Portlander of the Year: The Frog

The Portland Frog will no longer wear the frog suit. Let’s just get that out of the way up front. They don’t even like being called the Portland Frog; they prefer “Toad,” and that’s what other protesters call them. The Portland Frog doesn’t believe in the concept of nonviolent resistance that is now associated with their image worldwide. The whole thing, really, was a huge misunderstanding. You might say it blew up.

Seth Todd, 24, bought the now-famous green inflatable on Amazon in June for about $30. They still just have that one frog costume—the one you and everyone saw them wearing Oct. 2 when a U.S. Department of Homeland Security agent sprayed chemicals directly into the air vent—and it is still laden with chemical irritants. They had difficulty breathing for about a week after that night, despite Todd’s famously defiant response at the time, “I’ve had spicier tamales.”

Today, Todd tries to wear it as little as possible. The inside is still coated with chemicals and triggers coughing. So, no, Todd won’t wear it to protest at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility on South Macadam Avenue, and they won’t wear it for your newspaper photo shoot for being named 2025 Portlander of the Year. (They did eventually consent to wearing a loaner costume on the cover.)

Also, if you want Todd to wax philosophical about how the frog is now an unofficial mascot for the city of Portland and an international symbol of peaceful protest, they’re not going to do that shit either. How does it feel to be named 2025 Portlander of the Year?

“I don’t know. Kinda meh, you know. It’s nice, I guess.”

After the Portland Frog went viral in early October, the symbol exploded: Local boutiques sold out of plush frog toys and someone plastered Shepard Fairey-style “Don’t Obey” posters around town. Those stickers have been spotted as far away as Louisiana. Protesters in frog costumes marched in Oct. 18 No Kings rallies in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and London. The Portland Frog became a shorthand for confronting despotism with absurdity and whimsy, like if Abbie Hoffman tried to levitate the Pentagon dressed as Bluey.

When the year began, we penciled into our publication calendar the idea to finish 2025 by naming a Portlander of the Year. Like Time magazine’s long-standing Person of the Year honor, the title would be bestowed upon the person whose impact was felt most strongly across the city, for good or ill. By the end of autumn, it was clear that this figure wasn’t really a person at all. It was a concept. It was a frog.

Also by that time, Todd’s relationship with the frog suit had become fraught, and not just because of the smell. That video of the DHS agent spraying the vent? Misunderstood from the start, Todd says.

“I am not being peaceful at all,” they say. “When the video was being recorded, I was in the process of trying to de-arrest somebody, trying to prevent people from being detained by ICE. That isn’t a peaceful action. People misconstrued that. And I just had them assume that I’m a peaceful guy, and I’m not.”

As it turns out, Todd actually agrees more with his fiercest critics, who say he’s disguising violent revolution in a cute costume, than he does with his biggest fans, who admire his puncturing of authoritarian self-importance. But powerful art rarely stays within the control of its creators. And frogs, you may remember from biology class, are the product of metamorphosis.

After weeks of escalating rhetoric on Truth Social—Portland was “like living in hell” and was “war-ravaged”—President Donald Trump announced in September that he was sending federal troops to get the town under control. Even the most disassociated among us had to poke our heads up from our national media blackouts to figure out what this would mean. Would we have to cross a line of National Guard troops to get into the grocery store? How would we explain this to our children? Wait, are we actually war-ravaged?

The answer was no, of course not. This was political theater. And Portland went on to put on a show.

At first, most of the attention went to the chicken. Jack Dickinson, 27, had been a stalwart Portland protester all year, first at the Tesla dealership on Macadam and then at the ICE building down the street. He originally chose the zip-up chicken onesie as a nod to the aphorism Trump Always Chickens Out, a wonky criticism of the president’s economic policies, for the first No Kings protest in June.

When Trump sent U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to survey the scene of our burning hellscape on Oct. 7, the resulting footage showed her gazing out from the ICE facility’s roof upon a handful of hecklers and one tall chicken.

An interview with the chicken the next day overcame any stereotype of having a bird brain: Dickinson has an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Oregon State University and a graduate degree in economics, with a focus on game theory. In an interview with WW, Dickinson explained “the purpose of bringing a costume to an authoritarian consolidation.”

“What they rely on is fear. So by coming out in an absurdist manner, it speaks to them, to some extent, that we’re actually not that afraid.”

That was the same week the Portland Frog got pepper-sprayed in the air vent, shooting the unsuspecting amphibian into the stratosphere of viral internet fame. After getting pepper-sprayed, subsequent videos of the Portland Frog showed it dry-humping the air in front of a line of law enforcement officers, though, not getting into the specifics of game theory.

So, the chicken was the brains of the operation. The frog became the body. People needed something to give them hope during a tense time, and they got a bug-eyed frog wearing a smart blue kerchief.

Seth Todd was born in Portland and identifies as nonbinary, Mexican and Latino. They dropped out of Milwaukie High School to learn carpentry at Job Corps, the free career training program for low-income teens and young adults. Today, Todd works at a temp agency for the schedule flexibility to be able to protest.

An introvert, Todd’s natural habitat is at home in their Buckman apartment playing the video game Minecraft. A fellow protester warned that Todd isn’t very chatty and would be difficult to interview. This proved to be true. Their answers were short and gave only the exact information required, with occasional hints of sarcasm.

