Portland City Commissioner Dan Ryan was the swing vote on a proposal to cut $18 million from the city’s police budget. That proposal came from fellow Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty and was supported by Commissioner Chloe Eudaly. A group of Antifa/BLM activists saw Ryan as a potential third vote to pass the measure. Several dozen of them marched to Ryan’s house in late October and began chanting.
Protesters have taken to city council commissioner Dan Ryan’s home to ask him to defund PPB pic.twitter.com/jiadSi7ayS
— Melissa “Claudio” Lewis (@Claudio_Report) October 28, 2020
Ryan came out and agreed to talk with them. At the time he said he wasn’t sure how he would vote. But a few days later on Nov. 5, Ryan became the deciding vote against the proposal. “This 18 million proposal is a threat to our current public safety,” he said. That night, Antifa returned to his house and they were angry.
A group of roughly 60 people marched from Arbor Lodge Park to the commissioner’s home in the pouring rain Thursday evening. Upon arrival, they chanted “Black lives matter” and shattered a window and two terracotta planters. They lit flares and chucked eggs and balloons filled with paint at the home…
In a statement Friday, Ryan said protesters were using bullying and intimidation tactics and asked that they “be accountable to one another, and think before they act.”
“I appreciate that members of our community are passionate. But trespassing at the home I share with my fiancé; disrupting and intimidating my neighbors and me – and vandalizing my property – is not a productive or safe way to express opinion,” he wrote. “I have elderly neighbors and I fear for their safety and well-being.”