The Strategic Logic of the Naked Bicycle Ride
Also, what's actually happening in Portland? - BCB #169
One of the questions most intensely in the air on the Blue side right now is how to respond to Trump. To protest the deployment of National Guard troops, Portland decided to call an emergency naked bicycle ride. And then 1,000 people actually did it.
Many other people wondered why. My professional opinion is that this is less silly than it seems, so I’m now going to methodically ruin the fun by analyzing this protest tactic.
The strategy here is to capture media attention to humorously demonstrate that Portland is not a “war ravaged city” as Trump said. Before, we had pictures of people in black yelling at stoic Federal agents. Now we get the absurdity of men with guns standing over naked grandmothers.
And while non-violent conflict is not necessarily non-coercive, this tactic is harmless which makes it more broadly acceptable. To get all nerdy, you could say it’s aimed at the largest segment of the power strategy mix. It mocks power without threatening anyone. And it’s a classic. “Public disrobing” is what Gene Sharp called protesting naked in his 1973 list of 198 non-violent conflict tactics.
Or that’s the theory. Did it actually change the narrative? MediaCloud data says the narrative did change. “Portland and violence” was much more common than “Portland and naked” up until the day before the ride. Then “violence” fell and was actually less common than “naked” for a few days, and remained at a lower level for the next week.
Also, the story was more common in Red media sources than Blue sources, so it succeeded in reaching people who didn’t already agree with the idea that there’s something wrong with National Guard deployments.
And what did they think of it? Well, some thought it was disgraceful, such as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson:
“What I’ve seen is the abuse of law enforcement by radical leftist activists,” Johnson said. “Most recently, the most threatening thing I’ve seen is the naked bicyclers in Portland who were protesting ICE down there. I mean, it’s getting really ugly.”
Elected officials standing behind Johnson appeared to smile and laugh at the remark; Johnson did not.
But I’m willing to bet that many more people were smiling than not. In the videos it’s clear which side is having more fun. “I don’t want your revolution if I can’t dance,” as the saying goes.
What’s actually happening in Portland though?
And yet it’s so easy to get caught up in arguments about narrative that one can forget to ask about the facts on the ground. Conflict is like that. And unfortunately it takes a modest amount of effort to figure out what’s been happening in Portland, which I blame partly on the fact that news reports are incremental and partly on the fact that many sources have something to prove. (Previously: What we don’t know because of polarization.) So here’s my attempt at a brief straight-news summary.
Since June, there have been nightly protests outside ICE facilities that sometimes involve violence, according to the BBC who interviewed the neighbors:
Gray’s Landing resident Cindy Colgrove, 63, says it has been “115 days of hell” since protests against Trump intensified outside the ICE facility in June.
“I only come out during the day,” says Ms Colgrove while walking her neighbour’s dog near a small group of peaceful protesters.
“You see all the black-covered Antifa people aren’t here. They come with the night. In the daytime it’s all these little old senior people that think they’re changing the world before they pass from this earth.”
According to the most comprehensive timeline I could find, The crowd seems to normally be in the range of dozens of protestors, who have vandalized Federal buildings and lit things on fire and “rioted” on several nights. Federal agents have sometimes responded with flash grenades and tear gas. The Portland FBI says 198 arrests have been made since June.
Apparently neighborhood residents “disagree over who is to blame for the violence.”
The video below has lots of protest footage. It reports mostly from the Federal Protective Service side, which is interesting and seems somewhat less common than the many other (mostly amateur) videos reporting from the protester side.
One of the officers says, when asked what’s been happening,
Number one, a lot of First Amendment-protected activity. And then occasionally we’ll have where it will not be peaceful, and we’ll start having illegal activity.
I could not find reliable reports of the approximate number of protesters each night this year, but it’s worth noting that 40,000-50,000 marched in each of the two big No Kings protests in June and October. With 198 arrests during the same period, that means something like 0.2% of all protesters have been violent.
There is also, however, a continuing herd of inflatable animals, another strategic response by Portland’s very serious protesters.
Image of the Week
via Holly Anderson