Oregonians feeling protested out
There was no protest in Portland last night, as far as I can tell. I guess the protesters were out in the woods starting wildfires. ONLY KIDDING.
But a group of armed vigilantes had a roadblock going up in Corbett, just in case. Not kidding.
Lest readers feel deprived of protest-related news, however, buried below all the fire stories last night was this interesting poll of Oregon residents, which reveals that 66 percent statewide are sick of the protests in Portlandia. And they aren't all that fond of the police reaction, either.
Voters were more divided about the role of the police, with 46% saying they approved of the way the city’s officers are handling the protests while 45% disapproved. Twenty-nine percent said the police used too much force, 18% said it was about right and 42% said they didn’t use enough.The poll also found sharp generational differences among voters, with 66% of those aged 18 to 29 believing police are using too much force. A strong majority of that age group also approved of the protests generally. A majority of voters in the Portland area disagreed with the protests in Oregon’s largest city, but by a somewhat smaller percentage than voters in the rest of the state.
Gosh, I haven't felt this mainstream in a long while.
The politicians are skating on even thinner ice than the cops are:
You can read the whole thing here.
So a pandemic, a riot and a forest fire walk into a bar. They ask the bartender which one is the hardest to get rid of. The bartender thinks about it and says "The Riot." They ask him please to explain. "Well, the pandemic will eventually die down on its own. Look at the Spanish flu. It might take exposing it to the entire population of earth first, but someday Covid 19 will be more of a relic of history than an ongoing threat, right? Then you take the forest fires. They do incredible damage in a short time and they'll go on burning for months. However, even if we did nothing, the winter rains will eventually come along and extinguish them. There's no way they can last. But this hatred that's driving these riots? The hatred that's out there right now between factions of America? It's going to be very difficult for that to fade away. Once the sectarian violence starts - once you have people killing complete strangers and the cycle of revenge kicks in - there's no end to the hate. I'm from the Middle East. I know."
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteA July 28, 2020 poll by DHM, the same company cited for the September 11, 2020 study, also found that forty-five percent of Oregonians do not approve of the job their local police are doing. In the July 28, 2020 poll 55% reported that they think police treat white people better than Black people. It also indicated that more than 2/3’s of Oregonians polled support the Black Lives Matter movement now, in contrast to 54% in a 2018 survey by DHM.
The July 28, 2020 poll shows that only 35% of Oregonians support how police nationwide have responded to protests.
It is of course not appropriate to compare the two surveys since they asked different questions.
As pointed out in the September 11, 2020 survey twenty-nine percent said the police used too much force, while 66% of those aged 18 to 29 believe police are using too much force. No surveys that I am aware of have attempted to assess the demographics of the protesters, so why the “youngers” would have more than double the number of those believing that the police used too much force than the 29% of the survey group as a whole will perhaps be answered in some other survey. I often suspect that “the devil is in the details,“ such that I will give myself homework to read the surveys themselves carefully.
https://www.oregonlive.com/data/2020/07/new-polling-shows-most-oregonians-support-black-lives-matter-many-dont-approve-of-the-job-their-local-police-are-doing.html