SALEM, Ore., Jan. 20 — Trained de-escalators at the Hot Dogs Against Fascism tent pour a jug of water into the stinging eyes of a man from Portland Democratic Socialists of America who’d been pepper sprayed just moments earlier by a pro-ICE provocateur. They give him a towel, standing around him in a tight-knit circle; a legal observer in a fluorescent green hat tells him not to worry, as she saw the whole thing.
This man is just one of the 300 people from across the state, give or take, who convened yesterday at Salem’s capitol building to attend the recently formed Si Se Puede Coalition’s “We Make America Great” rally.
Hours later, another provocateur forced a rally-goer blocking their path to fall over his own bike. The man on bike said he was okay, but he knew he couldn’t react because—as a brown man—he’d be more likely to get arrested.
On the other side of the crowd, Marlene Ascencio Preciado and her partner held a squirming child in their arms while listening to a live cover of “You Raise Me Up.” It was Preciado’s first time bringing her family to a protest.
“They’re detaining USA citizens—teenagers, even the students I work with. I fear it could be one of them, too,” Preciado, who is a teacher in the Beaverton School District, said.
She said she doesn’t her child to worry that “one of his friends may be gone; they might not ever see them again. Or the parents of their friends. (I want) for them to not be living in fear.”
There’s been a 7,900 increase in ICE and Border Patrol arrests over the past year, according to a recent Innovation Law Lab report. And in just the first week of 2026, the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition reported 42 detentions.
Preciado says her local of the statewide SEIU Local 503 put together resources for staff, and that organizers in her unit made a list of community supports.
Many unions and community organizations brought carpools of people to the Salem rally: Pineros Y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, University of Oregon Student Workers-United Auto Workers Local 8121, the Sunrise Movement and chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America from across the state.
Portland DSA co-chair Brian Denning said he was excited to see the AFL-CIO in Minneapolis call for national solidarity in a general strike starting January 23.
PCUN also called for a series of six one-day general strikes in Oregon leading up to May Day 2026—January 19 was the second.
“How do we get to the point where regular working people can pull off a general strike?” Denning said. “The shootings in Portland certainly emphasize the fact that Border Patrol and ICE are working heavily in every major city in the United States… like a terror cell.”
So, he says, Portland DSA started to take on the task of building “the structures to fight back,” by providing whistle kits, coordinating with PIRC, going to city businesses and asking them to put up public signs of refusal to ICE, holding major rallies, utilizing the control they have in city council to strengthen sanctuary city laws and targeting companies who do direct work with ICE—like Avelo Airlines, who pulled out of Salem after community pressure—to hit them where it hurts, economically.
Also in attendance: YDSA’s national co-chair Daniel Salup-Cid, who was in-state for a convention.
Salup-Cid, a recent graduate of Florida International University who’s seen Miami’s “No Kings” and other big protests, said he was impressed by Salem’s turnout.
“It shows an appetite for rallies and mass action,” Salup-Cid said.
With mass action comes mass responsibility, as Carmen said, who was organizing yesterday with Hot Dogs Against Fascism: “If you’re going to advocate for this many people to be in a certain place, well aware that there might be counter protesters—we try to accommodate.”
Carmen’s group sent folks on-and-off to attempt de-escalation of the pro-ICE provocateurs, and his fellow organizers ended up treating the pepper spray injury after it happened.
“There’s a certain culture of helpfulness when things like this happen,” Carmen said. “So any supplies that they needed—they just came and took it. It’s understood ‘what’s mine is yours’ because we’re all fighting the same people.”
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