Tear gas Ted: the mayor manning Portland’s barricades

The federal courthouse in downtown Portland, Oregon, has become ground-zero for the nightly orgy of assaults, looting, arson, and public nudity — and, most recently, a surrealistic duel between protestors and federal agents using leaf-blowers to drive back each other’s tear gas — that continues to enliven America’s so-called Rose City in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

It’s a curious thing, this new alignment of some of America’s most high-profile mayors with the very people burning down their towns. In Portland the competent authority figure is 57-year-old Ted Wheeler, who took office three and a half years ago. By law, all Portland mayors are nonpartisan, but it seems unlikely Wheeler will be out campaigning this autumn for the Trump-Pence ticket. Like many mayors, he’s expressed the great orthodoxy of the past two months, announcing that he plans to redirect $7 million from his police budget and $5 million from other city funds to ‘communities of colour’. But Wheeler doesn’t stop at merely repeating the current Black Lives Matter slogans. He’s actually out there on the barricades, standing on the courthouse steps last week to express solidarity with the protestors and berating the federal agents sent to his city.

‘If they launch the tear gas against you, they’re launching the tear gas against me,’ Wheeler shouted over his surgical mask. ‘We are a community… We demand that the federal government stop occupying our city.’

Since the mayor was met by signs in the crowd that read ‘Tear gas Ted’ — in response to allegations that he had allowed police to use tear gas against protestors before federal agents arrived — and a large banner unfurled immediately behind him that abandoned subtlety for the stark message ‘Fuck you Wheeler’, this exercise in outreach could be called only a mixed success.