The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Black leaders decry violent intrusion by white demonstrators
Protesters in the liberal, predominantly white city of Portland, Oregon, have taken to the streets peacefully every day for more than five weeks to decry police brutality, but violence by smaller groups is dividing the movement and drawing complaints that some white demonstrators are co-opting the moment.
As the Portland protests enter a second month, they have shifted from the city’s downtown core to a historically Black neighborhood in North Portland already buckling under the effects of white gentrification.
Late last week, some protesters barricaded the doors to a police precinct and set fire to the building, which also houses Blackowned businesses. Two nights later, a potluck at a park in the heart of the Black community morphed into a violent clash with police, who unleashed tear gas to quell the crowd of several hundred people.
The change has frustrated some in the Black community, who say a “white fringe element” is distracting from their message with senseless destruction. “This is NOT the Black Lives Matter movement. This is chaos,” Kali Ladd, executive director of KairosPDX, wrote in a Facebook post. “These white actors are enacting dominance in a different form under the guise of equity . ... White supremacy has many forms.”
Demonstrations elsewhere in the city have grown increasingly violent. Early Friday, someone broke the windows of a federal courthouse and threw fireworks that started a fire inside the building.
One prominent Black leader wrote to Mayor Ted Wheeler and said some clashes had unfolded three blocks from his house. He said the problem was with “elements” that were “99% white” and did not represent the Black Lives Matter movement.
“It has nothing to do with helping Black people. These hoodlums are needlessly scaring neighbors and their children,” said Ron Herndon, who has fought for racial justice in Portland for four decades and led a school boycott in 1979 after the city closed predominantly Black schools. “At some point, enough is enough.”
Newly appointed Police Chief Chuck Lovell, who is Black, said the violence in North Portland was “offensive and hurtful” and has cost the city at least $6.2 million in overtime for its officers.
“I think people sometimes look at the protest movement as one homogeneous group,” said Lovell, “and there’s definitely a segment here that is very violent.”