Portland, Oregon has an extended history of street activism and has seen many notable protests.
History
Portland's first organized demonstration was held in 1857.
19th century
Women organized in the late 19th century around several issues. The temperance movement was especially active in Portland. Throughout Oregon and the Pacific Northwest woman suffrage was brought to the ballot five times before it was finally established in 1912. The movement began with Abigail Scott Duniway persuading Susan B. Anthony to join her for a tour of thousands of miles, speaking to people across the Pacific Northwest, in the early 1870s. Duniway would later articulate her non-confrontational approach, stating that it was important to win over men (whose votes must be secured in order to effect change) with a lighthearted, humorous approach: "Men like to be coaxed. They will not be driven."
The Direct Legislation League brought direct democracy to Oregon in the late 19th century.
1900 to 1970
Beatrice Morrow Cannady, shortly after founding the Portland chapter of the NAACP and joining the editorial staff of The Advocate, organized Portland's protest to the racist film The Birth of a Nation in 1915. The protests resulted in a city ordinance banning films that incite racial hatred.
In the early 1960s, journalists at the Oregonian and the Oregon Journal protested labor conditions, along with journalists around the country. They formed the newspaper The Portland Reporter, which was well received during its five-year run, and undercut the business of its competitors, driven by a strong campaign to persuade readers to cancel their Oregonian subscriptions, and to buy stock in the new paper. Striking workers engaged in protest marches among other tactics. The National Labor Relations Board ultimately ruled the strike illegal.
By the 1970s, national protest of the Vietnam War was peaking. Oregon had long been the site of opposition to the war; U.S. senator Wayne Morse opposed military intervention in Vietnam as early as the 1950s, and was one of only two senators to oppose the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing military action. U.S. president Richard Nixon planned to visit Portland in 1970. Some, including governor Tom McCall, predicted violent anti-war protests in the city, and planned a rock music festival in remote Milo McIver State Park to distract from efforts to protest in the city. The resulting festival, called Vortex I, became the only state-sponsored rock festival in U.S. history.
1970s and 1980s
In 1970, a plan implemented by Portland school superintendent Robert Blanchard called for busing Black students to schools in predominantly white districts, and the closure of schools in Black neighborhoods. The Portland chapter of the National Black United Front emerged as the principal adversary of the school board at that time, implementing an array of protest tactics.
The Black United Front organized a "March Against Racism" on April 4, 1981, with an estimated crowd of 1,500 people, 70% of whom were Black. The march was held in conjunction with similar marches in 37 cities across the United States. The march, which occurred less than a month after an incident in which Portland police officers threw dead possums in front of a Black-owned business in Portland, was one of several large demonstrations in Portland. The following year, Oregon voters approved the first public police review committee in Portland with Ballot Measure 51.
The brutal murder of Mulugeta Seraw in 1988 by the East Side White Pride gang further galvanized anti-racist protests in Portland, prompting further protests.
The Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, Oregon's only commercial nuclear power facility, was the subject of protests from its initial installation in the early 1970s until its decommissioning in 1992.
Igor Vamos and the Guerilla Theater of the Absurd, "Little Beirut"
1990s and 2000s
The WTO protests in nearby Seattle on November 30, 1999, were considered highly successful. While local boosters had hoped to "showcase the city to the world as a cosmopolitan capital of trade," instead the protests of the talks came to exemplify popular opposition to globalization. The protest leadership drew heavily on veterans of two decades of "timber wars" protests of the Pacific Northwest. As a result, Seattle canceled its Y2K New Year's Eve party; Portland did not, but there were concerns about possible disruptions.
Shooting of Kendra James (often used as a reference point for Portland police killings
