We maybe need to be talking more about how the Portland Police urged people to visit OMSI instead of going anywhere near a popular mobilization against fascism and then failed to protect OMSI after escorting the Proud Boys and their fellow fascist travelers across the closed Hawthorne Bridge.
While the kids played in the beautiful Science Playground, the public-address system announced that the museum was in “lockup”; no one could enter or leave until further notice. We could not see the street; none of the staff knew what was going on; no one could tell us how long the lockup would last; no one knew whether the marchers might assemble in front of the museum, making escape impossible.
In any event, the group of marchers near the museum was apparently relatively small; within a few minutes, the lockup was lifted. But the walk back to the light-rail system through a stark industrial area was, for me at least, heart-in-mouth. We had no place to hide on the street if something went wrong. When we made it back to our hotel, I felt relief, unreality, and fury.
That’s from Garrett Epps, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Baltimore, over in The Atlantic, in one hell of a post about the goals of fascism and the memory of one Justice Hans Linde.