If you live in Portland (or even just near it) and have friends or family living farther afield, you have almost certainly been asked at least once in the past two weeks about the decidedly unique flavor of the nightly protests taking place outside the ICE detention center on South Macadam.
Maybe they asked you about the frog. Or the chicken. Or the pajama party. Or the “Operation Inflation” project delivering inflatable costumes to the protests each night, now that the frog has become an unofficial mascot. Or the dance parties. Or the Emergency Naked Bike Ride on Sunday night, in which hundreds of intrepid souls who usually do this in the summertime under far more congenial weather conditions rode past the ICE building to join the fun.
If a story about a Portland protest begins with “The clarinet player from a marching band who were playing the Ghostbusters theme song while wearing banana costumes,” you might be forgiven for assuming it would just be another quirky Portland anecdote…