Community members in Eugene have planned an unofficial Pride rally and march for Saturday morning.
The event comes after Eugene Pride cancelled their annual march from Kesey Square, citing distrust in Eugene Police’s ability to keep rally-goers safe.
The flyer for the new march says: “No cops. No permits.”
Without a permit, Police Chief Chris Skinner says officers won’t be able to plan ahead for the event.
“What we're going to do is we're going to make an awful lot of assumptions, which I hate doing, about route and numbers and timing,” he said Tuesday. “We're going to have resources available in the event that we see conflict happening, whether it's Pride members and counter-protesters or Pride members and vehicular traffic.”
Skinner said officers will make themselves available just in case.
“We're not there to arrest people,” Skinner said. “We will, from a distance, do our best to keep an eye on things and make sure that we can intervene where we need to or wait to be called in the event that they need us.”
The Pride festival on Saturday will continue as planned at the Lane Events Center.
