The Wall of Moms

Update: Federal stormtroopers tear-gassed the Wall of Moms and other protesters in Portland on Wednesday, including Portland's Mayor.  The fight goes on.

Homegrown Hitler has deployed his Gestapo on the streets of Portland, Oregon, and threatens to do so in Chicago and other cities, which coincidentally have Democratic mayors.  His Secret Police--with no identification or official uniform and tooling around in unmarked vehicles, is apparently comprised of elements of ICE, Border Patrol and other unrelated employees of Homeland Security, commanded by acting Secretary Chad Wolf, whose claim to fame is as the architect of the current administration's family separation policy(which by the way was ruled illegal but still continues.)

The presence of these forces is causing rather than defusing conflict.  And surely by coincidence as well, footage of the resulting conflict is showing up in Trump campaign ads.  (As are scenes of street violence purporting to be in America now but are stock shots of violence in another year and another country.)

These official thugs have been seen pulling people off the street and into those vans, and were photographed beating an actual US military veteran who wanted to ask them a question: do you think what you are doing is constitutional?

Journalists have called attention to it.  "Can we call it fascism yet?" a columnist asked.  Politicians have criticized it, including the very first Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, a Republican, who did not mince words. “The department was established to protect America from the ever-present threat of global terrorism. It was not established to be the president’s personal militia.”

But these are words, and notable as they are, talk moves on.  (Family separations, no longer talked about, still happen.)  Doing something about it has fallen to, as usual, Mom.

Writes the Guardian:

"The chief financial officer for tech startups in Oregon’s biggest city joined hundreds of other mothers dressed in yellow in a “Wall of Moms”, turning out each evening to stand as a human barricade between protesters and agents dispatched by Donald Trump to aggressively break up Black Lives Matter demonstrations."

"What began as a small symbolic act of defiance on Saturday grew into the principal demonstration two nights later, as thousands packed the streets and squares outside the county jail and federal courthouse in downtown Portland for one of the largest protests to date.

At the heart of it were hundreds of women dressed in yellow and singing “Hands up, please don’t shoot me” – evidence that not only has Trump’s dispatch of federal agents failed to stop the protests, it has reinvigorated them."

The Wall of Moms began with 40 mothers in white.

Their line offered little protection once the federal officers started firing teargas and flash-bangs and charging with batons. But they were back in larger numbers the following evening, this time wearing yellow and carrying sunflowers. By Monday, the Wall of Moms had become the main event as Ullman and hundreds of others decided this was the moment to make a stand."

This is what it takes.  This is the hope to end this now.