10 FEBRUARY 19-25, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | usually lends it to other trolls who’ve joined the group. “The key to our success has been making it fun for the people who join and the people driving by,” she says. “The cool thing about the costumes is it lets people have fun. If I wore a Gumby shirt around town, it doesn’t matter what people’s political beliefs are, people are high-fi ving.” “It’s a marathon, not a sprint, so you’ve got to have fun,” adds Rich, and the costumes of- fered a way to keep the activism entertaining. He was excited to suit up, too, but didn’t know how he wanted to dress. He thought a giant robot might fi t with his neon signs. But after looking at costumes sold online, he ended up buying a Mandalorian helmet from the Star Wars franchise on Amazon. “It was too small, because I have a big head,” he says. “The Vader helmet was the fi rst one that fi t my head, so I went with that.” At fi rst, Rich had just the helmet, but he soon made his own red lightsaber, bought a custom-made black cape, and obtained the rest of Darth Vader’s exoskeleton-like suit. Although Rich puts Trump and Vader in the same category of “bad guys,” he says his costume is just for fun, and not to make any political statement. “It’s not too serious. If the Mandalorian fi t my head, I’d be in a full Mandalorian suit,” he notes. “At night, the lightsabers are really bright. I’ll usually hand out a couple, and people get really into twirling them.” Meanwhile, Rey wanted to embrace her Mexican roots and life in America. Día de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday held in November to honor deceased relatives, is “very important” to her, she says, but she also liked the idea of a Latina Lady Liberty welcoming immigrants to the U.S. So she combined the two styles, using masks and face-painting. A former Renaissance Faire regular, she also sewed the costume of Lady Liberty and dyed it copper green. “I think those costumes really translate across language barriers, especially Lady Liberty,” she says. “It also works to de-es- calate, and it helps keep solidarity with all of us. It could be a metaphor, like I felt it was in my case. It’s empowering.” The costumes also added to the fun of the Trolls events, giving her a feeling of “chan- neling anger into hope,” Rey explains. “If you come to one of them and we’re all there, you’ll fi nd that it’s really joyful. We have to look at the terror we’re facing with some kind of ability to not shrug it off, but to have some sort of light or hope. It really does help when you have some kind of hope.” As the Trolls began dressing up, “we had quite a few more regulars join,” Crystal says. Although she’s never donned a costume herself, she took on the planning and an- nouncements for their events. The Bridge Trolls were meeting as many as three times a week, and Crystal and Lori went from being the only regulars to seeing the core group grow into a few dozen people. Ready to hand over the baton, Crystal ap- preciated the steadier presence of others. “I was feeling pretty burnt out,” she says. “Luckily, there were quite a few people willing to fi ll in and be a regular presence. ...I learned from the whole evolution of the group that you can’t wait for someone else to tell you what to do in a situation like this. You have to take the initiative and learn as you go.” Trolling at a Whole New Level In August, Trump deployed the National Guard into Washington, D.C., and residents began protesting, including one man who threw a Subway sandwich at the face of a federal immigration agent. Others wore costumes. Denver resident Sarah Huston followed the coverage, and she couldn’t help but laugh at a photo from D.C. of a protester being ar- rested while dressed as a banana. “It’s been such chaos for the last year,” Huston says. “That’s when I decided, I’m not going to break any laws – but if I get ar- rested for some BS charge, I want whoever’s arresting me to feel like an idiot.” Huston had been attending rallies and marches “out of the gate” from the time Trump returned to offi ce in January 2025, but by the time she saw the banana, Denver protests had lost their momentum. The Colorado Bridge Trolls were just starting to pick up steam, though, and when Huston saw a public invitation to bring her favorite cos- tume and prepare to dance on an overpass, she bought a $30 taco costume from Walmart to embrace “Trumps Always Chickens Out” and went right over. “We had a great time,” she says of her fi rst experience. “Hearing all the mad honking, I really saw the value in what we were doing.” Erica joined that same month, after she saw an announcement for the Bridge Trolls on the website Mobilize, where anyone can post details for an upcoming protest. She saw that the rally was right by her house and recom- mended costumes, but the biggest draw was the music. “I remember thinking, ‘Well, that looks kind of cool,’” she says. “And yeah, it was so much fun...they’re just a really fun group.” Erica and Huston kept coming back. Erica would come wearing a blue-and-white tutu with stars and stripes, which is now her signature outfi t, even though she’ll oc- casionally borrow one of Lori’s mushroom costumes. As summer passed and fall arrived, the costumes were even handier because of how warm they were, but the Trolls also believed in the power of protesting that way. “I believe we can take