Let's see what the mayor of Durham has to say about ANTIFA burning and destroying downtown Durham on Wednesday night. It's good to see the mayor and other local politicians calling out ANTIFA directly and the local media identifying the exact anarchist group. Durham mayor says white anarchists took over racial justice protest, causing damage to businesses https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-ne...justice-protest-causing-damage-to-businesses/ More than a dozen businesses in downtown Durham are picking up after a protest for Breonna Taylor turned destructive on Wednesday night. City officials said 13 businesses were vandalized after a group of 60 to 75 protesters marched through downtown and some started busting out windows to different businesses in the area. Patrick Madison, a bartender and supervisor at Tabernas Tapa Diner on West Main Street, said protesters busted out one of the windows to their business. “It’s unfortunate,” Madison said. “It really puts a kind of dark light on some of the positivity of what’s going on.” During a press conference on Thursday, city leaders said a majority of Wednesday night’s protesters were not there to express anything that had to do with the outcome of the Breonna Taylor case. “The folks that were inflicting the damage last night were white,” said Mayor Steve Schewel. “I want to be clear, there is an indication that this is an attempt to co-opt a racial justice movement.” The group that advertised the protest on social media is a group of anarchists with Durham BURN. The group is part of the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) Underground Resistance Network from the Triangle. A flier was posted on the group’s Twitter page on Wednesday that said a “Breonna Taylor” protest would be held at 7 pm on Wednesday at CCB plaza. However, Durham Police Chief C.J. Davis said the police department was not notified about the protest. “We were prepared last night for some of our usual types of protests with minimal staff, but certainly we were not prepared to respond to the level of activity that we did last night,” Davis said. She said after what happened last night Durham Police will have to increase visibility at these protests but they will still continue their non-confrontational approach. “We don’t know what the next days could look like, so the Durham Police Department will be very strategic in ensuring that we have individuals close enough on standby to respond quickly,” Davis said. CBS 17 reached out to the group Durham BURN for a comment but we have not heard back. According to the group’s Twitter, the next protest will be in Raleigh at Nash Square at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, September 26th. ==================================== The WRAL article below has comments from other Durham council members, the chief of police, and more video. https://www.wral.com/durham-mayor-damage-done-by-those-bent-on-destruction/19303108/
Photographer Went Undercover With Looters Expecting To Find White Supremacists. Instead, He Found Anarchists https://dailycaller.com/2020/10/01/photographer-anarchists-white-supremacist-protest-riot-looting/ A furloughed photographer who documented protests starting on May 31 expected to find white supremacists behind widespread looting but instead found anarchists, according to a New York Times opinion column. Jeremy Lee Quinn started photographing a Black Lives Matter protest in Santa Monica, California, May 31 when someone notified him that people were looting a nearby shoe store, New York Times’ editorial board member Farah Stockman wrote in a Wednesday column. When Quinn arrived, he saw young people running out of the store carrying shoeboxes while a group of black-clad men wearing masks behaved like supervisors as the store was looted. Quinn witnessed a black-clad white man break a store window with a crowbar the following day, though he didn’t take anything from the shop, Stockman wrote. After reviewing videos of looting across the country, Quinn noticed similar groups of masked black-clad supervisors, so he dressed the same way and attended a protest, Stockman wrote. Quinn thought the supervisors would be tied to white supremacy groups, instead, he found a group of “insurrectionary anarchists.” Quinn decided to march alongside groups of “black bloc” anarchists across the country to learn more about them, according to Stockman. He said that though he respects their optimistic goal to create a society free of hierarchy, some of their tactics made him uncomfortable since they could aid President Donald Trump’s reelection. Anarchists advertised the protests on social media, drawing “cultlike energy” to events in Portland, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., Quinn told Stockman. He marched with protesters who launched fireworks at a federal court building in Portland, Oregon, and with protesters who heckled diners in Washington, D.C. The protests following the police killing of George Floyd on May 25 weren’t born of anger but were strategically organized and advertised on social media by anarchists who thought their actions could advance social justice, Quinn said, according to Stockman. Floyd died in police custody after a former Minneapolis officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, video shows. Nationwide protests followed his death, with some leading to violence, rioting, and looting. On the third day of protests in Minneapolis, Minnesota, anarchist publication CrimethInc reported black-clad individuals breaking windows, vandalizing police cars, and starting fires before disappearing in the crowd of protesters, Stockman wrote. Some anarchists participate in pacifist civil disobedience, while others justify committing crimes like arson and looting by saying it wears down the capitalist economic system, according to an anarchist podcast Stockman reviewed. Some anarchist’s social media profiles gained hundreds of thousands of followers since May, according to a Rutgers study. The “systematic, online mobilization of violence that was planned, coordinated (in real-time) and celebrated by explicitly violent anarcho-socialist networks that rode on the coattails of peaceful protest,” co-author Pamela Paresky told Stockman. “The ability to continue to spread and to eventually bring more violence, including a violent insurgency, relies on the ability to hide in plain sight — to be confused with legitimate protests, and for media and the public to minimize the threat,” Paresky said.