Why did you choose the symbol of the frog?

“I just really like frogs and I thought wearing a frog costume would be a morale booster for a bit and it was.”

Do your co-workers know you’re the Portland Frog?

“If they do, they don’t bring it up.”

What was it like to get that much attention?

“It’s very stressful. It’s all right. It’s not too bad. It’s kind of died down now. I was being doxed and stuff, so that wasn’t as fun.”

Todd is referring to an Oct. 3 post on X by rightist media gadfly Andy Ngo that disclosed Todd’s full name and birthday and shared screenshots of Todd’s former social media posts, including one that calls for bombing and murdering government employees.

On the one hand, this meant that Trump-aligned media spent a chunk of October debating the ideology of an inflatable frog, which probably counts as a win for the frog. That being said, those posts weren’t written a few years ago when Todd was still an adolescent; Todd thinks they’re from about January 2025.

When asked if they’re the “Antifa anti-government violent extremist” that Ngo says they are, Todd stands behind the posts. “I said what I said.”

It’s only when discussing the politics of immigration and protesting that Todd finally gets verbose during the interview. Yes, they are anti-fascist; their new Instagram account is for the “Portland antifa frog.” They wish that more protesters came to ICE, maybe enough to consistently block the driveway to the facility. But ’80s aerobicizers should stay home.

“I have a huge issue with people who show up and don’t actually do anything,” they say. “If you’re just showing up to do a little performative stuff and then go home and not cause civil disturbances, why show up at all?”

Actually, Todd can’t show up, either.

Another thing that Ngo dug up: Todd’s federal citation from DHS stemming from a protest on the South Waterfront on July 8. That is also true, Todd says. They threw a water bottle at the ICE gate and encroached on the federal property after being told to back off. Part of the reason that Todd doesn’t protest at ICE anymore is because they are legally not allowed to be near the Macadam building for six months, starting after a court date in early November.

But the frogs reproduced quickly. Amazon sold out of the costume for a while. The inflatables were so ubiquitous at the No Kings march that restaurants and bars started offering free beer, pizza and discounts to anyone dressed in one. U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) wore frog earrings at a town hall meeting that was also attended by at least half a dozen members of the “Portland frog brigade,” a loosely organized group inspired by the original Portland Frog. Just last week, the frog brigade attended another town hall, this one with Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield and Senate President Rob Wagner (D-Lake Oswego).

“Just thank you for everything you’re doing, in order to draw attention in a really respectful way and a humorous way, but to an incredibly important issue,” Wagner said in a video on Bluesky with the frogs. “We’re really proud of the work that you’re doing.”

When City Councilor Jamie Dunphy saw the video of the Portland Frog saying they’ve had “spicier tamales” than the pepper spray, he also felt civic pride. “That kind of Portland absurdist defiance is so rich and filling for me that it’s an entire meal.”

Further, Dunphy says, the frog “sparked something in the protest movement that nobody fully appreciated was there under the surface. And when it came out, Portland and the rest of the globe leaned in hard.”

The Portland ICE facility quickly saw protesters playing games of Twister and holding tea parties, book clubs, knitting circles and full aerobics classes. (The media departments of ICE and DHS did not respond to a request for comment about costumed protesters.) The city held an “emergency” World Naked Bike Ride on Oct. 12. Seeing the momentum of the protests go in this direction was a massive relief to Portlanders who were flashing back to the destruction of the 2020 protests.

It also got the attention of the national news cycle and suddenly, the Rose City had its “Keep Portland Weird” groove back.

City Councilor Steve Novick not only approves of making the Portland Frog the person of the year, he thinks the Lou Reed and David Bowie song “Hop Frog” should be the song of the year.

“The frog and the chicken and various other protest animals have gone a long way toward restoring Portland’s pre-pandemic, goofy Portlandia image,” the District 3 councilor says. “And I think that is not only good for civic morale, I think it will help spur our economic recovery.”

Part of the reason Portland has fallen to 80th out of 81 U.S. markets for real estate investment, Novick says, is because people got the idea during the 2020 protests that Portland is in ruins. It has been very difficult to erase that image from the national psyche. But the protests—and the frog, in particular—have reminded the country that Portland is still that magical place they heard about a decade ago.

Novick hopes that translates into more young, talented people wanting to move here again and real estate developers wondering if maybe they wrote off Portland too quickly.

“This is a cool place where cool people want to be,” Novick says. “And that’s vague and touchy-feely, but it’s true. We don’t have a bunch of Fortune 500 companies here. What we have—in addition to great neighborhoods and solid public transportation, among other things—is largely a vibe.”

The Portland Frog is currently on a mental health break. “I’ve been going through a lot,” they say. They suspect they’ve done long-term damage to their respiratory system after getting chemical-sprayed in an enclosed space (the frog head), but the immediate mental toll of the international attention is certain. Todd is focusing on other ways they can serve the community, such as volunteering with ICE neighborhood watch groups.

Now that the weather has turned and a federal judge blocked Trump’s plan to deploy the National Guard here for the foreseeable future, the protests at ICE are much smaller. The frog suit lives in Todd’s apartment closet. Someone told them they should hang on to it for the history museum, but nobody has called.

Perhaps this is just as well. The Portland Frog was never just Toad. Instead, it reminded us who we are as Portlanders.