is a features editor who publishes award-winning stories about law, tech, and internet subcultures. A journalist trained as a lawyer, she has been writing about tech for 10 years.
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By the time I arrived, the waterfront park in downtown Portland, Oregon was already awash with people as far as the eye could see. The No Kings protest in June had turned out around 10,000 people across the city; this one saw several times that number just downtown, with thousands more choosing to join localized protests in their neighborhoods or in the suburbs.
Unable to get a precise crowd estimate, I tried instead to count inflatable frog costumes. I gave up on this about twenty minutes later: there were simply too many frogs.
Last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order designating so-called “antifa” a domestic terror group — a designation that does not exist. The EO was followed by a national security presidential memorandum directing members of his cabinet to forcefully hunt down and prosecute the shadowy forces of antifa and their allegedly well-moneyed funders. A couple of days later, the president ordered the National Guard into “War ravaged Portland” to “protect” ICE from antifa, turning the mid-sized city into one of the epicenters of the fight.
A lawsuit ensued, and as the state of Oregon and the city of Portland went to court to accuse Trump of hallucinating a war zone where none existed, a new resistance symbol was born. A viral video captured a protester in an inflatable frog suit staring down — so to speak — a flock of militarized ICE agents, and inflatable costumes were suddenly de rigueur not just at protests in Portland but all over the country.
In Portland, June’s protests were dominated by American flags and the symbol of a crossed-out crown. The October protests, on the other hand, were all about the frog. All throughout the crowd, there were inflatable frog costumes of varying degrees of quality — mostly green, with a couple of pink frogs and Halloween-themed skeleton frogs. There were many other inflatables, too — unicorns, sharks, dinosaurs, chickens, squirrels, flamingos, aliens, Garfield — but the frog had become ubiquitous in all forms. There were people in frog kigurumi onesies, people in frog masks and frog hats and little paper frog cutouts taped onto beanies. Signs and t-shirts featured frogs and words like “ribbet” and “hop.” A trio of inflatable frogs posed for photos by the waterfront trail; protesters crowded around them with their phones, as eager as children at Disneyland waiting to take photos with Mickey Mouse.
Protesters pose for photos with a trio of inflatable frogs at the October No Kings protest in downtown Portland.
Aside from the signage, the crowd itself would not look terribly out of place at Disneyland. Many of the signs were iterations on “Stop fascism” or “Fuck ICE” or “Fuck Trump.” Women strode through the park wearing sweatshirts and t-shirts adorned with “Aunt Tifa” in glittery letters. Several signs made reference to the executive order and the national security presidential memorandum that had painted antifa as an organized centralized movement paid for by George Soros. “Not a paid protester I’d pay to protest this bullshit” read one sign; “Hey Cankles-McTaco-Tits! Nobody paid me to be here” read another. An inflatable zebra carried a sign reading “Soros: Venmo me @AntifaZebra.”
“The administration thinks that we’re all being paid by antifa to be here,” said Ralph Christiansen, who has lived in Portland his entire life. He was carrying a sign that read “Still waiting for my antifa check” and wore a baseball cap over his gray hair that identified him as a military veteran.
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