With dancing frogs and naked bikers, Portland resists Trump's National Guard troops

PORTLAND, Oregon — Ana Hilde doesn’t recognize the apocalyptic version of Portland that Donald Trump has been selling to the world.

The Portland she loves is a creative community where people are open-minded, think critically, push for change and help their neighbors. A be-who-you-wanna-be place with inflatable dancing frogs and naked bike rides.

No neighborhoods burning down. No terrorists roaming the streets. No war-ravaged districts.

A far cry from “living in hell,” as Trump has derisively described the city.

“We have such an incredible community here, and it’s being drilled down to something that is ugly and untrue,” Hilde said while sipping a cup of java at Coava Coffee Roasters.

“We’re quirky, we’re creative — and we’re not in a war zone,” she said.

In the shops, art districts, cannabis dispensaries and elsewhere in Oregon’s largest city, public sentiment runs strongly against Trump and his plan to send National Guard troops into the streets to watch over what he says is a community under attack.

Portland is not acquiescing quietly.

The city and the state have sued the Trump administration, and court orders have placed the deployment of troops on hold for the time being.

Other forms of resistance have had a distinctly Portland vibe — kooky, nonconformist and deliciously over-the-top. This is a city, after all, that is peculiar and proud. “Keep Portland Weird,” the city’s unofficial motto, screams in bold letters from the back wall of a downtown nightclub.

Outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in the southern part of the city, people in puffy animal costumes gather daily and nightly to protest the arrest and mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. The cast of critters has included kangaroos, raccoons, sharks, cats, chickens, an ostrich and gyrating frogs. They dance on the sidewalk and wave signs as motorists drive by, honking in support.

Nowhere has the opposition been more overt and outrageous than when hundreds of people pedaled through the city streets in the cold rain on Oct. 12, in what they billed as an “emergency” naked bike ride to bring global attention to Trump’s plans. Some riders paraded in the buff, their private parts on full display. Others dressed in tutus, see-through ponchos, Halloween masks and cartoon character costumes.

Beneath the eccentricity, however, lies a deep-seated fear that Trump and his administration are attempting to punish a left-leaning city and state that does not support his policies and that for 40 years has voted for the Democratic candidate for president, including Trump’s opponent in last year’s race, Kamala Harris.

For many across the United States, Trump’s attacks on Portland and other Democratic-run cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, DC, are nothing less than the erosion of constitutional rights and liberties.

“What we’re seeing is an assault on our basic freedoms,” said Dr. Kerri Hecox, 52, of Medford, Oregon, an addiction and family medicine specialist who participated in the naked bike ride.

‘What’s going on there?’

Curtis Best rested on a park bench along Portland’s downtown waterfront on a sunny afternoon. A breeze ruffled his curly, white mane. The park, which hugs the Willamette River and sits on what was once a six-lane highway, is a peaceful haven of tree-lined walkways, fountains and lawns where gaggles of Canadian Geese rendezvous.

Best, 70, a retired molecular biologist, likes to stroll along the waterfront — with his 6-year-old dog Instant Karma (Karma for short) — on days like this, when the weather is good.

Best has lived all over the world. But he always comes home to Portland.

“It’s just the best place,” he said.

Not according to Trump, who has described the city as a war zone where radicals are spreading “left-wing terror” and “antifa” thugs are committing acts of violence.

Many Portland residents say the president’s description is far from their daily reality and is creating a gross misperception of their city.

“My everyday experience is I go to work, I hang out with friends, I come to my favorite bars, I go to my favorite places, I hang out with my dogs and my partner,” Tiana Stewart, 37, a bartender, said at the Prost Marketplace food pod.

One of the most popular spots in the city, the pod takes up about a city block. There are a dozen food trucks – everything from barbecue to sushi to Mexican to smashburgers – and surrounding beer gardens. Friends and families sit at shared picnic tables enjoying the weather and the vittles, sneaking treats to dogs that lie at their owners’ feet.

“It’s just everyday life like everybody else,” Stewart said.

Because of Trump’s recent assertions about her city, friends and family around the country have contacted Stewart and other Portland residents to ask, “What’s going on there?”

“It offends me so deeply that we have a president that is willing and able to spread such misinformation without hitting the streets and coming out here and absolutely showing on display – from avenue to avenue, from southeast, from northeast to the westside – exactly what’s going on and discounting it himself,” she said. “But he knows that the people who are watching are going to buy into it. It’s ludicrous to me.”

Portland, like any sizable city, has its problems.

Homeless camps are visible in parts of the city. In Chinatown, for example, tents litter the sidewalks. Those without tents sleep on the ground.

Drug use, especially the surge of fentanyl, is a serious concern. One day this week, a group of about 10 people gathered at Third Avenue and Northwest Couch Street, some sitting on the ground, some in wheelchairs, passing around a glass pipe in broad daylight. An alarming number of deaths and injuries from fentanyl use prompted officials to declare a 90-day state of emergency in the city last year.

“I think it came out of the covid epidemic,” said Hilde, who is also an addiction specialist. “That was hugely destabilizing for many people with loss of employment, loss of housing and at the same time, we had a change in our drug supply.

Fentanyl entered the market in a huge way, “and it is a game changer,” Hilde said. “That substance is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. People become dependent quickly and sort of spiral down. So, yeah, you are going to see people that are using on the streets.”

None of those problems is a reason to call in the National Guard, Best said from his bench in the park. He has another theory about Trump’s motivations.

“Obviously, this is all a scam,” he said. “I really believe it’s a way to militarize police and make problems in these cities. … I think he just wants revenge on us. I think he just doesn’t like Democrat cities, Democrat states or its people.”

