On the frontline at Occupy Portland

By 9 p.m. on the evening of Saturday, Nov. 12, it appeared that the Occupy Portland movement was headed for an unceremonious end. The group’s hundreds-strong encampment seemed to have splintered into factions; Lownsdale Square grew more empty by the hour, a jigsaw puzzle of tarps, tents and muddy plots of unoccupied land. Just across Southwest Main Street, between 3rd and 4th Avenues, Chapman Square maintained a sense of enthusiasm as the true believers rallied and sang, the homeless moved on in search of shelter and the rest waited. One block over, Terry Schrunk Plaza was host to live music and free food.

A strong Portland Police Bureau presence loomed. The police made small talk among themselves, and many of them were seemingly oblivious to the residents of the encampment whom they were to arrest at 12:01 a.m. on Nov. 13, by order of Mayor Sam Adams.

“It’s been very peaceful,” said Portland Police Chief Mike Reese, just after 8 p.m. “We’re encouraging people to pack up peacefully. So far it’s been a seamless process; the biggest challenge so far has been the cold, because of which we’ve had to rotate officers through in shifts of 20–25.”

At least three fights broke out between the hours of 9 and 11 p.m., one the result of a dispute over drugs, another concerning one camper’s alleged involvement in the drug overdose of another individual and the third an unclear scrap, quickly settled by police.

But what seemed for much of the evening to be only the most dedicated remnants of a dying movement and assorted curiosity seekers suddenly blossomed into a visceral display of civic support for the Occupy movement, as Portlanders poured into the downtown area by the thousands as the 12:01 a.m. deadline drew near.

A crowd estimated at between 5,000 and 7,000 assembled in downtown Portland at midnight, beginning what would be a tense six-hour standoff between police clad in riot gear and Portland residents chanting, “Too big to fail, too many to jail.”

Michelle Rintelman, who recently graduated from Portland State with a degree in communication, beamed over the support shown by Portland residents.

“I think that a lot of people have been supporting this movement quietly, behind the scenes,” Rintelman said. “I think all of those people came out tonight.”

One of the evening’s many tense moments came when a protester threw a lit firework at police officers, some of whom were on horseback. A spooked horse stepped on one protester, who was uninjured and remained in good spirits.

“I’m okay, but you can see on my shoe where I got stepped on,” the young man said. “It was pretty crazy.”

The heaving crowed swayed as protesters encouraged each other to hold the line at Southwest 3rd and Main Street, where Portland Police were momentarily threatened with the possibility of being surrounded by thousands of protesters just after 2:30 a.m. on Sunday. Clad in riot gear with masks down, officers then fell back to Southwest 3rd and Madison Street, where they were to remain.

For more than three hours a clearly conflicted crowd stood face to face with a line of Portland Police, their riot masks just one foot away from the frontline of the protest. Officers showed stoic restraint in the face of near-constant verbal abuse from a minority of the protesters, while others offered the police their thanks and expressed their understanding at the job they had to do.

A girl who wished only to be identified as Leah, a liberal studies major at PSU, walked down the line separating officers and protesters, offering each police officer a flower.

“It was a preemptive de-escalation tactic,” Leah said. “Flowers make people happy. Only one police officer took one, a female officer. She said she couldn’t accept anything, but let me place it on her. She insisted on the fancy flowers from New Seasons though.”

Shortly after 6 a.m. on Sunday, Portland Police played a recording over loudspeakers, asking protestors to leave the streets and return to the sidewalks and parks, so that they could re-open traffic on Southwest Madison Street. Within minutes the streets were clear, except for the line of twenty or so officers who had held the line in full riot gear throughout the night. Using the emblematic “human microphone,” Occupiers implored police to clear the streets. Several minutes passed.

The showdown ended Sunday afternoon with multiple arrests and the fencing in of Lownsdale and Chapman Squares. The evening, however, ended hours earlier and in a manner that Portlanders can be proud of. On Sunday morning at 6:22 a.m., more than six hours after being ordered to leave, Occupy Portland asked Portland Police to leave. And they did.

A group of twenty or more cyclists rode slowly down Southwest Madison Street, stopped for a red light and chanted in unison for the Portland Police to get out of the street. As the light turned green, for the first time in the evening the riot masks turned the other way as police cleared the streets and the bicycles crossed Southwest 3rd Avenue and toward the Hawthorne Bridge as a cheer went up.

View more photos from Occupy Portland on our photo blog