For Once, the Left Might Be Winning a Messaging War

I went to a No Kings rally on Sunday, the first I have attended since Trump’s return to office. It was fun and uplifting: singing and dancing, clever signs, and a trio of T. rexes whose heads flopped entertainingly as they waddled down the sidewalk. Passing drivers honked in support.

The protest made me think about the movement’s strengths and weaknesses, and today I’d like to highlight what’s working. I’ll get to what needs improvement in an upcoming post.

The good: I am so proud that the left is standing up for truth and morality in a way that the right has totally abdicated. On Sunday, we showed the world who we are at our best—people with caring hearts, passion for our country, and a healthy sense of humor to boot. I’m especially proud that the movement is so peaceful. Not because I expected violence, but because peace takes extra discipline in the face of Trump’s frequent unlawful brutality.

I think this disciplined peacefulness may slowly be turning the tide of public opinion.

Studies show that peaceful, nonviolent protest movements are effective—especially when met with violence from the forces they are protesting against. The sight of brutality towards peaceful civilians ignites popular sympathy, which helps lead to policy change. That was what happened in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, when Americans across the country witnessed the police siccing dogs and shooting water cannons at peaceful Black demonstrators and even children.

This year, there has been disturbing brutality from Trump’s government, although it has taken on new shapes. Faceless ICE agents in unmarked vehicles are snatching people off the streets and out of their homes, zip-tying children and detaining not only undocumented immigrants but also US citizens. “Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot by immigration agents,” reads one article by Oregon Public Broadcasting. People are being deported without due process, some of them simply for speech the President dislikes.

Troops are being sent to US cities on the flimsiest of pretexts while Trump labels their left-wing leaders and residents the “enemy from within.” Every day, military helicopters fly over my home here in Southwest Portland, menacing my own peaceful city as Trump chomps at the bit to send troops here. I wrote a Facebook post about this situation a few weeks ago, describing the sickening feeling of hearing the Black Hawks and realizing they had been sent by a deranged President who hates us and who wields immense and frightening power. My post struck a chord—it was shared 368 times.

But since then, something remarkable has happened.

It began a month ago, before the helicopters, when Trump first announced he would send National Guard troops here. He described Portland as “war ravaged” and “burning to the ground.” Portlanders looked around and collectively said, Huh?

It was a perfect, crisp fall weekend. Everyone was out working in their gardens and walking their dogs. Downtown, which has struggled since the pandemic and the 2020 BLM riots, is now generally safe and peaceful again.

Portlanders flooded social media mocking Trump’s delusional rhetoric with images of the city’s beauty—the Saturday Market, the line outside Voodoo Donuts, the picturesque Japanese Garden. “War ravaged Portland” became a hashtag. I chipped in with my own posts about the “defense” I had mounted (against birds flying into my windows) and the “murder” (of crows) in my front yard.

The troops were supposedly coming to protect the ICE facility near downtown. There had been protests and riots there earlier in the summer, but by September they had simmered down. Trump had apparently been influenced by misleading Fox News footage implying that the riots were ongoing, so Portlanders shared up-to-date footage of the ICE facility too. Perhaps two to five protesters could typically be seen standing around holding signs. One of them always wore a fuzzy yellow chicken costume.

The deployment quickly got tied up in court. A local federal judge—a Trump appointee—determined that Trump’s justification was “untethered to the facts.”

Meanwhile, Portland kept finding more and more ways to break through Trump’s nonsense.

Along with the memes of #warravagedportland, an “Emergency” World Naked Bike Ride was planned, a revival of an old Portland tradition. The Portland Marathon continued on schedule, its course running right past the ICE facility. The protests there grew too, and while they were tense at times, they also took a silly turn. Early on, a video circulated of protesters dancing in sync. And the chicken was joined by other characters.

The pivotal moment came when a federal agent shot pepper spray into a blow-up frog costume’s air vent. The frog had been doing nothing aggressive—local news has reported that most aggression at the ICE facility has come from the feds themselves, who at times appear to be trying to provoke the protesters. The agent’s spray-in-the-airhole move was caught on camera and quickly went viral, and the “Portland protest frog” skyrocketed to meme fame. Suddenly the resistance had its icon.

“The Portland protest frogs are multiplying,” read the title of a video posted a few days later by OregonLive. The frogs were joined by other whimsical blow-up creatures, like unicorns, dinosaurs, axolotls, and bananas. By now, it is hard to avoid footage of these creatures boogeying outside the Portland ICE facility while the masked, camouflaged federal agents stand nearby looking absurd. The Portland frog has become a worldwide sensation—at last Sunday’s protests, people donned blow-up frog costumes as far away as Paris and Madrid.

I don’t remember ever feeling prouder of my city. I was so nervous about the protests when all this began. We all were, after 2020. We feared that some dumb young people would take Trump’s bait and riot. Instead we have costumes and dancing, and they are exactly the right response. Somehow, these creative protesters have managed to jam up the narrative while also standing up for American democracy—and advertising our proudly weird city along the way.

Listening to the costumed people talk about what they’re doing is deeply moving. Beneath the silliness is a very serious intent.

Seth Todd, the original Portland frog, explains it well in one great video:

As part of the…Latino community, I don’t like seeing my neighbors, my community members, my family…being disappeared without due process. …Whether they’re here legally or not, they should be treated as a human being, because that’s what they are. That’s what we are. We are humans, and we are not supposed to be treating other people unfairly, just because we have the power to do so. Since you have that power, you should be even more careful with how you treat people, because you have that much power, and it comes with a lot of responsibility.

