High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Hands Across Hawthorne was a rally held at the Hawthorne Bridge in Portland, Oregon, on May 29, 2011, in response to an attack on a gay couple one week prior for holding hands while walking across the bridge. According to the couple and Portland Police Bureau, a group of five men followed Brad Forkner and Christopher Rosevear along the bridge before they were attacked. News of the assault, which was condemned by Portland`s openly gay mayor, Sam Adams, and its police chief, Mike Reese, spread throughout the Pacific Northwest and the United States. The attack prompted volunteers from the Q Center, a nonprofit organization that supports the LGBT community, to form street patrols as a means of monitoring downtown.