Blogs Jun 8, 2010 at 12:50 pm

Comments

1
The customers must smell awful.
2
Smell ain't the half of it.
3
Lame. They said that unlike racial discrimination people choose to wear the police uniform. Well, people also choose to wear baggy pants, expensive sneakers and a big fro or dreads- that is also a choice.
They said the cops make some people uncomfortbale.
Same could be said for young men who look like the description I gave above.
They suck.
4
In a world full of fear, it takes a set of patchouli-scented balls to piss off the cops who want you to think they are the thin blue line between you and anarchy. Which, to people at an anarchist coffee shop, is an awfully good joke.
5
being good anarchists no doubt if they had a problem or crime in progress they would not call the police anyway...
6
What works for Portland also works against it.
7
Though it was also pointed out in the comments in the link, I think the idea of anarchists calling a press conference is the funniest shit in the world. I know there's nothing inherently contradictory about it, but it still cracks my shit up.
8
Heh heh. They'll never see another cop in there ever again, even if they need one. And I hope the place never catches on fire, either, because they'll never see a firefighter in there either.
9
Aw, 5280, I know a couple Portland cops who take their sworn oaths seriously enough to show up if needed, and in a hurry too.
11
Are anarchists allowed to call 911?
12
LOL @ Portland
13
Dan,
Perez-Diez & Langley are damn fools. That's no way to treat Portland's finest. Good that you pointed it out. Should Red & Black be robbed (I don't wish that at all) at gunpoint, one can be assured that the Portland Police Dept. would respond tactfully. I just wonder if Perez-Diez & Langley would be grateful?
14
My favorite comment:

"who wants to start the band "Anarchist Pouty-Faces" with me?"

That band should totally happen.
15
@13, to be invited to swear an oath of public trust as a police officer takes some doing. Any damn fool can open a business. That's how it's always been, and how it should be.
16
Fuck, even the mafia isn't stupid enough to refuse service to cops. They spit in their sandwiches, sure, but they do so with a warm smile and a handshake.
17
This is just the sort of "rights" that the teabagger champion. They're a business, they should be able to choose whom they wish to serve & whom to kick to the curb.

But you won't see them defending these guys. Because teabaggers aren't interested in principles, they're interested in shrill indignation and maintaining white male dominance. Just ask Lord Basil.
18
You know a city is uber liberal when stories like these come out... I'll take the anarchists over the right wing fundies any day of the week.
19
@3 No Ms. Doe, you suck. Because you somehow found a way to sneak your racist views into a thread about anarchist baristas and police officers.
20
Real anarchy is your 6th Grade gym class without any teachers present to keep the bullies in check.

The people in this article are little pissants who, when they get robbed at gunpoint, will wish they treated the police a lot nicer.

Granted, I have my issues with Cops. A lot of them are the same douchebags you went to high school with who wanted to boss people around and talk about guns. But not all of them are dicks and I'd have to imagine that Portland, one of the most low-crime, hippie-friendly and progressive cities in the country, likely has a pretty decent police force.
21
...but justice is blind, right? Everybody knows that police, ahem, internally prioritize, but that doesn't make it right.
22

The police are here to represent the State. They're not here as your buddies or really even to protect you. They're here to collect evidence for the State to be used against whomever they have deemed the "suspect(s)".

If you think I'm wrong, just ask anyone who lives in a poor neighborhood.
23
I found the comments on the story link and here quite interesting in that they ( mostly) support the cops and sneer at the cafe owners. Most businesses have a sign that says "We reserve the right to refuse service" which they did- poorly I might add. That should be the end of it.

Most Police do a fine job protecting the public they serve but it's a sign of the times-as Dan pointed out-is the reality that the police would indeed be slow to respond to a call from said cafe. Why, because police depts. and Portland is a glaring example, have become increasing arrogant and insensitive to the public.

Perhaps people feel there is no other way to protest the simmering resentment against the police by refusing to serve them at their business. However as a public servant the police are required by law to render help to that establishment should they need it-that's their job.
24
Let me guess. These guys are the same stripe of "business" owners who open a coffee shop, store, or restaurant as some sort of life project or hobby. You know, those places that are never actually open when they say they're going to be, or that run out of key ingredients halfway through the day (Paseo, I'm looking at you).

These shops often offer a different/unusual/superior product, but, fuck, it's a pain in the ass to deal with them.
25
I love the comment where people holding polite press conferences thinking that they're anarchists are the same as people going "aaaarrr!" and thinking that they're pirates.
26
@10 You are and you should. P.S. your unattractiveness has nothing to do with your appearance.
28
I'm in a minority it seems where I think I understand where Red & Black are coming from (and they are a very nice, scheduled cafe, btw).

As they stated, it isn't a refusal of service. They obliged the officer's take out order. But uniformed police make a lot of Portlanders nervous for a lot of different reasons, especially with a lot of Portland police's recent history with the clientele of the cafe. I can imagine how a woman kissing the ass of a cop loudly in the middle of a "safe space" would make the regulars, many who have been harassed by police, uncomfortable.

Add to that, I'm sorry, but as others have said... the Red & Black is not the only option in that area for coffee. Cops loitering around there will, for a lot of these folks, scream spying.

