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'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

reason.com

141–150 of 325 posts

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#141
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which buildings have been burned, exactly? Local reporting covered the Molotov cocktails last night [0] but did not indicate that any buildings were being burned down or even caught on fire. Portlanders continue to note that most of the city is unaffected by protests. Life goes on as normal. Only a couple specific blocks downtown are contested, and only because the police have chosen to make those blocks into a battl…

Police are making it a battleground? Not the people throwing Molotov cocktails, fireworks, and bricks. No, it is the police who have made it a battleground.

the police union needs to call for a 60 day strike. just take away the policing function of the local government for two months. that will lay bare the real motives of the protesters, either peaceful demonstration or violence and looting.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also seen little reporting on what I suspect (admittedly, merely judging from photos) has driven a lot of the more confrontational protesting in Portland: youthful energy and enthusiasm that doesn’t actually think that much about theory or aims. Press coverage and the attacks of ideological opponents depict these protestors as a focused political force that knows exactly what it seeks and why it is doing the s…

There are well articulated lists of demands from leaders of the movements. Not everyone in the gatherings needs to be super well-versed in the policy details to support them. Here are some examples: More modest: https://8cantwait.org/ Larger scale: https://www.tenforjustice.com/demands You can probably find more local information from your local BLM or other social justice organizations. Here is a specific example fr…

Some of these sound reasonable, some of them are completely ridiculous. It's probably for the better of the movement that these demands aren't the subject of (sympathetic) news coverage, because they're way outside the overton window of the general population. In fact, republicans/conservatives could hardly get any better support for their claim that BLM supporters are radical marxists.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#143
post #58

There’s reason to be skeptical. From a local Portland journalist covering the protests: https://twitter.com/alex_zee/status/1302284883625046016?s=21 “ Not that I want to legitimize this @reason piece, but I have filmed copious moments of ppl throwing things at police/vandalizing bldgs/etc & have never been told I’m not allowed to film. I have never heard of the so-called “IPC.” The lack of sourcing in this story show…

[deleted]

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#144
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the police have been making it worse. Using questionable tactics, using disproportionate force, lieing, inciting/supporting one side over the other, using beyond questionable reasoning for declaring a riot, using agent provocateur ...i could go on. Check out Blue Leaks as well. The fact is the majority of the media covering Portland are not showing the whole story.

Citizens have constitutional rights to peaceably assemble. The language is right there in the bill of rights. Police don’t show up and corral peaceful protesters who applied for, and were granted, permits for demonstrations. When an assembly becomes not peaceful it ceases to be lawful. If unlawful protesters do not disperse police must use what you call “questionable” tactics to remove them. The rule of law must be u…

So one person throwing a bottle is a reason to declare a riot? This has happened. Who decides when an assembly ought to be declared a riot? Currently its police and they have shown time and again they cannot be relied on to make a sound judgement in that regard. The majority of time there has been little reason to declare a riot and instead of relieving the tension, government forces have stoked it. What about using agent provocateurs? Surely this is not what you consider to be upholding the rule of law. And for that matter Portland police have shown bias in their application of the law in regards to counter protestors. I support the rule of law wholeheartedly but it must be applied evenly across all fronts for the rule of law to be maintained. On its face alone, I agree with your statement but digging any deeper reveals that unfortunately your black and white maximalist/ reductionist viewpoint doesn't fit the reality in the ground. Its shades of grey. The media and the radicals on any side are forcing you into this viewpoint. Btw you are leaving out so much in your assessment to in order to make a black and white argument.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#145
Do you believe there is any validity to the idea that increased political polarization is synchronous with an increase in systems that perform better when their data sets are distinctly opposed? Can there be a middle when our analysis systems perform more poorly in those conditions?

