Troutdale

In Troutdale, I found a handful of people standing around in a parking lot getting ready to drive around with flags on their vehicles. I talked to Iris, who said their reasons for participating in the protest was to oppose war, authoritarianism, and the genocide in Gaza. To them "authoritarianism boils down to the will of the people doesn't matter.” Iris saw examples of this in continued US support for Israel and "ICE hunting people" when the majority of Americans oppose both.

Gresham

In Gresham, US Senator Ron Wyden, Oregon Senator Chris Gorsek, and State Representative Zach Hudson were among the political figures who spoke.

I spoke with several attendees of the Gresham rally including Ally and Erent. Ally, 12, told me she was there protesting against Trump with her family. She told me that Trump “thinks he’s trying to make America great when he’s making it worse.” and that he’s “trying to take people’s rights away” and take people from their homes. Erent, 73, a military veteran emphasized the military’s oath to the constitution which he said Trump was attacking. Erent said Trump is “tearing down every guardrail there is; He thinks he’s a dictator.” Erent said that Trump’s attacks on Iran effectively amount to declaring war without approval from Congress: “that’s the prerogative of Congress not the President.”

Damascus

At the Damascus protest Mo, 74, said, “I love living in this country with democracy;” and that she opposed political rhetoric about ICE agents being hypothetically used to patrol voting locations, which she sees as evidence of democracy being under threat.

Rhonda, 69, said that she was there “to resist this take over of our government and our democracy.” Rhonda also agrees that the president “declared war without asking Congress.” Rhonda says that Trump “started a war he doesn’t know how to finish.” I counted 182 people at the protest in Damascus.

Sandy

In Sandy, Margret said they were protesting the fascist Trump regime that doesn’t believe in due process or the rule of law. To them clear examples of this were the actions of ICE agents taking people from their homes without warrants, dragging people out their cars and people being deported to countries to which they had no connection.

Michael said that the Trump "administration is trying to ruin the country and turn it into an authoritarian state," and enriching itself in the process. He said he viewed Trump's claims that peace talks were underway with Iran as being done so he could enable insider trading. He also expressed concern that Trump's threats to bomb Iran's infrastructure would be a violation of the laws of war and the Geneva conventions. Organizers count of attendees at the Sandy protest was 413.

On Saturday January 31, 2026 the activist group Multnomah East Indivisible held a “ICE Out for Good” rally in opposition to the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the community. The protests were held in response to the killings of two Minnesotans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agents.

The protest came after the Gresham City Council passed an emergency declaration over the community impacts of immigration enforcement the previous week after sustained community pressure to do so. The speakers at the rally included two members of the Oregon legislature: Oregon State Senator Chris Gorsek and State Representative Zach Hudson, Joshua Dunham a local pastor, and Raquel Barajas an immigrants rights advocate.

Oregon State Senator Chris Gorsek expressed concern over immigration agents wearing masks to conceal their identities describing it as “hiding in plain sight.” Gorsek said that he had “substantial concerns” that the training federal immigration agents were receiving wasn’t thorough.

When Gorsek rhetorically asked what happens when law enforcement aren’t well trained, a protester answered his question “people get shot in the street.” “Right” Gorsek said, “and violations of civil rights and civil liberties.” Gorsek also ridiculed ICE for, “this nonsense of arresting people in hospitals, near schools, near courthouses - no, no, no, no, we have to say no to that.” Since the Trump Administration rescinded guidance around “sensitive locations,” which had previously discouraged ICE from doing immigration enforcement at schools, hospitals and churches, concern about the presence of ICE at such locations has increased.

A recent example brought up by several speakers was the detainment of Diana Crespo, a second grade student at Alder Elementary, along with her family when they took her to get medical care at a local hospital.

Rep. Zach Hudson described ICE as “operating outside the law” and “patrolling the streets and stopping anyone who they think look foreign” or non-white and “insisting that they prove their citizenship or legal residency. It’s as if the fourth amendment somehow doesn’t apply to anyone with the wrong skin tone.”

Hudson said that the “horrific killings” of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents had awakened many to “the violence that can be inflicted by the hands of the state.” But said that, “For many in our communities of color, this is nothing new and some of us are only waking up to that now”

He described the detention and then relocation of Diana and her family, who were applying for asylum, to Texas as them and thousands like them being “disappeared” and said that “nothing about this is keeping us safe.” (Diana Crespo and her family arrived back in Oregon escorted by Oregon Congresswoman Maxine Dexter on Feb. 7, 2026.)

