Here is another Doomer Doug recon report from Portland, Oregon. Indeed, multiple downtown business stores are now closing in preparation of the riots soon to start. Nordstrom is already locking its doors.
Right now there are about 300 to 400 people in Pioneer Square. The weather is drizzle and light rain, the temp is 40 F, so the weather won't be a factor. The Snowflakes have plenty of REI and North Face rain gear.
Finally, here is why I am predicting violence in downtown Portland once things get rolling. You can always count on a core of 200, 400, maybe as many as 1,000, so called "anarchists," depending on the size of the total crowd. Since 10,000 are now expected, and I have seen the anarchist, violence prone group is usually around 10 percent of the total, we will have the critical mass.
The other thing is I smoke fairly close to the corner of SW Park and Morrison, which is about 50 feet, across the street from the NorthWest corner of Nordstroms. Hanging in our fire escape was a nice, one to one and half inch thick branch. The Snowflakes are going to have a lot of tree branches available to use as weapons because downtown is covered with fallen tree branches from the storm last week.
What this particular branch was there for is a prepositioned weapon for the Snowflakes. Back in the November riots, the police reported finding multiple "stashes" of rocks, stones, glass bottles, hidden around Pioneer Square for use as projectiles against police. I took it down, and threw it in the basement dipsty dumpster. I guess one Snowflake won't have his club to smash windows, or break heads later on tonight. LOL
We are going to see violence in downtown, and maybe other demonstration sites, Portland tonight. The Snowflakes have been watching the chaos in DC, Austin, and Oakland all day, so they are PRIMED AND READY FOR ACTION. You should also not underestimate the level of VENOM AND HATRED FOR TRUMP the Snowflakes have. They see themselves as heroes fighting Hitler and his SS taking over.
Granted, our new Portland Mayor, Ted Wheeler, is made of sterner stuff than the loser Charlie Hales was. After making all the usual liberal mewing about "the right to demonstrate," he has made it clear the PPD are free to engage, at the site commanders discretion if they start to see the kind of anarchy, chaos and property damage we saw on November 8th. By the way, the total property damage from the November riots was estimated to be between ONE TO THREE MILLION DOLLARS.
I have no doubt the business groups are all over Wheeler and the PPD to prevent a repeat of that. Tri met also has a very heavy, supervisors and Transit Police, presence at Pioneer Square. They also don't want a repeat of the transit chaos from November.
It should be interesting to see what happens. You have thousands of, mostly peaceful demonstrators, a large minority, up to 1,000, who are bent on violence, against a city that is pissed off about the November riots, and a new political leadership that doesn't want to incur the wrath of an equally pissed off business community. The PPD are, as usual, caught in the middle.
Yep, you should have stayed around Portland so you can see all the fun and games, Dennis. <G>