Eviction protest in Portland.

https://www.opb.org/article/2020/12/10/portland-red-house-eviction-blockade-protest

The Kinney eviction protest in Portland is one of the strangest news stories I've heard in a while, because the lines of conflict don't really match the usual political divisions.

A lot of leftists are supporting the Kinney, because they're a poor Black and Native American family in a dispute with a capitalist developer who wants to foreclose on their home. On the other hand, some of the anti-government elements of the right also support the Kinneys, because they're

  1. property owners trying to argue that the mostly Democratic city government's claim to their land isn't legitimate, and
  2. part of the far-right Sovereign Citizens movement. In particular, their son is a reactionary who changed his name to William X. Nietzsche, promotes Q-Anon conspiracy theories, and tried to represent himself and his family in court using Sovereign Citizen pseudo-law arguments.

As of yesterday, the city government agreed to let them stay in their home if they took down the barricades. But since they still don't legally own the house, that seems like a temporary measure at best, and it's not really clear how this is all going to pan out down the line.

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