Maxine Bernstein, March 16, 2021
Black community leaders on Monday joined Portland’s mayor, deputy police chief, the sheriff and the state’s acting top federal prosecutor to decry a resurgence ofvandalism to businesses and the federal courthouse, calling the targeted unrest at odds with the social justice movement.
They accused anarchists of co-opting the Black Lives Matter movement and causing senseless damage while speaking out in support of the Police Bureau’s renewed use last week of a mass arrest tactic.
“The misguided and miseducated anarchists reject civility and instead intentionally create mayhem through criminally destructive behavior, tearing up our city and this must stop,”said Avel Gordly, a former state state senator,during the video news conference. “You are not helping. You are hurting Black people. We need peacemakers and peacekeepers.”
