Thousands of sympathizers with Occupy Portland showed up at pre-dawn today, briefly halting downtown traffic, to support protesters as they rejected the midnight deadline to leave two adjacent city parks from which they’ve officially been evicted.
Occupy Portland’s Facebook page lists an e-mail address for protesters wanting advice from the National Lawyers Guild — suggesting the group’s resolve to stay put at a time when officials are voicing concern about the safety and health of Occupy encampments in several cities.
“Take off your riot suit. You’re sexy, you’re cute” and “Shame on you” are among the chants Portland protesters directed at police in riot gear who’d been dispatched to remove roughly 200 remaining protesters, according to ABC News Radio.
On Saturday, some protesters did dismantle their tents, heeding an order from Mayor Sam Adams, who said conditions are unhealthy at the encampment and that it is attracting drug-users and thieves, The Associated Press reported.
Throughout the night, the number of police fluctuated�by 4 a.m., roughly 200 officers were stretched across a street fronting a federal courthouse�but police showed no signs of moving against protesters, according to The AP.
Nevertheless, police said they had been preparing to fend off a clash against dozens of purported anarchists, AP reported.
On Friday, police seized cement blocks that they were told some demonstrators planned to use them as weapons against police.
“We’ll take action that’s appropriate, when it’s appropriate,” police spokesman Lt. Robert King told AP.
“We are not going to engage in confrontation for a misdemeanor,” he said, noting that remaining in the park after midnight constitutes a misdemeanor.
Police action seemed less likely after crowds of supportes swelled in the parks during the early morning.
By then, protesters have already met to discuss how to proceed as the midnight deadline passed, and repeated the Occupy Wall Street movement’s aim of being nonviolent.
“We are a peaceful resistance,” Chico Tallman, a 63-year-old accountant told AP. “But we’re fed up with the direction the country is going. It’s all about profit.”
Elsewhere, two San Francisco police officers Saturday said they were cut by two people in an Occupy march who, after those assaults, disappeared into the crowd.
“Apparently one of the demonstrators had a sharp object on the end of one of their sign sticks, and reached across and sliced his finger,” said San Francisco Capt. Rick Parry, adding that the officer was trying to clear an intersection.
A second officer was cut in the face in a scuffle with a protestor, Parry told ABC News Radio.
Occupy organizers were unconvinced.
“Police did a lot to try to force us off the streets and maybe someone had something sharp on them but that’s just a conjecture,” one protester told an ABC News Radio reporter who was recording on the scene.
In Philadelphia, police said an Occupy camper alleged that she was raped inside an Occupy tent by an out-of-towner who’d traveled to Pennsylvania to protest.
Soon after the attack, they arrested the suspect whose criminal record includes several arrests for robberies in Kalamazoo, Mich., officials said.
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