How the wide adoption of Operation Inflation animal costumes has helped define ICE protests in Portland

Operation Inflation was conceived last fall when protests at Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement building routinely drew counter protesters and a large law enforcement presence. Jordy Lybeck and his wife Lacy wanted to impact the nature of news coverage as Pres. Trump threatened to send National Guard troops to Portland. As Trump’s baseless assertions that Portland was “war-ravaged,” a “burning-hellhole,” where the mayor and the governor of Oregon were “petrified for their lives” appeared with increasing frequency, so did their determination to help correct the record. They began providing inflatable animal costumes to those protesting at the ICE facility. 

The images of people playfully wearing large, inflatable costumes visually contradicted the narrative of a war torn city. They said they are also creating pure “absurdity” as counter-protestors yelled at larger than life frogs, chickens, unicorns and other creatures. Jordy Lybeck and Lacy join us to tell us about their strategy for supporting protests, how the movement has spread to other cities and how this weekend’s No Kings demonstrations went down.

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