Tonight’s downtown #portlandprotests will allegedly have marches from chefs (Chef Bloc), teachers (anteacha?), lawyers (lawyers), health care professionals (Scrub Bloc), and dodgeball players (thonk!).

Is tonight career night.
I’ll be investigating for the @portlandmercury !

Crowd at Salmon Street Springs is a responsibility distanced 300. Chef Bloc and Scrubs Blocare mingled around this hypnotic drum / spoken word performance.

I’m not always about drum circles but this group rips.

Thunderous drumming has the crowd like

The drums die down and the speaker tells the crowd that we are at a time when the president and government are trying to rewrite the history of Black people. “The story they want to tell is that we are dangerous, that we deserve violence, that we don’t matter. But we do matter.”

Oh interesting! I didn’t know there would be a DANCE OFF?! Christian Burke aka Creme Brulee is here to host it! Here’s the flyer https://www.instagram.com/p/CC9fHNohwcF/?igshid=q2cn46xsfvqn

I just like you to have all the info.

A speaker who is not Creme Brulee is doing my favorite summer jam: The demands.

1) Defund police by 50%. Reinvest that money in the community, especially the Black community. 2) Free all the protesters. 3) Feds out of Portland now. 4) Wheeler must resign.

“This week I told a cop quit his job. He told me to get a job.” Creme Brulee says.

(Aside: Well how lucky that this is protest career night then!)

“This is not a peaceful protest. This is a joyful protes!” Creme Brulee shouts.

Here’s a bunch of people jumping around to Creme Brulee yelling “Black trans lives matter!” You live to see it.

The scene is joyful, but these cars have corked the road for extra security. Corking means that they’re acting as a physical barrier to protect a crowd from ( forbid this!) a potential car attack.

Organizers have actually blocked Naito all the way back to the next intersection so that unwitting traffic doesn’t get stuck.

These protesters organized a self-identified Asian Bloc tonight. Getting ready to march to the Justice Center. They’re in red shirts!

The Salmon Springs Fountain assembly of blocs is touching 1,000 strong. Everyone is lining up to march.

The Salmon Springs fountain protest—an informal assembly of Blocs—is marching to the Justice Center protest!

March is momentarily paused. They’re having the women’s march difficulty of “where these people gonna go?” There are already a ton of people in Chapman and Lownsdale parks and the surrounding streets.

Apologies if this spin shot makes you dizzy. I think this is the largest crowd to ever attend the Justice Center area downtown protest!

You may school me in the comments!

Wormed my way over to SW 3rd and Salmon to confirm a suspicion. There is major protest overflow. People cannot fit!

Just a random table of people who came down here to give out helmets and knee pads.

Another pan of this huge crowd. This is at least 3,000, maybe 4,000.

People walking through the crowd with utility buckets full of veggie burritos and snacks for demonstrators.

ITS ALMOST DODGEBALL TIME

I don’t know what dodgeball career focus will be like. I’m exhilarated. I’m wary.

Meanwhile this very nice cell phone light effect:

Asked a demonstrator in the wall of moms why they’d moved their backpacks to their front and the only one near me not wearing a gas mask said, “For protection.”

As I was tweeting this, I saw someone next to me putting on their gas mask.

“Oh, is it gas mask’o’clock?” I said, thinking I could finish my tweet.

I could not. I looked up to a cloud of gas descending as federal officers gassed a crowd of 3k people.