When she posted a link to the fund-raiser in a neighborhood Facebook group, a woman confronted her. Ms. Allen was destroying the city, she said. Ms. Allen fired back, arguing that
“If I see you on the street, you will be the next Black person hanging from a tree,” the woman wrote.
Other neighbors were more supportive, and Ms. Allen ended up with about $300 to buy supplies. She got the mask and the goggles, but the helmet she bought did not quite fit. She went without one until another protester gave her a hard hat.
Her family eventually followed her into the movement. Sometimes, her aunts took her to marches. Her grandmother watched livestreams of the protests on Twitter to check on her. Even her 12-year-old brother tagged along at a few protests.
“I’m very scared,” Laura Vanderlyn, her grandmother, said. “No matter what, she feels she has to be out there. Daria is a very, very passionate girl about everything.”
In the crowds that swarm nightly around downtown Portland, there are many things to fear: projectiles, aggressive protesters, low-flying fireworks, riot police and counterprotesters who sometimes try to antagonize the crowd. Over the weekend, one of the counterprotesters was shot to death.
Ms. Allen tries to avoid most of the dangers. She constantly skims through Instagram and Snapchat, watching videos of the protest to stay informed about what is happening in other parts of the crowd. It is not important to her to be at the front line of confrontations with the police.