Hundreds of people gathered on downtown Portland's waterfront Friday evening in a show of solidarity with Charlottesville, Virginia.

With placards and calls for peace, demonstrators denounced the hate-inspired rallies that have rattled cites around the nation, including Portland.

Violence last week engulfed Charlottesville, a small college town, when white nationalists clashed with counter-protesters in the streets over the removal of a Confederate statue.

The Portland demonstration, billed as a "nonviolent rally and march," started as people took turns at a microphone set up at the Salmon Street Springs fountain while rush-hour traffic poured over bridges in the background.

"This is beautiful," said Portland's Resistance organizer Gregory McKelvey, surveying the crowd stretching along the Willamette River. A snow-speckled Mount Hood stood in the distance behind him.

Some people carried American flags. Others carried signs. Among them: "Be excellent to each other." "This veteran stands against hate." "A senior citizen not silent!"

The horror of the Charlottesville violence and scenes of neo-Nazis and white supremacists taking over the Virginia's city's streets propelled some people here to attend their first demonstration ever or first one in a while.

"I was tired of explaining to my 11-year-old all the hate that's going on in this country," said Sabrina Henley, 48, of Northeast Portland. She had just finished adding a few words to a sprawling white banner that read "PDX stands with C'ville." More than a hundred people signed it.

Others said they came to show support for anti-fascist activists, whose visibility has grown from their confrontations with far-right groups in recent months.

"I'm cutting these guys all the slack in the world," said Brian Woodward, 65, of Beaverton. "They've been instrumental in protecting people's lives."

The crowd held a moment of silence for people who have died because of racism.

The list started with Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago who was lynched during a visit to Mississippi in 1955. He had been accused of whistling in a grocery store at a white woman.

It continued with Heather Heyer, who was killed in Charlottesville when 20-year-old James Alex Fields Jr. allegedly drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters.

It included Ricky Best and Taliesin Namkai-Meche, two men killed in Portland in May when witnesses said they stood up to a man who launched into a racist harangue directed at two girls, including one wearing a hijab, on a MAX train.

In contrast to other Portland's Resistance protests after Donald Trump's election, police were keeping a low-profile this time. The mood appeared mostly mellow as two officers watched the rally from nearby and some black-clad demonstrators with their faces covered hung back. Children played in the fountain as the crowd geared up to march.

The gathering remained mostly peaceful, with no signs of brawls or objects thrown that marred other protests, though there was a report of someone yelling racist comments and getting maced.

"This is not a message you want to fight with," said Sgt. Jeff Niiya, one of the two police officers in attendance. "It would just make you look bad."

City sprinklers came on about two hours into the rally, sending people on the lawn running for cover. The march began shortly after that along Naito Parkway to chants of "black lives matter," then snaked further into the downtown core as people yelled "No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA" and later circled back to the waterfront and crossed over the Hawthorne Bridge as people moved onto the east side. They headed back over the Morrison Bridge.

The crowd briefly halted cars, buses and MAX trains along the way, but drivers generally seemed to accept the delays without rancor. One motorist raised a fist out of her car window and chanted along. Some people walking through the streets lit flares that sent up small plumes of red smoke.

Estimates put the crowd at about 800.

Barbara Haga, 72, of Portland said it was a good sign that so many people gathered on short notice.

"We all need to show our faces ... we've got to fight the insanity that culminated in Charlottesville, for one," she said.

A regular demonstrator since November, she said that seemingly, "we have a new issue, almost daily, to try to counter."

Yen Hoang, Kim Jones and Johnah Garcia, all students from the Pacific Northwest College of Arts, joined the demonstration to denounce hate and white supremacy, they said.

"If we don't do anything it's just going to get worse," said Jones, who recently moved to Portland from Santa Fe. "I want to be on the right side of history."

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh

skavanaugh@oregonian.com

503-294-7632 II @shanedkavanaugh

Oregonian reporters Samantha Matsumoto, Jim Ryan, Annie Ma and Rob Davis contributed to this report.