Read every word of this from the President of the Portland chapter of NAACP: google.com/amp/s/www.wash…
"Images of “Naked Athena,” as the protester has been labeled, have gone viral, her unclothed confrontation with police earning her accolades as a brave ally of the cause...
...But I see something else: a beneficiary of white privilege dancing vainly on a stage that was originally created to raise up the voices of my oppressed brothers and sisters. "
"Unfortunately, 'spectacle' is now the best way to describe Portland’s protests. Vandalizing government buildings and hurling projectiles at law enforcement draw attention — but how do these actions stop police from killing black people?"
"The president and his allies want spectacle, be it a naked yogi or the next shocking display of force. They need to distract the country by engaging our movement in empty battles where they have the advantage."
"If we engage them now, we do so on their terms, where they have created the conditions for a war without rules, without accountability and without the protection of our Constitution."
"What is happening in Portland is the fuse of a great, racist backlash that the Trump administration is baiting us to light."
"We cannot fall for their deception. We cannot settle for spectacles that endanger us all."
"We welcome our white brothers and sisters in this struggle. In fact, we need them."
"But I must ask them to remain humbly attuned to the opportunity of this moment — and to reflect on whether any actions they take will truly help establish justice, or whether they are simply for show."
"I am not suggesting retreat. Instead, I am proposing that we take the cause of Black Lives Matter into those places where tear gas and rubber bullets and federal agents cannot find us, and where there is less risk of spectacle distracting from our true aims."
"In boardrooms, in schools, in city councils, in the halls of justice, in the smoky backrooms of a duplicitous government"
I will only add that the narrative of civil war has been pushed for years now by Trump + Russia.
