Democrat offices and first-ever Starbucks store damaged in anti-Biden protests
Officers arrested around a dozen protesters on Inauguration Day
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Your support makes all the difference.The Oregon office of the Democratic Party and the original branch of Starbucks in Seattle were among several buildings damaged by protesters after Joe Biden was sworn-in as president on Wednesday.
Police arrested around eight people in Portland, Oregon, and at least three in Seattle, while hundreds more were said to have taken to the streets to protest in both cities.
Doors and windows were smashed at the Democratic Party’s offices in downtown Portland, NBC News reported, where a small dumpster was set alight, and “f*** Biden was sprayed on walls, alongside a message that read "Breonna Taylor deserves justice".
At least 150 protesters marched on to Portland's Immigration and Customs Enforcement building, where they called for the agency to be abolished.
According to police, the Portland protesters were carrying weapons such as “Molotov cocktails, knives, batons, chemical spray and a crowbar”.
“We don't want Biden, we want revenge!,” read a banner that was seen by The Oregonian, and appeared to sport an antifascist symbol and another based on the “three arrow” designs used by Social Democrats against the Nazis in the Weimar era.
The same banner also denounced “police murders, imperialist wars and fascist massacres", while another banner read "We are ungovernable”.
In Seattle, around 100 protesters were seen carrying a banner that read “F*** Trump, **** Biden too, they don’t give a **** about you.”
According to police, they caused damage at the William Kenzo Nakamura Courthouse, an Amazon Go store, and a Starbucks store on Pike Place which opened as the world’s first ever branch in 1971. Glass was left strewn across the store.
One protester told the Seattle Times that Mr Biden’s appeal to Americans for “unity” was “disgusting” because the Democrat wanted “unity with people who actively want to harm people,” in apparent reference to police and the political right.
Wednesday’s protests came several months after Seattle and Portland saw large demonstrations against systemic racism and police brutality last summer.
They took place after the Minneapolis police killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, and the Kentucky police killing of an unarmed black woman, Breonna Taylor.
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