‘We don’t want people’s rights violated’

On a recent Monday, a small band of protesters stood outside the ICE field office and held up signs with slogans like “Due Process” and “Feds Out of Portland.” A few feet away, a couple of people dressed in large spotted green frog costumes frolicked about. Passing motorists honked their horns. A Portland police officer drove past in his department-issued SUV and gave a thumbs-up.

On some days, the protests come with a soundtrack, sometimes locally produced. One catchy tune by The Neighborhood Kids includes the hook: “Get them kids up out the cages.”

There are the caregivers, keeping the area clean by picking up trash, grilling full slabs of ribs and doling out chips, bagged carrots, blueberries, donuts, trail mix and water. MRE military meal pouches are on site in case of food emergencies. There are also rabble-rousers at the site, yelling expletives as heavily armed federal officers survey them on the sidewalk from a perch up on the roof. And there are visitors and onlookers who just want to see the over-the-top scene and the now-famous dancing frogs.

When Trump announced his decision to deploy 200 federal troops into Portland, he said they were needed to protect ICE facilities from the protesters. Some protests have turned combative with law enforcement, resulting in officials resorting to the use of tear gas.

Some protesters have been arrested. On Oct. 14, armed federal agents wearing face coverings detained a comedian dressed in a giraffe costume for trespassing after he equated ICE officials to Nazis in a satirical song. Two days earlier, a clarinet player performing the “Ghostbusters” theme outside the facility was dragged to the ground and arrested after agents said she tried to interfere with the arrest of a man fleeing from federal officers.

Pedro Anglada Cordero, an activist and social worker, has lobbied city officials to shutter the ICE facility. He helped organize an online petition calling on the city council to revoke a permit for the building where ICE operates, arguing that the building’s owners are profiting from the violation of basic human rights.

For now, Trump’s plans are on hold while he awaits a ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A lower court issued a pair of decisions earlier this month temporarily blocking him from federalizing the Oregon National Guard or deploying any guard members to Oregon, saying he had not met the threshold required by law.

Under federal law, the president can call the guard into national service if the United States has been invaded or is in danger of being invaded by a foreign nation, if there is a rebellion or the danger of rebellion against the government, or if he is unable to execute the laws of the land by using regular forces.

The Trump administration justified its plan to deploy federal troops in part by claiming that protesters were trying to set fire to the ICE center and other buildings. “Portland is burning to the ground, it’s insurrectionists all over the place,” he told reporters at the White House on Oct. 5.

But crime data doesn’t back him up.

Protesters set fire to buildings, including a county-owned facility, during demonstrations following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. But building fires in Portland were down by 33% this summer compared with the previous one — and most were not believed to have been intentionally set, The Oregonian reported.

What’s more, Portland Fire & Rescue spokesman Rick Graves told the news outlet there were just four reports of fires in the vicinity of the ICE facility between June and September. Two were flag burnings, one was reported by a person who said they saw a flag burning in a TikTok video taken outside the facility, and the other was a reported “smoke grenade” tossed by a federal officer that didn’t involve a fire at all.

To some, Trump’s argument for deploying the troops is undercut by the frivolity often on display outside the ICE facility.

“It’s really hard to keep on claiming that this is civil unrest here when you see people out in frog costumes,” said Hecox.

Giant spiders in big city with little city mindset

At the Oregrown Portland Cannabis Dispensary, on the city’s northeast side, customers can purchase strains of weed in pork belly, strawberry shortcake and a range of other scents. Employees pride themselves on weighing out flower marijuana for the store’s clientele. It gives customers the chance to smell and examine the product before purchase, which they can’t with pre-packaged buds.

The store is a place where the workers see one another as family. They have decorated for Halloween. Spider and bat cutouts are on the walls. A large web with a startlingly big spider takes up a corner of the store.

Rae Clouser, the general manager, said the pot shop sees people from different backgrounds – all day, every day. A lot of customers want to talk about Trump and the National Guard. Others don’t.

“What I’ve personally experienced here is people just upset about the narrative that we are angry people,” she said. “We’re not angry people, and they’re painting us out to be a very hateful and angry kind of people.”

Portland, she said, is a big city with a little city mentality. “We’re not Chicago. We’re not New York. We’re not nearly a city of that size,” Clouser said. “So how we’re portrayed in the media makes a lot of difference.”

Clouser feels like Trump and his administration are targeting Portland and trying to put it in a box.

But “we all deserve to express ourselves in one way or another, whether that be people who are part of the LGBT community or just any other community out there looking for someone else to be a part of their little in-house family,” she said. “That’s what Portland is all about.”

‘Nothing to be afraid of’

Jessi Zemwalt and Dani Jackson, who were brunching together on Oct. 13 outside in the city’s Alberta Arts District, also took issue with how the city has been portrayed, especially by conservative media outlets. While dining on vegan brisket made from jackfruit (Zemwalt) and a Nashville hot fried chicken sandwich and fries (Jackson) and peppermint tea, the couple lamented how frustrated they are with the negative coverage.

“What you see is just so blatantly not true,” said Zemwalt, 32, who lives in Salem and works as a senior library assistant. “We’re walking through, and we’re looking at our city. Even the protests we’ve had have been so minor compared to 2020 or even long before that. It’s very strange to hear people refer to this as a war zone when we are living quite peacefully.”

Jackson, 34, a furloughed federal employee who lives in Portland, has offered to escort people around the city so they can see what it’s really like.

“What are you people afraid of?” Jackson asked. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Art student Michelle Ward, 53, delivering Uber Eats with her son, worried that the things that make Portland what it is are getting lost in the madness of the world.

“We have a lot of beauty, eclectic and different personalities and different stuff that balances out the bad — where a lot of people just have bad, or what we call ‘bad,’” she said.

The real Portland is really just a city that cares, she said, “a melting pot of people that care about other people.”

Enough to dress up in goofy costumes and bike naked in defense of the city they love.