Violent clashes broke out Saturday afternoon in downtown Portland between right and left wing activists over a Christian prayer event.
Members of right-wing group Proud Boys and left wing Antifa demonstrators converged at the Tom McCall Waterfront Park for an event scheduled for noon in downtown Portland by Canadian Protestant Christian preacher Artur Pawlowski.
Pawlowski is known for his public opposition to abortions, homosexuality and most recently mask rules, calling police who enforce them 'Nazis' in a YouTube video posted ahead of Easter this year.
Around 50 people attended the event, and video shows the black-clad Antifa demonstrators armed with shields and umbrellas, disrupting it with smoke bombs and what appeared to be pepper spray, and knocking over the event's speaker system.
One of the demonstrators commandeering a microphone and can be heard saying, 'All Cops are B*******, in the name of Jesus,' over the speakers.
Violent Antifa protestors can be seen disrupting a prayer event at a park in Portland Saturday afternoon
Clad in black, they are seen shouting at attendees and aggressively walking up to them
The Antifa demonstrators periodically spray members at the prayer group with a yellowish/brown liquid
The demonstrators can be seen knocking over the prayer group's soundsystem
The Antifa members throw smoke bombs in the middle of the event as well
'Antifa had threatened to beat people up and do what they do — and then they showed up and did it,' an attendee at the event told the Portland Tribune.
'The police were not even far from there and they were laughing in their vehicles and doing their thing. It's probably hard to care as an officer in a place where they take away all your funding.'
Another woman on the scene told a videographer filming the event that the Antifa activists had been throwing flash bombs, sometimes in close proximity to children.
'We were about to have a worship event, and Antifa just rolled in like an angry mob, started throwing flash bombs at everybody, macing everybody, rotten eggs at everybody, black paint,' she said.
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