Sweating Out the Fascism With Anti-ICE Aerobics

On Sunday, November 9, roughly 20 people met outside Portland’s Immigrations and Customs Enforcement facility for an aerobics workout class. Decked out in neon leotards, the participants did grapevines to classic, upbeat ‘80s new wave tunes in front of the boarded-up ICE building, where right-wing paramilitary types were conspiring to arrest and deport people. 

Sunday’s “Sweating out the Fascists” aerobics class was another in a series of increasingly absurdist-seeming protests at Portland’s Immigrations and Customs Enforcement facility, nestled deep in the South Waterfront. The inflatable frog has become the mascot of Portland’s anti-ICE protests, but other inflatable characters also make frequent appearances, as does a man on horseback. People have also shown up for Latin dance and crochet lessons. 

“We just wanted to make sure we could have our voices heard, and this was a fun way to do it.” Jennifer, one of the teachers of Sunday’s class, told the Mercury. “It’s also a way to draw a contrast when people across the country are saying we are a war torn city that’s on fire. We’re not. We’re a fun-loving city… we’re here to have fun and make these guys over here look a little silly. It makes them look like they’re doing cosplay.”

By “these guys,” Jennifer meant the federal officers at ICE, who showed themselves halfway through the workout. They stalked on the roof of the facility with gigantic pepper ball guns, drove a large bus with shaded windows into the loading zone, glowered at the proceedings from behind balaclavas, and fired some pepper balls at protestors camping out closer to the entrance gate of the facility, across the street from the kitschy aerobics class.

It was uncanny seeing Eric, a coach for Fulcrum Fitness, yell “IT’S TIME TO SWEAT OUT THE FASCISTS” into a microphone in front of an anti-ICE aerobics class. But there is a historical precedent for anti-fascist aerobics workouts. 

It all started with actor/activist/early aerobics influencer Jane Fonda. Fonda made her most famous political move in 1972, taking a trip to Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam in an attempt to see beyond the prevailing narratives of Western involvement in the Vietnam War, and deliver letters to American POWs there. When a photo of Fonda sitting in a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun turret made it back to the United States, it made her the single most hated person in America, “Hanoi Jane” to millions of Nixon-poisoned weirdos.

Fonda didn’t give up on her activist work, but she would later become best known for bringing aerobics to the masses. After meeting Leni Cazden, a pioneering Los Angeles-based teacher of group aerobics classes, she was hooked. Fonda opened a gym with Cazden where she taught several classes a week, wrote a book about aerobics, and famously, starred in a series of videos that brought the group aerobics experience to living rooms everywhere and birthed the home fitness video market. 

These videos have a very specific aesthetic, the sort that can seem cringe in one decade and kitchy-cool in another: soft focus lenses, pastel colored rooms, neon-pastel leotards and leg-warmers, wild blowout haircuts, and textured, dynamic synth soundtracks, and a light, positive tone, with interspersed “woos” and Fonda telling her students to “feel the burn.” Jane, still connected to the struggle even today, put a lot of the money she made from these videos into New Left political action committees. 

Which brings us back to Sunday.

“Some folks and I got together and decided we were pretty fed up with what was going on with our community,” said Karen Werstein, one of the organizers of the event. “We don’t like our friends and members of the community getting disappeared for no reason and ICE’s presence here is too strong, too full on. We decided to do something joyful and energetic and bring that energy in front, and bring support and bring attention to something serious, but in a fun way, so we can keep bringing that energy.”

Rae, a healthcare worker, emphasized the utility of group aerobics as a connective force in the community, the sort you draw on when organizing. 

“It’s something that keeps us grounded, keeps us held together in our community, keeps us in our joy. When we reinforce the connections within our local community, that is a way of defying the fascist government trying to overtake our cities, rip families apart, and deport people even when they’ve been contributing members of our community their whole life, so this is something that keeps us in community,” Rae said.“We get our heart rate up, we’re dancing together, we’re moving in synchronicity, we’re feeling each other’s energy, we’re vibing.” 

“I feel a lot of confusion. It’s so counter to who we are, as Oregonians, as humans, and as Americans. This is not what I believe our country was formed to be,” said Jessica, when asked about the ICE agents shifting around during the proceedings. 

At the same time, Jessica said, the long history of racism and injustice in the United States has paved the way for this moment. 

“I think it’s in our roots and we aren’t acknowledging that. So I think that’s bubbling up now, in this way,” she said. “It makes me really fucking sad.”  

Aside from the pepper-ball firings, and also a local weirdo showing up in Trump gear and blasting loud, terrible pro-Trump rap music, the event came and went without incident. At one point, one of the aerobic participants, working out with a big “STOP ICE CRUELTY” sign, crossed the street and invited some of the more seasoned protestors to join. Some of them took them up on the offer. One protester did routines while wielding a sign that read “ICE AGENTS CAN’T MAKE THEIR PARTNER CUM.”

“I didn’t pay much attention to politics until Obama was elected, and I didn’t get actively involved until Trump was elected,” said Jennifer, a healthcare worker who changed into scrubs to attend a healthcare employee protest at the facility that went down right after the aerobics demonstration ended. “I naively believed that, if we elected a Black president, we beat racism. But that was wrong, as I learned shortly after.”

Werstein said she came to think critically about ICE in Portland after sending her kids to King School, a predominantly Black and Latino school in Northeast Portland. Werstein said she noticed that many of the Spanish-speaking families wouldn’t show up to school events because they heard ICE was in the area, and didn’t feel safe leaving their homes. 

“I thought that was terrifying. I think being a parent is one of the hardest jobs in the world and if you have to add concern about your safety every single day, or worry that you can’t go support your kid at their school because you’re afraid an ICE agent will come and kidnap you?” Werstein said. “That was when it hit home for me, seeing it in my school community.”

Werstein said she hopes events like the aerobics protest can help activists avoid burnout.

“It’s hard, there’s a lot of ups and downs throughout the day,” Werstein said. “I think it’s good for people to have a moment together, and realize there’s more of us who want to care and support our friends and neighbors and community.”