If you had been at Washington-Jefferson Park during the day on Sunday, you might not have expected the chaos that ensued when the sun went down.
Around the park, there were no lines of police officers in riot gear, no streams of bicycles and few visible squad cars.
“We want a peaceful event, and we didn’t want to have to deal with police going out and negotiating directly with the anarchists,” Ward 3 City Councilor Bobby Lee said in the still sunlit park. He was part of a liaison program that had members in yellow hats, hoping to talk to the anarchists and mediate disagreements.
A gathering of anarchists engaged in its historic re-enactment of the protest from one year ago, and several people — from anarchists to University sociology professor Julia Fox to civilians in black shirts expressing their support — spoke about what the anarchist movement means to them.
The only overt group besides the anarchists was a sea of white shirts, members of the neutral observer program who met before the gathering at Eugene’s Rose Garden near the Willamette River a few blocks away to receive their instructions to only observe and not interact.
The police were at the park, but not in uniform. They were in maroon vehicles parked on the side of the road and across the street, observing the gathering and making sure it did not get out of hand.
Even without a uniformed presence, the police were still fresh in the minds of those gathered at the park. One masked anarchist carried a sign about Industrial Workers of the World and said his main goal as an anarchist was to show support for the community, educate and agitate.
“People should have the right to do whatever they want,” he said. “I don’t want to give my name. That’s why I’m wearing a mask … I don’t want to piss anyone off … I’m just afraid of the cops.”
Several other people came to the park carrying signs. Some favored the anarchists, some the police. One man favored them both.
“Eugene appreciates the good intentions of its police and anarchists. We just wish they would play more basketball,” Eugene resident Tom Atlee’s sign read.
“The vast majority of people in the community don’t really want to take sides,” Atlee said. “There’s a lot of support for the anarchists and a lot of support for the cops. … My sign is trying to say in a slightly humorous way that we consider there are good points to both of these groups, and if they would just stay within the good things, then it would be pretty cool.”
One woman was not as supportive of the cops. She was especially critical of the way she thinks they are carrying out their code of ethics.
“When you see [this] code of ethics, you’re supposed to protect and serve the public — all citizens, every age,” Ruth Duemler said, referring to a flier she handed out. “And it seems like they’re abusing a lot of the public for the sake of the property owners. I don’t like property damage, and I believe strongly in nonviolence. But I feel the police are here to serve all of us and not just the property owners.”
The anarchists were left with the park to themselves for most of the day. They surrounded the foundation to the freeway, ate food, listened to speeches, watched a puppet show and played music.
With the absence of an overt police presence, there was only the peaceful discussion of what police intervention meant to these rallies and a feeling that the day just might pan out without trouble.

“If they had police officers surrounding the park, this would have been a different event today,” Lee said.
“The more that you can have activities like this, where the police don’t need to intervene, the more the bad blood is going to go away,” Ward 1 City Councilor Gary Rayor said. “We’re working on creating a forum where police and anarchists can find a common ground.”
But despite what was to be a peaceful assembly, confined to the park, in the early evening Sunday, there was still the discussion of the presence of the observers and the absence of the police.
“Although well-intentioned, they do act as the first level of policing,” anarchist leader Steven Heslin said about the neutral observers. “I advocate working outside the legal system.”
Heslin did say that he feels much less threatened by the observers than he does by the cops, but he offered what he considers a better alternative.
“Instead of being observers, more members of the community need to come down and observe the events themselves,” Heslin said.
But many council members at the park and the observers themselves felt that is exactly what the observer program is.
“They’re observing the police and the protesters,” Mary Feldmann, one of two lead observers, said. “They’re community members who are concerned.”
“If the police come in and bust [the anarchists’] heads, then the observers can say, ‘I saw that,’” Lee said.
But Heslin and the anarchists expressed their fundamental problem with an organization designed to observe the events.
“It still feels like they’re here to monitor us,” Heslin said.
But when the sun went down and the gathering left the park, the discussion and those observing the anarchists took a drastic change.
When the sun was still glaring over the still peaceful gathering in the park, Lee made a statement that best sums up the beginning day, and possibly the start of summer.
“So far it’s been great, but still its not over yet,” he said.