A comment that should be it's own post: from u/crazyfingers619

"You don't understand Portland. These people simply have nothing better to do. They protest random shit because they think protesting makes them Portland and have been doing so for many years, I shit you not the motto of the entire city is "keep portland weird". It's a very bizarre town full of head in the cloud hippy anarchists who relish in bending social norms of all types. The city hasn't always been like this. It's a recent wave of new residents that transformed the city some 10 years ago after an influx from SoCal. (A great deal of people with mental disabilities are also put on busses and sent here, as the liberal nature of the city cares for them better than most cities.)

They're the offspring of affluent San Francisco Silicon Valley types who couldn't be bothered getting a job in an office somewhere so they sent them north where they could be sustainable trust fund babies.

They've never held a real job, have had everything handed to them, and amidst all the lack of discipline find themselves bored and in need of purpose so they've created this LARP fantasy where they walk around the freeways fighting an illusionary fascist shadow government while doing designer drugs and experimenting with their unimportant sexualities.

There is no end goal. They get off on screaming at any authority figure, and with all the hoopla of the past few months they're having the greatest "summer of love" they've ever known.

There is no reason to the mob, no deep strategy. Just a group of asshats getting their rocks off smashing stuff and being angry at as many things as they possibly can be. A distilled incarnation of modern leftist ideology."