At least 48 people were arrested in Portland Thursday as hordes of anti-Wall Street protesters took part in the nationwide 'N17,' marking the two-month anniversary of the Occupy movement.
The protesters disrupted the Steel Bridge Thursday morning then moved on to downtown streets and bank branches, leading to some of the most tense altercations with police since the Occupy movement came to Portland six weeks ago.
Roads were closed, TriMet riders faced random delays, and some lunchtime employees found themselves either locked inside their buildings or witnessing a spectacle.
Twenty-five were arrested for blocking a Steel Bridge on-ramp, and nine more for entering a Wells Fargo branch inside the Standard Insurance Center.
At about 3:30 p.m. a large group swarmed the Chase Bank branch at the southeast corner of Pioneer Courthouse Square, stirring a strong response from police that included pepper spray and 14 more arrests, said Portland Police Bureau (PPB) Lt. Robert King.
Closer to the 5 p.m. commute time, hundreds of people lined the sidewalks, standing inside a perimeter of police officers in riot gear.
MAX train, bus and vehicular traffic was sporadic at best.
Earlier, some marchers also congregated at a Bank of American branch on Southwest Morrison Street and First Avenue.
The unpredictable downtown movement lasted from noon until after sundown but stayed, for the most part, east of Broadway.
Those arrested at the Steel Bridge included labor union representatives, who were calling for Congress to act and create more jobs to build American infrastructure.
The people arrested inside the Wells Fargo branch asked for a moratorium on foreclosures.
In a pre-protest statement on the Occupy Portland website, the movement announced their international 'N17' participation and also said the city and Multnomah County should cease enforcing those foreclosures.
Until the pushing and struggling in the early evening, all of the arrests happened peacefully, with the 25 in the morning being escorted onto a TriMet bus for transport.
During a prolonged showdown outside the Wells Fargo at Southwest 5th and Salmon, one union protester wearing a black hard hat identified his fellow marchers as working class people fed up with being trampled by the current economic system.
"We're done with it, we're struggling and we're gonna change the system," said the man on live TV.
A union plumber with Local 290 who brought his 3-year-old son with him said it was important to show that they are the majority.
"It is a nonviolent movement and I want to show that he is part of the 99 percent," said the man of his son, also during a live KOIN Local 6 telecast.
Throughout the hours of continual protest, marchers could be heard with a variety of chants, including 'corporate greed has got to go,' 'solidarity forever,' and the Occupy movement classic, 'banks got bailed out we got sold out.'
In Eugene, 17 Occupy protesters were arrested Thursday in demonstrations at banks throughout the city that drew an estimated 200 to 300 people. Eugene police said the protests remained peaceful and the arrests were for nonviolent civil disobedience.
Hundreds of protesters and labor demonstrators shut down University Bridge in Seattle, the Associated Press reports.
Nationwide, over 300 arrests were made Thursday, according to the AP.
--Toshio Suzuki
