Recall from Chapter 1 that most social problems go through a social problems process consisting of the following stages of development: claims making, media coverage, public reaction, policymaking, social problems work, and policy outcomes (Best 2021:15). In this section we will trace this pattern through the Portland Demonstrations of 2020. As you read, consider how you have observed this pattern in other social problems.

6.2.1 Claims Making and Media Coverage

Figure 6.2 “George Floyd Memorial“

On Monday, May 25, 2020 Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd. One of four Minneapolis police officers who arrested Floyd for allegedly trying to pass a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill, Chauvin forced Floyd to the ground and knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes. Floyd struggled to breathe, cried out in fear and pain to his mother and to his God, and foretold his own death, but Chuavin did not let up until Floyd lost consciousness. Floyd was pronounced dead at the hospital later that afternoon. Floyd joined Ahmaud Arbery, killed by white vigilantes in February 2020, Breonna Taylor killed by police in March, 2020, on a very long list of Black people killed by police and vigilantes.

Video captured by horrified bystanders flew across social media. In the first week after Floyd’s murder, 3.4 million original posts and 69 billion engagements, accounting for around 15% of all post on Twitter during that week. By June 8th, #BlackLivesMatter was mentioned in 1.2 million original posts (Wirtschafter 2021). Since 2013, when the man who admitted killing 17 year-old Trayvon Martin was acquited of murder charges, #BlackLivesMatter has drawn attention to racist violence in the U.S. and become code for a set of claims about racism, policing, lynching and underserved communities.

6.2.2 Claim: Racist Policing and Lynching

Vigilante-style lynchings are extra-judical killings in which an individual or a mob kidnaps, tortures, and kills persons suspected of crime or social transgressions. Sometimes victims’ bodies are also mutilated after they were murdered. In the U.S, the victims have most often black men, women and children, and the perpetrators were almost never punished. More than 4,400 lynchings have been documented in the U.S. between 1877 and 1950 (Taylor and Vinson 2020). Racially motivated lynchings can be understood as an informal social control that reinforces the dominance of people who are white within a racial hierarchy.

Journalist, Ida. B. Wells wrote about lynchings as part of her work to document descrimination people who were Black experienced in the late 19th and early 20th Century. Sociologist W. E. B. DuBios led the N.A.A.C.P. in an anti-lyching campaign that resulted in a reduction of lynchings and seeded the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-20th century. In spite of the progressive gains these movements achieved, the murder of Travon Martin, and unarmed teenager on his way home, and the acquittal of George Zimmerman who killed him, was a painful reminder that the extrajudicial killing of black people has never completely stopped.

Explicit racial bias has been demonstrated in some police departments. In a 2022 investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department, where researchers “based on interviews and a review of 700 hours of body camera footage, identified an exhaustive list of slurs that officers and supervisors consistently use against women and Black people, including suspects, witnesses, bystanders and their own colleagues.” They also identified “patterns of discrimination in arrests and use of force. (Dewan 2022, n.p.) ”

Portland police also have a well documented record of individual police officers expressing racist ideas about people who are Black. The 2012 report, Black and Blue: Police-Community Relations in Portland’s Albina District, 1964-1985, documents a long and troubled history of racist policing, which include a troubling incident of harassment in which several Portland Officers left dead animals at a popular restaurant owned by a person who was Black.

Many advocates for police and policing resist claims of racism by asserting that such attitudes are the result of individual prejudice held by a few “bad apples” rather than a culture of racism. Robin DiAngelo, an educator who studies racism, has written extensively about the lengths people will go to to avoid being labeled racist, even as they are expressing racist ideas (DiAngelo 2018). Most people, including police officers, resist being thought of as racist. It is important then to look beyond personal bias and socialization to understand that racial bias is only one dimension of racism. Claims of racism and racist policing also rest on racial disparities and historical patterns of policing. Racial disparities, also called racial inequities, exist when a one racial group is overrepresented compared in a given outcome compared to their representation in the general population. Specifically, Black Lives Matter organizers and their allies point to higher percentages of people who are Black being stopped, arrested, imprisoned, and killed by police than people who are white.

In Portland people who are Black make up only 5.3% of the city of Portland, yet they account for 22.6% of traffic stops and 16 % pedestrian stops in 2019. They are also arrested at a rate 4.3 times higher than people who are White. Furthermore, people who are black are killed by Portland police 3.9 times more than people who are White (Levinson 2021).

This pattern of racial inequity repeats in cities across the U.S. A 2020 study found “that while black people were much more likely to be pulled over than whites, the disparity lessens at night, when police are less able to distinguish the race of the driver. The study also found that blacks were more likely to be searched after a stop, though whites were more likely to be found with illicit drugs. (Pierson et al. 2020) “Research on racial disparities for people killed by police in the U.S. found that men who are Black are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than men who are white, and that women who are Black are about 1.4 times more likely to be killed by police women who are white. (Edwards et al. 2019)”

Claims of racist policing also rest on historical scholarship about the history of policing in America, which includes the hiring of Irish police officers in 1830’s Bostons to police communities of formerly enslaved people who were black (NPR 2020), slave patrols and Jim Crow-era policing of black communities (NAACP n.d.). Please watch this brief video to learn more about this history.

