The organizers of a popular Portland, Ore., parade have canceled this year’s festivities after an anonymous email threatened violence against a Republican group participating in the event.
Activists targeted the 82nd Avenue of Roses Parade, scheduled for Saturday, because the Multnomah County Republicans were allowed to participate.
The parade’s organizers, the 82nd Avenue of Roses business association, received an email from an unknown email address thegiver@riseup.net Saturday, which threatened violence unless the Republican group was kicked out, Oregon Live reports.
The email threatened to send “two hundred or more people rush into the parade into the middle and drag and push those people out” unless organizers kicked the Republican group out of the parade, according to Oregon Live.
The group said that “You have seen how much power we have downtown and that the police cannot stop us from shutting down roads so please consider your decision wisely.”
Due to “threats of violence” from “by multiple groups planning to disrupt the event, 82nd Avenue of Roses Business Association can no longer guarantee the safety of our community,” the organizers said in a press release.
The event remains canceled, despite an outpouring of community support for the, the organizers said Wednesday.
“The showdown was imminent,” Rose Festival Foundation spokesman Rich Jarvis told Oregon Live. The organizers “were boxed into a corner, they simply had no choice. In order to avoid a violent outbreak, they had to cancel the parade.”
Local police were ready “provide a police response appropriate to the needs of the event, which has traditionally been a family-friendly affair,” Sgt. Pete Simpson, a spokesman for the Portland Police Department told Oregon Live.
The organizers made the decision to council without discussing security with the police department, according to Simpson. “My understanding is that the decision by organizers to cancel was made prior to any further discussions with East Precinct,” Simpson said.
The Multnomah County Republican Party blamed the city for failing to quell violent protestors. (RELATED: Portland Mayor: ‘Culture Of Protest’ New Norm For ‘Foreseeable Future)
The city “allowed this cancer of lawlessness to grow to the point where its leaders are now bragging, like some sort of comic book characters, that ‘the police cannot stop us,’” James Buchal, chair of the Multnomah Republicans, said in a statement.
The Rose Festival Association and the Multnomah County Republican Party did not immediately return The Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
“The road to fascism begins with armed gangs of thugs using violence to shut down opposing points of view,” Buchal said. “The question now is whether the City of Portland will be complicit in such conduct.”
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