The two cops standing guard outside the Portland Police Bureau look tired. It’s the 54th consecutive night of the city’s Black Lives Matter protests, and the months-long street-festival-cum-revolution occupying the small park outside the Oregon federal courthouse—just a block and a half away from the downtown police station—has gone largely unmolested by local law enforcement. “The courthouse is basically theirs for most of the day,” one officer admits. “We don’t really move in until they start setting fires.”
The fires in question don’t start until later in the night; in the early evening hours, the extent of the disorder is a handful of masked young activists spray-painting profanities on the side of the Multnomah County Justice Center. The tone of the daytime occupation is cheerful: the air is filled with the thick stench of marijuana, and well-dressed college students mingle with septuagenarian ex-hippies sporting tie-dye Bernie! shirts, suburban moms, grungy Portland teens, wild-eyed street bums, and professional-looking activists from the city’s many protest-related organizations. An entrepreneurial duo has set up a stand in the middle of the street selling Black Lives Matter shirts and face masks, and another vendor down the way is marketing vegan kebabs. A woman weaves through the crowd handing out water bottles, earplugs, and other protest essentials, singing along to the rhythmic bass line of a hip-hop song emanating from a set of speakers on the park’s southeast end. (The lyrics are unambiguous: “Cop shot, cop shot, cop shot, cop shot/Keep shooting my people/We will shoot back.”)
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