Fig 6.3. NPR Throughline, History of Policing in America [YouTube Video], June 2022. In this 4:51 minute video, we examine the history of policing which contributes racist police practices.

This historic construction of racist policing recalls Racial Formation Theory. We explored this theory by Omi and Winant (1986) in Chapter 2. The theory describes how racial classifications are created, changed and recreated through racial projects, like policing, which attach meaning and power to racial categories. Policing becomes a racist practice when people who are black get profiled as more likely to be considered a threat to public safety than people who are white.

 Critical Race Theory, also introduced in Chapter 2, helps us understand how legal statutes like The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 (H.R.5484) actually creates and sustains racial inequity. Other legislation that has contributed to the racial inequities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System include the Crime Bill (H.R.3355), which significantly expanded prisons and funded 100,000 new police officers, and 1998 Amendments to the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA98), which limits access to financial aid for students who have been convicted of a drug felony (Whitman and Exarhos 2020). Critical race scholarship further places this legislation within the historical context of legal statutes that began with post-civil war Black Codes which restricted Black people’s right to own property, conduct business, and move freely through public spaces, and fed a convict leasing system that replaced slavery as a source of cheap labor for plantation owners.

6.2.3 Claim: Under-resourced Communities

The history of exclusion, segregation, and discriminatory lending practices described in chapter 4 created the social and economic conditions in the under-resourced communities we are looking at in this chapter. Demands for police reform and prison abolition argue that policing is an inadequate response to the social problems that impact historically disadvantaged communities. This claim centers the social devastation of historic racism in BIPOC communities.

The legacy of economic exclusion and discrimination is well demonstrated in a 2014 report for the City of Portland, which found that African-American family income is less than half that of White families, and the poverty rate among African-American children is nearly 50% compared to 13% for white children, with local unemployment levels in 2009 nearly double the unemployment rate for people who are White. It was also found that “fewer than one-third of African-American households own their homes, compared to about 60% of white households, and that African-Americans have experienced housing displacement and the loss of community as the historic Albina District has gentrified (Bates et al. 2014:3)”. The same study also documented substantial disparities for health outcomes like diabetes, stroke, and low birth weight, and in access to health insurance, prenatal care, and mental health care.

BLM organizers are part of the larger movement towards prison abolition. Prison abolitionists claim that ending mass incarceration requires divesting from racist systems of containment and control in order to invest in community infrastructure, economic opportunity and environmental justice. Between 1980 and 2009, the prison population increased by over 500%. Racial disparities in this expanding prison system can be better understood when we look at the economic conditions in the communities that imprisoned people come from.

Social geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore applies a Maxist analysis to the economic conditions that accompanied the massive expansion of prisons in California during this period. She demonstrates that the U.S. prison system grew to contain and control surplus labor as low wage workers in historically disadvantaged communities lost access to jobs during the 80’s and 90’s. She also argues that mass incarceration prevents displaced workers from building robust labor movements that might challenge these exclusionary economic conditions (Wilson Gilmore 2007). In 1996, Gilmore partnered with Angela Davis to organize Critical Resistance to challenge the idea that imprisonment and policing are an acceptable solution for social, political, and economic problems. The contemporary prison abolition movement, with which many BLM organizers are aligned, can trace its roots to this anti-carceral community building.

6.2.4 Public Reaction

A protest is a public expression of objection, disapproval or dissent towards an idea or action. Sustained protests have been used by social movements to disrupt civic life in order to draw attention to the ways in which the system is not working, and to demand change. Protests began on May 26, 2022 in Minneapolis and around the US, growing to more than 7700 Black Lives Matter inspired demonstrations by mid-August. Juneteenth weekend alone saw as many as 25 million people in the US, including many celebrities and public figures, publicly demand justice and change.

On Thursday, May 28, the Pacific Northwest Youth Liberation Front (PNYLF) organized a demonstration at The Multnomah County Detention Center demanding an end to state-sanctioned violence against black people. The young, mostly white demonstrators chanted, “Black Lives Matter”, “I Can’t Breathe” and “Defund the Police.” PNYLF followers describe themselves as “decentralized network of autonomous youth collectives dedicated to direct action towards total liberation (Graves 2020). ” For PNYLF, total liberation includes ending mass incarceration.

The people who attended the official NAACP demonstration the next day were also predominantly white. Black civil rights leaders including past and current leaders of the NAACP, The Portland Urban League, and a City Commissioner, along with local faith leaders, rallied around a symbolic plywood casket, surrounded by banners to honor the murdered – George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Micheal Brown, Ahmaud Arbery – calling for an end to racist policing, and calling on the growing crowds to “Stop killing us!” and to “Carry your white privilege to the point that it makes a difference.” In spite of the peaceful tone of the day, tempers and provocations flared with urgency as evening fell. Police and demonstrators clashed and the demonstration was declared by the Portland mayor to be a riot (Graves 2020).

