Agreed but the issue here is politicians are allowing this rogue activity to manifest vigilantes because ANTIFA are assaulting people because they outnumber them. Clearly many of these people need a real job.
Difficult to say exactly what’s happening in Portland and elsewhere because every article I’ve seen picks sides. The NYT article posted earlier is a good example. Whether it was because of the jury verdict or otherwise it was much less unfavorable to Antifa.
However, from what I can piece together, I think in your haste to blame Antifa, you’re being unfair to law enforcement and the administration. At least in Portland, they seem to be doing their level best to maintain the peace.
Sadly, neither of these groups seems capable of substantive debate so they resort to shouting each other down and acts of violence, and that leaves any city in which they show up in an unenviable position. The city can’t just arrest people for shouting, they can’t be everywhere at once to see the assaults, and they can’t spare the manpower to arrest everyone blocking streets and still expect to avoid a melee.
They allowed several right wing groups to march last weekend, kept them separate from Antifa, allowed them to block a street, and make use of a public park for an event, all of those things normally require a permit, which was apparently never obtained.
I’ve read that the PD there arrested a woman off of a motorcycle, who was revving the engine to drown out one of the alt-right speakers, and made at least 16 other arrests. They don’t seem to be picking sides, as you suggest.
All this when the proud boys or whatever have come from out of town with the stated intent of causing exactly what happened. There’s fault on both sides for what keeps happening in Portland. That’s simply an objective fact. It results from an inability to have a civil debate, which is a societal problem, not a partisan one.