WASHINGTON: A man was shot dead in the US city of Portland, police said Sunday, the latest violence to upend anti-racism protests as President Donald Trump presses an election message characterizing his Democratic opponent Joe Biden as weak on violent crime. But hours after the gunfire Saturday during a pro-Trump rally in the Oregon city, Biden accused the president of fanning the flames of violence in a polarized and tense nation.
The shooting followed a week of country-wide protests – including the cancellation of numerous sporting events – over the police shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin of African-American Jacob Blake. The violence in Portland erupted during a rally involving hundreds of vehicles “caravanning throughout downtown Portland,” police said. OregonLive reported “clashes” and “tense moments” between demonstrators and counter-protesters.
Photographs from the scene showed the victim wearing a hat with a logo for “Patriot Prayer,” described by local media as a far-right group at the center of multiple Portland demonstrations that have ended in violence. The Portland clashes followed unrest in Kenosha, where prosecutors accused 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse of shooting dead two men and wounding another who were protesting against Blake’s shooting. Trump is due to travel on Tuesday to the Midwestern city to meet law enforcement officials and view damage from unrest triggered by Blake’s shooting last weekend.
Wisconsin’s Governor Tony Evers sent the president a letter asking him to reconsider the visit as it “will only hinder our healing,” according to US media reports. Violence connected to anti-racism protests has become a major issue in the campaign for November’s presidential election, with Trump presenting himself as the “law and order” choice and arguing that a Biden presidency would allow left-wing mob rule.
Biden condemned the violence and argued that Trump had played a role in spurring the clashes. “He is recklessly encouraging violence,” the Democratic nominee said in a statement. “He may believe tweeting about law and order makes him strong – but his failure to call on his supporters to stop seeking conflict shows just how weak he is.”
Biden’s campaign said he will give a speech Monday to address what it called a key question facing voters in November “Are you safe in Donald Trump’s America?”
A series of speakers addressed thousands of protesters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, marking the 57th anniversary of American civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech in the 1963 March on Washington.
“We’re marching to overcome what my father called the triple evils of poverty, racism, and violence,” Martin Luther King III said in his remarks, adding that those “evils” have exacerbated four major challenges the coronavirus pandemic, unemployment, police brutality and gun violence, and voting rights – that currently face the United States.
The event, dubbed the “Commitment March: Get Your Knee Off Our Necks,” came after 46-year-old African American George Floyd died after a white police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes during an arrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota in May.
Floyd’s death sparked weeks-long protests and social unrest across the United States. Public anger has been reignited in the wake of the Aug. 23 police shooting of 29-year-old African American Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which has led to consecutive days of protests and violence at times in the city.
–The Daily Mail-Global Times news exchange item
