The Oregonian | By Lizzy Acker | August 01, 2020
Dawn Redlich was in her apartment in Old Town on May 30 watching TV when Portland police used tear gas on protesters outside. It was a temperate night and a little breezy, she said, and gas wafted into her open windows.
“The night it happened and into the next afternoon I had a real scratchy nose, itchy throat, burning in the eyes,” she said.
Redlich is one of the many people living in the downtown area experiencing the side effects of more than 60 days of ongoing protests.
For two months, protesters have gathered every night to demand an end to systemic racism and police violence in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.
Right-wing media and the federal government report that Portland is “a city under siege” and downtown has become a flashpoint of civil unrest over police violence.
“If the Federal Government and its brilliant Law Enforcement (Homeland) didn’t go into Portland one week ago, there would be no Portland — It would be burned and beaten to the ground,” President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday.
For the vast majority of Portlanders, these hyperbolic declarations are demonstrably false.
But people living in and around downtown Portland tell a different story, one that includes long nights of explosions and tear gas drifting through windows.
Redlich filed a claim against the City of Portland after the tear gas episode, and according to her attorney Michael Fuller, the city has agreed to pay her $500.
Another of Fuller’s clients, Monique Jefferson, also filed a claim against the city after gas entered her apartment near the Portland Art Museum on May 31. According to Fuller, the gas caused severe and ongoing burning in her chest, throat and nose, as well as ear pain.
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/08/living-in-a-downtown-portland-under-siege.html
