06:50 PM PDT on Friday, August 13, 2004

By kgw.com and AP Staff

BEAVERTON -- A couple hundred protesters showed up Friday at Southridge High School in Beaverton where President Bush was holding a town hall-style meeting with supporters.

KGW President Bush and his wife Laura at a rally in Beaverton's Southridge High School.

A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and police in riot gear with batons separated the protesters from the school. The demonstrators criticized Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and the economy.

At one point, a middle-age Bush backer shouted at and struck a young female protester. A police officer pulled the Bush supporter across the street to calm her; she left moments later.

The protest group gathered at the same time thousands of people were lining up in downtown Portland for a public rally for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

Protesters like 19-year-old Sarah Steadman of Beaverton, said they would have rather been at the Kerry rally but thought it was important to protest Bush.

"There are (thousands of) people in Portland supporting Kerry," said Steadman, who graduated from Southridge last year. "It's more important for us to be here, standing up for our community and saying not everybody supports Bush."

"It's so important to be a voice of dissent," added another protester, 23-year old Kristin Crandal.

Earlier in the day, the Sierra Club staged a demonstration on Marine Drive near the Port of Portland to protest corporate pollution of the Portland Harbor.

Protesters dressed in toxic waste suits were holding banners calling calling for the renewal of the 'polluter pays' principle and the cleanup of Oregon’s superfund sites.

Although the protest was held near a Bush event at the Port's Terminal Six, Sierra Club spokesman Nat Parker said their message was aimed at both Bush and Kerry.