The Red & White

What began with one person in a green inflatable frog costume has ballooned (literally) into a full-blown (no pun intended) visual movement. Outside an ICE facility in Portland, Oregon, demonstrators have shown up in inflatable costumes and have sparked a movement. At first glance, it looks childish or absurd: a zoo of inflatable animals, from frogs to unicorns, chickens to T-Rexes. But that absurdity is the point. This is protest.

The costumes are distributed to protestors for free by Operation Inflation thanks to donations. They do four things: deflate the “war-zone” narrative, highlight the absurdity of calling in heavy force, make visible non-violence, and use humour and spectacle as political tools.

The president, the federal government, and some media outlets have painted the narrative that Portland is a chaotic “war-ravaged” city, “burning down” and in need of militarized intervention, as quoted by AP News. But if the “threat” is a 6-foot-tall mushroom, raccoon, or panda, then the logic of deploying riot gear, tear gas, and federal troops on this “serious insurrection” starts to look more ridiculous than the costumes themselves. In fact, the suits reduce mobility, restrict vision, and make running or aggressive movement awkward. The design is intentional. By clearly being incapable of “violent extremism”, the costumes help emphasize that the protest is peaceful, even if the issues are deadly serious. 

The tradition of using satire, art, and performance in protest is not new. While it can be argued that such a spectacle about serious issues—such as immigration enforcement, federal overreach, and civil rights—risks them not being taken seriously. The beauty here is that they don’t treat the costume as the whole story of the protest. They use it as a tool to magnify the deeper injustice. The costumes invite people to see protest differently, reducing fear and violence to instead heighten creativity and rewrite the narrative. The message becomes: We’ll show up. We’ll be non-violent. We’ll be weird. But we won’t be silent.

For the readers upon the hilltop, somewhere between purgatory and paradise, you might ask: Why should we care? There are no inflatable animals here. But this isn’t really about costumes. It’s about narrative and who gets to tell the story. 

These protestors are exercising their First Amendment rights, peacefully, yet they’re met with force. If their speech is silenced, what does that mean for ours? Free speech doesn’t vanish all at once; it erodes when we ignore its suppression in others. Protest is communication. The way people choose to express dissent, and how those in power respond, reveals the health of our democracy. When citizens wear inflatable animal suits to make a point, they’re also challenging how protest is perceived. They ask whether the state treats free expression as a right or as a threat.

Always question the official narrative by asking, who is framing the story? If these protestors weren’t dressed in inflatable costumes, perhaps the state’s version of the story would be easier to accept. Visual symbolism matters. A frog suit speaks differently than a riot shield. Power should rest not in batons or tear gas, but in people.

Protest doesn’t have to look angry. It can be creative, strange, even funny, and sometimes that’s exactly the point. Don’t see these protests as ridiculous. See them as proof that protest isn’t just about shouting, it’s about being seen, being heard, and being unafraid to inflate the narrative until it bursts.