Protesters in Oregon are trying to establish their own autonomous zone in Portland, according to reports.
Demonstrators and members of the anti-fascist group Antifa started setting up walls and barriers late Tuesday outside of the Multnomah County Justice Center, where they’re calling the area the “Chinook Land Autonomous Territory,” according to video posted online.
The 20-second clip posted by a reporter for The Post Millennial shows large appliances set up as makeshift road blockades and a wooden board painted with the letters “ACAB” — or “All Cops Are Bastards.”
The protesters late Tuesday began putting up tents in nearby Lownsdale Square, where the so-called “Occupy Portland” encampment took shape in 2011, KATU reports.
About 12 demonstrators remained in the newly declared autonomous zone as of 5 a.m. Wednesday, the station reports.
Police in Portand, where protests have been held for seven straight weeks in the aftermath of George Floyd’s police-custody death in Minneapolis, removed some of the barricades early Wednesday, The Oregonian reports.
But some of the demonstrators returned and threw glass bottles and pointed lasers at cops who disengaged with the crowd, the newspaper reports.
Federal officers then dispersed the crowd using tear gas and other less-lethal munitions early Wednesday morning, but several tents remained set up in Lownsdale Park, according to the report.
The newly decreed zone is similar to what protesters in Seattle created in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood in June, calling it the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone, or CHOP. The city saw a 525 percent spike in crime as a result of violence associated with the area, Mayor Jenny Durkan said earlier this month.
