"Assaulting people" - not true as far as I have seen. The PPD and the feds are the ones assaulting people. "Trying to permanently blind officers with lasers" - a bit of a stretch, especially considering protesters are shining lasers at snipers that are pointing laser scopes at them. "looting, and throwing potentially lethal objects at citizens and officers." - definitely not citizens, and the objects being thrown at officers are mostly ordinance that was thrown at the protesters by the officers first, along with some water bottles and a few other not-so-lethal objects. In the one night I was down there so far I saw two protesters with rubber bullet wounds to the head and an immense amount of tear gas and flash bangs were unleashed. There is some credence to the burning of things and looting, but that is a small group of people that do not represent the mass of the protest. There are always a couple bad apples in every bunch, but most of the rest of the protesters do not approve of such actions as it is not in the best interest of the cause. The protesters have been assaulted consistently without directly assaulting the police in return. I would say that Portland is learning how to fight back without actually fighting. I hope we can keep things civil even though we may disagree about what is happening in Portland - I was on the ground and experienced it first hand, and will be going again soon.