Go read the NYT opinion column --- where the information for this story is taken from. The Truth About Today’s Anarchists “Insurrectionary anarchists” have been protesting for racial justice all summer. Some Black leaders wish they would go home. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/opinion/anarchists-protests-black-lives-matter.html By Farah Stockman Ms. Stockman is a member of the editorial board On the last Sunday in May, Jeremy Lee Quinn, a furloughed photographer in Santa Monica, Calif., was snapping photos of suburban moms kneeling at a Black Lives Matter protest when a friend alerted him to a more dramatic subject: looting at a shoe store about a mile away. He arrived to find young people pouring out of the store, shoeboxes under their arms. But there was something odd about the scene. A group of men, dressed entirely in black, milled around nearby, like supervisors. One wore a creepy rubber Halloween mask. The next day, Mr. Quinn took pictures of another store being looted. Again, he noticed something strange. A white man, clad in black, had broken the window with a crowbar, but walked away without taking a thing. Mr. Quinn began studying footage of looting from around the country and saw the same black outfits and, in some cases, the same masks. He decided to go to a protest dressed like that himself, to figure out what was really going on. He expected to find white supremacists who wanted to help re-elect President Trump by stoking fear of Black people. What he discovered instead were true believers in “insurrectionary anarchism.” To better understand them, Mr. Quinn, a 40-something theater student who worked at Univision until the pandemic, has spent the past four months marching with “black bloc” anarchists in half a dozen cities across the country, chronicling the experience on his website, Public Report. He says he respects the idealistic goal of a hierarchy-free society that anarchists embrace, but grew increasingly uncomfortable with the tactics used by some anarchists, which he feared would set off a backlash that could help get President Trump re-elected. In Portland, Ore., he marched with people who shot fireworks at the federal court building. In Washington, he marched with protesters who harassed diners. Mr. Quinn discovered a thorny truth about the mayhem that unfolded in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man in Minneapolis. It wasn’t mayhem at all. While talking heads on television routinely described it as a spontaneous eruption of anger at racial injustice, it was strategically planned, facilitated and advertised on social media by anarchists who believed that their actions advanced the cause of racial justice. In some cities, they were a fringe element, quickly expelled by peaceful organizers. But in Washington, Portland and Seattle they have attracted a “cultlike energy,” Mr. Quinn told me. Don’t take just Mr. Quinn’s word for it. Take the word of the anarchists themselves, who lay out the strategy in Crimethinc, an anarchist publication: Black-clad figures break windows, set fires, vandalize police cars, then melt back into the crowd of peaceful protesters. When the police respond by brutalizing innocent demonstrators with tear gas, rubber bullets and rough arrests, the public’s disdain for law enforcement grows. It’s Asymmetric Warfare 101. An anarchist podcast called “The Ex-Worker” explains that while some anarchists believe in pacifist civil disobedience inspired by Mohandas Gandhi, others advocate using crimes like arson and shoplifting to wear down the capitalist system. According to “The Ex-Worker,” the term “insurrectionary anarchist” dates back at least to the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, when opponents of the fascist leader Francisco Franco took “direct action” against his regime, including assassinating policemen and robbing banks. If that is not enough to convince you that there’s a method to the madness, check out the new report by Rutgers researchers that documents the “systematic, online mobilization of violence that was planned, coordinated (in real time) and celebrated by explicitly violent anarcho-socialist networks that rode on the coattails of peaceful protest,” according to its co-author Pamela Paresky. She said some anarchist social media accounts had grown 300-fold since May, to hundreds of thousands of followers. “The ability to continue to spread and to eventually bring more violence, including