Portland residents fear to venture downtown after a year of violent riots

"Residents across the metro area say downtown Portland has become dirty, unsafe and uninviting and many anticipate visiting the city’s core less often after the pandemic than they did before," according to a poll conducted by the Oregonian which surveyed 600 Portland residents.

Frequently used words by the respondents of the survey described the current state of Portland as, "destroyed, trashed, riots and sad."

Half of those surveyed say they haven’t visited downtown since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Roughly 30 percent say they have visited the downtown corridor a couple of times but have no further plans to return.

"[My 13-year-old-son] is very afraid to go downtown now," one mother surveyed said. "He loved to go down just to the waterfront and walk around. He loved to go to Saturday Market. These are things that cannot happen anymore."

Another resident blamed Portland’s "woke" government for single-handedly contributing to the violent destruction of the city.

"There seems in the last year to be this permission to do violence," Resident Laurie Lago said.

Although hundreds of far-left extremists have been arrested during the riots, Portland District Attorney Mike Schmidt refuses to prosecute crimes; which has cultivated a city run by lawlessness, chaos, and disorder.

Portland was under siege by Antifa and far-left extremists outside the federal courthouse for more than 100 consecutive days last year as rioters advocated to defund the police while engaging in acts of extreme violence.