A man douses his eyes with milk after being pepper sprayed.
A man douses his eyes with milk after being pepper sprayed. Kelly Kenoyer

It’s been a year since alt-right rabble-rousers Patriot Prayer met in Terry Schrunk Plaza for a pro-Trump “Free Speech Rally”—and were met by three large groups of counter protesters. After someone allegedly chucked a soda bottle at a group of Portland police, officers shot pepper spray and dropped flash bangs into the crowd, sparking expected chaos. The event ended after police rounded up at least 300 protesters and wouldn’t let them leave until officers took down their information and snapped a photo. (A city investigation has since called this practice inappropriate).

Many of the same protesters reunited this afternoon in the same plaza, located directly across the street from Portland City Hall. The premise? Patriot Prayer had scheduled a “freedom march” at Terry Schrunk to bid farewell to Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, a longtime member who’s moving out of Oregon. Rose City Antifa (joined by several other left-leaning activist groups) came to protest Patriot Prayer’s white supremacist affiliations—and also chastise the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) for how they handled last year’s protest. Neither protest had a permit from the city to legally protest.

Today’s events drew a far smaller crowd than last year’s dueling protests—which came just days after two men were fatally stabbed on the MAX. But, like last year’s protest, police officers showed up to the event in head-to-toe riot gear.

And almost immediately, it got violent.

Mercury reporter Kelly Kenoyer documented the afternoon clash from the ground. According to her observations, both groups carried their own pepper spray and used it liberally on one another. Activists spent most of the rally provoking each other with taunts and getting tangled up in brief physical fights.

According to ACLU observers, four people were arrested—two from each side of the protest. PPB spokesperson Chris Burley confirmed this number in a press release sent this evening. Jonathan D. Feit, 36, and Andrew Arbow, 32, were both charged with disorderly conduct. Gregory Isascson, 43, was briefly detained by Federal Protective Service officers for failing to comply with a lawful order. And the fourth suspect arrested has refused to give his name to PPB.

Burley said PPB’s aware these weren’t the only people breaking the law at the rally today. “Investigators will be conducting follow-up which may lead to arrests at a later time,” he said.

According to Burley, two law enforcement officers pepper sprayed protesters to break up fights—but “no other significant police actions [were] taken today.” Burley noted that protesters used pepper spray and threw fireworks, bottles, rocks, and ball bearings at each other during the clash.

“The intent of our presence today was to provide a safe environment for all participants, non-participants, and community members while ensuring the peaceful exercise of the First Amendment,” said Chief Danielle Outlaw, in a press statement. “Bureau members attempted to intercede by separating and arresting people on occasions when people’s safety were in jeopardy.”

The dueling protests eventually fizzled out on the waterfront, with members of both groups throwing rocks and yelling racist, homophobic, and sexist slurs at one another.

Alex Zielinski is a former News Editor for the Portland Mercury. She's here to tell stories about economic inequities, cops, civil rights, and weird city politics that you should probably be paying attention...

4 replies on “Patriot Prayer Clash With Antifa Protesters in Downtown Portland”

  2. Can we please stop with the euphemisms? White supremacist nazi wannabes aka delusional, deranged, dangerous animals (not patriot prayers, WHAT THE FUCK IS A PATRIOT PRAYER?) fight with normal, non-delusional, non-deranged, non-dangerous people who believe fascism has no place in our society.

  3. The phrasing here is fascinating. Stating that police action from last year has been questioned and challenged, then saying the police arrived in full head to toe riot gear, and then immediately violence occurred suggests that the police were responsible for the violence? I get that the writer really, really doesn’t like cops. Anyone who’s read her work does, but this is stretch even for her.

    How is it unreasonable for cops to wear riot gear at an actual riot? This idea that cops need to receive injuries (that local writers will poo-poo as insignificant and part of the job anyway) before they take any aggressive action is really a gross misunderstanding of how actual humans and violence work. Sure, I know some very nice people who would genuinely allow themselves to be injured before they even thought about defending themselves, but none of them have ever faced actual violence, and no one in their right mind would put those people in charge of defending anything anyway. Real violence just isn’t like that. It’s like what the videos of the riots show: un-choreographed, unpredictable, ugly, and featured the winner mostly outnumbering or sneaking up on the loser.

  4. I think it’s important to note that 75% of the 40-50 people that showed up for Joey Gibson’s band of white nationalists and anti-Muslims/anti-Gay bigots spent the prior week stating unequivocally online that they were coming to provoke violence.

    Once they were sent home, the reveled in the violence they started once they got here, despite the Proud Boys having been physically removed from Portland, Notably with Allen Puckett stating unequivocally that he punched and kicked an unarmed, gay man (as caught on video) because he hated the kid for being gay.

    There’s no excuse for these people being allowed to continue their anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic marches while stating very clearly that there is a conspiracy to do violence and bring these to marches to Portland

    These are the seeds of pogroms. Period.

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