a violent insurgency, relies on the ability to hide in plain sight — to be confused with legitimate protests, and for media and the public to minimize the threat,” Dr. Paresky told me. Her report will almost certainly catch the attention of conservative media and William Barr’s Department of Justice, which recently declared New York, Portland and Seattle “anarchist jurisdictions,” a widely mocked designation accompanied by the threat of withholding federal funds. There’s an even thornier truth that few people seem to want to talk about: Anarchy got results. Don’t get me wrong. My heart broke for the people in Minneapolis who lost buildings to arson and looting. Migizi, a Native American nonprofit in Minneapolis, raised more than $1 million to buy and renovate a place where Native American teenagers could learn about their culture — only to watch it go up in flames, alongside dozens of others, including a police station. It can take years to build a building — and only one night to burn it down. And yet, I had to admit that the scale of destruction caught the media’s attention in a way that peaceful protests hadn’t. How many articles would I have written about a peaceful march? How many months would Mr. Quinn have spent investigating suburban moms kneeling? That’s on us. While I feared that the looting and arson would derail the urgent demands for racial justice and bring condemnation, I was wrong, at least in the short term. Support for Black Lives Matter soared. Corporations opened their wallets. It was as if the nation rallied behind peaceful Black organizers after it saw the alternative, like whites who flocked to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after they got a glimpse of Malcolm X. But as the protests continue, support has flagged. The percentage of people who say they support the Black Lives Matter movement has dropped from 67 percent in June to 55 percent, according to a recent Pew poll. “Insurrectionary anarchy” brings diminishing returns, especially as anarchists complicate life for those working within the system to halt police violence. In Louisville, Ky., Attica Scott, a Black state representative who sponsored a police reform bill, was arrested last week and charged with felony rioting after someone threw a road flare inside a library. In Portland, Jo Ann Hardesty, an activist turned city councilor, has pushed for the creation of a pilot program of unarmed street responders to handle mental illness and homelessness, a practical step to help protect populations that experience violence at the hands of police. Yet Ms. Hardesty is shouted down at protests by anarchists who want to abolish the police, not merely reform or defund them. “As a Black woman who has been working on this for 30 years, to have young white activists who have just discovered that Black lives matter yelling at me that I’m not doing enough for Black people — it’s kind of ironic, is what it is,” Ms. Hardesty told me. In Seattle, Andrè Taylor, a Black man who lost his brother to police violence in 2016, helped change state law that made it nearly impossible to prosecute officers for killing civilians. But he has been branded a “pig cop” by young anarchists because his nonprofit organization receives funds from the city, and because he cooperates with the police. “When they say, ‘You are working with the police,’ I say, ‘I have worked with police and I will continue to work for reform,’” Mr. Taylor told me. “Remember, I lost a brother.” Black people get shot for doing ordinary law-abiding things. They don’t have the luxury of anarchy, he told me. That’s the thing about “insurrectionary anarchists.” They make fickle allies. If they help you get into power, they will try to oust you the following day, since power is what they are against. Many of them don’t even vote. They are experts at unraveling an old order but considerably less skilled at building a new one. That’s why, even after more than 100 days of protest in Portland, activists do not agree on a set of common policy goals. Even some anarchists admit as much. “We are not sure if the socialist, communist, democratic or even anarchist utopia is possible,” a voice on “The Ex-Worker” podcast intones. “Rather, some insurrectionary anarchists believe that the meaning of being an anarchist lies in the struggle itself and what that struggle reveals.” In other words, it’s not really about George Floyd or Black lives, but insurrection for insurrection’s sake.
