After dark this week, a growing menagerie danced and bounced in the streets as federal officers looked on, a jiggling embodiment of the message city and state leaders have been sending for two weeks in news media briefings and court filings: Though there have been arrests, the majority of protesters in Portland are peaceful — and perhaps a little weird.
“The juxtaposition of this moment is what’s resonating,” said Whitney Phillips, an associate professor at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication whose academic research has focused on political narratives and symbols. “This moment is dangerous. It’s violent. It’s also absurd.”
Mr. Trump and members of his administration have described the demonstrators in Portland as cruel, violent extremists bent on overthrowing the government. Since early June, a small but persistent subset of demonstrators has attempted to disrupt the work inside the ICE building by blocking cars from entering and exiting.
The animal army — a technical term for a collection of frogs in this case — might have started as one man’s whim, but it has grown into a more intentional campaign, with protest organizers accepting and encouraging donations of costumes. It hasn’t precluded shoving matches between people on the left and right, nor federal officials from arresting demonstrators or firing pepper balls into the crowd to clear the building’s driveway.
“It just makes it seem sillier when they come after us,” said Jack Dickinson, 26, who shows up most days to protest wearing a chicken onesie with an American flag as a cape. “There’s a whimsy to Portland, I think, that’s meeting this moment. You see it with me, you see it with the frog.”
Mr. Todd, the frog, said he had been detained by federal officers and cited for failing to follow instructions three times since early summer, and video of federal officers pepper-spraying him through the air vent in his costume drew widespread attention this week.
“It tasted like peppermint,” he said.
The scenes of colorful, oversize animals dancing to pop music under the stern gaze of federal agents in riot gear has altered the national conversation about the protests, prompting internet memes and segments on late-night shows, even as the Trump administration and right-wing influencers doubled down on their descriptions of Portland as a city in flames during a White House “round table on antifa” Wednesday.
President Trump’s depiction of Portland as a “hellscape” has inspired demonstrators in the city to challenge his portrayal with street theater and silliness.Credit…Jordan Gale for The New York Times
On Friday evening, the ICE building unwittingly played host to the wedding of a unicorn and Kenny from the TV show “South Park.” The happy couple then walked down a red carpet under a wave of bubbles to the tune of the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive.” The officiant, Dave Marvin, 68, wore a pinstriped suit and a rabbit head. He described the wedding as “a very civil union.”
“We’re trying to emphasize and reiterate what peaceful and joyous protests we have in ‘war-ravaged’ Portland,” Mr. Marvin said.
In the case of Mr. Todd and the frogs that joined him this week, there’s also unintended symbolism: White nationalists embraced the cartoon character Pepe the Frog, first drawn in an independent and politically agnostic comic, with such enthusiasm that the Anti-Defamation League included Pepe in its collection of hate symbols and worked with its creator on a social media campaign to “save Pepe.”
Mr. Todd said he did not intend to take back the frog as a political symbol when he bought his $30 costume on Amazon several weeks into the Portland protests. He said he was just hoping to “make the president and the feds look dumb.”
“There was no higher point beyond that,” he said, “other than I just really like frogs.”
As long as everybody can take care of their needs….we still want to run a city fairly.