The troop deployment is still working its way through appeals. Any day now, the National Guard may arrive. But meanwhile, in the court of public opinion, I think we have gained the upper hand.

It’s hard to gauge what people are thinking across the country, but I sense that a tide may be turning. I even think I witnessed this tide-turning in real time last weekend, in the comment thread on a Wall Street Journal article.

The article was on Sunday’s No Kings protests and was published just after they ended. I didn’t read the piece itself; I jumped straight to the comments. I often read WSJ comments to take the temperature of center-right America. Unlike readers of Fox or the New York Times, WSJ readers include both Trump loyalists and traditional conservatives who despise him. It makes for some lively discussion.

Most major WSJ articles generate a thousand or so comments; hot-button issues might generate four thousand. But Sunday’s protest article drew ten thousand—an order of magnitude more. In my experience, that kind of participation is second only to a piece criticizing Trump and Vance’s Oval Office ambush of Volodymyr Zelenskyy back in February. I cannot fathom why a peaceful nationwide left-wing protest would so agitate WSJ readers to a similar degree, but apparently it did. I think that in itself may be a good sign.

Still more hopeful was the way the comments changed in the hours after the protests ended.

Initially, just after getting home from my local rally, the top comments left me a bit deflated. Wasn’t it their president who said “I have a pen and a phone?” read the one in the lead, referring to Obama’s reliance on executive orders. They seemed quite happy with having a dictator as long as it was their dictator.

Another top comment, equally dismissive, read:

What utter nonsense. Seriously folks. How about putting this much effort into getting your legislators to work in a bipartisan fashion to get our government running.  Spare me the “but…but ….but the other side…….” . Resist Resist Resist is no way to do anything.

The thread went on like that. It was mostly negative. I had read similar remarks the day before, so I wasn’t surprised, but it was still disheartening.

The next morning, as I began to write this blog post, I reopened the article to pull those quotes. But to my surprise, the comments had shifted around, something I hadn’t seen before. Usually, inertia keeps their order intact.

The comment with Obama’s “phone and pen” quip was still on top—it had 598 likes at last count. But overnight, another comment had worked its way to second place, overtaking the others and garnering 515 likes:

Who holds a military parade for himself on his birthday? A king. Who claims unilateral authority over the military. A king. Who demands everyone in federal leadership vow allegiance to him and abuses his privileged position to punish his foes? A KING.

The third comment was now pro-resistance too:

The puerile comments on this site criticizing Americans’ fundamental right to stand up and protest is on par with the concerted efforts of Mike Johnson and company to label these events as “un American hate rallies.”  Trump’s massive power grab attempts are an affront to everything the Founding Fathers established.  Someday people will look back on Trump’s era as an ugly aberration from everything America is supposed to stand for.

And then, just a little farther down, there was this from a man named Steve:

i am 76 years old and have never attended a protest before today. Not about Vietnam, or Nixon,  or civil rights. But when the billionaires’ spokespeople called it a “Hate America” rally, I said “we’re going”.

My father fought with Patton in Europe, his kid brother—my namesake—was killed test-piloting a B-29 in the run up to Hiroshima, my brother was a Captain in the Army Medical Corps during Vietnam, my nephew flew F-16s in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

And I exist today thanks to this country because all my Dad’s family that stayed behind in Eastern Europe died in gas chambers (presumably to the apparent delight of Young Republicans). I love this country—the greatest and freest in history. And I hate what it’s becoming under the rage-inducing, callous and unlawful Trump Administration. That truly does preach hatred.

So with 3 to 4,000 others in my little Midwest suburb I was out today, waving and cheering to the  honking drivers passing by. 

An exhilarating day. And only the beginning.

I have to tell you, reading this comment brought tears to my eyes.

So, what changed between Sunday afternoon and Monday morning? I think it must have been the protest footage. More people must have seen, with their own eyes, that what the GOP had been saying about the left was simply not true.

Prior to Sunday, GOP leaders had boxed themselves into a corner. They insisted that the protests would be violent—their latest craven falsehood, which they somehow assumed people would buy despite evidence to the contrary. Texas Governor Greg Abbott even mobilized the Texas National Guard in preparation for the violence. These were “hate America” rallies, said House Speaker Mike Johnson and various other Republicans. Attendees would be Antifa terrorists, paid by George Soros. It was all an insidious plot, a widespread network of miscreants and assassins who were out to destroy the country.

Those same GOP leaders then looked foolish when several million Americans turned out for joyful, peaceful marches in all fifty states, many waving American flags and signs proclaiming their love of their country. It was clear that the warnings had been woefully out of step with reality.

And so, inch by inch, I think and hope this movement might be getting somewhere. Not with far-right partisans—they will remain unmoved. Fox has already pivoted from decrying the protesters’ anticipated violence to dismissing them as unserious and out of touch, and I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before they start calling the protest frog a terrorist symbol.

But that doesn’t matter. What matters is people like Steve, the WSJ reader who had never protested before but joined this time. He was moved by Trump’s overreach, the GOP’s ugly rhetoric, and the peace and truth of those who are resisting. These are the people we need to reach—the ones who are quieter, or who are in the middle; those who are not deeply partisan and can possibly be swayed. Some of them, at least, are being moved. I hope and pray that will continue.