I’ve never wanted to visit Portland. Hell, I’ve never even cared to think about it. The whole idea of Portland always felt like a punchline I wasn’t in on. A meme city. Somewhere you go to ironically appreciate weirdness and drink coffee under gray skies. Not my thing.
But then I saw what happened at the ICE center.
At 4 a.m., coffee in hand, half-asleep and scrolling TikTok, I saw it—frog people dancing the cha-cha slide in front of riot cops. Inflatable bodies bouncing like cartoon avatars. Performance art, ridiculous costumes, street chants woven into absurd choreography. And I just sat there. Stunned. Emotional. Awake in a way I didn’t expect to be.
Because it wasn’t just protest—it was performance alchemy.
It mocked fascism—with magick.
And it made me swell with hope.
That sounds crazy. I know it does. But it felt sacred in a way I can’t shake. It felt like the America I want to live in.
Not the kind obsessed with polished messaging or well-behaved resistance.
Not the kind that thinks protesting needs to be grim, sterile, or approved.
But the kind that fights authoritarian power with joy, with absurdity, with ritual—with a frog suit and a beat drop.
What I saw wasn’t weakness.
It was resilience through ridiculousness.
It was the use of humor and dance and theater to pierce through the armored soul of an institution designed to dehumanize.
It was the ICE center—a literal manifestation of control, fear, and removal—being turned into a goddamn dance floor.
There’s power in that. There’s defiance in that.
Because sometimes the most dangerous thing you can do is refuse to perform seriousness on their terms.
Watching that frog person—who later posted from inside the suit—hit every beat of the cha-cha slide like it was divine choreography felt like something more than resistance. It felt like an invocation. A mirror held up to power that didn’t just reflect—it distorted. It exaggerated. It laughed. And in that laughing, something cracked open.
This is what absurdism looks like when it grows teeth.
When it dances in the streets.
When it knows the stakes but chooses art anyway.
I don’t know what’s going to happen in this country. Some days I feel like the spell of despair is winning. But today, watching a frog costume dance in front of ICE while riot cops stood frozen in confusion—I felt hope.
Real, absurd, irrational, cha-cha sliding hope.