PORTLAND, OR - Peaceful protesters issued a clarification to the news media that their condemnation of federal secret police only applies to capitalist countries.

"We need to unshackle ourselves from oppressive forms of coercive power structures like the racist and fascist police departments," declared a spokesperson for the protesters, Whisper White. "This is why we are out here night after night, through all the smoke and the heat from the fires and the loud explosions. We are fighting this fight for all of you too. We can't allow these unidentifiable police in unmarked cars to just whisk us away while we are out here."

"Now, if this country were communist, that'd be a different story. You need the secret police there to weed out all the capitalists, religious people, and other undesirables."

Several confused bystanders asked for clarification from the protesters sporting Marxist banners and defensive explosive devices when they began decrying the use of secret police against them. 

"Up until now they had been telling all the neighborhood about how we needed our government to be based on socialist models, which I always thought had bad things like secret police," said resident unemployed shopkeeper Jamal Owens. "It makes a bit more sense now that sometimes you need the police to whisk people away and other times it is the hallmark sign you are living in an authoritarian nightmare. It's a nuance I guess. Well, I better get back to filing this fire insurance claim on my business." 

"Yes, every communist regime that has been tried had secret police, but that wasn't really socialism, and even if it was, those secret police were really vital and necessary to humanely and discreetly take people to re-education centers to help them not be Nazis," said Angaleigh McCutcheon.

At publishing time, peaceful protesters were forming a shield wall and advancing defensively against federal police forming an aggressive formation around a federal court building.