By the third night, the mayor declared a state of emergency, and parts of downtown Portland were boarded up. While a majority of the protests were peaceful and non-violent, news reports in July estimated that the riots cost local businesses, mostly in the vicinity of the Multnomah County Justice Center, at about $23,000,000.

More demonstrators filled the streets each night. Violence escalated when militarized federal agents were deployed in the streets of Portland. Federal officials, including the Attorney General and the President, defended the action as necessary to protect federal property, and to “prevent violence from spreading to other American cities”. Many state and local leaders argued that federal intervention was an unnecessary political stunt that only further escalated tensions (Graves 2020).

The demonstrators, now in the 1000’s, responded, as a Wall of Moms, Dad’s with leaf-blowers, a naked white woman, and a mostly white, multigenerational multitude of first-time protesters, took turns confronting heavily armed federal forces and demanding an end to racist policing while declaring loudly that “Black Lives Matter.”

On July 30th, Oregon State Police were once again responding to the demonstrations as federal agents began to withdraw, and the demonstrations became more peaceful, though no less urgent.

The charged demonstrations in downtown Portland were not the only demonstrations for Black Lives in the state. 33 Oregon towns saw overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations, like the 25 – 50 people enthusiastically singing “Black Lives Matter” as they paraded up and down the main street in Manzanita every weekend throughout that grim covid summer. More than 2000 cities in 60 countries around the world saw similar protests (Wikipedia n.d.).

It was and remains a contested, often heated conversation. Around the state smaller groups of pro-police counter-demonstrators refuted claims of racist policing in Oregon and declared that, in fact, “Blue Lives Matter.”

6.2.5 Policy Making, Social Problems Work and Policy Outcomes

Protests were not the only way Oregonians responded to the murder of George Floyd. The small town of Vernonia was one of several that issued resolutions supporting equality and inclusion. Book clubs and racial equity work groups were convened. Antiracist organizing took center stage as the whole state seemed to enter into an urgent public conversation about racism in Oregon, alternatives to policing, and what it might look like if Black lives really mattered here.

In June, more than 800 people, organized by Unite Oregon and Imagine Black, testified at city budget hearings, and urged city officials to redirect $50.000.000 from policing to community support and to sever connections between Portland Public Schools and the Portland Police Bureau. The city budget did cut $15,000,000 funding for School Resource Officers and two other controversial policing programs. The Mayor also responded with a list of 19 proposed police reforms, 13 of which he was able to achieve within the year.

In July, The Electoral Justice Project of the Movement for Black Lives introduced the Breathe Act, which “offers a radical reimagining of public safety, community care, and how we spend money as a society.” Two Members of Congress, Rashida Talib and Ayanna Pressley stepped up to champion the measure’s “four simple ideas:

• Divest federal resources from incarceration and policing.
• Invest in new, non-punitive, non-carceral approaches to community safety that lead states to shrink their criminal-legal systems and center the protection of Black lives—including Black mothers, Black trans people, and Black women.
• Allocate new money to build healthy, sustainable, and equitable communities.
• Hold political leaders to their promises and enhance the self-determination of all Black communities.

In April of 2021 the Portland City Counsel’s Racial Equity Steering Committee issued a 65-page report with recommendation for police reform, that included improved racial equity training and assessment, along with proposed changes in the way law enforcement responses to Homelessness, and mental health crises.

In 2021, the Oregon legislature passed HB 2930 to hold police more accountable for sexual assault and racial bias. By August 2022, the commission formed to draft the new rules released a draft proposal for public comment. The proposal has been widely criticized for being too lenient and allowing officers who commit serious crimes to keep their jobs (Levinson 2022).

Portland police followed through on several of the requests including more robust anti-bias training (Byrne 2021). Police agencies across the state have prioritized increasing racial and gender diversity in their recruitment, and have begun to screen new hires for racial bias. However, these efforts have not been broadly supported by police officers. The majority of police personnel surveyed in 2021 thought that additional anti-bias training was unnecessary, and 15% of respondents said they had plans to leave within the year. A respondent quoted in the report described a general feeling within the rank and file that had been “betrayed” by “city leaders, elected officials, and community. (Genaco et. al. 2022:47)” Those who advance an abolitionist vision, in which there are no under-resourced communities, assert that we can’t train our way out of racism.

 A growing coalition of organizers emerging from the 2020 demonstrations continues to work towards decarceration, transformative justice and community care. For example, Don’t Shoot PDX, which was organized in 2016, continues to offer programing for young people impacted by racial injustice and police violence, as well as “mutual aid [including] food, household supplies, and clothing distributions to marginalized families, houseless communities, indigenous reservations and rural populations in the region” and legal outreach community members who experience racism and discrimination (Don’t Shoot PDX n.d.).