Portland’s far-right versus anti-fascist faceoff unfolds
At least 13 people were arrested, police said
PORTLAND – Police in riot gear were keeping groups of far-right extremists and anti-fascist counterprotesters apart Saturday afternoon in a tense standoff here leavened by a third group spreading soap bubbles through the gathering crowd.
Members of the Proud Boys right-wing group, some wearing “Keep America Great” caps, yelled at the black-clad, masked counterprotesters from the group known as antifa during sporadic verbal confrontations.
The right-wingers, waving American flags, marched across a downtown bridge as police held back the anti-fascist protesters massed along the waterfront. Many appeared to begin dispersing without a clash but confrontations continued around the city. Police asked reporters and others to stop posting locations of protesters, so they could keep opposing groups apart.
Antifa activists walked around near the bridge, yelling, “Go home, Nazis.”
Police using sound trucks told people to clear the streets, declaring there were no permits for marching. “If you’re in the street, you’re subject to arrest for disorderly conduct,” they announced.
At midday, authorities said they had arrested at least three people in connection with the demonstrations, but provided no details.
Earlier in the day, police seized weapons including bear repellent and metal and wooden poles from multiple groups.
“Everybody’s playing a chess game,” said one police officer, who declined to give his name. Farright leaders said they would seek to lure antifa activists into provoking violence, hoping to build evidence against them.
Meanwhile, members of the group Popular Mobilization, or Pop Mob, dressed as animals, a dinosaur and a giant banana, along with jugglers and a brass band, joined the fray in a less fraught demonstration.
The get-ups appeared to be in the spirit of “Keep Portland Weird,” the unofficial slogan of this quirky city of food carts, artisan doughnuts and naked bicycle rides. But Pop Mob’s organizer described the approach as a deliberate strategy to combat white supremacists without the violence employed by members of antifa.
Effie Baum said that Pop Mob aimed to thwart hatemongers’ creation of memes, such as a viral video showing a member of the “western chauvinist” Proud Boys punching an antifa protester in Portland last year. “A lot of their toxic masculinity and macho posturing can be combated by laughing at them and humiliating them,” Baum said.
The offbeat tactic, refined from years of experience with extremists targeting Portland, accompanies a broader effort this week by community leaders to maintain the progressive city’s brand. On Wednesday in a downtown square, Mayor Ted Wheeler convened politicians, law enforcement officials, educators and business and religious leaders who endorsed inclusive values and denounced the prospect of violence.
Portland police are serious, however, about preventing the sort of brawls that have grown out of past appearances of groups including the Proud Boys, which is deemed a hate organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The groups expected Saturday are similar to those that gathered two years ago in Charlottesville, Va., for a white nationalist rally that turned deadly.
President Donald Trump said in a tweet Saturday that “Portland is being watched very closely. Hopefully the mayor will be able to properly do his job.” The tweet began with Trump saying, “Major consideration is being given to naming antifa an ‘organization of terror.’”
Trump made no mention in his tweet about far-right groups.
In a CNN interview Saturday, Wheeler called Trump’s tweet mentioning him “not helpful.”
“This is a potentially dangerous and volatile situation, and adding to that noise doesn’t do anything to support or help the efforts that are going on here in Portland,” Wheeler said.
Trump initially tweeted July 27 that he was considering naming antifa groups a terrorist organization, although it was unclear under what legal mechanism he would do so. The tweet came after U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz, Rtexas, and Bill Cassidy, R-LA., introduced a resolution calling for the terrorist designation, citing a June 29 Portland antifa assault on Andy Ngo, a conservative journalist. Wheeler said Wednesday that he expected arrests to be made in connection with that assault.
Portland police weren’t sure which groups would show up Saturday, but they were deploying their entire force of almost 1,000, backed by FBI agents and an undisclosed number of officers from around the state. They began early Saturday morning closing some downtown streets and a bridge across the Willamette River. On Friday, workers had erected half a mile of concrete barricades for crowd control along the waterfront.
“We’ve prepared for the worst,” said Lt. Tina Jones, spokeswoman for the Portland Police Bureau, which has been criticized for appearing to favor the right-wing Patriot Prayer organization. “We will be criticized for what we do and what happens, no matter the outcome.”
In an interview Thursday, Proud Boys organizer Joe Biggs said that his group was holding its End Domestic Terrorism rally in Portland to expose Rose City antifa members as criminals. “We will continue to come back until they start dealing with antifa as domestic terrorists,” said Biggs, 35, a Florida man and former staffer for the Infowars right-wing conspiracist website.
Biggs said that he aimed to take punches on Saturday, not throw them. “I want them to be violent, and I’m just going to sit there and take it, and everyone’s going to see who antifa really is,” he said.