Hudson called on protesters to vote in the upcoming midterm elections to shift control of the US House of Representatives away from Republicans who are “enabling Trump’s takeover” to the Democratic party. Losing their majority, Hudson said, would mean that Republicans wouldn’t be able to control the budget process or “block a third impeachment motion.”

Local pastor Rev. Joshua Dunham, who previously called on the Gresham City Council to pass an emergency declaration spoke at the “ICE out for Good” rally. Dunham expressed regret that “it took the deaths of Renee and Alex, two white folks, for us to wake up because we know we know that they were not the first to lose their lives at the hands of ICE and sadly won’t be the last.”

He characterized ICE as a “secret police” targeting people of color and the state of immigration as a crisis of conscience and a crisis of faith. He posited that Jesus as a brown skinned refugee “likely would have been rounded up by ICE and his family deported.” Dunham said he wanted ICE out of Gresham for good and called for the abolishment of ICE.

Raquel Barajas, an immigrants rights advocate, said that the local organizing that went into lobbying the Gresham City Council into passing a resolution declaring an emergency over immigration policy on Jan. 20, 2026 “made our power impossible to ignore” and “the Gresham City Council listened and they passed a resolution.” Barajas described the resolution as “a promise that must now be turned into action, it is the beginning of a conversation and not the end.” Barajas called for the abolishment of ICE and for action to be taken to pressure Gresham City Council to end “all loopholes of collaboration with ICE like the Flock cameras.” The Gresham City Attorney, Ellen Van Riper, has denied that the city has any contract with Flock group.

Protesters marched along Burnside with a set of signs with the names and photos of people who are known to have either been killed by immigration officers or died while in ICE custody in 2025 through January of 2026. According to reporting from The Guardian 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025 and eight had died in January of 2026. Dunham said, “We are remembering those who lost their lives at the hands of ICE” before the signs were brought out to lead the march.

Note: I canvassed for Rep. Zach Hudson and Sen. Chris Gorsek in the lead up to the 2024 November election.

On July 17, 2025 the activist organization Indivisible called for nationwide protests in response to various actions and policies implemented by the Trump administration and the Republican controlled congress. The significance of the date and the name chosen for the mass action: “good trouble lives on!” commemorates civil rights leader and former congressman John Lewis who died July 17, 2020.

At 2:18 that very morning the Senate passed the Recissions Act of 2025. The act rescinded funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides grants to local NPR and PBS member stations around the country.

One such protest took place at the SE Stark St and Cesar E. Chavez Blvd intersection near Laurelhurst Park. The protest was one of a series of protests that have followed since the Hands Off and No Kings day protests called for by Indivisible and 50501. The signs I saw protesters holding showed that continuity: some warned that Trump wanted to be a king, some held sings protesting ICE, some were concerned about the cutting of funding to NPR and to state Medicaid programs. One sign I saw protested the US sending military aid to Israel.

One of the organizers at the event told me the protest was made up of multiple local indivisible chapters. They told me that the chapters were created according to the new Portland City Council district map.

Later that afternoon at a Gresham park, the organizers of the Multnomah East Indivisible group held an event to recruit more members to their leadership team. Two current Oregon Senators spoke at the event: Chris Gorsek whose district includes Gresham, and Senate Majority Whip Lou Fredrick. Sen. Fredrick recounted how he met John Lewis and had mutual connections with him as well. During his speech he condemned the current state of immigration enforcement he said that immigration officials “clearly have a quota of brown-skinned people to rough up” and that the US now has concentration camps that cruelly and inhumanely lock people in cages. He told those present that they should step up to make the change for a better future they wanted to see. He said that “no one else is gonna come up and do it, you have to do it.” Fredrick condemned the banning of books and efforts to impose increased restrictions on voting and noted the high levels of voter turn-out in their election which they attributed to Oregon’s use of mail-in voting.

This post was originally published on Medium, on June 20th.

On June 14, “No Kings” protests happened around the country on the same day as a military parade was scheduled to occur in Washington DC with the stated purpose of celebrating the US Army’s 250 birthday. It was also President Donald Trump’s birthday.

Which led many to believe that the military parade was actually happening because Trump wanted a military parade; And, the coinciding of his birthday with the US Army’s was a good pretense for Trump to use to get the military parade he had previously wanted but had been unable to make materialize. The events were planned by a broad coalition of organizations including 50501 and Indivisible.