There needs to be consequences... Nearly 70% of charges against Portland rioters were dropped by progressive DA https://www.theblaze.com/news/portland-rioters-da-prosecuting-charges Of the nearly 1,000 protest and riot-related arrests made in Portland since late May, prosecutors have dropped almost 70% of the charges, according to The Oregonian. On Wednesday, the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office released a new statistical dashboard that provides data on "protest-related cases referred to his office by law enforcement for prosecutorial review and potential issuing." "This is a major step forward for the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office," the statement from progressive District Attorney Mike Schmidt read. "Transparency in the work we do is a keystone to my administration. Moving this data online for the community to easily use will have a significant impact on understanding cases that arise from mass demonstrations. I promised during my campaign that I take a smarter approach to justice. That work continues with the launch of this dashboard. I am committed to launching future dashboards and other public facing programs that will support data-driven and transparent decision making." Of the nearly 1,000 protest and riot-related arrests made in Portland since late May, prosecutors have dropped almost 70% of the charges, according to The Oregonian. On Wednesday, the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office released a new statistical dashboard that provides data on "protest-related cases referred to his office by law enforcement for prosecutorial review and potential issuing." "This is a major step forward for the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office," the statement from progressive District Attorney Mike Schmidt read. "Transparency in the work we do is a keystone to my administration. Moving this data online for the community to easily use will have a significant impact on understanding cases that arise from mass demonstrations. I promised during my campaign that I take a smarter approach to justice. That work continues with the launch of this dashboard. I am committed to launching future dashboards and other public facing programs that will support data-driven and transparent decision making." Between May 29 and Oct. 5, there were 974 cases referred to the Multnomah DA's office by the Portland Police Department for prosecution, 666 were rejected, meaning 68% of all referred cases had the charges dropped by the Multnomah County DA. The dashboard states that 543 cases have been "rejected in the interest of justice." There were 902 public order crime charges, 166 person crime charges, and 125 property crime charges. There were 95 felony charges. Court records show 18 people have been arrested three or more times during protests in Portland since May, The Oregonian reported. This development is not shocking since Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt declared in August that his office would decline to press charges against protesters and rioters participating in Portland demonstrations. "If we leverage the full force of the criminal justice system on individuals who are peacefully protesting and demanding to be heard, we will cause irreparable harm to them individually and to our society," Schmidt said. "The Multnomah County District Attorney's Office will presumptively decline to prosecute a case where the most serious offense is a city ordinance violation or where the crime(s) do not involve deliberate property damage, theft or the use or threat of force against another person." Schmidt said that his office would not prosecute for the following crimes: Interfering with a peace officer or parole and probation officer Disorderly conduct in the second degree Criminal trespass in the first and second degree Escape in the third degree Harassment Riot (unless accompanied by a charge outside of this list) Portland Police Association President Daryl Turner reacted to Schmidt's pledge by saying, "I am disgusted that our city has come to this." In September, the U.S. Marshals Service deputized 56 Portland police officers and 22 Multnomah County sheriff's deputies to respond to potential violence under the orders of Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) after she declared a state of emergency. The federally deputized officers are effectively circumventing the Multnomah County District Attorney's office, who aren't prosecuting rioters. The deputizations remain in effect through December. Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell said he didn't know that the officers would remain federal deputies until 2021. Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) argued that the deputizations last "beyond the governor's stated emergency." In the race for Portland mayor, Wheeler is currently polling significantly behind Sarah Iannarone, who is a supporter of Antifa, in the race for Portland mayor. Last month, the Department of Justice designated Portland, Seattle, and New York City as "anarchist jurisdictions," a label that could lead to federal funding being withdrawn from those cities.