New on WWFU:
On the same day community members gathered to grieve the killing of Renee Good at the hands of an ICE agent in Minneapolis, something shifted in downtown Portland, Oregon. What began as a vigil and flag burning across from the federal courthouse transformed, almost organically, into an autonomous zone that held space through the night and reignited a conversation many people have been having quietly for months: What if mourning isn’t enough? What if we actually hold ground?
“What started as a permanent vigil just… grew,” one participant said. “People had yarn in their pockets and wrapped it around a corner of the park, and that became the seeds for the first barricade. Then folks were like, fuck it, and started dragging street barricades over. It all snowballed from there.”
Indigenous community members played a central role in establishing a sacred fire at the site, grounding the space in ceremony, remembrance, and resistance. People said this was also a way to honor earlier anti-ICE organizing that began in Portland in January 2025, when Indigenous community members held weekly sacred fires outside the ICE facility long before summer crowds grew.
That history often gets erased. This space made it visible again. “This was about honoring the people who paved the way.”
The second gathering expanded beyond vigil into political education and open discussion. People spoke not only about grief, but about responsibility, naming City Hall’s role in permitting the ICE facility, the courts’ role in deportation pipelines, and the broader illusion that these institutions are neutral.
“This time it was way more intentional,” the participant said. “The sacred fire represents truth. And it was surrounded by institutions of lies.”
Both nights of the autonomous space coincided with other actions happening across Portland, including large demonstrations at the ICE facility. With multiple events unfolding at once, police resources were stretched thin. Participants say that mattered.
It was a reminder of an old movement lesson: authorities can easily manage one large, predictable protest. They struggle when resistance becomes decentralized, simultaneous, and self-directed.
People came to mourn Renee Good. They stayed because mourning alone felt like surrender.
What emerged downtown wasn’t a perfectly planned occupation or a pre-announced autonomous zone. It was something messier and more alive: a community deciding, in real time, not to go home.
And in that decision, to hold a fire, to defend space, to gather under Indigenous guidance, to speak openly about the failures of local institutions, many participants say they glimpsed something that felt less like protest and more like practice.
Not just responding to violence.
But rehearsing a world beyond it.
https://www.wewillfreeus.org/autonomy-in-practice-permanent-vigils-and-sacred-fires/
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