Patriot Prayer known for Pacific Northwest protests

PORTLAND, Ore. — The man who was fatally shot as supporters of President Donald Trump skirmished with Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland a week ago was a supporter of a rightwing group called Patriot Prayer, which doesn’t have a big national footprint but is well-known in the Pacific Northwest.

Patriot Prayer’s founder, Joey Gibson, has held pro-trump rallies repeatedly in Portland and other cities since 2016. The events have drawn counterprotesters from around the region and had heightened tensions in Portland long before Black Lives Matter demonstrators began nightly protests over the May 25 death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police.

Gibson, a one-time Senate candidate, founded Patriot Prayer in 2016. In past interviews with The Associated Press, Gibson has said that he and his group are not a hate group and want to exercise their freedom of speech without interference from left-wing groups or protesters.

The group became a prominent presence in Portland in the summer of 2017, when Gibson organized a large rally in the city less than a week after a white supremacist fatally stabbed two men who had come to the defense of two Black teenagers — including one wearing a Muslim head-covering — on a light-rail train.

The defendant Jeremy Christian, who was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences this year, had attended a Patriot Prayer rally several months before, but was kicked out by organizers for flashing Nazi hand signs.

Patriot Prayer held several other marches and rallies in Portland in 2017 and 2018, and Gibson was arrested on a charge of felony rioting last summer in an incident related to a brawl that broke out between the group’s supporters and left-wing activists at a pub after a May Day march in the city. Gibson has pleaded not guilty.

In a video that was live-streamed on Facebook last summer after he was released on bail, Gibson urged his supporters to “show up one hundred-fold” at a rally scheduled for the next day in Portland that was organized by the Proud Boys — a group that has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center — and other rightwing groups such as the Three Percenters and the American Guard.

Gibson told the AP he was again present late last Saturday night in Portland when a caravan of about 600 Trump supporters drove through the city, sparking clashes in the streets with Black Lives Matter demonstrators. It was there that Patriot Prayer member Aaron “Jay” Danielson was fatally shot.