Scenes from Portland's imaginary insurrection
"It would be funny if it wasn’t so f**king serious," Tim Dickinson says.
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As Donald Trump lies about Portland being “war-ravaged,” “on fire,” and “bombed-out,” journalist Tim Dickinson is providing a public service with his eyewitness accounts confirming his home city is anything but.
“It is borderline hysterical. It would be funny if it wasn’t so f**king serious to think that this is in fact a war zone needing federal intervention, much less federal troops prepared to use all force,” Dickinson said during a video he filmed last month outside the ICE facility in Portland that is the epicenter of Trump’s efforts to stoke conflict in the city.
Since then, Dickinson has posted videos showing how disconnected Trump’s confused and Fox News-inspired claims about Portland are from reality …
… as well as sharing harrowing scenes from the trenches.
He’s reported live from peaceful and very Portland events …
… and even risked it all by interviewing some terrifying protesters.
As a senior politics writer for Rolling Stone whose beat includes the rise of authoritarianism in the US, Dickinson has a unique perspective on the developments in Portland and their broader political context. So we checked in with him to talk about what he’s seeing on the ground and what it means for the country more broadly.
Dickinson told us that while there have been “contentious protests” outside Portland’s ICE facility, “otherwise the city is incredibly peaceful and life is going on normally.”
“I’ve been trying to take pictures and videos that are nowhere near this one conflict driveway — images of puppies and kids playing frisbee, and families out having picnics — because the idea that Portland is burned to the ground and totally a war zone is just preposterous,” Dickinson said.
“Noem and DHS are really focused on putting together propaganda and posting it on the internet. It seems to resonate with people who want to be convinced that there’s an active war zone here, but when you go outside, it looks like a normal Wednesday.”
A transcript of Dickinson’s conversation with Public Notice contributor Thor Benson, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.
Thor Benson
You’ve been posting pictures and videos from Portland, where you live, and showing that it’s not the war-ravaged city that Trump describes. What inspired you to do that?
Tim Dickinson
I’ve lived in Portland for years now. There were actual conflicts between protesters and Portland police back in 2020. Trump took advantage of that in the later part of that summer, then things sort of settled down.
They beta-tested all of their authoritarian ideas here in 2020. They had people just being randomly grabbed off the street and pushed into unmarked cars, people getting shot with less than lethal munitions, and poorly identified officers — all things we’re seeing now.
The protests at the ICE facility here have at times been vigorous, and protesters are very good at trying to discredit the use of force by doing mildly provocative things. But when Trump said that everything here was burning and war-ravaged, it was a beautiful September day. He was threatening to deploy the troops. I had to take my kids someplace, and I got on my bicycle and rode down to the ICE facility.
I knew all the CNN trucks were going to be there, that national media would swoop in to try to tell a narrative about what’s happening, and I had a chance to be one of the first people on the scene. To the extent that there’s any conflict here, it’s about this one driveway. The ICE folks have to come and go. While there’s contentious protests at night, during the day this looks more like a Saturday market than it does a war zone.
Thor Benson
I lived in Portland for a few years, so when this stuff happened in 2020 I was paying pretty close attention to it. There were right-wing agitators that showed up during the protests. It seems like there’s been some of that now, too.
Tim Dickinson
Yeah. I’m disturbed by that because what the Trump administration wants is ongoing, active conflict. By declaring it a war zone, Trump invited right-wing agitators back to Portland to create the conflict he wants visuals of.