President Donald Trump hasn’t conquered Portland. As the White House ponders an endgame to the war with Iran it launched a month ago, Portlanders joined nationwide protests Saturday against Trump’s expansion of executive powers.
“These are all just a bunch of strangers, but we share the same idea that something is very, very wrong,” said Shelly Caldwell, who joined the procession across the Steel and Burnside bridges. “It’s clear that this is a very dangerous path to go down, and I think that the more people feel like they’re not alone, whatever happens in the future just makes us all feel like we’re not being outraged at home by ourselves.”
The third “No Kings” march in a little over a year, like its forerunners, drew tens of thousands of people to Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Its hallmarks are now familiar: retirees and families with hand-lettered signs, orange-tinted mockery, and the inflatable frog costumes that debuted last summer outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building on the South Waterfront.
Elected officials made the expected cameos: U.S. Sen Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Gov. Tina Kotek spoke at morning events that fed into the mass assembly. “When President Trump tried to send the Oregon National Guard into Portland, we said absolutely not,” Kotek said outside the Oregon Convention Center. “We took to the streets, peacefully and powerfully. We went to the courts. And the troops went home.”
Missing, as of nightfall? Tear gas. The last large-scale protest in Portland, a labor march to ICE in October, was met by a fusillade of chemical munitions, spurring a federal judge to constrain their use. An appeals court panel paused that ban last week.
But when a smaller crowd circled the ICE facility Saturday evening, donning gas masks and burning a flag at the gates, federal agents—now under the command of Markwayne Mullin rather than Krist Noem—held their powder.
Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office.
Support WW
