Far-Right Protest Group Plans Return to Portland as Anniversary of MAX Slaying Nears

The event's description says the march will be the last for frequent brawler Tusitala "Tiny" Toese "before he leaves to go back to his island."

A Patriot Prayer protester on June 3, 2017. (Aubrey Gigandet)

As the anniversary nears of Portland's double slaying on a MAX train, the far-right protest group Patriot Prayer has planned another "Freedom March" for June 3—one year after the group's most notorious demonstration in Portland.

The march will start in Terry D. Schrunk Plaza in downtown, and is scheduled to last from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The event's description says the march will be the last for frequent brawler Tusitala "Tiny" Toese "before he leaves to go back to his island." Toese is Samoan.

The description also says Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson has been banned from Facebook for 30 days, after posting a photo of a car driven by antifascist protesters that he claimed had been "stalking" a family in Vancouver.

Next week's event comes a year after the Patriot Prayer protest that galvanized Portland.

Mayor Ted Wheeler tried to stop the march last June, just days after Jeremy Christian killed two men and severely wounded another on a MAX train. Christian, a white supremacist who attended a Patriot Prayer march, allegedly hurled racist insults at two black teenagers riding the train, one wearing a hijab. When three bystanders interrupted his rant, he attacked them with a knife.

Last year's June 4 protest ended in violent clashes, between Gibson's Patriots and more than a thousand counterprotesters, but also between counterprotesters and police.

Portland police surrounded and detained hundreds of protesters, taking a photo of their IDs before releasing them. The ACLU of Oregon is suing the city and calls the detentions illegal. Police say the counterprotesters threw bricks, firecrackers and other objects at officers.

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