the country back if we can stand up to him, so I run around in a taco costume,” Huston says. “Plus, I love the way it makes people laugh. I like to put smiles on faces.” More people believed in the power of cos- tumes after protests against ICE in Portland, Oregon, in early October. While standing in front of a row of immigration agents at an ICE facility, a man dressed in a tall, infl atable frog costume was pepper-sprayed through the costume’s air vent by an offi cer. The videos and images of a puffy, cartoonish frog being met with aggressive violence appeared on national news and became a symbol of what Rey calls “tactical frivolity.” The Portland frog incident came just a couple of weeks before a nationwide No Kings 2 protest in October. In Denver, the protest drew an estimated 8,000 people — some estimates put the number far higher — and costumes were noticeable in the crowd. Some members of the Colorado Bridge Trolls showed up with speakers, dance moves, signs and costumes for drivers passing down Lincoln Street. Rich appeared to be the only Darth Vader, but there were plenty of Lady Libertys, with Rey among them. Other protesters, including Trolls and non-Trolls, dressed up like characters from South Park, unicorns, a lobster with a guitar (i.e., a “rock” lobster), and an axolotl, a rare and endan- gered amphibian from Mexico. But No Kings 2 was the last protest that saw a large turnout in 2025. At the same time, the Trolls were winding down for a couple of months as the weather got colder and the holidays approached. In November and December, they went from organizing three events a week to three or fi ve a month, Lori says. The group’s targeted issues became more diverse with more members. Protesting ICE was still a constant theme, as agents had detained more than 70,000 people and deported more than 600,000, including more than 3,000 in Colorado, by the end of the year, according to the American Immigra- tion Council and the Trump administration’s own numbers. Rey says she was most upset by the loss of women’s rights, while Erica protested for human rights and Huston said that protect- ing democracy worldwide was her biggest priority. Immigration enforcement stayed in the headlines, though. In December, Trump initi- ated Operation Metro Surge, a large-scale immigrant enforcement campaign in Min- neapolis. As in Los Angeles in June and D.C. in August, Minneapolis residents responded with protests, and federal agents responded with violence — but this time, it was fatal. When activist Renee Good, a Colorado na- tive, was fatally shot on January 7, thousands of Denver protesters rallied at the Capitol on January 9 to show their anger and sorrow. The Colorado Bridge Trolls held their own protest on the Highland Bridge, and Lori says that more than 400 people turned out. She had to lead a chunk of them onto the nearby 15th Street overpass because they couldn’t all fi t on the Highland Bridge. According to Rich, it was the most energized response to a Bridge Trolls protest. “The honks per minute, you’ve never heard it before in your life. People are laying on their horns,” Rich says. “Old people were dancing. The energy was incredible.” Then federal immigration offi cers killed Alex Pretti, a VA nurse and activist whose parents live in Colorado, on January 24. Pretti’s death was followed not just by one night of protests, but an entire weekend of demonstrations including a vigil by the Aurora VA facility, businesses across Den- ver going on strike, high school students walking off campus and marching through downtown, and speeches and rallies at the Capitol, La Alma Lincoln Park and at the Cherry Creek headquarters of Palantir. Of course, the Colorado Bridge Trolls had to get in on the action. By that time, they had hosted about 100 events, including protests on bridges, street corners and with the larger crowds at the Capitol. They returned to the Highland Bridge, their “favorite,” according to Lori. The turn- out was again large enough that they spilled over to the 15th Street overpass when the bridge became stuffed with people of all ages grooving and waving. Rich’s playlist, loud enough to drown out the rising tide of repetitive “beep, beeeep” from below, made for quite the show for those driving along Central Street. Many protesters on the bridge didn’t have a way to tie their signs to the chain ink perimeter, so they held them up by pressing the signs with their palms, often striking up conversations with the person next to them stuck doing the same. Some passersby stopped and took pictures, letting their chil- dren meet Darth Vader or stare at the giant taco wagging back and forth. Groups of young, smiling walkers changed their course to see what was going on. Some never left, or just came back with their own signs. After a year of setting out to have fun while standing up for what matters to them, the Colorado Bridge Trolls seemed to have found a way to bridge joy and resistance, while still focusing on the real issues. “It’s a whole different atmosphere after Renee Good was killed, after Alex Pretti was killed,” Rich says. “As much as people are scared of the administration, I’d be scared of the masses that are changing their minds.” Email the author at
[email protected]. News continued from page 8 On January 31, hundreds joined the Colorado Bridge Trolls in Highland, outraged over events in Minneapolis. BENNITO L. KELT Y
