100 Days of Protests in Portland

In Portland, the whitest major city in the U.S., demonstrations against systemic racism and police brutality have stretched for 100 straight days, sparking unprecedented cuts to the city police bureau, night after night of violence by law enforcement officers and protesters, presidential condemnation and national attention.

The ongoing unrest may alter the city’s reputation for years to come.

The so far unending cries for change began three days after George Floyd’s death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. But the arc of Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Oregon’s largest city has varied markedly from June to July to August before reaching their 100th day Friday.

In this documentary, protesters, activists and city leaders weigh in on how one of America’s whitest major cities became the center of the national conversation over systemic racism and police brutality.

The first took place May 28 when dozens gathered in front of the Multnomah County Justice Center, which houses the Portland Police Bureau’s downtown headquarters, the county jail and other law enforcement offices.

The next day, a vigil for Floyd drew thousands to Peninsula Park in North Portland. After three hours, hundreds set off for the Justice Center, nearly five miles away.

1/99

At around 11 p.m., people began smashing windows and entering the building. Someone lit a fire in a first-floor office.

Police in riot gear streamed in to disperse the crowd using tear gas, pepper balls and stun grenades.

The bureau’s use of tear gas that night and on subsequent ones rankled critics who said it was irresponsible to deploy the chemical agent as coronavirus spread through the state and a small slice of the crowd was responsible for the destruction.

“We’re in the middle of a pandemic that literally attacks your respiratory system,” said Cameron Whitten, a longtime Portland activist and founder of the Black Resilience Fund. “And here we have police officers indiscriminately using tear gas against broad swaths of people, the majority of whom aren’t committing any sort of vandalism whatsoever.”

Within a half hour, some in the crowd made their way to Pioneer Place shopping mall, smashing the windows of the nearby Apple and Microsoft stores and the downtown Louis Vuitton outpost and making off with merchandise.

By midnight, police declared a riot. The bureau made 48 arrests that night.

And at 4 a.m., Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty declared a state of emergency and imposed a nightly 8 p.m. curfew, which lasted four days. As the city council president, Hardesty made the declaration while Mayor Ted Wheeler visited his dying mother.

For the next three weeks, Portland’s protests took on a similar pattern.

Thousands of demonstrators would gather for rousing speeches, typically on the lawn at Revolution Hall in Southeast Portland and march carrying signs and banners to a park, Pioneer Courthouse Square or other city landmark.

Images of demonstrators lying prone in silence on the Burnside Bridge for 8 minutes and 42 seconds evoking the horrific stretch of time that Floyd lay pinned under the officer’s suffocating knee or streaming en masse across the Fremont Bridge spread across social media and activated a broad swath of white Portland that hadn’t latched on to earlier waves of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Many of those demonstrators who gathered for early evening speeches would eventually end up at the Justice Center, joining a smaller contingent of protesters already there.

By 11 p.m. almost every night, pockets of violence broke out as individuals tossed rocks, bottles and other debris at police officers. Officers responded by launching volleys of tear gas and flash bangs to disperse the crowds.

Critics said the police response was an overreaction to the actions of a few trouble-makers who almost never seriously threatened officers outfitted with protective gear. The agency was mocked on social media when officials posted photos of items thrown at officers during the nightly demonstrations.

Days later, Wheeler banned the use of tear gas save for cases when a life was at risk. A federal judge agreed with the mayor, imposing a 14-day moratorium on the use of chemical agents to disperse crowds.

"Why I protest:" Unfiltered voices from the front lines

They have held signs, raised fists and chanted. There have been marches, speeches and tear gas. The Oregonian/OregonLive’s journalists asked participants in Portland's historic demonstrations to go beyond the slogans and talk about what moved them to take part.

Still, demonstrators pledged to turn out every night until they saw progress, some citing historic protests during the Civil Rights era that saw demonstrators take to the streets for 382 consecutive nights in Alabama.

“I need people to understand that kind of mental fortitude is not something we’re used to having because we’re used to such luxurious lifestyles,” said Devin Boss, leader of the Black-led group Rose City Justice that organized the biggest ongoing peaceful protests in the city’s history before disbanding in late June amid controversy over its finances, leadership and transparency. “Your feet are gonna hurt. You’re going to be tired. We’re not here to be comfortable or happy.”

In an effort to curb the vandalism at the Justice Center, city leaders rented a fence to keep protesters at bay.

The structure was almost immediately lampooned by demonstrators and, along with the iconic elk statue stationed nearby, became a symbol of the protests themselves.

Demonstrators in Portland and elsewhere soon trained their eyes on statues and other monuments to known slaveholders. On June 14, protesters tore down the statue of Thomas Jefferson on the steps of the high school named for him.

Within days, Portland Public Schools announced it would no longer have armed police officers patrol its campuses. Other metro-area districts followed suit. And leaders in the Oregon Legislature announced they would take up a series of reform bills with an eye on police use of force.

