Martin Connolly doesn't harbor any ill will for Vancouver.

He just wishes street brawls didn't break out in Portland when activists cross the Columbia River and stage political demonstrations that attract fringes from the left and right.

The most militant from each side come armed with fists. Others have concealed carry permits for firearms.

"How do you counter that?" Connolly said. "All I've got is a sense of humor and a discount to a bulk Chinese sex toy store."

That discount is what inspired the longtime Portlander to stage a protest of his own on Oct. 27.

"Stop sending your dildos to Portland," the event description blares on posters and atop the website he built specifically for the weekend bar crawl. Participants are encouraged to bring the sex toys for the march.

But Connolly said the demonstration isn't a dig at the people of Vancouver. Or residents of Clark County.

His ire is reserved for Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson and both the radical right-wing demonstrators that follow him to Portland and the left-wing counter-protesters that participate in the fistfights that make national news just as often.

"This is going to be the antithesis of that," Connolly told The Oregonian/OregonLive in a phone interview.

The rally will begin at Esther Short Park at 2 p.m. From there, Connolly will announce to those gathered that the event is meant to be a peaceful rebuke to the violent clashes that have plagued Portland's streets for the last year.

"If you're wearing your stereotypical black antifa mask, maybe go home," he said. "It's not a turf war."

From there, Connolly and his fellow rally-goers will march to the Tap Union Freehouse and circle a couple of blocks before returning to the park. They'll wave sex toys as they walk.

And if Gibson or a group of Proud Boys show up to the rally?

"I'm ducking into the nearest bar," Connolly said. "I've got a dance recital with my kid the next day. I'm not going to show up with a black eye."

To ensure there's no mistaking his intent, Connolly said he'll be lugging a black trash bag and filling it with litter as he walks.

"We're not leaving any ill will behind," he said. "We're leaving things better than we found them."

It wouldn't be the first time right-wing groups in the Northwest face ridicule and rebuke via sex toys.

When Nevada ranchers Ammon and Ryan Bundy led the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns in early 2016, internet activists conspired to flood the property with deliveries of lube, dildos and other such paraphernalia.

At one point, occupier Jon Ritzheimer uploaded a video diary entry in which he railed against jokesters spending their money on "hate and hate and hate" before angrily sweeping the assembled deliveries off a table.

Connolly remembers the video but said his rally wasn't inspired by the episode. Nor was he thinking of the so-called "dildo epidemic" that struck Portland in 2015 when an unnamed artist began hanging the sex toys on power lines across the city.

He wants to send a message to folks who travel to the city just to start trouble, he said.

"There's some sort of civic pride I have," Connolly said. "Sure, Portland is a toilet sometimes. But you know what? It's our toilet."

--Eder Campuzano | 503.221.4344

ecampuzano@oregonian.com