Nature, books and naked bike rides: Portlanders push back on Trump claims that city is ‘like living in hell’

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/03/portland-oregon-living-hell-tiktok-trump

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On the ground in the Oregon city, with rich fall colors and leafy hiking trails, things look different than on Trump’s TV

In Portland, Oregon, a city Donald Trump claims to have seen “burning down to the ground” on his television, residents are pushing back on the US president’s false depiction of their tranquil city as a war zone.

Trump, who refuses to accept firsthand accounts from Oregon’s governor and the Portland mayor that the widespread unrest he thinks he’s seen on television is not actually happening, has ordered the military in to the Pacific north-west city.

Portland police made three arrests on Thursday night after fistfights broke out between demonstrators and a pro-Trump influencer from Washington DC at an Ice field office, and 200 national guard troops are expected to arrive in the coming days. But a visit to the Ice field on Thursday afternoon showed that, far from being “under siege” by militants, there were fewer than 10 protesters on the sidewalk, nearly outnumbered by journalists.

Now residents, frustrated with the president’s false claims that Portland is “war ravaged”, are showing a different side of their city from the one depicted by Trump and Fox News.

A raft of Instagram and TikTok videos from Portlanders are poking holes in Trump’s claim that life in their city is “like living in hell”, showcasing verdant hiking trails, trees in rich fall colors and a thriving food scene. Plans are also being drawn up for the most Portland of all possible responses: an Emergency Naked Bike Ride against “the militarization of our city”.

On a rainy Thursday in the city, the kitchen at Kann, Portland’s award-winning Haitian restaurant, was busy preparing for dinner. Jokes about Trump’s war were shared at Coava, a cafe with a single-origin coffee menu that changes seasonally which is popular with Japanese tourists. Business was brisk at Powell’s Books, the downtown icon which inspired the new protest slogan: “Portland isn’t a war zone; it’s a bookstore with a city around it.”

The parking lot was full at Providore Fine Foods, a culinary marketplace whose owner, Kaie Wellman, said she was concerned about how Trump’s “threats against our city” could be “devastating for local businesses” like hers, which worked so hard to survive the pandemic only to be hit first by Trump’s tariffs and now his “100% false” portrayal of a minor protest at the Ice field office in the city’s south waterfront district. “It’s really profoundly upsetting,” she said.

Wellman, a fifth-generation Oregonian, is opening a bistro this month in the Portland Art Museum’s new Mark Rothko Pavilion, a $110m expansion that has taken a decade to complete. “It really is such a cornerstone for our community, for downtown Portland, to have such a significant new building,” she said. She describes her leap of faith in opening a new restaurant just blocks from where the 2020 protests for racial justice took place as “a love letter to Portland and what a vibrant community we are.

“One of the main reasons that we’re opening up this cafe downtown, and do what we do here in town, is because of our deep love for the state and for the city. And to see it portrayed anything less than what it is, you know, is just so frustrating. It’s a place that people want to come and live and raise their families. And it’s kind of unmatched in beauty,” Wellman said.

“Yes, we’ve had issues here, but we’ve had the same issues that basically every other city around this world has had. And we’re coming at these issues from a thoughtful place and not trying to sweep them away. But the issue that’s being portrayed right now does not exist in this town.”

Asked about Trump’s claims of lawlessness, Wellman said it was “not the case at all”. “And I am in the south waterfront at least two to three times a week because my 92-year-old mother lives in the south waterfront,” she added. “So I can tell you firsthand what’s been happening down there. And what I have seen, at the quote-unquote very worst, it’s still been peaceful protests. Maybe there’s been some strong words thrown around.”

“I would say right now, if there is any disturbance that’s been going on, it’s Black Hawk helicopters that are circling around a neighborhood that is filled with many retirees and older people … causing all of them fear and a lack of sleep,” she added.

Back at the Ice field office protest, Amanda Cochran, a US army veteran, was holding a homemade sign that read “Vets Against Militarization” on one side, and “Immigrants Are Not the Enemy’ on the other. She wore a tour shirt for the Canadian rock band Three Days Grace with the lyrics “Let’s start a riot.”

“I’m here because I’m really fed up with the fact that Trump is talking about using the military to go into cities and to train the forces,” she said.

“I served in the US army for six years and this is my first time ever protesting,” she said. “I just felt really strongly that if we don’t stand up and say something then this could easily become a militarized country and the citizens will be under the control of the military, and I don’t think that that is OK, and that’s not what I fought for.

“Us veterans, we have the privilege of being able to express our opinions because we’re out, and hopefully we can kind of give those soldiers that don’t want to be there a voice. If enough of us show up, maybe Trump will back off,” she added.

Across the street, the Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, who has been reporting from inside the facility, prepared for a live hit out front, accompanied by three men with covered faces who appeared to be private security guards.

Just to their left, a young protest organizer, Jack Dickinson, who achieved a measure of viral fame this week for the chicken costume he wears to mock Trump, was being interviewed for the local news.

Why a chicken? One of the advantages of the costume, Dickinson explained, is that “it disarms people.

“We’re dealing with a real influx of rightwing agitators right now,” he continued. “It becomes difficult for them to interact in certain ways, I think, when there’s the chicken suit, but not just the chicken suit, it’s then somebody who tries to have a conversation with them about the soybean situation that we’re facing right now,” referring to the collapse in crop prices for US farmers due to Trump’s trade war with China.

“We do not want this to escalate,” he said, agreeing with local officials who suggest that Trump wants to provoke a response from the protesters.

“There is definitely a desire for a response. We saw this most clearly on Sunday night because for that protest, we had 30 people that were down here associated with rightwing Twitter accounts or rightwing YouTube channels,” Dickinson said. “There is a clear desire to get somebody reacting in a way that they can frame as a justification for what they are doing. And Portland just isn’t giving them what they want.”