8 FEBRUARY 19-25, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | says it’s been “energizing” and “cathartic” to reach so many people. A little support doesn’t hurt, either, and it usually comes every few minutes in the form of a honk. “In two hours, I’m getting a message in front of 40,000 to 60,000 eyeballs, and we’re moving around, so it’s not the same eyeballs,” Lori says. “It’s not like I’m hitting up the same commuter traffi c all fi ve days a week and showing them the same thing. It’s an incred- ibly effective way to get the message out.” According to the Colorado Department of Transportation, her estimates are modest. An average of 150,000 vehicles drove underneath the Dayton Station pedestrian bridge per day in 2024, the most recent year available on CDOT’s traffi c data dashboard. More than 200,000 vehicles a day on average passed under the Downing Street bridge, CDOT’s 2024 data shows, while more than 250,000 drove under the Highlands Bridge a day. Lori noticed drivers who “won’t honk because they’re afraid of honking,” but for “whatever reason would smile from ear to ear,” she says. “You see that — and of course you see the people who fl ip you off — and know- ing how many cars are passing under us, you would get a gauge on how people are feeling.” The honks, smiles and small group of friends Lori has cultivated during troubling times was a way “to replenish our own per- sonal souls and to be able to cope with what we’re living in,” she says. But eventually it was time for Trolls-in- training to make a little a noise of their own. Organized Noise When Denver started hitting the streets after Trump’s return to offi ce in January 2025, Rich and Rey decided to ride the surg- ing wave of activism. Rey says she’s been an activist since she lived in Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots in 1992, so protesting was nothing new to her. Rich, meanwhile, was so inspired by the energy at 50501 rallies at the Colorado Capitol that he became a “kind of a connois- seur of protests,” he says. He tried some singing and togetherness at vigils held outside the Aurora ICE facility every Monday for Jeanette Vizguerra, the immigrant activist who was detained in mid-March. (She’s since been released and is prominent in Den- ver’s protest scene.) Rich went to the Capitol for every 50501 protest, too, showing off the big, fl ashy signs that he made at home. “It was fun for me, just to be around people,” he says. A Navy veteran, Rich is pretty handy with electronics. Thinking bigger than placards with printed slogans like “ICE Out!” or cardboard scrawled with “Chinga La Migra,” Rich hand-painted signs blue and yellow, like a Ukrainian fl ag — only he equipped them with cats and tacos made of LED fl ex lights that glowed white and neon green, too. By July, enthusiasm for nationally planned protests began to wane in Denver. A Good Trouble Lives On protest, named in honor of late Congressman John Lewis, drew 2,000 protesters, and the turnouts continued dropping from there. Rich began looking for something beyond Capitol rallies, and came across information about a bridge protest on the r/DenverProtests Reddit page, which became a hub for local organizers in early 2025. This particular bridge protest was to be held at the Dayton Station pedestrian bridge over I-225, by a light rail station near Aurora and southeast Denver. “I had never been to one, so I decided I’d check it out,” he says. “I was really just kind of blown away with the cars all honking, and how it made them feel good. We were waving to people. It felt good for me.” Rich was “hooked pretty quickly,” he admits. He came back and helped Lori and Crystal unfurl banners reading “Defend De- mocracy” and “Release the [Epstein] Files.” Lori and Crystal were now organizing three bridge protests per week, and Rich “didn’t miss a single one,” he says. All they were missing, he thought, was music. Rich had brought a “boombox” to protests before, and usually got a positive response as “people...always gravitated to me” when his tunes played, he says. He made a YouTube playlist to set the protest vibe just right, fea- turing “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine, “Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival and “Seven Nation Army” by the White Stripes. He then created a sepa- rate playlist just for dancing: “Gasolina” by Daddy Yankee, “Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince, “Livin’ la Vida Loca” by Ricky Martin, “Twist and Shout” by the Beatles and “Pump Up the Jam” by Technotronic. Some songs made it onto both, like “fashionista” by