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Armed Activists Seized Three Blocks of a North Portland Residential Neighborhood. Here’s What It Was Like Inside the Encampment. For five nights, Portland’s attention was fixed on this intersection. Red House Eviction Defense barricades. (Mick Hangland-Skill)
8:56 pm Dec. 8, North Mississippi Avenue and Skidmore Street A group of guards watch the entrance to a barricaded section of road in North Portland. They re armed, masked, and dressed in black from their balaclavas to their boots to their bulletproof vests. It s intimidating, but they re also laughing with each other, which gives the barricade a feeling similar to entering a nightclub. Can you walk in or will the bouncer tell you to scram?
More than two North Portland blocks remained barricaded and occupied by activists Saturday morning, with few hints at progress.
The protesters fortified positions around the âRed House on Mississippiâ after Multnomah County sheriffâs deputies, with an assist from Portland police, arrived Tuesday to secure the home for the owner, a developer who bought it at auction in 2018.
Officers arrested half a dozen people at the house and found various weapons. Others were arrested in violent clashes that ensued with protesters shortly after the initial legal action.
The activists and the Black-Indigenous Kinney family that owned the house for more than 60 years claim the Kinneys were targeted by unjust predatory-lending practices, ultimately leading to foreclosure on the property.
Barricades, sentries remain at N. Portland red house as city ‘tries diplomacy and de-escalation’
Updated Dec 13, 2020;
More than two North Portland blocks remained barricaded and occupied by activists Saturday morning, with a few hints at progress.
The protesters fortified positions around the “Red House on Mississippi” after Multnomah County sheriff’s deputies, with an assist from Portland police, arrived Tuesday to secure the home for the owner, a developer who bought it at auction in 2018.
Officers arrested half a dozen people at the house and found various weapons. Others were arrested in violent clashes that ensued with protesters shortly after the initial legal action.