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#146
post #19

The mainstream news reporting on Portland (and other regional rioting) got to the point where they were bald-faced lying about peaceful protests standing in front of burning buildings. The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that these professional journalists think that their readers can’t understand a nuanced world of gray and need everything reduced to black and white. There can be a concept of “BLM”…

> There can be a concept of “BLM” that is obviously right and important to support, while there is also a well organized radical contingent taking cover within BLM that is wreaking havoc on the streets and will bully or beat up anyone who stands up to them (police or bystander alike). For starters I'd suggest not putting black lives matter in capitals since that acronym covers both the tautological expression as well…

I agree with what you’re saying. The fact you get downvoted speaks of the success they’ve had masquerading themselves as a good or “peaceful” movement.

People, I know you mean well but remember that bad things that look good can cause much more harm than things that look outright bad. Be skeptical.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#147
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously this is to control the narrative. Why would they shoo and have "minders" ala repressive regimes? Is it because "fake news" (that'd be a tough sell coming from the left who question that assertion). Is it because they don't want people to see the underbelly of the movement or at least the bad elements in their movement? What we do know is that if you are an organization looking for change, if you're not very…

> What we do know is that if you are an organization looking for change, if you're not very careful, your well intended movement will be usurped by those who have ulterior motives It seems to me, as an outsider, that this has already happened given what started as good intentions from occupy Wall Street down to whatever we have now. I can’t imagine the goal was actually burning buildings, but is a subversion of the g…

It is on-record at this point that US federal and local agents infiltrate these organizations and run a divide-and-conquer playbook. When you fight against the monetized weight of these efforts, they write articles like this one, attempting to invoke the imaginary leftist authoritarian boogey-man. The best part of this article is that it linked the demands of the protestors, which I fully, 100% across-the-board support: https://www.tenforjustice.com/demands.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a natural, human tendency. Us vs. them. Tribalism. That sort of thing.

Certainly. I even catch myself doing it too. I’ve had to develop a kind of framework for considering political issues to avoid it: What’s best for me? What’s best for my family? What’s best for my community? What’s best for my country? What’s best for the planet? Often these questions have contradicting answers. However once I think through them, I can at least begin to structure an opinion.

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Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#149
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citizens have constitutional rights to peaceably assemble. The language is right there in the bill of rights. Police don’t show up and corral peaceful protesters who applied for, and were granted, permits for demonstrations. When an assembly becomes not peaceful it ceases to be lawful. If unlawful protesters do not disperse police must use what you call “questionable” tactics to remove them. The rule of law must be u…

So one person throwing a bottle is a reason to declare a riot? This has happened. Who decides when an assembly ought to be declared a riot? Currently its police and they have shown time and again they cannot be relied on to make a sound judgement in that regard. The majority of time there has been little reason to declare a riot and instead of relieving the tension, government forces have stoked it. What about using…

It’s simple. We have rules and regulations on how to assemble in public. They differ from city to city and state to state but the information isn’t hard to find. Typically you need a permit if your assembly is more than 20 people but that’s not universal. And an assembly in the middle of the night is almost certainly not peaceful or allowed.

People are trying to make it grey to apologize for what is happening.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any "mostly peaceful" claims can and should be dismissed as unverifiable I honestly thought “mostly peaceful” was a meme at this point. With cities on fire for months and months, how can anyone take such a claim seriously? Edit: Twitter seems to agree with me. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23MostlyPeaceful

According to this report, most BLM protests have been peaceful: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/05/nearly-all-bla... original report here: https://acleddata.com/2020/09/03/demonstrations-political-vi...

According to your link, "93% of demonstrations have involved no serious harm to people or property" out of a total of 7,750 demonstrations this year.

Which is one way to say that there have been approximately 542 protests this year involving serious harm to people or property. But sure, nothing to see here. (And by the way, what % of that 93% involved harm that the researchers didn't consider "serious"?)

Next time I see my grandad I'll tell him that there were only 71 bombing raids on London over 8 months of the Blitz, therefore his childhood in that city was "mostly peaceful."

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