Demonstrators gathered for the 82nd consecutive day on Monday in Portland. Organizers were promoting a march beginning at Kenton Park in North Portland, located blocks from the Portland police union headquarters.
Portland protesters have held events for nearly three months following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Crowds have rallied against police brutality and anti-Black racism.
Crowds have diminished since the early days of the protests and since federal officers that had been policing the protests made themselves scarce. But smaller crowds have turned their ire toward a rotating set of targets that’s included police precincts and the Portland Police Association office on North Lombard Street. Many activists view the union as a roadblock to the reforms they demand.
Just over 100 had gathered at Kenton Park shortly after 9 p.m. The group started marching shortly before 10 p.m. and grew to about 200 by the time it reached the police union building.
There, people milled about in the street while protest cars blocked traffic on Lombard Street and music and speeches blared over a loudspeaker. Occasional chants broke out. Some were spray painting the plywood that now encases the building.
Minutes before 11 p.m., Portland Police officers announced over a loudspeaker that it had “learned” people might be trying to force entry to the building. Protesters were warned to move away from the building to allow officers to check. About two dozen officers arrived and formed a line near the building’s side entrance.
The warning also was posted on Twitter.
The line of officers retreated minutes later. Someone in the crowd threw a bottle as police left, while police released smoke and fired pepper balls.
Police have responded forcefully at times to these roving protests, often declaring the assemblies unlawful in response to thrown objects or lasers pointed at police officers. Police often push protesters away from the buildings, making arrests and deploying crowd-control munitions.
On two previous occasions, protesters have broken into the police union and lit fires, though they were quickly extinguished in both cases.
A protest held downtown on Sunday took a violent turn as a group restrained and beat a driver who sped away from one crowd only to crash his truck nearby. Video showed the man was sitting on the ground when one person kicked him in the head, leaving him unconscious and bleeding in the street. The man was hospitalized with serious injuries but expected to live, police said. No arrests had been made in the incident.
Linneas B.G., a regular at the weeks of protests, was at Kenton Park on Monday night. He said he thought the night might get more heated after the events of the night before, adding that it was awful that the man was attacked, but that protest remains necessary.
“I’ve been doing it every day because I think it’s important,” he said. “I’ve been protesting since the day I was born.”
Sunday’s assault occurred as an otherwise peaceful protest unfolded blocks away at the downtown Justice Center. Police were seen only briefly, pushing crowds away from the building’s garage door so vehicles could enter.
Letha Winston, the mother of a 27-year-old man fatally shot by Portland police in 2018 after he had shot and wounded two others in a downtown Portland parking lot, addressed a crowd of demonstrators early Sunday night, imploring protesters to keep marching and demanding change.
The day before, on Saturday, a pro-police demonstration ended in a report of a gun fired by a motorist leaving the demonstration, which police said they were investigating. No one was injured by gunshots.
Police also said they were investigating reports that someone threw an explosive device that detonated near the corner of Southwest Fourth Avenue and Main Street. The explosion can be heard on a video posted to Twitter. People in the video are heard shouting that the device was thrown from a black GMC SUV.
Explosive devices were thrown at protesters and some members of the press in Laurelhurst Park a week earlier in the waning hours of the protest. No one was injured in either incident.
-- The Oregonian/OregonLive
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Portland protesters gather for 82nd night of demonstrations Monday near police union headquarters - OregonLive
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