Posted on 08/18/2003 7:58:52 AM PDT by bedolido
PORTLAND - Both police and protesters are planning for a possible raucous day Thursday when President Bush visits for a fund-raiser on the University of Portland campus.
Portland police are coordinating security with the U.S. Secret Service and a White House advance team, hoping to avoid some pitfalls that led to major police clashes with demonstrators a year ago at a money-raiser for Sen. Gordon Smith in Portland.
Meanwhile, local activists are making plans of their own as they gear up to protest his appearance.
Bush is expected to spend less time in Portland compared with last August, when his overnight stay at the downtown Hilton competed for attention with the disturbances outside.
He is expected to fly in Thursday to attend a $2,000-a-person Bush-Cheney 2004 fund-raising luncheon at the Chiles Center on the University of Portland campus, according to invitations. He then is scheduled to make a stop at a national forest in Central Oregon to draw attention to his "Healthy Forest Initiative."
He will head to the Seattle area for a stop Friday to highlight the region's salmon recovery trends and end up at a Bellevue, Wash., fund-raiser before returning to his Texas ranch. White House spokesman Ken Lisaius would not say where Bush is staying overnight.
"Hopefully, the visit will go better than it did last year," said Ron Wampole, U.S. Secret Service special agent in charge of the Portland office. "There's a lot of concernstoward that, believe me."
Alan Graf, a Portland lawyer who filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Portland and Portland and Beaverton police on behalf of nine people who were pepper sprayed or hit with rubber sting balls during last year's Bush protest, said he hopes police are respectful of citizens' rights this time.
The lawsuit is pending, but at the city's request, a settlement hearing is set for next month.
"I think the police have to remember they're not only there to protect the president but to protect the right to dissent," Graf said. "I'm hoping that the police respect the constitutional rights of the protesters, and that the protesters are nonviolent and peaceful."
The Portland Police Bureau is expected to meet with an advance team from the White House Monday, and officers are also planning to meet with protest organizers. Police Chief Mark Kroeker said the bureau's main responsibility will be to safeguard the president.
So far, the Portland Peaceful Response Coalition has applied for a city permit to gather about 10 a.m. Thursday at Portsmouth Park and march south to Willamette Boulevard, and to demonstrate until 5 p.m.
An ad hoc group of activists from labor, antiwar, and environmental movements are planning a "Portland Says No to Bush!" march from Columbia Park to the university.
Other than the marches, protesters have suggested a mass bicycle ride and mock die-in involving people dressed in camouflage with names of slain U.S. military taped to them.
Workshops have been held in the last few weeks on civil disobedience and the gathering of photographic and videotaped evidence of police misconduct. A fund-raiser was planned to help support those who may be arrested or jailed during Bush's visit.
My what a creative group. /sarc
Prairei
Guess that makes them a bunch of c**ks**kers...
Stands to reason... Portlan is San Francisco North!
Seems to me that whole part of the country is hopelessly without reason
Actually, the eastern portion (east of the Cascades) of Oregon and Washington are quite conservative, politically; beautiful landscape, if somewhat barren in spots; and inhabited by hard working people. The two states need to be divided vertically rather than horizontally, in my opinion.
Protest is an honorable American tradition and constitutional right. Any President who took steps to limit that right doesn't deserve to be called a Republican. Crushing free speech is a Democrat tactic.
Desecration of the dead.
That's certainly true, but how does critisizing the government equal giving aid and comfort to the enemy? How does engaging in a legal protest mean that you are un-American? This country was founded by people who had a beef with authority. Voicing your opinion is as American as apple pie (check out Norman Rockwell's painting of a man standing up to speak his mind). Our enemies have been the ones who threw critics in jail- not us. Our enemies were the ones who used "national security" as an excuse for throwing dissidents into gulags-not us. We don't do that. We're Americans, not Islamists or Soviets.
Those who are criticizing Bush, the military, or the conduct of the war in Iraq ought to be classified as enemy combatants
Really? What about people who support the war, but think the government has taken some wrong steps in our strategy in fighting it? How are we to know if the war is being fought correctly if there isn't an open, vigorous discussion of the war by the American people? I trust the President, but not enough to let him rule without being open to criticism or debate. What you're proposing is the beginning of tyranny: A government that isn't accountable to anyone.
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