The “No Kings” protest in Gresham started with a rally outside Gresham City Hall at 10:00 and after opening speeches, marched up the sidewalks around 10:30 on Eastman Parkway, turned left to walk alongside Burnside Rd, crossed the street at Civic Dr and walked back up to Eastman Parkway to return to the plaza next to Gresham City Hall for closing speeches before the event wrapped up after 12:00 PM. Organizers estimate that at least a thousand people showed up for the Gresham protest.

There were speeches delivered by a variety of politicians and individuals connected to various Democratic organizations including: Oregon State Representative, Zach Hudson; the chairperson of the Multnomah County Democrats, Salome Chimuku; and Heather Coleman Cox, who founded Multnomah East Indivisible (which organized the event) after the previous April 5th “Hands Off” event and was recently elected to the Gresham Barlow School Board.

In her opening statements, Heather Coleman Cox described the protest as being about rejecting “the idea that one man can rule unchecked.” They continued, “we will not stand by while the foundations of our sacred democracy our torn down.” They argued that after recent overreaches of executive power by Donald Trump (including the Federalizing of the California National Guard in response to clashes between federal officials and protesters that followed from immigration related raids of local businesses and the detainment of, David Huerta, President of the California SEIU) a federalized national guard might eventually come to Oregon. Coleman told the crowd that the current protest was following in the footsteps of the civil rights movement and that American principles of democracy, justice and equality were being eroded. To address this, she said that the people would be the moral compass that would address injustice when elected officials fail to uphold them. She told protesters they were there “protesting to reclaim the soul of our democracy.” She concluded her opening statement by emphasizing that the protests were intended to be a “peaceful, nonviolent, rally.”

Catherine Caruso, a former US Forest Service employee and former US Army National Guard veteran, led demonstrators in the pledge of allegiance.

Rep. Zach Hudson performed a decently long limerick styled poem about Donald Trump. And then rolled off a list of characteristics of fascism he argued demonstrated the ways Trump has embraced fascism. He then referenced the “this machine kills fascists” sticker that was on Woody Guthrie’s Guitar before he performed a cover of his song “All You Fascists Bound to Lose” in which he referenced JD Vance and Donald Trump.

The march up Burnside began shortly after.

When they returned to the plaza next to Gresham City Hall after the march, Salome Chimuku, the chairperson of the Multnomah County Democrats, gave an impassioned speech where she said that people should be uncomfortable with recent actions taken by the federal government against immigrant and refugee communities: “No, we should not be comfortable as they are kidnapping our community members and taking them up to Tacoma without due process,” she said. Which seems to be a reference to an asylum seeker who was detained by ICE officials outside an immigration court in Portland and almost 1,500 others detained inside an ICE detainment facility in Tacoma, Wa. She urged the protesters to continue to resist attacks against marginalized communities and progressive leaders because, she said “The moment you are silent is the day that they come for the person who was going to protect you,” she said.

She also criticized the media for not covering the Gresham “No Kings” event which she described as an attempt to create a narrative that people in Gresham where not opposed to the actions of the Trump administration. She said that those in attendance “should be proud to let people know that there are people here [in Gresham] who say no, who continue to say, ‘this is not good enough.’”

KGW listed the Gresham rally as a part of their coverage of the “No Kings” protests happening across Oregon. The local newspaper The Gresham Outlook’s only reporter, Christopher Keizur, was attending Mt. Hood Community College’s graduation ceremony during the protest and has since published a short article on the event.

The next speaker was Juliette Kudrick, who recently finished working for State Rep. Zach Hudson as part of a program with Portland State University. She said that Donald Trump wanted to make the county one for “wealthy elites while the rest of us can go hungry and homeless.” And that, “Donald Trump [is wasting] our money on a birthday parade for himself, all while he slashes funding for Medicaid and food stamps.” (also called SNAP: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)

Kudrick says that autocracy is fundamentally opposed to principles of American democracy: “we do not believe in monarchs or tyrants we believe in democracy.”

Kudrick said she felt hopeful during the rally and that, “it is hope that inspires us to demonstrate, to fight against the status quo and to take a stand against wannabe dictators!”

The last speaker, KC Hansen, (a former chair of The Democratic Party of Oregon) celebrated the birthday of the US Army and the American flag, and mocked Trump’s. She said that the President was weaponizing the American flag to divide people from one another. She described the American flag as a symbol embodying “aspiration hope and [a] coming together of many people for a greater cause,” which she says aligns with the goals of the “No Kings” protest. And that to her, “love of country means loving our neighbors.”

Note: I canvassed for Rep. Zach Hudson in the lead up to the 2024 November election.