![\"File](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/L6EMKTU6KJFC5GHWK54CATCCIQ.JPG\")
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File – Councilor Loretta Smith at a Portland City Council meeting on Feb. 5, 2025, Portland, Ore.<\/p>\n
Anna Lueck for OPB<\/p>\n
After protesters interrupted a Portland council meeting Wednesday, one councilor is looking to loosen the city\u2019s rules around carrying guns in City Hall. <\/p>\n
Councilor Loretta Smith, who represents East Portland in District 1, has drafted a city ordinance to allow city councilors to openly carry a firearm while conducting city business. Smith has never carried a firearm.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a defensive mechanism,\u201d Smith told OPB. \u201cIf people know that you\u2019re a serious person and you\u2019re going to protect yourself they\u2019re not going to be as quick to mess with you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Portland has a culture of public protest that dates back decades, and council chambers have long been a backdrop for public attention and unrest. But, Smith said, recent demonstrations feel different.<\/p>\n
For months, a concerted group of activists dubbed \u201cRevoke the ICE Permit PDX\u201d have urged city councilors to take stronger legislative action to close the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in South Portland. <\/p>\n
On Wednesday night, roughly 40 members of that group interrupted the council meeting with chants and shouted demands. One woman named Susan Anglada Bartley squeezed past the public testimony table and stood in front of the council dais, where she held up a petition. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve collected 19,000 signatures to revoke the ICE permit,\u201d Anglada Bartley told OPB Thursday evening. \u201cI\u2019ve brought it to council five times, and they have never paid attention. I saw an opportunity to hold it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
When security guards tried to remove Anglada Bartley, they ended up pushing her toward where Smith was seated at the dais. <\/p>\n
Smith recorded and took photos of the interaction with her phone. In one photo, Anglada Bartley is holding the petition toward Smith while a guard\u2019s arm is held around her neck. <\/p>\n
Anglada Bartley was later arrested by Portland police, along with three other people, and charged with trespassing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
That interaction rattled Smith, who later posted the vidoes she took on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are not peaceful protesters,\u201d she said in an interview with OPB. \u201cThey are getting more aggressive and it\u2019s not OK. They yelled at me, \u2018Do your job, Councilor Smith.\u2019 We can\u2019t do our job because of them interrupting our meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anglada Bartley rejects that characterization. She told OPB that she was intentionally using non-violent action to show her opposition to city councilors. <\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have a weapon, I didn\u2019t hit anyone,\u201d she said. \u201cWhy am I now being threatened with violence?\u201d<\/p>\n
Smith said she feels particularly vulnerable to threats as a woman of color in political office. <\/p>\n
She isn\u2019t the first to feel this way in City Hall. Previous city commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty received so many death threats while in office that the city replaced her council office windows with bulletproof glass. <\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s council meeting continued after a roughly 40 minute delay, with all councilors appearing remotely. This is the second time a city council meeting went online so far. A meeting on Jan. 21 was also protested by the Revoke group, leading to a brief shutdown and switch to an online meeting.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Portlanders are allowed to carry a concealed firearm in most public buildings if they have a license to do so. But it\u2019s illegal to openly carry a loaded firearm in public, with some exceptions. Smith hopes a city ordinance can introduce an exception to this rule. The proposal has yet to be reviewed by the city\u2019s legal team. <\/p>\n
Revoke the Permit PDX organizer Holly Brown told OPB she was shocked by Smith\u2019s plan. <\/p>\n
\u201cCouncilor Smith is so afraid of constituents using First Amendment rights that she wants to shoot people?\u201d Brown told OPB. \u201cNo one was threatening her. Susan was simply holding pieces of paper. The councilor is the threat here.\u201d <\/p>\n
Council President Jamie Dunphy is tasked with deciding when to kick people out of council chambers for disrupting a meeting \u2014 and when to take meetings online. Dunphy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Smith\u2019s ordinance. <\/p>\n
Mayor Keith Wilson did not attend the Wednesday meeting. But, in an email to OPB, he said those kinds of disruptions by protesters \u201cpose serious safety risks.\u201d <\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t outright support Smith\u2019s proposal, but acknowledged her concern. <\/p>\n
\u201cI stand in support of my council colleagues who were subjected to unacceptable aggression and verbal abuse,\u201d Wilson wrote, \u201cone of whom stated that the session was so unsafe and \u2018out of control\u2019 that she is now considering a concealed weapons permit and a firearm.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the Portland Police Bureau, about 26 officers responded to Wednesday night\u2019s council protest. No one was injured.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe fully recognize and respect the community\u2019s right to peaceful protest,\u201d said PPB Chief Bob Day in a statement. \u201cThat right is fundamental. Our goal is always to balance protecting constitutional rights with maintaining safety for the entire community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Correction: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized how Anglada Bartley approached councilors during the Wednesday meeting. OPB regrets the error. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"File – Councilor Loretta Smith at a Portland City Council meeting on Feb. 5, 2025, Portland, Ore. Anna…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,221454,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-479345","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-northwest-politics-politics-portland-city-council-portland-guns","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-united-states-of-america","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}