Protests/tear gas report

[prairiewindmomma]

A new report has come out re: the use of tear gas during the Black Lives Matters protests in Portland in 2020.

Many of the protesters and nearby residents experienced health side effects from exposure. The new report shows some were exposed to levels 2000x the health/safety limit. There is an embedded video in the Guardian article which shows how they did a forensic analysis of how many and what munitions were used, how weather affected the flow of the gas dispersal, and so on.

I am sharing this because I think people should generally be aware. Women reported ongoing menstrual difficulties after exposure, among other issues. This wasn’t well known to protesters and residents initially—in part because using tear gas is illegal in combat and until recently was rarely used in the US by police. 
 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2023/apr/17/teargas-effect-portland-police-investigation

 

[Lecka]

I had not heard about this, thanks for sharing.  
 

It reminds me of when helicopters were flown really low over Washington DC to disperse protesters, my husband was shocked by that, he couldn’t believe it happened.  

[prairiewindmomma]

It’s a wild world when we have to add “how to handle civil unrest” to the life lessons we give our kids. The CS tear gas smells like chlorine. Another version smells like black pepper. We now tell our kids that if they can smell it, they need to go if they safely can because it’s so easy to be overexposed. 
 

That area has university buildings, restaurants, shopping, apartments, and was in the air flow of healthcare and schools. Even if you aren’t an active protester, it’s easy to get caught up in stuff. 
 

The soil at a school playground was contaminated. https://www.opb.org/article/2021/01/29/portland-school-tear-gas-playground/?outputType=amp

Kaiser did a study on the health effects also. Here is a news piece about it that details more of the health effects: https://www.kgw.com/amp/article/news/local/women-reported-menstrual-changes-after-getting-exposed-to-tear-gas-in-portland/283-7f1fae44-0380-4552-bbc0-5eb0c18aab51

 

 

[Katy]

This is new?  I thought I heard about this back then, when they were exposing sonic weapons used for crowd dispersal.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Katy
dispersal not disposal. sigh.

[prairiewindmomma]

The fact that they were using munitions and that they caused some side effects was known fairly early on. The long term outcomes of that was not. Sonic dispersal wasn’t used much. The shrapnel some people took from the munitions was known. The kidnapping by federal agents of people off the street was known. 
 

The fact that some of the concentrations were 2000x safe allowances is new. The forensic recreation is new. All of the documentation had to be really dug up because PPD wasn’t very forthcoming. As the article and video embedded in the article states, it was people gathering spent munitions and piecing together photos and videos combined with info requests that helped put together the big picture of what went down.
 

 

[Heartstrings]

1 hour ago, prairiewindmomma said:

The fact that they were using munitions and that they caused some side effects was known fairly early on. The long term outcomes of that was not. Sonic dispersal wasn’t used much. The shrapnel some people took from the munitions was known. The kidnapping by federal agents of people off the street was known. 
 

The fact that some of the concentrations were 2000x safe allowances is new. The forensic recreation is new. All of the documentation had to be really dug up because PPD wasn’t very forthcoming. As the article and video embedded in the article states, it was people gathering spent munitions and piecing together photos and videos combined with info requests that helped put together the big picture of what went down.
 

 

I keep seeing people asking why we don’t protest the way they are in France and this is why.  It’s not safe because our police are militarized. 

[Melissa in Australia]

What would you prefer police to do against armed, violent mobs of protesters? 

Maybe batons and give the protesters a beating? Though I guess that wouldn't work against armed mobs. 

If the protesters are more heavily armed than the  police it seems to really limit  options

[prairiewindmomma]

For starters, I think the police shouldn’t attack peaceful bystanders. The police in Portland targeted medics, the attorney volunteers who were acting as peaceful observers, and the journalists.
https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/07/23/894953202/order-temporarily-blocks-feds-from-targeting-press-and-legal-observers-in-portla

Second, they should follow the law and their own safety guidelines: after a judge banned PPD from using tear gas, the PPD coordinated with federal agencies who then used the tear gas.

The protesters were not more heavily armed than the police. That is completely laughable.

