Elana Pirtle-Guiney is president of the Portland City Council in Oregon.
Protesters wave at passing cars as they rally along the sidewalks outside of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in South Portland, Oregon, on Oct. 13, 2025.

Since President Donald Trump declared Portland, Oregon, “war-ravaged” in September and threatened to deploy federal troops, residents have responded with creativity, humor and determination. Rather than meeting aggression with aggression, Portlanders have channeled their civic pride and quirky nature into a new kind of resistance.

Portlanders are choosing costumes over combat, showing up to protests dressed as chickens and frogs, while flooding social media with proof of Portland’s strength and spirit. These whimsical images have garnered national media attention and stand in stark contrast to the dystopian narrative Trump is promoting.

The hashtag #WarRavagedPortland has become a citywide celebration, filled with photos of bike riders, farmers' markets and lively restaurants ‒ residents showcasing the decidedly not war-ravaged city they love.

Trump's deployed troops can't find anyone to fight

Though the threat of troop deployment is scary, this moment has also catalyzed something exciting: an explosion of Portland pride. For years, our city struggled through multiple complex challenges: the COVID-19 pandemic’s economic devastation, the fentanyl crisis, large protests following George Floyd’s murder and other challenges that many urban centers faced were exacerbated by Trump sending in federal agents at the time.

We were honest about those struggles, sometimes brutally so, and went to work tackling them. But Trump’s wildly distorted characterization, which threatens to recreate our city’s narrative, has unified Portlanders in rejecting these false narratives.

This time around, Trump’s wrath was sparked by television reports that misleadingly mixed footage from violent 2020 protests with present-day imagery of demonstrations outside Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. The reality is that these recent events have been small, mostly peaceful protests occurring in a small area of a city spanning 145 square miles.

The protests in 2020 were fundamentally different – in scale, in nature and in purpose. That was when rallies, marches and protests erupted nationwide over police brutality.

Today’s protests oppose heavy-handed ICE raids in our immigrant communities and the threat of federal military occupation. Attempts to compare the two should be seen for what they are – disingenuous efforts to justify intervention in a city that is managing its own affairs, but whose residents have the audacity to say out loud that they do not support the president’s agenda.

The data tells the real story of our city’s progress.

Portland recorded a 17% drop in violent crimes, the largest of all major American cities, in the first half of 2025. Homicides fell 51% year over year.

Gun violence so far this year has declined roughly 30% from 2024. We were recently recognized as a top city in violence prevention programs.

Downtown foot traffic surpassed 21 million pedestrians through August, making this summer the busiest since before the pandemic. LinkedIn ranked Portland among its top 25 “Cities on the Rise 2025” for job growth and new talent.

Heavy-handed responses won't solve our problems

We continue working on challenges that require ongoing attention. These include downtown office occupancy rates, property crime prevention, stemming the proliferation of cheap drugs and ending unsheltered homelessness.

These complex urban issues, unfortunately common across the nation, demand thoughtful policy solutions, not federal deployments. As City Council president, I led the Protect Portland Initiative resolution alongside my colleagues. This unanimous legislative response establishes clear guidelines for how our city protects residents if the administration deploys troops unlawfully.

This is what local governance looks like when it functions.

We are not alone in our assessment that this is a farce. A federal judge, appointed by Trump himself, granted Oregon’s temporary restraining order against troop deployment, affirming that Portland’s protesters are overwhelmingly peaceful and nonviolent.

If a federal judge, the governor, the mayor, the police chief, the City Council, the business community, the residents and the folks in frog and chicken costumes are all saying this deployment is ridiculous and unnecessary, we have to wonder why Trump is so adamant about sending in the troops.

If deploying the National Guard were truly necessary, the three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals would have acted immediately. Instead, it spent a week before deciding, in a split vote, to allow the deployment on Oct. 20.

Is this a dry run for establishing a military police state?

We fear – and so should every patriotic American – that Trump is using Portland as a testing ground for authoritarian overreach. He’s attempting to write himself a blank check to deploy federal agents and military troops anywhere he wants, against whomever he wants.

What happens in Portland establishes precedent for Chicago, Baltimore, San Francisco and every other city that disagrees with his politics. This is alarming because federal military presence in our cities fundamentally undermines the American principle of local self-governance.

The burst of Portland pride we’re witnessing isn’t just a response to Trump’s threats. It’s a reminder of who we’ve always been.

We are a city that solves problems through collaboration, not coercion (and, yes, sometimes dressed as chickens ... if we’re wearing anything at all). A community that builds from the ground up, not the top down.

That work doesn’t need federal intervention. It needs what’s always made America great: the freedom that allows communities to solve their own problems and chart their own futures.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney is president of the Portland City Council in Oregon.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump's threats have inspired Portlanders to prove we're anything but chicken | Opinion

Reporting by Elana Pirtle-Guiney / USA TODAY

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