A February 7 protest at the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis turned decidedly phallic then hundreds of protesters threw purple and pink dildos at vehicles as he drives out the gate of the facility that houses the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office.
“Fuck you” chants rang out as the dildos bounced off a sheriff’s SUV. Police rushed to collect the dildos and throw them over a fence, away from the protesters who were shouting “eat a dick.”
Since early January, near-daily protests in Minneapolis have demanded an end to the federal occupation of the city, where 3,000 immigration agents have been deployed. until a relapse at the end of February. The demonstrators were largely nonviolent. The ICE agents failed to do so, leading to the murder of two local residents, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.
This particular anti-ICE protest used an unlikely projectile: the humble rubber shaft.
Operation Dildo Blitz
The dildo protest in Minneapolis was the brainchild of Rook T. Winchester, a pseudonym for a man who declined to use his legal name for security reasons.
Very much Portland’s inflatable “protest frogs” And Chicago’s speedo-clad protesterthe point of “Operation Dildo Blitz” is known as tactical frivolity– that is, a humorous form of protest designed to expose as absurd the government’s claims that protesters are dangerous or violent.
Absurd protesting, Winchester believes, also irritates immigration agents in some way. Mockery, he said Newsgroup rewiringis “kryptonite for these fascists.”
He came up with the idea after meeting a young woman at a prayer vigil outside the ICE detention center in Florida known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” After her father was arrested by ICE and transported to that facility, she moved in with a conservative aunt who supports President Donald Trump.
The aunt later kicked her out for being outspoken about her political beliefs, Winchester recalled. In response, the woman “placed a suction cup dildo on her aunt’s door as a message to her to… go fuck herself,” Winchester said. He decided that dildos in Minneapolis could send a similar signal.
One of the anti-ICE protesters, Russell “Jolly” Ellis, nicknamed the action “Operation Dildo Blitz,” a nod to Operation Midway Blitz, the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement operation in Chicago in September 2025.
This isn’t the first time sex toys have been used as a political message.
A 1768 Japanese parody of a samurai etiquette book for women replace photos of origami wrapping paper with dildos. The authors of the 2013 book Shunga: sex and pleasure in Japanese art took that insertion as a rebuke of the pretensions of the samurais.
In 2015, one artist placed dildos instead of guns in the photos of Republican leaders in an effort for more gun control. And in 2016, students at the University of Texas organized one Promotion “Cocks Not Glocks”.where they lugged dildos around to protest a concealed carry law.
Five days after ‘Operation Dildo Blitz’, Border Tsar Tom Homan announced this the Minneapolis “surge operation.” concluded. Approximately from February 25th 500 officers remained.
Joy is resistance
Winchester knew that Minneapolis-based sex toy store Smitten Kitten had turned into a donation center that delivers supplies to people affected by the ICE operation. So he called the store to see if they had any dildos they could donate for a protest at the Graduate Hotel in Minneapolis in late January.
“Fuck ICE, how can I help you?” replied the Smitten Kitten clerk.
“We’re going to protest against ICE. We’d like to bring some dildos. Can we come over and get some?” Winchester asked.
The store was a game. Winchester and his friend swung by Smitten Kitten and left with dozens of discounted dildos. They then took a Lyft to the Graduate Hotel.
They arrived to “a few hundred” protesters making noise and raising signs. Winchester and his friend distributed the dildos to the crowd.
“What people do with these dildos after we hand them out is up to them,” Winchester said, recalling that protesters “juggle them, attach them to their helmets and wave them.”
The mood changed from intense singing and making noise to one lighter atmosphere– until a protester makes a dildo at the feet of an ICE agent. According to Winchester, it did not hit the officer.
He claimed that “nobody got hurt except their ego.”
Nevertheless, Winchester said, he believes the officer retaliated by spraying pepper balls.
“I didn’t see the pepper ball get shot, but I definitely inhaled it,” Winchester said.
Natalie Johnson, CEO of Minneapolis-based sex toy manufacturer Like a Kitten, saw a video on social media of the protester being pepper-sprayed. She said the violence shows “how much lack of control there is over these federal agents.”
“It’s this whole culture of fragile masculinity, and nothing points to that more than just throwing a dick at their feet,” Johnson added.
About a week later, dildos appeared again at an anti-ICE protest outside the Whipple Federal Building. And this time there were many more.
Johnson contacted Winchester and asked if protest participants needed more dildos. He said they did. She offered to donate 500 dildos. She bought them for about $2 each from a local bank that was liquidating excess inventory from a recently closed adult store in Minneapolis.
Winchester drove to Johnson’s warehouse and filled the backseat and hatchback of his Subaru Crosstrek with boxes of eight-inch dildos, in colors ranging from clear to Day-Glo pink to purple. This time, he and a friend drove to the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, where they wheeled out the dildos in a cart. They handed them out to the crowd of demonstrators, which the dildo distributors estimated numbered in the hundreds.
Ellis arrived at the protest around 11:15 a.m. He reported on his Instagram working as a “designated dildo retriever.” After protesters threw the dildos over the fence in front of the Whipple Building, he collected them before police did.
“There’s a ridiculous combination of these officers armed to the teeth with masks on, body armor and AR-15s, and we were literally armed with rubber dicks,” Ellis said. RNG.
Ellis said the protest felt different than others he had attended at Whipple.
“There was joy because people felt like they could express some of that righteous anger,” Ellis said. “Joy is resistance. Fascism wants you to be bitter, miserable and angry and wants you to just give up.”
After about nine cars were pelted with dildos, Ellis said he was “sure” he would be arrested even though he didn’t throw dildos. He had previously seen protesters arrested outside Whipple for throwing bologna and snowballs.
“Then it dawned on me why they don’t arrest anyone, because they have to have an arrest report that says ‘arrested for throwing dildos,'” Ellis surmised.
Winchester and Ellis both left as tensions increased.
“When [the dildos] They all got thrown over the fence, and I heard a car get hit, and then I thought, OK, I guess the distribution is done because I’m not there to hurt anyone,” Winchester said. ‘We are non-violent.’
Possibly, at least 42 people were arrested at the Whipple protest for failure to disperse. The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office said chunks of ice were thrown and an officer was hit in the head. Winchester disputes that story.
When Johnson watched videos of the protests, she saw some commentators say the protest showed “how crazy and unhinged everyone on the left is.” But she thinks it’s absurd to be more angry about throwing dildos than about taking children from their parents and killing civilians.
“Why do you have this kind of reaction to a dildo if you don’t have this kind of reaction to human life?” Johnson asked.
The supply is shut off
When protesters from across the country contact Johnson to ask if she can deliver sex toys, she suggests they go to their local sex toy store. Johnson’s dildo supply line has ended.
When she recently called her bank contact to buy more of the liquidated stock, the man said he was told the bank could no longer sell dildos. He said management had expressed concern that his customers would be upset if their bank sold sex toys.
Johnson believes the decision was political: that the bank cut her off because the dildos were used to protest ICE. (The bank in question declined to comment on this matter.)
Although her offer was cut off in Minneapolis, the anti-ICE dildo movement has spread nationwide, most recently at a State of the Swamp protest in Washington, DC, on February 24. Winchester brought a suitcase of dildos to hand out to protesters. The The protest frog from Portland also joined the demonstration in the capital.
“It taps into the spirit of the Merry Pranksters or Abbie Hoffman,” said Winchester, referring to some notoriously mischievous activists in American history.
ICE defenders “want to tell the story that we’re all a bloodthirsty, violent gang. But once you put dildos in our hands and we embrace that absurdity, it makes it harder for them to fight.”
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