By the time I arrived, the waterfront park in downtown Portland, Oregon, was already overrun with people as far as the eye could see. The June No Kings protest attracted approximately 10,000 people across the city; in the city center alone there were several times more of them, and thousands more decided to join local protests in their neighborhoods or suburbs.
Unable to get an accurate crowd estimate, I instead tried counting the inflatable frog suits. After about twenty minutes I gave up on this idea: there were simply too many frogs.
Last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order designating so-called “antifa” a domestic terrorist group — but that designation does not exist. The EO was followed by a Presidential National Security Memorandum directing members of his Cabinet to forcibly track down and bring to justice the shadow forces of antifa and their supposedly well-heeled sponsors. A couple of days later, the President ordered the National Guard into “war-torn Portland” to “protect” ICE from antifa, turning the mid-sized city into one of the epicenters of the fight.
A lawsuit ensued in which the State of Oregon and the City of Portland went to court To accuse Trump of hallucinating a war zone where there was none, a new symbol of resistance was born. A viral video captured a protester in inflatable frog costume looking down, so to speak, a pack of paramilitary ICE agents, and the inflatable suits suddenly strict not just at the protests in Portland, but across the country.
In Portland, protests in June were dominated by American flags and the symbol of a crossed out crown. On the other hand, the October protests were about the frog. Scattered throughout the crowd were inflatable frog costumes of varying quality – mostly green, with a couple of pink frogs and some Halloween-themed skeleton frogs. There were also many other inflatable toys – unicorns, sharks, dinosaurs, chickens, squirrels, flamingos, aliens, Garfield – but frogs became ubiquitous in all forms. There were people wearing onesies with frogs, people wearing frog masks, hats with frogs and little paper frogs glued to their hats. The signs and T-shirts featured frogs and words like “ribbet” and “hop.” A trio of inflatable frogs posed for photos on the boardwalk; protesters crowded around them with their phones, as eagerly as kids at Disneyland waiting to take a photo with Mickey Mouse.
Aside from the signage, the crowd itself doesn't look terribly out of place at Disneyland. Many of the signs were repetitions of the phrases “Stop Fascism,” “Fuck ICE,” or “Fuck Trump.” Women strolled through the park wearing hoodies and T-shirts that read “Aunt Tifa” in glittery letters. Several signs referenced the executive order and the presidential memorandum on national security, which portrayed antifa as an organized, centralized movement funded by George Soros. “I wouldn’t pay a protester to protest this nonsense,” one sign read; “Hey Kunkles-McTaco-Tits! Nobody paid me to be here,” another read. An inflatable zebra carried a sign that read, “Soros: Venmo me @AntifaZebra.”
“The administration believes that antifa is paying us all to be here,” said Ralph Christiansen, who has lived in Portland all his life. He carried a sign that read “Still Waiting for My Antifa Check” and wore a baseball cap over his gray hair, indicating he was a military veteran.
“I don’t get it yet,” Christiansen joked. “Maybe I didn’t fill out the right paperwork or something.”
“I'm a veteran, and I think a lot of people who are involved in policy making right now don't support us,” he said when Edge asked him why he was protesting. “Every day I wake up and think: What did he do now? What did they do now?” He described attacks on boats off the coast of Venezuela. “Every day it's something new and I'm really tired of it. I hope things like this can change that.”
“The lies get so old, so old,” said Connie Copeland, an elderly woman who carried a sign that read “I am Aunt Tifa.” A local resident originally from Oregon, she said she attended every No Kings protest in the area all year.
“People are being snatched off the streets without even thinking about who they are, and it's very clear that we're in trouble and that we need to stand up and speak out,” said Copeland, who was wearing a T-shirt with a frog on it.
When asked about the video that gave birth to a million frogs, she confirmed that she had seen it and liked it. “Oh, it's fantastic. Because, again, it's a peaceful thing, and Portland is the best at being peaceful and loving and accepting of everyone.”
