http://themilitant.com/2017/8124/812404.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 81/No. 24 June 19, 2017
(front page)
SWP opposes moves to ban Trump rally in Portland, campaigns there
Militant/John Naubert
Mary Martin, SWP candidate for Seattle mayor, right, discusses party’s
working-class program with Trump supporters, others, during protests in
Portland June 4.
BY MARY MARTIN
PORTLAND, Ore. — Socialist Workers Party members spoke out against
efforts by liberal Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler to cancel a June 4 rally
scheduled to support President Donald Trump as well as oppose the
frenzied liberals’ campaign to drive him out of office. When Wheeler
failed, Trump supporters faced anti-Trump protesters, including an
anarchist “Black Bloc”-style group determined to come after them. And
local cops, reinforced by state police, were out in force.
Wheeler had urged the federal government to ban the event after two
people were killed on a train here by Jeremy Christian, an
ultra-rightist bigot, shouting anti-Muslim slurs. The two men who were
killed, and another who was injured, had come to the defense of two
young women targeted by Christian, one of whom was wearing a headscarf.
Christian has been charged with murder.
Joe Gibson, organizer of the pro-Trump rally, told participants he would
eject any white supremacists. He and other speakers said Rick Best and
Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, the two men who were killed on the train,
were heroes. Gibson had thrown Christian out of a prior pro-Trump event.
After a relatively peaceful hour of contending protests, some anarchists
in black masks threw bricks at police. The cops responded by detonating
flash-bang grenades, arresting 14 people and shoving people from one end
of the park to the other. The cops kept up a barrage of announcements
amplified to a deafening level, ordering protest participants to disperse.
A team of Socialist Workers Party members, including myself, the SWP
candidate for mayor of Seattle, set up a campaign table and introduced
the party and its working-class perspective to people from both events,
as well as passers-by, for over two hours.
One woman who introduced herself as Ardith told SWP member John Naubert
that she was a Trump supporter and had come to the rally from south
Oregon, mainly because she wanted to talk to the anti-Trump people. She
said while some were open to discussion, one man told her insistently,
“Why don’t you just go over there across the street where the fascists
are?”
Naubert said the SWP explains that the working class is the true target
of the hysteria about Trump in the liberal bourgeois media, late night
“talk” shows and radical anti-Trump protests. These forces all see the
working class as stupid, reactionary and dangerous. Ardith said she
enjoyed the discussion and bought a copy of The Clintons’
Anti-Working-Class Record: Why Washington Fears Working People by SWP
National Secretary Jack Barnes.
There were a number of others like Ardith. “William Jones, wearing
camouflage pants, a bulletproof vest, a T-shirt and carrying an American
flag on a pole, sat along a concrete barrier in front of City Hall,” the
Portland Oregonian reported, “conversing with anti-Trump protesters
about whether socialism can exist in a capitalist society and whether
Trump will make life better for anyone not wealthy.
“Jones said he likes to keep an open mind and debate people, trying to
change opinions or let others change his,” the paper reported.
David Servillo, a hospital worker in Portland who is originally from
France, told us he thought it would have been wrong to shut down the
Trump rally as the mayor demanded. “It’s a democracy, right?” He was
delighted to see the titles on revolutionary politics in French
displayed on the party table. He decided to buy a subscription to the
Militant and a French edition of Is Socialist Revolution in the US
Possible? by SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters.
There were some anti-Trump demonstrators who didn’t appreciate the SWP.
At the end of the protests, SWP members packed up their materials and
prepared to leave. A group of anarchists tried to get into it with Trump
supporters, stacking newspaper boxes in the streets to block police. The
cops started sweeping the streets and ordered people to disperse.
One anarchist seeking to attack Trump people, and not looking too kindly
at the SWP, grabbed our table and threw it, along with our bookrack,
into the street to obstruct a cop car.
Participants from the Trump rally stopped to help us recover our table
and rack from the street and carry them and our literature to our car.
“I’m glad to see your paper says that ‘workers are the target of the
liberals’ fury,’” Miles, one of the men helping us, told me, looking at
one of the headlines in the Militant. “I didn’t start out as a Trump
supporter, but I couldn’t stand Clinton. Now I have friends who are
liberal who won’t talk to me.
“What’s your party’s name again?” he asked. “Thank you for being here.”
Related articles:
SWP protests assaults on political rights in Washington
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