The (Unofficial) Downtown May Day March has Gotten... Interesting

Portland Mercury:

Alex ZielinskiMay Day marchers try to shut down Pioneer Place mall.For the past couple of hours, a growing crowd of May Day marchers has led Portland's bike cops and horse cops on an energetic (and unpermitted, as the cops like to point out) tour of downtown—a trip you should be following over at our Twitter feed, if you haven't been already. There've been arrests—up to a dozen, officially, Portland police are reporting; we think there will likely be much more accounted for when the dust clears. There's been a smoke bomb. People plucked off sidewalks while riding their bicycles. Repeated encounters with riot cops. A sighting of mayoral candidate Jefferson Smith. The usual. As to where have the marchers gone? A better question is where haven't they gone. The march started beneath the Burnside Bridge and headed toward Naito and Pine (where there was an arrest). It headed south on Fifth (where there were arrests). The crowd hit Pioneer Square (with arrests on the way). Then it meandered toward the South Park Blocks, through Chapman Square, outside Central Precinct, into Pioneer Place Mall and, well, onward and onward. Except, as our Nathan Gilles just reported a few minutes ago, the crowd has voted to rest for a while at Pioneer Square before deciding whether to march again. The other march planned for today, hosted by all the unions, starts in about an hour. Hit the jump to see what the cops have had to say about all this so far. And click over to the Portland Occupier live blog to keep up on all the days events and see some excellent pictures of how folks were treated. [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

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