“I look around and I don't see a war zone anywhere,” City Councilman Samir Kanal said on stage, going on to praise the weather, parks, the Willamette River and Portland's various sports teams. “We have llama therapists at the airport, naked bike rides, and chickens and frogs defending democracy.”
The waterfront parkland surrounding the USS Oregon Memorial is nearly two miles from the ICE facility where the original “Frog” fought camouflage-clad feds; a small but dedicated group of protesters showed up regularly every night for months. A weekend No Kings protest can attract people of literally all ages; The crowd at the ICE facility tends to be young. There are many reasons why this is the case, the most important of which is that federal law enforcement continues to shoot people with pepper balls. Taking multiple hits with less-than-lethal wounds is a young man's game.
“These young, nonviolent protesters are the spearhead of our movement,” said one speaker at the rally, drawing a line that both connected and separated the No Kings protests from the protest against the ICE facility. But it was clear that the protest against the ICE facility set the agenda in at least one respect. “We will respond to fascism with absurdism as only Portland can,” the speaker said to thunderous applause from the crowd.
Later, another speaker took the microphone and chanted, “Show Trump what democracy looks like!”
“This is what democracy looks like!” the crowd responded.
“Show Trump what Portland looks like!”
The crowd, all shiny and furry and on bobbing inflatables, shouted, “This is what Portland looks like!”
As I headed towards the ICE complex the weather became more seasonal. The downtown riverfront showcases Portland's charm—the sparkling river, bridges curving overhead, trees bristling with golden autumn leaves. Meanwhile, the ICE facility is sandwiched between a freeway exit and a Tesla dealership, an afterthought for the building in the area developed around OHSU Hospital.
About a dozen feds – dressed in camouflage, body armor, helmets and masks – sat on the roof of the building, looking down on a crowd of 500 people, many of them in suits. There were unicorns, dinosaurs, axolotls, lobsters and, of course, lots of frogs. Three inflatable bald eagles bobbed around with a sign that read, “The real Americans are antifa.” The others came in foam Halloween costumes – Banana and Patrick from SpongeBob SquarePants (but wearing fishnets) started dancing furiously when the Britney Spears EDM mix started playing.
Counter-protesters and right-wing streamers regular presence on this sitebut for the moment their presence was eclipsed by the massive outburst of spectacle. I did encounter a few outside the immediate area – a couple of men shouting “Heil Hitler” and “Hitler should put you in jail” at me over a loudspeaker. The intended effect was overshadowed by the fact that they were on Lime scooters and how desperately they sped off as the spinning motorcycle began chasing them around the block.
If No Kings felt a little like Disneyland, the ICE protests felt like a carnival in a parking lot or maybe a pride parade in the clearance section of REI. Stacks of giant speakers played everything from dubstep to Lily Allen. At one point, “Bella Ciao,” a song made popular by the Italian anti-fascist resistance against dictator Benito Mussolini, began to play over the speakers, but the crowd's reaction was nil. (I never heard this song at the Portland protest. before Charlie Kirk's alleged killer was arrested; one local journalist confirmed that he hadn't heard it either.) The next song chosen, “YMCA” by the Village People, was better received, and protesters began energetically doing the YMCA dance as ICE agents hovered over them.
About a third of the protesters were wearing gas masks or respirators; smoke from the pepper balls and mace still hung on the sidewalks, making it unpleasant to stand there without some kind of face covering.
“ICE is the only damn terrorism in Portland,” one protester told the feds over a loudspeaker, mocking them for their paramilitary gear. “Look around you. Your enemy is a barista named River.”
“Look around you. Your enemy is a barista named River.”
While the feds posed from the roof of the building, police officers rode freely through the crowd on bicycles. Local police liaison officers walked back and forth. Signs and chants continued to ridicule the police, but no one seemed particularly bothered by the police themselves. Instead, the focus was on ICE.
“Jump!” the crowd chanted for the feds on the roof. “Jump!”
When the feds turned a blinding spotlight on them, middle fingers rose in the crowd. Looking back, I saw a sea of upturned faces in the rain, eyes shining in the light.
