Mom Team Enters Portlandia Bowl

At the front of the growing crowd stood the Moms, bellies extended, arms locked, singing a lullaby with new lyrics.

Yet, feds in camo came out of the federal courthouse and shot.

While they set out to keep the peace, Barnum said, they were at times caught in the crossfire and were teargassed by police. Saturday night, protesters started dismantling the fence around the courthouse, Barnum said.

“The Feds came out of the building, they walked slowly, assembled themselves and started shooting,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it was happening. Traumatic doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

The key word in there is “crossfire,” the Moms created a wall between the feds and those not quite so peaceful, not well-behaved children exercising their right to protest for the redress of grievance. They tore down the fence surrounding the courthouse and set fire to the entrance. Did Moms standing between the rioters trying to burn, gain entry and destroy the courthouse mean that the feds should stand there and watch? Is there a tactic that would allow the feds to address the destructive mob but leave the Moms untouched?

Last night, the crowd was bigger, no doubt in reaction to the reinvigorated protests generated by the federal agents in camo straying from their defensive positions at the courthouse into the streets of Portland in their rental minivans.

Notably, while the protesters complain that the Portland police have been harshly forceful toward them, although the Portland police have failed miserably to accomplish much, the local cops were nowhere to be seen when it came to yet another attempt to breach the federal courthouse. If Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler didn’t want the feds taking action in his city, then where were his cops as the assault was mounted?

The perimeter fence around the courthouse was torn down, the plywood covering the exterior of the courthouse was punctured and the exterior of the courthouse was breached. In response, feds shot teargas from the inside of the courthouse through the breach.

And then the Mom Team showed up, to stand between the feds on the inside and the rioters on the outside who just breached the courthouse wall.

The intentions of the Mom Team appeared positive, as they not only showed up to prevent harm to their “children,” the protesters and rioters, but to provide some level of peacefulness to those bent on destruction.

“We blocked the fence in hopes that the kids wouldn’t take it down and the feds would stay in their building,” she said.

The peaceful night took a turn for the worse when the fence was toppled and police used teargas to disperse the protesters. Barnum said their group on social media has more than 2,000 moms wanting to participate and they aren’t stopping anytime soon.

How did it happen that the Mom Team “blocked the fence” but, in passive tense, “the fence was toppled” anyway? Did they do a poor job of blocking, or did the kids beat the Moms into submission to get to the fence? Something happened, but you would find it impossible to know what, exactly, unless the Moms were more concerned with putting on a front line show for the cameras to inflame distant passions about how awful it was that the feds were firing upon pregnant moms. And indeed, it is a horrible scenario, and there should be some serious thought given to why pregnant moms were willing to risk the lives and health of their unborn child to participate in the Portlandia Bowl.

What did they think would happen? What else could happen?

Not a Portland police officer in sight throughout the night. The perimeter fence was down, the plywood barriers broken, the courthouse wall breached and the feds remained within the building and its perimeter, where there is no legal issue as to their authority to defend the federal courthouse.

The evening might have started with the best and most peaceful of intentions by the Mom Team, to protect their children and save them from the ravages of the feds, and no doubt some showed up to exercise their right of peaceful protest. But some showed with implements of destruction. Some eyed the courthouse with bad intent. And the people who did so, and the people who remained there either helping or cheering them on, can take little comfort in being part of the riot even though they may not have been the particular individual who broke through the barrier.

While the conduct of feds in minivans roaming the streets in search of kids wearing black to snatch was beyond their authority, defending the courthouse from breach was not. And if, after the teargas has been fired into the crowds, they remain, what’s let to do?

Where are the Portland police? Where are the Moms to exert their calming influence on those in the mob prone to violence?

To read about this the next day, it was a peaceful protest disrupted by violent attacks by the feds because a few bad apples just weren’t satisfied with singing “We Shall Overcome.”

Some protesters have exhibited the lawless behavior that federal officials have cited to justify their crackdown: Some have thrown cans and bottles, shot fireworks or pointed lasers at officers. One was recently accused of hitting a federal officer with a hammer. On Saturday, protesters set a fire in the police union headquarters.

But many others have demonstrated in the streets through peaceful means, appalled by the aggressive responses by federal officers that have left some protesters injured and the air inflamed with tear gas. They have held signs and marched. At times when people have thrown bottles, other demonstrators have rushed to try to stop them. On Saturday, a group of women locked arms and chanted: “Feds stay clear. Moms are here.”

Introducing the Mom Team into the mix creates yet a deeper level of unseemliness to the feds’ forcefulness, and local police absence, to this situation. Nobody wants to see moms harmed. Moms are as American as apple pie. Who doesn’t love moms? And yet, does the entry of the Mom Team into the Portlandia Bowl change anything?

9 thoughts on “Mom Team Enters Portlandia Bowl”

  2. Jeff

    The moms in Little Beirut couldn’t exert enough control over the kids they’ve raised so as to stop them from property damage? I’m shocked! Shocked!

    …Well, not that shocked. Naked Athena was far more effective in stopping the DHS squad than the moms had any chance of being. Maybe there’s a lesson there that we should have learned in the 60s.

  4. Dan

    It used to be that terrorists needed to kidnap hostages to use as human shields. These idiots are volunteering for the job.

    1. SHG Post author

      If the moms were serious, they would offer their children up for sacrifice. After all, look how well the Children’s Crusade went?

      1. Richard Parker

        It was a Great Success! Supplied the slave harems for decades. Probably not quite what The Moms (TM) have in mind.

  5. Rxc

    “Chicks up front!!”

    DC is not a state because those old white slave owning men went thru exactly this scenario (without the chicks) 230 years ago.

  6. John Barleycorn

    Well it would be pretty cool to see the State of Oregon and Billy form the Feds hash out their disagreements and air their grievances with each other in the same building.

    But how are they going to get in with all that plywood nailed to the doors?

  7. Richard Parker

    “The Mom Team” is an absolutely brilliant tactic in the age of the universal camera. Women are strong (“hear them roar!”) except when they are gentle flowers being abused by large sweaty men. There is no Good Answer as long as the supply of idiots is as bottomless as it appears to be in Portland.

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