Protest fueled by history of gentrification

Protesters barricaded streets in a residential neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, and set booby traps for police after officers arrested about a dozen people in a clash over gentrification and the eviction of a Black and Indigenous family from a home.

Several city blocks remained closed Wednesday by a series of blockades fabricated with wood, metal and wire fencing. Protesters dressed in black and wearing ski masks stood watch from atop a nearby wall.

The street behind the blockade in the residential neighborhood of homes, coffee shops and restaurants was laced with booby traps aimed at keeping officers out — including homemade spike strips, piles of rocks and thick bands of plastic wrap stretched at neck-height across the roadway.

Mayor Ted Wheeler, who weathered a summer of civil unrest that almost cost him his reelection, said the city would not tolerate an “autonomous zone” and his police chief threatened more police action after officers made about a dozen arrests Tuesday.

“Those at the barricade should put down their weapons, leave it behind and allow the neighborhood to return to peace and order,” Chief Chuck Lovell said Wednesday in a video posted on Twitter. “Portland police will enforce the law and use force if necessary to restore order.”

Supporters of the Kinney family, the Black and Indigenous family that was foreclosed upon, have said the home was unjustly taken through predatory lending practices that target people of color. The 124-yearold house is known locally as the Red House on Mississippi and was one of the few remaining Black-owned homes on North Mississippi Avenue. It’s in a historically Black part of Portland that for decades was one of the few areas Black residents could own homes because of racist real estate and zoning laws. Over the past two decades, the area has rapidly gentrified — with brewpubs, coffee shops, bicycle shops and upscale condominium complexes replacing Black residences.

The current clash draws on that troubled history for context and it also fits into a larger worry in Oregon — and nationally — about what will happen when pandemic-inspired eviction moratoriums enacted by Oregon and the U. S. government expire in the coming weeks. Oregon state lawmakers are debating a proposal to extend that moratorium until July 1 and also establish a compensation fund for struggling landlords.

Housing advocates worry that if nothing is done, a tsunami of evictions in 2021 will lead to hundreds or thousands of newly homeless people in Oregon.