On June 17, the Portland City Council voted to reroute more than $15 million from the police bureau to other city programs and initiatives and disband several specialty police units – changes that would have been unthinkable a month earlier.

Portland police made 236 arrests in June, according to the bureau. And police declared a riot only once that month, when demonstrators gathered at the headquarters for the union that represents rank-and-file officers on the last day of the month, lighting a trash can on fire and breaking some of the building’s windows.

By then, the movement had bifurcated.

While thousands regularly attended protests until mid-June, Rose City Justice, which had organized the large gatherings at Revolution Hall and other sites announced its dissolution on June 30.

Front-line police officers sound off on vitriol, violence aimed at them

Four rank-and-file Portland police officers this week provided firsthand accounts of their work amid heated protests, increasing gun violence, calls for reforms and budget cuts.

After that, demonstrators rarely numbered even 300 at the small nightly protests in front of police headquarters downtown.

JULY

Police declared a riot three times during the Fourth of July weekend, including twice on the holiday itself.

President Trump ordered federal police to protect Portland’s Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse, ushering in a new era in the city’s summer of protests.

Within days, personnel from the Federal Protective Services, U.S. Marshals and other agencies were stationed at the courthouse.

Federal officers were not bound by the same orders that barred local authorities from dispersing tear gas into crowds and they regularly employed aggressive tactics in clearing crowds.

Right-wing media and Republican lawmakers took images from the first few nights of protests to paint Portland as a “city under siege,” drawing footage from May 29 when police declared a riot and several downtown businesses were looted.

Those actions, critics said, justified Trump’s hardline response to the city’s demonstrations.

Federal officers’ presence and heavy-handed tactics first drew protest participants by the hundreds. Then a pair of events galvanized demonstrators to multiply those numbers nearly ten-fold.

On July 11, a federal officer shot a munition at protester Donavan La Bella as he held a boom box aloft, striking him between his eyes.

Gruesome photos and reports from his family members conveyed the severe damage to his face and brain.

Days later, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported federal police were patrolling downtown in unmarked vans and snatching protesters from the city’s streets.

The dual outrages drew thousands to the federal courthouse for the next several nights. Among the most recognizable groups: a coalition of women wearing yellow shirts and calling themselves the Wall of Moms who stood at the front of the crowd to act as a barrier between federal police and protesters.

Hardesty credited the group in part for drawing even more demonstrators downtown. Images of yellow-shirted moms in helmets hit by clouds of tear gas drew renewed sympathy for demonstrators.

“When you tear gas moms, what happens? Twice as many people show up the next night,” Hardesty said. “And you tear gas them again, twice as many people show up the next night.”

The Wall of Moms would eventually crumble following allegations that its founder centered the experiences of white women over Black, native and other women of color. A new organization, led by Demetria Hester, was erected after the original’s dissolution.

“We knew there was a need for a group — even though we’ve been protesting. We know there was a need, so we fulfilled that need. And the moms are fulfilling their needs to help with the Black Lives Matter movement and be with this revolution,” she said.

The federal government’s response to Portland’s protests drew rebukes from activists locally and nationally.

“Interestingly enough, tear gas is banned in war. So you cannot use tear gas in war and conflicts — but it’s still being used for crowd control,” said Dr. Michele Heisler, a physician at University of Michigan and the Medical Director for Physicians for Human Rights.

Wheeler, who is also the police commissioner and was criticized by demonstrators for allowing Portland officers to use tear gas on crowds in the protests’ early goings, cast sharp jabs at the president as he pushed for the removal of federal police.

“Clearly (Trump) hadn’t been to Portland before because Portlanders were not going to take that sitting down,” Hardesty said.

On July 22, Wheeler waded into the crowd protesting in front of the courthouse, checking in with demonstrators along the way. The mayor was tear gassed twice that night, a development his office said was not part of the game plan.

As he stood with the crowd, Wheeler railed against the Trump administration’s deployment of officers to the city.

“This is a waste of time, waste of resources and my biggest fear, honestly, is that someone is going to die,” he said.

As Wheeler decried the president’s tactics and called for the removal of federal police, Gov. Kate Brown and Vice President Mike Pence reached a deal to do just that. On July 30, federal officers withdrew to be replaced by Oregon State troopers.

The state police largely remained in the shadows that first evening as thousands turned out to demonstrate for the 64th consecutive night.

AUGUST

With the feds gone, protesters trained their eyes on local law enforcement buildings.

On Aug. 4, they once again targeted the police union headquarters. On Aug. 5 and 6, demonstrators gathered at the bureau’s East Precinct, which sits right against a three-story apartment complex.

By mid-August, Portland protests’ latest pattern was clear.

On Aug. 19, demonstrators marched to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in South Portland. They chanted, then a handful of them began lobbing rocks and other heavy objects at windows.

