“We wanted to symbolize that both parties are the oppressor,” said a 25-year-old protester who wished not to be identified, fearing reprisals from the government. “We have all experienced firsthand that police violence is police violence, regardless (of the political party that has power) … It makes no difference to the person being beaten.”
“For whites, perhaps they feel there is time to let the government work, but for blacks and indigenous people who have a rope around their necks, there is no time,” said the protester. “There is no justice, so there is no peace.”
Biden, in his inaugural address on Wednesday, called for racial justice and unity in America, recognizing that the nation is deeply divided by systemic racism and political forces. He denounced white supremacy and domestic terrorism and said the country must be cured.
“A cry for racial justice, some 400 years in the making, moves us,” said Biden. “The dream of justice for all will no longer be postponed.”
Still, protesters wearing black clothes and gas masks took to the streets on Thursday in Portland, where social justice demonstrations last for months. Protesters there the day before had vandalized the Democratic Party’s state headquarters and a US Federal Immigration and Customs building, or ICE, the police said, and four people were charged in connection with these events.
CNN witnessed more arrests on Thursday night, when most of the people present at a protest in the ICE building were white. In fact, the demographics of the Portland protest movement have often been criticized. Protesters say it shouldn’t be a surprise, as the city is 77% white, and not looked down upon.
“I want to dispel that white anarchists are co-opting this for their own gain,” said the 25-year-old white protester who told CNN that he lived in Portland most of his life. “There are blacks and indigenous people out there who cannot have the same external action as whites can”.
‘It doesn’t matter who the president is’
The anger of some protesters is fueled by their assumption that the Biden government will not meet its main demands: abolish the ICE and de-authorize the police, a concept that can range from reinvesting police resources in marginalized communities until the total dissolution of forces, they said. them to CNN.
“There is a lot of anger and rage” about social inequality among Americans, protester Alix Powell told CNN. And vandalism is how some people express their anger, she said.
“There is a lot of hopelessness in people my age and in people I know who feel that no matter how you vote, no matter what you do, they are not listening,” she said on Thursday. “A riot is the language of the unprecedented.”
“It doesn’t matter who the president is: black lives don’t matter, Arab lives don’t matter, they don’t care about us. They just don’t care, ”another demonstrator of Arab descent, who also wished to remain anonymous, told CNN on Thursday.
National black leaders are counting on the new president to unify the county and enact policies that address the disparities that blacks face in housing, education, jobs, health and election suppression, they said. They also want Biden to undo the damage done by President Donald Trump’s offensive rhetoric against people of color and his refusal to deal with police brutality in the black community.
Among the first three executive orders that Biden signed on Induction Day, was one designed to guarantee racial equality and support underserved communities. Biden also brought together the most racially diverse presidential office in the history of the United States. His Department of Homeland Security stopped deportations for 100 days, with a few exceptions. And on Friday, he signed executive orders that expand aid to low-income Americans.
Many months of Portland protests
As in cities across the country, protests erupted in Portland late last spring over the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police and expanded to include demands for police accountability and prosecutor reform in Breonna Taylor cases, Ahmaud Arbery, Elijah McClain and other black victims.
Events ranged from peaceful Black Lives Matter marches to violent demonstrations, including arson and vandalism. Some have become targets of hate groups that seek to antagonize those who go out to defend the rights of marginalized communities.
Oregon’s complicated racial tensions date back to the country’s founding. Also in 1854, the Oregon Constitution was amended in an exclusive language to keep blacks out of the state, according to a timeline published by Portland city officials.
The 14th Amendment, granting citizenship to blacks, was passed there in 1868, two years after Congressional approval.
But it was only in the 1950s that Oregon began to overturn the laws and rules that supported racial discrimination in housing, schools and jobs.
Andy Rose, Dakin Andone and Hollie Silverman of CNN contributed to this report.
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