Rioters dressed in black marched through the streets of northeast Portland, Oregon, late Saturday, causing damage to businesses along the way.
The “direct action” event was promoted as a reaction to the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade on Friday. “If abortions aren’t safe, you aren’t either,” read one ad for the march.
The Supreme Court decision returned the right to regulate abortion back to the states. Oregon is not one of the states that is anticipated to pass abortion bans or restrictions.
As reported by Meagan Cuthill, “Oregon, which has the fewest abortion restrictions in the country, will not see any legal impact from the ruling.”
According to the Portland Police Bureau, a destructive group of more than 60 individuals caused damage to numerous businesses during a march through the Hollywood District beginning at 10 p.m.
The group marched out of Grant Park and allegedly started breaking windows and scrawling graffiti on businesses and vehicles. The group left the area by 10:45 p.m.
“Officers were monitoring the crowd but did not have resources to intervene in the moment,” Portland Police wrote in a news release. “At the time of this event, there was an injury shooting and a stabbing in East Precinct, and a felony assault in Central Precinct. Additionally, a community festival in North Precinct was underway, an impromptu ‘dance party’ drew approximately 1,000 people to Irving Park, and they held a march and blocked traffic.”
The Mother and Child Education Center, a nonprofit claiming to have provided “practical assistance to thousands of pregnant women in the greater Portland area since its inception in 1971,” was vandalized, police said.
The Portland Police Bureau reported in a Sunday morning update no arrests were made during the riot but said, “just because arrests are not made at the scene, when tensions are high, does not mean that people are not being charged with crimes later.”
Locally, Loreto House, a Denton pregnancy help center, and three churches in the Houston area were vandalized over Mother’s Day weekend in May as tensions rose across the country over the leaked U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion suggesting that Roe v. Wade could be overturned, The Dallas Express reported.