Federal Protective Service officers armed with riot shields emerged, pushing the crowd into the street with pepper balls and other less-than-lethal munitions.

Portland police then swept the crowd back from whence it came, bull rushing protesters and sometimes deploying smoke and stun grenades to disperse those who remained.

Once the crowd’s actions began dying down, Portland police would retreat, demonstrators would march back to the immigration building and the cycle would repeat.

The rhythms of that night’s demonstration were emblematic of the way Portland protests unfolded throughout mid-August. Whether in front of a Portland Police Bureau precinct in Southeast Portland or the police union headquarters in North Portland, demonstrators numbering a few hundred at most sought to draw a forceful police response by vandalizing city and county law enforcement offices and chanting, “No good cops in a racist system,” a fixture of nightly protests.

Portland’s protests against systemic racism and police brutality began drawing counter demonstrators, some of them mainstays in right-wing groups that have visited the city regularly in the last four years.

The counter demonstrations began in earnest on Aug. 15 when a group of conservative activists staged a “flag-wave” on the steps of the Justice Center.

The crew of about 15 drew a sizable counter protest, which culminated in a small march to a parking garage where some of the flag-wavers had parked. The confrontation ended shortly after someone shot a gun inside the structure.

A week later, a well-publicized protest organized by a group of far-right organizers with ties to fascist groups drew hundreds of demonstrators to the Justice Center, this time creating shield lines to push back their opponents.

Attendees brawled openly in the streets with Black Lives Matter counter-protesters and the groups traded volleys from paintball guns in broad daylight.

The event drew almost no visible police presence and the Portland Police Bureau, so long criticized for its heavy-handed show of force during protests, came under intense scrutiny for the lack of officers during that demonstration’s most volatile moments.

Agency officials said they only had 30 officers on hand because so much of the police force had routinely patrolled the city’s protests.

Meanwhile, conservative activists were planning another incursion into the city.

On Aug. 29, hundreds gathered in Clackamas for a well-publicized pro-Trump caravan that was supposed to circle downtown Portland. Police tried to keep the truck caravan on the interstate rather than let vehicles exit onto the Morrison Bridge.

But scores of flag-flying trucks eventually began to spill into the city.

Right-wing demonstrators pelted counter protesters with mace and paint balls, a tactic Trump later approved calling it a “defensive mechanism.”

“Paint is not bullets,” he said.

One of the caravan’s organizers put out a call for demonstrators to leave the city at 8 p.m. Nearly an hour later, with a few stragglers from that protest still downtown, a 39-year old supporter of the right-wing group Patriot Prayer who’d taken part in the pro-Trump event was shot and killed.

A Black Lives Matter activist who admitted to a journalist for Vice News that he’d shot the man was killed by federal fugitive hunters who closed in on him.

Protests drew decidedly fewer attendees in the days immediately following the downtown shooting.

A few dozen gathered in Woodstock Park Wednesday, a gathering that soon ended with demonstrators rallying in front of the North Portland police precinct.

On Friday, the 100th consecutive night of protests against systemic racism and police brutality broke out in Portland.

Hardesty, the lone Black member of the city council, said the ongoing demonstrations prove Portlanders are aching for change.

“People are hungry for this conversation. Because what we had before was an unjust system. And I have no desire to rebuild a system that did not work for all our community members,” she said.

— Eder Campuzano | @edercampuzano | Eder on Facebook

— Brooke Herbert | @abrookeherbert

— Beth Nakamura | @bethnakamura

— Dave Killen | @killendave

— Mark Graves | @markwgraves

Everton Bailey, Jr., Jayati Ramakrishnan and Shane Dixon Kavanaugh of The Oregonian/OregonLive staff contributed to this report.

Over the last 100 days, The Oregonian dispatched the following reporters to follow the demonstrations on the ground or from afar: Everton Bailey Jr., Maxine Bernstein, Eder Campuzano, Noelle Crombie, Bryce Dole, Joe Freeman, Jamie Goldberg, Mark Graves, Jamie Hale, Tom Hallman, Molly Harbarger, Alex Hardgrave, Brooke Herbert, Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, Dave Killen, Sean Meagher, Jeff Manning, Piper McDaniel, Beth Nakamura, Ryan Nguyen, Jayati Ramakrishnan, K. Rambo, Michael Russell, Jim Ryan, Brad Schmidt, Ted Sickinger, Madison Smalstig, Celina Tebor, Andrew Theen, Ty Vinson and Fedor Zarkhin.

Molly Young monitored and edited protest coverage for the bulk of the last 100 nights. Margaret Haberman, Andre Meunier and Elliot Njus edited breaking news and protest follow-ups. Ryan Fernandez monitored social media.

Betsy Hammond, Teresa Mahoney, Therese Bottomly and Laura Gunderson provided editorial oversight for this project.

Megan Otto edited the print version of this story for The Sunday Oregonian.