Before Los Angeles, there was Portland, Oregon.
For more than 170 days in 2020, thousands of Portlanders gathered to protest police violence. They lay peacefully in the middle of the city’s most iconic bridge and marched with a local NBA star — but also tore down statues and looted shops. Police launched tear gas canisters into crowds, while the 750 Department of Homeland Security agents President Donald Trump dispatched to the city without the approval of local or state officials grabbed protesters at night and loaded them into unmarked vehicles.
As anti-Trump protests ramp up — with major rallies taking place across the country on Saturday — Portland officials are anxious to avoid a repeat of 2020.
“The Portland Police and then the feds overreacting in the way that they did, I think it brought even more people out because it was such injustice,” said Ali King, a veteran social organizer in Portland who worked for now-retired Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) at the time. “When I saw the LA thing, I just had flashbacks. I did feel some PTSD.”
The impact of those protests and riots on Portland was massive. Voters completely overhauled the city’s government structure, the county elected a more tough-on-crime district attorney, and the police department reformed the way it deals with protesters.
Five years later and 1000 miles away, President Trump again deployed federal officers into a city beset by protests against the will of state and local officials. Those recent events in Los Angeles have put Portland back on edge. Protests this week in the Rose City have been largely peaceful, but as tensions grow, officials hope policy changes will be enough to avoid a repeat of 2020’s violence and prevent federal involvement.
“We’ve changed so much since 2020,” Mayor Keith Wilson, a trucking company owner and political outsider who was elected in 2024 on a progressive platform of fixing the city’s homeless problem and improving public safety, told POLITICO earlier this week. “But federal overreach is something we’re concerned about, and we’re prepared to sue.”
A review conducted by an independent monitor after the 2020 protests found failings by the city and the police department ranging from poor communication with the public to inadequate training in deescalation tactics and insufficient guidance about when and how to use force. These problems, the review found, led to mistrust between the public and the police and escalated — rather than deescalated — the situation.
“I just don’t think we’re looking for that fight,” Hayes said. “If ICE start pushing certain lanes, of course people are going to stand up and protest — but I don’t think they’re going to be inner-city destructive.”