[Melissa in Australia]

I thought the general population in USA is so heavenly armed that police need military style weapons? 

I am pleased to hear that is not correct and rather  laughable. I was obviously mislead and believed that America is like some war zone 

[YaelAldrich]

16 minutes ago, Melissa in Australia said:

I thought the general population in USA is so heavenly armed that police need military style weapons? 

I am pleased to hear that is not correct and rather  laughable. I was obviously mislead and believed that America is like some war zone 

In some places this is more true than false.  But in most cities gun ownership is pretty low.  Basically if a person owns a gun is rather likely they will own more than one gun.  Those who don't own a gun are in the majority I believe. 

[Pawz4me]

3 hours ago, Melissa in Australia said:

I was obviously mislead and believed that America is like some war zone 

You are badly mislead, although that's understandable based on how many shootings threads there have been recently.

 

3 hours ago, YaelAldrich said:

Those who don't own a gun are in the majority I believe. 

This is true. One about one third of Americans own a gun. But lots of those people own multiple weapons. There's a reason those people are often referred to as idolators or ammosexuals. I believe Portland is a heavily Democrat-leaning city, and that article states that among Democrats only about twenty percent own a gun. It was unlikely that the protesters in Portland were heavily armed, unless there were agitators from elsewhere (which is very possible).

 

[Heartstrings]

7 hours ago, Melissa in Australia said:

What would you prefer police to do against armed, violent mobs of protesters? 

Maybe batons and give the protesters a beating? Though I guess that wouldn't work against armed mobs. 

If the protesters are more heavily armed than the  police it seems to really limit  options

You should find some videos of protests here.  Mostly they are peaceful until the moment the police decide they have tired of the protest, then the police end them with violence.  
 

Strangly when far right groups protest, they do it heavily armed, especially in open carry states.  They are almost never met with violence.  It’s an interesting phenomenon.  
 

This video from the protests in Florida has been haunting me.  You see women sitting in a circle, Unarmed, no threat, arms in the air.  Then you see dozens of cops walking up to surround and arrest them.  
 

Yes, it’s Tik Tok. The news media doesn’t cover this sort of thing much, it’s up to citizen journalists.  
 

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRTrT1yU/

 

Edited April 21, 2023 by Heartstrings
Wrong location mentioned

[MEmama]

6 hours ago, Melissa in Australia said:

I thought the general population in USA is so heavenly armed that police need military style weapons? 

I am pleased to hear that is not correct and rather  laughable. I was obviously mislead and believed that America is like some war zone 

The only place I’ve ever seen a gun irl was in Mexico. For much of the population none of this gun stuff is normal or common in any way. 
 

To think of the country like a war zone is as absurd as believing all Australians wrangle crocodiles every day on their way to work. 🙄

[Heartstrings]

Amnesty international found that police violated human rights during the 2020 BLM protests. 
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2020/08/usa-law-enforcement-violated-black-lives-matter-protesters-human-rights/

 

 

BLM protests were overwhelming peaceful. 
“….In fact, the Black Lives Matter uprisings were remarkably nonviolent. When there was violence, very often police or counterprotesters were reportedly directing it at the protesters….”

https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/publications/black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelmingly-peaceful-our-research-finds

 

[Corraleno]

7 hours ago, Melissa in Australia said:

What would you prefer police to do against armed, violent mobs of protesters? 

Maybe batons and give the protesters a beating? Though I guess that wouldn't work against armed mobs. 

If the protesters are more heavily armed than the  police it seems to really limit  options

Here's video of the police attacking an Australian news crew who were filming a demonstration outside the White House that was 100% peaceful until heavily armed police started throwing tear gas, beating people with batons, and shooting people with rubber bullets, including journalists.

 

[Heartstrings]

9 minutes ago, MEmama said:

To think of the country like a war zone is as absurd as believing all Australians wrangle crocodiles every day on their way to work.

That’s not true?   🤣.  (Kidding, kidding). 

[Heartstrings]

It’s interesting that that’s the particular vision of America that is being spread internationally.  Rupert Murdock owns a chunk of the media in Australia and also owns Fox News here.  It would make sense that the Fox News vision of things is easily spread.  
 

