{"id":3470,"date":"2020-09-19T16:26:25","date_gmt":"2020-09-19T16:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=3470"},"modified":"2020-09-19T16:26:25","modified_gmt":"2020-09-19T16:26:25","slug":"what-happened-in-portland-shows-just-how-fragile-our-democracy-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=3470","title":{"rendered":"What Happened In Portland Shows Just How Fragile Our Democracy Is"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“In the video, Juniper Simonis screams<\/a> as they are pushed to the ground, struggling, by a group of men in military fatigues who wield large, black weapons. While Simonis is handcuffed and their service dog barks, the men surround them, a wall of camo, blocking the videographer from capturing the full extent of what\u2019s happening. Simonis wears shorts and a tank top, but the men appear dressed for war. The officers\u2019 uniforms bear a large patch that says \u201cpolice,\u201d but they aren\u2019t police. They\u2019re federal agents, but with no name tags or badges, they are, in the moment of Simonis\u2019s arrest, impossible to identify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simonis is an American scientist \u2014 a computational ecologist who does data analysis for researchers and the government. Last month, Simonis was detained outside a federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, by mysterious men now known to be agents of the Department of Homeland Security, a federal agency created to fight terrorism. By Simonis\u2019s own estimation, the scientist spent around eight hours in the agents\u2019 custody. For the first 45 minutes or so, they said, they were held in a parking garage without having been read their rights. Simonis was then transferred to a U.S. Marshals\u2019 lockup. Their request to call a lawyer or a friend was refused. Eventually, Simonis was given a citation for vandalism related to chalking the sidewalk in front of the courthouse, and sent out the door in the middle of the night with no way home.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“According to a recent report by the Democracy Fund\u2019s Voter Study Group<\/a>, support for democracy is in no way universal. In fact, their findings show that 1 in 3 Americans have, at some point in the last three years, supported some kind of authoritarian view, and only about 80 percent said it was very important to live in a democracy.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/the-federal-clampdown-on-portland-shows-just-how-fragile-our-democracy-is\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“In the video, Juniper Simonis screams as they are pushed to the ground, struggling, by a group of men in military fatigues who wield large, black weapons. While Simonis is handcuffed and their service dog barks, the men surround them, a wall of camo, blocking the videographer from capturing the full extent of what\u2019s happening. Simonis wears shorts and a tank top, but the men appear dressed for war. The officers\u2019 uniforms bear a large patch that says \u201cpolice,\u201d but they aren\u2019t police. They\u2019re federal agents, but with no name tags or badges, they are, in the moment of Simonis\u2019s arrest, impossible to identify.<\/p>\n

Simonis is an American scientist \u2014 a computational ecologist who does data analysis for researchers and the government. Last month, Simonis was detained outside a federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, by mysterious men now known to be agents of the Department of Homeland Security, a federal agency created to fight terrorism. By Simonis\u2019s own estimation, the scientist spent around eight hours in the agents\u2019 custody. For the first 45 minutes or so, they said, they were held in a parking garage without having been read their rights. Simonis was then transferred to a U.S. Marshals\u2019 lockup. Their request to call a lawyer or a friend was refused. Eventually, Simonis was given a citation for vandalism related to chalking the sidewalk in front of the courthouse, and sent out the door in the middle of the night with no way home.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“According to a recent report by the Democracy Fund\u2019s Voter Study Group, support for democracy is in no way universal. In fact, their findings show that 1 in 3 Americans have, at some point in the last three years, supported some kind of authoritarian view, and only about 80 percent said it was very important to live in a democracy.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[431,953],"class_list":["post-3470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-democracy","tag-portland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3471,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3470\/revisions\/3471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}