Hundreds gathered at Portland’s Justice Center and Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse on the evening of Thursday, July 30. This marked the 64th consecutive day of protests in Portland in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and against police brutality.
This protest was thr first following the implementation of an agreement between Governor Kate Brown and the Trump administration that would facilitate the withdrawal of federal agents in Portland following several weeks of clashes between protestors and federal agents from agencies such as ICE and Border Patrol. During the clashes, the federal agents have deployed both chemical gasses and crowd control munitions against the protestors.
The agreement made between Governor Brown and federal officials was that Oregon State Police would protect the federal courthouse and a number of federal agents would leave the state.
Thursday night marked the first day in which Oregon State Police were tasked with policing the area. Despite this, no officers were seen outside the building, although some figures were seen on a balcony several floors up. The biggest cosmetic change to the courthouse was the replacement of the graffitied plywood on the front doors and windows with clean plywood. There were also two large floodlights installed on the building which lit up the area in front of the courthouse fence.
The reinforced fence remained around the building. The fence and the cement barricades were covered in a thick layer of chemical residue from the nightly gassings. The fence, which has been a repeated point of contention in the past, was largely ignored Thursday night, except for the occasional fence shaking.
Moreover, the crowd more heavily policed itself and there were repeated calls from speakers to leave the building alone. Around midnight, a few adolescents lit a small trash fire right inside the fence. Several adults ran over, chastised the teens, and quickly poured water to put out the small blaze.
“This is not about that building [the federal courthouse], this is about Black lives,” one of the speakers told the crowd. He also added, “If you’re here for the building, leave now.”
This speech was met with chants of “Peaceful protest” from the hundreds gathered in front of the federal courthouse.
The crowd listened to speeches from Black leadership for most of the night. The speakers, standing in front of a banner, stationed themselves in the middle of 3rd Avenue directly in front of the courthouse fence. The crowd gathered in a circle around them, with their attention focused on the speakers and not towards the courthouse building, which was no longer the focus point of the crowd with the withdrawal of the federal agents.
Another speaker discussed the murder of Vanessa Guillén, the army soldier who was murdered in April by another soldier, authorities believe. He called for “Justice for Vanessa” and said that the crowd should fight for her, too. Protestors then chanted “Vanessa’s life mattered.”
Speakers also talked about the organization, “Wall of Moms,” which has been mired in conflict following a series of internal issues and allegations against the founder. These complaints included that the founder filed for non-profit status for the organization without consulting Black leaders and that the group had left one of the protests without accounting for several Black moms who were still there defending protestors from attacks from the federal agents.
One speaker called on people to support the “Black wall of moms.” He said that they had been out there since the beginning of the movement and that without their guidance much of the crowd would not be out there.
When they were not listening to speeches, the crowd chanted. Their chants included “Whose streets? Our streets,” “Say her name, Breonna Taylor” and “Black lives matter.” There were also chants directed at police, both local and federal, including “No good cops in a racist system,” “No cops, no KKK, no fascist USA” and “Feds go home.”
At one point a protestor led a call and response about supporting different groups within the Black community. She would call “Who do we protect?” and the crowd would respond with “Black women” and, later, “Black youth.”
There were a handful of fireworks shot off throughout the night. Unlike past nights, none of them were directed towards the federal courthouse and the quantity of them was significantly reduced.
The crowd itself was significantly smaller than in previous nights with less than a thousand gathering. There was a notable decrease in moms wearing yellow shirts, although the “Wall of Veterans,” wearing white, was present for much of the night.
The crowd’s energy was less confrontational than past nights and there were very few people in the crowd who seemed to want a confrontation between police and protestors. Despite this, protestors still came prepared for a possible standoff. Some carried shields and umbrellas, most wore helmets and gas masks and a handful held hockey and lacrosse sticks to return tear gas canisters to police, if any were deployed.
There was even a pile of umbrellas combined with lacrosse sticks in front of the former location of the elk statue for protestors to use. At that same location, an argument broke out among several people over whether they should start a fire or not before the group broke up without starting a fire.
There ended up being no need for that equipment Thursday night. The crowd mostly dispersed around 1 a.m., several hours sooner than past nights.