I can understand why Red & Black might not want cops hanging around because it will spook their established clientele and they will lose business. I don't think they handled it properly and I think their idea to en-noble it with a bunch of half-brained anarchist babble just makes things look even more ridiculous. But I do get where they're coming from. I don't hang out at donut shops for a reason.
29
What's interesting about this isn't that anarchists asked a cop to leave (well, fucking duh!) but that a woman made it a point to publicly and profusely thank the cop for his service to the community while in the coffeeshop.

The woman, Cornelia Becker Seigneur, describes herself as a "Faith & Culture & Family Writer". She wrote the "Real-Life Mom" column in the Oregonian for a few years. She's been published in Christian News Northwest, a fact that she points out before her publication in Parents magazine.

What was she doing in an anarchist cafe with a cop?

Dan, you fell for this father, son, and holy ghost.
30
Oh, and the cop wasn't refused service. He bought his coffee to go, stuck around, and was then asked to leave. Go jouranimalism.
31
Portland is such a pussy city, fuck, I was gonna write more but that pretty much sums it up.
And @30 I buy my coffee to go all the time even if i want to stick around dumb shit, not everyone can spend their whole fucking day writing beat poetry at a coffee house but that doesn't mean they have to get the fuck out cause their cup isn't a huge pretentious mug.
32
Writing beat poetry in a coffee house? Where do you live? In a Archie comic?
33
I imagine a cop is gonna make the self-medicated paranoid schizos nervous. As well as the imaginary revolutionaries and the editor of the local marxist-leninist newspaper and his two readers. What if the cop over ears a secret conversation from the weekly meeting of the squirrel liberation front?

Anarchists, the anarchists' worst enemy.
34
@33: There has been a lot of police brutality recently in PDX, and a lot of activist response to that police brutality. It's a pretty tense situation there at the moment, so I can kinda understand the cafe's wariness of a uniformed cop hanging around inside their shop.

Sorry if reality intruded on your flippancy.
35
In the end, it's a problem that will sort itself out. No cops will show up in uniform for a month and then the various regulars will start suspecting that any new customers are secretly spies for the fascist pigs and drive them off. Business will die off (or someone's going to attack a customer they suspect of being a police plant), and that'll be the end of it.
36
@28 and 29 - THANK YOU.

This is a case of having a business designed to be a gathering grounds for a certain set of legal and permissible behaviors (discussing anarchist ideology and organization according to anarchist principles - look it up, kiddies, anarchism does not equal "overthrowing the government"), and a cop and other citizen came in with the express purpose of making trouble for the people peaceably organizing there.

It's the equivalent of a Catholic priest walking into a gay bar an talking loudly about how awesome God is for smiting those sodomites. Dick behavior disruptive to the other patrons.

37
What I don't understand is how this story became The Biggest Story Ever over on Portland Mercury's blog site. I'm really surprised by the number of comments, and to see so many Mercury readers show their true colors as cop worshipers. The Red & Black isn't in my neighborhood but I'm going to start going out of my way to patronize the place.
38
What about that gay bar in Texas that got raided by the police, and the patrons roughed up? I imagine they'd have the same policy, for roughly the same reasons, and I doubt anyone on this forum would sneer at them.
39
@24:

I don't know this cafe in particular but, in general, worker-owned businesses are more efficient and successful than businesses as a whole.
40
The idea that cops might refuse to protect the tax-paying owners of a coffee shop because they refuse service to uniformed police due to finding them intimidating is beyond ironic. I'm reminded of the Muslim protesters who waved signs proclaiming "Death to all who say Islam is violent!"
41
(31: Portland is such a pussy city, fuck, I was gonna write more but that pretty much sums it up.)

Wow! What an insightful generalization based on the observation of one coffee bar. Have any other nuggets of wisdom to share?
42
@34 Exactly what I meant by imaginary revolutionaries. Thank you for the concrete example.
43
@35 - You say that as if it's paranoid to assume that cops send secret spies into anarchist circles. It's not. At all. You see, most law enforcement view anarchists as potential terrorists because they don't understand what the core principles of anarchism really are. And to be fair, many *anarchists* don't realize what the core principles of anarchism really are and behave in ways that are mildly (usually) terroristic.

That said...the point at which those secret spies cease to be neutral observers and become agents provocateur (also very, very common) is the point at which I cry "foul."
44
@42 - Yes, because we totally live in a perfectly just society where cops never, ever overstep their authority or operate in situations where there are insufficient checks on their power. Do unicorns live in your backyard and fart sunshine happiness rainbows, too?
45
To answer the rhetorical question..yes, I would guess that the police would take their time answering a call from this cafe.

However, I'd also imagine that they'd take their time answering a call from, say, a defence attorney who specialised in police brutality cases, or a journalist who ruined a cop's career by accusing them of corruption.

In either case, I can't see Dan taking the same gleeful attitude.
46
As for the accusation that this case is a civil rights issue:

The police officer should bring a civil rights suit and take all their money, or at least bankrupt them. He should have no trouble finding legal help, and people who'd donate to help with costs.

If that doesn't happen then presumably the case isn't winnable, ie it wasn't a civil rights violation in law.
47
@44 The fact that some cops are crooked is no justification to be a douche.
48
@43-- It's still paranoia even if they are out to get you. I'm just half-facetiously suggesting that left without obvious outlets for their paranoia, the customers of the cafe will eventually turn on each other.

Please wait...

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