#Portland’s disease is spreading – can any liberal city resist?

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Federal law enforcement officers face off with protesters in Portland, Oregon.
REUTERS

Portland, Ore., has seen 60 straight nights of violent unrest, and now it’s starting to spread: Saturday was a national night of “solidarity,” with demonstrations in multiple cities in support of the Portland goons.

Yes, goons: Shooting off mortar-style fireworks, hurling rocks and bottles, shining lasers in officers’ eyes, taking power tools to the fence around the courthouse area: All of it belies any claim of “peaceful protests.”

The arrival of federal agents in Portland hasn’t stopped the nightly attacks on the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse. Saturday evening, police responded to a shooting in the vicinity and found nearby a bag packed with Molotov cocktails and loaded rifle magazines.

The city finally declared the scene a riot — and Seattle followed suit after a violent demonstration near the former “occupied protest zone.” There, protesters breached a construction site for a youth detention center and destroyed windows at a court facility. This was after the county executive bowed to the mob and said he’d work to eliminate youth detention centers by 2025.

The thugs’ Gotham brethren also showed their support, with hundreds of demonstrators marching from the Lower East Side to police headquarters on Saturday night. Some set fires in garbage cans while others vandalized NYPD vehicles, tagging them with graffiti, slashing their tires and trying to smash in their windows. At one point, a few protesters jumped atop a police SUV, with one holding an inverted American flag scrawled with “F - - k NYPD.” But the cops are under orders to show restraint.

Lefty pols prefer to simply deny the menace. Rep. Jerry Nadler insisted on-camera that the idea of violence in Portland is merely a “myth that’s being spread only in Washington, DC.” (We asked his office for an explanation, but it declined to respond.)

Meanwhile, what’s going on in the City of Roses is inspiring more mayhem.

“Across the country people are committing violence, supposedly in support of Portland,” the city’s police chief, Chuck Lovell, said Saturday. “If you want to support Portland then stop the violence, work for peace,” he pleaded. “We want to get back to the critical issues that have been hijacked by people committing crimes under the cover of the crowds.”

But that won’t happen as long as the mob besieging the courthouse gets to keep on committing crimes — indeed, the lack of response across the country only encourages more rabble-rousing. If mayors don’t want the feds coming in to clean up their cities, they better start doing it themselves.