Correction appended below

Up to 1,500 people are expected to descend Friday on the downtown Portland waterfront for a rally and march in solidarity with the people attacked by white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville last week.

Gregory McKelvey, one of the leaders of organizing group Portland's Resistance, said he expects to see the biggest crowd since thousands swarmed the city after President Donald Trump's inauguration.

"Like Charlottesville, Portland has recently been a victim of right-wing hate and white supremacy crimes," McKelvey said. "We feel that pain, too, and so we want to show that city we stand with them."

The number of people who are planning to attend once again shifts attention to how Portland police will respond.

Since the election, police have tried various tactics to deal with large crowds of protesters, and, increasingly, counter-protesters.

Sgt. Jeff Niiya, who has been studying how to handle group protests since Occupy Portland, said each event presents case-by-case variables. The police presence will be minimal Friday, he said, despite past marches and rallies where police in riot gear heavily patrolled the crowds and used tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray to subdue violence.

"I'm giving a lot of trust to them because they say they are going to handle it," Niiya said. "I told them I hope we can leave the past in the past and have a successful march."

Niiya spends his time surveying social media to gauge the intent of protest organizers and how many people might show up. He reaches out to leaders on all sides -- counter-protesters, too -- to talk about what they're expecting and what they hope to achieve.

He said he wants to make sure Portland police take into account marchers' safety concerns as well as city residents' worries.

Niiya is also conscious of how past enforcement strategies have looked to protesters and the outside.

Some members of anti-fascist groups have been arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and interfering with police and often are dispersed by police because officers say they throw bricks, bottles and other objects.

During an especially large "Patriot Prayer" rally June 4, a wall of police cleared downtown's Chapman Square of hundreds of anti-fascist demonstrators after water bottles and other things flew.

The police response then wasn't about picking sides, Niiya said, it was about officer safety.

"If you hadn't been focusing on us and instead been focusing on the Patriots, you could have stood there all day long and yelled and screamed at them," Niiya said.

A spokesperson from Rose City Antifa, one of the largest antifa groups in Portland, didn't respond to requests for comment.

For Friday, McKelvey said he thinks that the protest will be peaceful if left alone by city officials. The march will start at 5:30 p.m. and last until 7 p.m. -- McKelvey said vandalism and other trouble starts after dark.

But he also wants clarity about what's allowed and what isn't. In the past, his group has marched across bridges and in the streets. At subsequent marches, they weren't allowed to do either. He said he's willing to follow the rules, if he knows what they are, because it's a matter of safety for his supporters.

"We need to know what we can and can't do and what will elicit a violent response," McKelvey said.

McKelvey and anti-fascist group members have complained that police often push them back, arrest them or hold them back from marching when far-right events are largely uninterrupted. Niiya knows this and is now trying to hold police back as much as possible from feeding the narrative that they're backing groups that advocate white supremacy, oppose immigrants and deride feminism.

"We don't take sides in these conflicts," Niiya said. "I don't like us standing between the two groups and, if there's a march, I don't like us marching alongside them."

But that light touch led several physical altercations to go on unabated at an Aug. 6 march led by far-right organizer Joey Gibson of Vancouver and his Patriot Prayer group.

The violence between anti-fascist counter-protesters and people from various groups who unite under a shared extreme conservative ideology lasted more than half an hour, with several scuffles escalating from punches thrown and flags burned to extended brawls.

Gibson said he tried to use his bullhorn to break up the fights, but he thinks a lot of people come from both sides with the express purpose of throwing fists. In the future, he plans to ask people who don't want to fight to ring the group, so that the clashes are contained within the rally.

Police were also unhappy with the violence that day and Niiya said he's planning to rethink police strategy before Gibson's next rally.

Gibson has set a Sept. 10 event where the featured speakers are people who want to preserve standing Confederate monuments -- the issue that sparked the Virginia conflict and less violent ones across the South. He expects the largest crowd yet, with far-right supporters flying in from across the country.

Gibson said he expects to take "extra precautions," wouldn't say what those may be.

"I'm in a really hard spot because Patriot Prayer promotes peace and love but at the same time it's about standing up for what you believe in and you don't stand down," Gibson said. "If you're not going to stand down, antifa is going to come and be violent. How do we stop that without being violent ourselves, without brawling in the streets?"

Niiya has monitored the news reports of Gibson's protests in other cities including Seattle and San Francisco, but also factors in how Gibson's message will play in Portland, where he expects people won't welcome the presence of Confederate flags.

Niiya said he talks with the groups about how they can deal with that. He wants leaders to police themselves as much as possible, but if police see people breaking the law, they will intervene.

"We're doing a lot of this work on the back end to make sure it's safe and people have their constitutional rights to protest and communicate and do all the things we love about this country," Niiya said. "And do it safely."

But Gibson blamed counter-protesters for the majority of the incidents. His comments echo Trump's remarks Tuesday that the violence in Charlottesville, where one woman was killed and dozens more injured, was as much a fault of anti-fascist and anti-racist groups as it was the white supremacists who acted violently.

Gibson said he denounces violence in his videos and in person during the speech-making time at rallies, but he said he can't control the responses of his supporters to counter-protesters.

"It takes real discipline and it takes real strength to get people to see the bigger picture and to not use violence," he said.

(An earlier version of this story misspelled Sgt. Jeff Niiya's name.)

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com

503-294-5923

@MollyHarbarger