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2020/nov/13/australia-newspaper-ownership-is-among-the-most-concentrated-in-the-world

The high newspaper industry ownership concentration was largely due to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp which, at the time, controlled 57% of the newspaper market by circulation.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Heartstrings

[wintermom]

3 hours ago, Pawz4me said:

This is true. One about one third of Americans own a gun. But lots of those people own multiple weapons. There's a reason those people are often referred to as idolators or ammosexuals. I believe Portland is a heavily Democrat-leaning city, and that article states that among Democrats only about twenty percent own a gun. It was unlikely that the protesters in Portland were heavily armed, unless there were agitators from elsewhere (which is very possible).

 

I'm only going to guess that this is an underrepresentation, as it's self-reported and the sample size or quality (was it rendom and representative of the whole population) for the survey isn't reported. At the least, it's not telling the whole story about easy access to a gun. From the article you provided the link. 

Three in 10 adults say they personally own a gun, while four in 10 say they live in a household where someone owns a gun, according to a 2017 survey from Pew Research Center.

There are about 393 million privately owned firearms in the US, according to an estimate by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey – or in other words, 120 guns for every 100 Americans. That’s the highest rate of any country in the world, and more than double the rate of the next country on the list.

[Heartstrings]

Owning guns, having access to guns, and carrying them around are all very different things.   I personally have several, they don’t get carried around.  If I leave them all at home to attend a protest the fact that I own them is irrelevant to how I’m treated at a protest.  Especially when the protest where they are openly carrying AR 15s strapped to their back tend to go differently.  

[livetoread]

I think very few left leaning protestors come to protests armed.

I also think the protests in Portland may have started out peaceful but the protestors themselves ended up being more violent against the police than in other areas. That isn't to excuse the behavior of the Portland police at all, but I think Portland has a deserved reputation for being more willing to engage in violent protest. As things went along, protestors did initiate violence against the police by throwing things without provocation (in particular situations anyway). But like I said, there was much fault on the police side, and without that, maybe things would not have escalated on the protestor side.

And not to get too political, but I am thinking that it's not so much being heavily armed that protects protestors from police retaliation as it is sympathy to the cause of the protest. I think many police try and be professional no matter the issue, but history shows police tolerate the open carry protest of some groups/races/causes much better than others. Heavily armed BLM protests would have deteriorated much faster and in a much more ugly way, I have no doubt.

 

[prairiewindmomma]

One unique aspect of the later protests was that far right wing protesters like the Proud Boys came to scuffle against the BLM protesters.  This is documented, in articles such as this one: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/28/portland-violence-far-right-protests-police  Ironically, Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys were using these as training grounds for the insurrection that took place on January 6.

Members of the Portland Police Bureau had/ have ongoing relationships with the proud boys. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/disturbing-texts-between-oregon-police-far-right-group-prompts-investigation-n972161 https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2022/01/feds-furious-city-kept-them-in-dark-about-derogatory-training-slide-advocating-violence-against-demonstrators.html 

Portland does have a deserved reputation for clashing against far right groups: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/23/portland-oregon-clashes-protests-proud-boys-antifascist  In 2021, PPD did more of a hands-off take on the situation: https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/23/us/portland-clashes/index.html Things didn't escalate as much as in 2020.

I agree with the last paragraph of this article from The Atlantic, which was published in 2019: "The real target, though, is not Portland or antifa but all of us, and our sense of security that we are free citizens of a democratic nation, free to take our children downtown to play or to assemble peacefully to advocate values.." 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/meaning-street-protests-portland/596686/

We had just been at the OMSI (Kids' science museum) the weekend before. It did kind of dent my sense of security.  Likewise, the violence of having police attack innocent citizens does make me feel like peacefully assembling and advocating for democracy is dangerous.  I think this erosion of a sense of safety, of a sense of trust in our government, is probably much more dangerous on the whole to our national psyche than even the spate of gun violence we are currently afflicted with. It makes me wonder why they want me to feel that way; what end are they trying to accomplish?