Protests draw attention to Oregon
PORTLAND, Ore. — Viral videos of bloody skirmishes between right-wing activists and selfdescribed anti-fascists have drawn national attention to Portland, Ore. — a city of storied political activism that has struggled to keep the peace at dueling rallies.
Tensions erupted most recently this month when members of the so-called “antifa” movement showed up at a march organized by a right-wing group called Patriot Prayer.
As police tried to keep order, fist fights broke out in a string of downtown parks.
Videos from the conflict on social media show one man being knocked to the ground and kicked repeatedly as he covers his head with his hands. In another, a man lying on the ground is dragged away from a group of attackers, his face bloodied. In a third, two men — including one wearing homemade body armor — take swings at a third man who is backed against a wall with his arms raised.
Police made four arrests June 3 in and around the parks, which have become gathering places for dissent in this liberal city already known for nearweekly protests.
Protesters here traditionally have demonstrated together for their causes. But over the past year a different type of political activism has shattered the unanimity normally seen among demonstrators, said longtime Portland resident Jon Baldivieso.
“It obscures better forms of political speech,” he said. “It feels different when protests are more one-sided and not skirmishes between ideological factions. … I’ve got very low patience for physical confrontation.”
What is happening could be an expression of a deep sensitivity to a dark chapter of the city’s history that’s bubbling up as the rest of the country, too, becomes more politically polarized.
In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan had a strong presence in the city and by the 1980s, Portland was a hot spot for white supremacist groups, earning it the nickname “Skinhead City.”
One of the most infamous attacks in Portland’s racial history occurred in November 1988, when an Ethiopian immigrant was beaten to death by three white supremacists from the California-based White Aryan Resistance in front of his apartment.
The city was also the home base for Volksfront, a nowdefunct white separatist organization founded in 1994, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.
While Patriot Prayer isn’t considered a white supremacist or hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, its members march alongside right-wing groups promoting free speech rights by rejecting political correctness, said Ryan Lenz, an SPLC spokesman.
Those marches have drawn a forceful reaction from a leftwing movement known as the antifa that is dedicated to rooting out neo-Nazis and white supremacists, he said.
The 10-year-old group Rose City Antifa is one of the most organized of these loosely affiliated groups in the nation and also one of the oldest.
Individual antifa members remain anonymous, but the group’s public Facebook page issued a call for members to show up June 3 to confront the “rising tide of fascism and the forces of structural and insurgent white supremacy” in Portland.