It’s Going Down

On Tuesday morning, Portland community members successfully repealed heavily armed and militarized Multnomah County Sheriffs backed by Portland police officers, who were attempting to evict the Afro-Indigenous Kinney family, who has lived in the “Red House on Mississippi” in the North Portland neighborhood for 65 years.

[…]

The eviction began in the early morning, after officers officers “violently dismantled the 75+ day “Red House” [support] encampment,” and then “entered the home itself, destroying its interior, and violently arrested two residents – injuring at least one.” Supporters and neighbors responded by pushing police off the property, into their cars, and out of the area. Police cars had their windows busted out, were covered in paint, and their tires were slashed, while riot police were confronted, driven back with rocks, sprayed with a fire extinguisher, and according to one report, were “chased…into a full retreat reminiscent of recent street warfare seen in Paris.” Police responded by firing tear-gas at the crowd. Tuesday’s attempted eviction is only the latest in a series of attempts to remove the family from the home in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

According to a press release:

The Afro-Indigenous Kinney family, longtime owners of the “Red House,” maintain cultural and generational ties to the home in question. The tactics we are facing, of sneaky and illegal foreclosure tactics, predatory banking and loans, elected judges who take campaign contributions from the real estate industry, coupled with violence from law enforcement and no real Due Process, have been used across this historically Black neighborhood to displace Black and poor people, says homeowner and Indigenous elder Julie Metcalf. If Black and indigenous lives matter in Portland, this must stop.

Since September of 2020, an eviction resistance encampment has grown outside of the home, ready to mobilize if law enforcement attempted to evict the family. From the Red House Mississippi website:

The Portland community has united to save the Red House on Mississippi, rallying support around the family to reclaim the house and hold the land in a 24/7 eviction blockade. Since September, support has grown for the Red House and today we maintain an around-the-clock community presence along with onsite camping, a fully functional kitchen offering two free hot meals a day, and free programming centered in healing and abolition. This is what it looks like for neighbors to truly take care of each other.

[…]

Via https://itsgoingdown.org/portland-housing-defense-barricades/