Portland, Oregon, is not a war zone. It isn’t war-ravaged. It hasn’t “burnt to the ground,” as President Donald Trump announced Sunday morning, just as he was preparing to deploy 300 California National Guard troops to the city, one day after a Trump-appointed judged denied his attempts to have Oregon National Guard soldiers mobilized to the city.
While Trump was making proclamations this morning about Portland’s ravaged streets, I was running through the city, part of some 12,000 people who took part in the Portland half marathon and marathon. Thousands more were lining the course, which started and ended in downtown, while also winding through neighborhoods on both sides of the Willamette River.
It was a beautiful fall morning, the tree-lined streets in full fall glory, the sun just coming up over Mt. Hood as we crossed Sellwood Bridge. There were bands, and cowbells, and plenty of anti-Trump and anti-ICE signs to capture the spirit of a city apparently under siege. The vibe seemed joy-filled, nothing at all like the apocalyptic hellscape that Trump and his administration have described.
Maybe that’s because there is no hellscape. No violent protests. No Antifa agitators. By most accounts, small, peaceful protests have been occurring at an ICE facility (near the race course, though we didn’t see it; we did see the chicken-suited man who is often at the ICE protests). One night, people set up with a tea party while ICE troops marched by. On Friday, a frog-customed protester was pepper-sprayed by officials, suggesting that the true agitators are those sent there by the president himself.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut ruled on Saturday that the government had no sound rationale for sending Oregon National Guard troops to Portland. She pointed out that protests in Portland were “largely sedate,” and that local law enforcement were capable of handling issues that arose in the city. (They did not seem too pressed: there were plenty of Portland Police doing traffic control during the race.)
By Sunday, President Trump had decided that he would deploy California’s National Guard to Portland, not only a vast waste of resources, but also a problematic (and likely illegal) work-around to Saturday’s court ruling. California Governor Gavin Newsom is in the process of stopping this action, too.
Like any major metropolitan area, Portland is not without its problems. The half marathon course today went past some camps for people experiencing houselessness—probably the most pressing issue in Portland, as in other big cities. But spending money on troop deployment, rather than on support for those who need housing (many who are veterans), is just one more way that the federal government is abusing its own citizens, causing division, and stoking more violence.
To be honest, running in Portland today unsettled me not because of the war-ravaged streets, but because so many of us (myself included) can act as if nothing’s wrong in our increasingly fascist country. While I was enjoying my morning, I know there are people afraid to leave their homes, worried that ICE is lurking, ready to disappear them because of their skin color, if not their immigration status. I know there are people in Chicago cleaning up their homes after ICE rappelled onto their rooftops in darkness, trashing their apartments and zip-tying their babies. I know there are folks in Gaza, trying to survive another night while Israel drops bombs on them—bombs funded by U.S. taxpayers.
I know I am lucky to be healthy, and privileged enough to run freely through a beautiful city on a Sunday morning. I wish and pray that this freedom could be experienced by everyone. Perhaps that’s why President Trump’s decision to send military troops into America’s cities to support his campaign against immigration is so troubling: because, as Maya Angelou said, “no one of us can be free until everybody is free.”
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