Jessilyn, “Not My President” by CNG, “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy and “Short Dick Man” by Gillette and 20 Fingers. “I had a pretty good playlist going,” Rich says. “I was, like, ‘You know what? Maybe I should spend some money and get an actual, really powerful speaker.’” So he bought a JBL Partybox Stage 320, a $600, R2D2-sized, high-powered speaker on wheels. However, with a cacophony of sup- portive honking, roar of motors and the hum of high-speed tires below, “it’s loud being up on the bridges, so you need something loud you can hear,” Rich explains. He bought another Partybox and linked it to the fi rst one via Bluetooth, but he still wasn’t convinced it was enough and eventually bought a third. That’s loud enough...for now. “He quickly became someone I lean on very heavily,” Lori says of Rich. “He’s become very important to me, and he was willing to be completely involved.” Even though the bridge protests were merrier and stronger by July than they had been a few months earlier, the turnout was still smaller than what Lori wanted. So she started thinking about branding. “We need a logo, we need to call ourselves something,” she remembers saying to Rich and Rey, who’d quickly joined her husband as a regular. “It’s hard to market and grow the size of these events without that.” After a bit of “spitballing,” Lori says that Rich proposed calling themselves trolls, playing off the idea of trolling Trump and how trolls in fairytales dwell by bridges (though usually under them). “I love it,” Lori said, and the Colorado Bridge Trolls were born. Gumby, Darth Vader and Lady Liberty Looking for ways to keep the messaging fresh and motorists engaged, Lori dug up an old costume of Gumby, the clay, shape-shift- ing green humanoid that had a children’s’ show in the ‘50s and then an odd revival in the ‘80s, largely thanks to Eddie Murphy’s famous Saturday Night Live bit. She’d used the costume at a Denver’s St. Patrick’s Day parade thirty years before, but it had laid dormant since then. For protesting in the 2020s, it was perfect. “If this administration is going to be ri- diculous, we’re going to be ridiculous,” Lori says. “If I’m dressed as Gumby, that’s pretty ridiculous. That’s where that was born from.” Dressing up for the fi rst time this past summer, Lori says she “quickly realized” that the costumes also offered anonymity. She understood how intimidating it could be expressing political views on a street corner, and they had already dealt with angry confrontations. At Capitol rallies, some protesters were showing up in masks and dressed in black, including people who identifi ed as members of Antifa or Black Bloc, far-left, anti-fascist groups often ac- cused of violence, but she was looking for a more light-hearted idea. “For people who wanted anonymity, you could get that inside a costume without being scary like Black Bloc,” she recalls. “It was still appealing to the masses that we wanted to attract to the movement, which were people that really needed to get out there and do something for their souls, but they were afraid. They didn’t want to be part of something really big. They didn’t want to get swept up in something. They didn’t want to be part of the police presence, all of those things that scared them.” Protests like ICE Out and No Kings 2 in June had seen police clash with people trying to march onto the highways. There had also been attacks on protesters reported, including two people who threw bottles and yelled at anti-ICE protesters last February. Three se- niors who were walking near the Rage Against the Regime rally in August were allegedly at- tacked by masked protesters, with two of the seniors, both women, ending up in the hospital. Lori says that the Trolls’ interactions with law enforcement have always been harmless; they usually entail an offi cer checking to make sure their signs are tied to the bridges right, telling them why police were called, and then leaving after watching them protest for a bit. Still, she decided to buy a few more infl atable costumes, including two mush- rooms colored with wavy tie-dye designs and a big, baby-blue bunny “straight out of Snow White,” to lend to other protesters who didn’t want to show their faces, Although she still puts on ol’ Gumby now and then, Lori News continued from page 6 continued on page 10 The Colorado Bridge Trolls feature Gumby, Darth Vader, Frogs, a Statue of Liberty and other wacky characters. Rich, who dresses as Darth Vader, was key to creating the Bridge Trolls brand. COURTESY OF THE COLORADO BRIDGE TROLLS BENNITO L. KELT Y
