As Cory Alexander and her daughter Nevaeh Belka stroll through downtown Portland, a mural catches the 9-year-old’s eye.
The wall of black plywood surrounding the Pioneer Place Apple Store is a memorial to Black Americans killed by police.
George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Jason Washington.
Nevaeh trots up the steps, faces her mother and raises a fist. Alexander, 46 and white, taps on her phone and takes a photo of her Black daughter.
But national media reports, particularly those published by right-wing outlets, suggest a vastly different version of how safe it is for children and families to stroll through downtown Portland.
One America News Network describes “violence gripping the city.” A Fox News headline blares “Portland protesters flood police precinct, chant about burning it down.” The New York Post reported Saturday that Portland “descended into violence.”
Many people who live in Portland, including Alexander, heard over the past few days from worried relatives in other states who feared that their loved ones in Portland might have been affected by fires or caught in police crossfire as they went about their day.
The images that populate national media feeds, however, come almost exclusively from a tiny point of the city: a 12-block area surrounding the Justice Center and federal courthouse.
But national media reports, particularly those published by right-wing outlets, suggest a vastly different version of how safe it is for children and families to stroll through downtown Portland.
One America News Network describes “violence gripping the city.” A Fox News headline blares “Portland protesters flood police precinct, chant about burning it down.” The New York Post reported Saturday that Portland “descended into violence.”
Many people who live in Portland, including Alexander, heard over the past few days from worried relatives in other states who feared that their loved ones in Portland might have been affected by fires or caught in police crossfire as they went about their day.
The images that populate national media feeds, however, come almost exclusively from a tiny point of the city: a 12-block area surrounding the Justice Center and federal courthouse.
And they occur exclusively during late-night hours in which only a couple hundred or fewer protesters and scores of police officers are out in the city’s coronavirus-hollowed downtown.
Those events are hardly representative of daily life, including peaceful anti-racism demonstrations that have drawn tens of thousands of protesters, in a city of 650,000 people that encompasses 145 square miles.
The vast majority of Portland residents spend quiet home-bound lives on hushed tree-lined streets with coronavirus and its resulting economic catastrophe as the greatest threat to their well-being.
Portland has experienced weeks of daily protests since the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minnesota police.
The largest of them, involving thousands of people chanting and marching for racial justice and police non-violence, have been peaceful.
