Portland protesters on Wednesday began setting up tents in the park near federal court and have closed the streets to create their own autonomous zone, compared to the Capitol Hill protest dissolved in Seattle.
Protesters began pitching tents in Lownsdale Square in downtown Portland across the street from the Pioneer Courthouse, one of the federal properties Homeland Security sought to protect by bringing federal officials into the city two weeks ago.
A camera at the Portland Standard Building showed protesters starting to set up tents Tuesday night in the same park where “Occupy Portland” was installed in 2011, KATU reported.
PORTLAND’S DESPERATION CONTINUES FOR SIX STRAIGHT WEEKS WITH NO APPARENT END IN SIGHT
An unofficial Twitter page attributed to a group of anti-capitalist and anti-fascist teenagers who call themselves the Pacific Northwest Youth Liberation Front said protesters want to establish the Chinook Autonomous Terrestrial Territory, or CLAT, in downtown Portland. The Chinook people include several indigenous groups native to the Pacific Northwest.
“You need people here ALL night, especially early in the morning! Keep going rn! Bring some tents, ”said the Twitter page, sharing an image of a barricade that read“ ACAB, ”an acronym that stands for” All Cops are Bastards “and” Black Trans Lives Matter. “
The Portland Police Department said in a statement early Wednesday morning that “a couple of hundred protesters gathered at Revolution Hall in Southeast Portland and marched throughout downtown Portland before ending their march on Pioneer Square” on Tuesday night.
Police said some protesters then made their way to the Justice Center and by 9:15 pm They then began to barricade Southwest Main Street and Southwest Salmon Street on Southwest Third Avenue using “industrial kitchen appliances, road blocks, and traffic signs.” . Protesters also lit several fires.
At around 1 am, protesters “in an organized effort” left the barricades and walked toward the Central Enclosure “in an attempt to disrupt officers as they entered from the end of their shift,” said the statement from the policeman. At that time, officers removed some of the barricades on Southwest 3rd Avenue and Southwest Salmon Street. But protesters began to return to the area and “the officers disconnected.”
Protesters threw glass and laser bottles targeting officers and set fire to what was left of the barricade, police said. Several minutes later, a protester extinguished the fire and several protesters began to rebuild the barricade.
Police added: “CS gas, crowd control ammunition, or force was not used.”
Civil unrest engulfed many cities in the United States when George Floyd died after a White Minneapolis police officer punched his knee on the neck on May 25 while in custody. But in Portland, which is familiar terrain for loosely organized far-left activists known as “Antifa” or antifascists, the protests never stopped.
SEATTLE CHIEF DEPUTY SAYS “RECOVERY” AND “POLITICAL” THE 50 PERCENT BUDGET CUT WOULD LEAD TO MAIN DISCOUNTS FOR BLACK OFFICERS
Downtown businesses have accumulated millions of property damage and lost sales, and hundreds of thousands of Portland residents have been off the streets for six weeks. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, a Democrat, said President Trump did not “calm” the violence and instead “escalated” tensions by deploying federal officials to the largest city in Oregon earlier this month.
Over the weekend, a protester was seriously injured when a federal officer fired non-lethal ammunition and hit him in the head. In a separate incident, a 23-year-old protester was arrested for attacking a federal officer with a hammer while leaving a court.
Referring to federal officials, Wheeler said Tuesday that “the best they can do is stay inside his building or leave Portland entirely.” The mayor added, “Our goal is to end these violent protests quickly and safely. And in the meantime, I asked him to clean up the graffiti at local federal facilities.”
“I was born and raised here, and I graduated from the local public school system. I chose to make my living here, I chose to raise my daughter here, ”said Wheeler, who has faced criticism from all sides, according to the Associated Press. “And in all the years that I have lived here, I have never seen the most divided community. I haven’t seen it worse either. “
The Pacific Northwest Youth Liberation Front, which defines itself as a “decentralized network of autonomous youth collectives dedicated to direct action towards total liberation,” has reportedly helped organize protesters and provide tactical advice.
The page retweeted several images of makeshift plywood barriers painted with other messages, including “Abolish Pigs and Prisons,” “Black Liberation Now,” “Stolen Land” and “Racism Chokes Us All.”
The group ordered protesters to maintain an area near Salmon Street after riot police arrived on Wednesday morning to remove the barricades that blocked roads.
A woman retweeted for the group, Lindsey Smith, who said she is a preschool teacher who monitored police activity during the protests, shared videos showing protesters shuffling supplies in cars around the block to build new barriers in what she described as a “barricade building party”. “Trash bags were seen burning in the street and some protesters blew trumpets and drums.
Police confront protesters as Black Lives Matter supporters demonstrate in Portland, Oregon, on July 4, for the 38th day in a row at the Portland Justice Center and across Portland, with a riot declared around 12:20 p.m. in the morning of July 5. CS tear gas and less lethal weapons were used and multiple arrests were made. (Photo by John Rudoff / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The mayor and police have repeatedly denounced the violent clashes as a destructive distraction from the Black Lives Matter movement and make a clear distinction between peaceful protesters and those who are determined to relate to the authorities, whom the police call “agitators.”
Other officials, including several city commissioners, Democratic Governor Kate Brown and Speaker of the Oregon House, have criticized the police for being too aggressive. Meanwhile, there was a cycle of unrest, police response, and more outrage.
“There really is this battle that we are having right now: a communications war over who is a ‘good protester’ and who is a ‘bad protester.’ And what the police and the mayor are trying to do is turn the city against the people protesting, ”Gregory McKelvey, an activist and critic of the police response, told the AP.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“Every night’s protest is turning into a protest of the police activity of the night before. So when people say we want this to stop, they can’t stop because today’s protest will be about what the feds or the Portland Police Office did yesterday, ”McKelvey said.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
