6 westword.com WESTWORD FEBRUARY 19-25, 2026 | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | A Higher Calling THE COLORADO BRIDGE TROLLS WANT YOU TO JOIN THEIR OVERPASS PROTEST PARTIES. BY BENNITO L. KELT Y As outraged as Denver protesters are with the Trump administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, some still get bored with the handmade sign-waving and slogan-chanting on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol. “I had been doing a lot of stand-out-with- your-signs-and-wave at people, which just felt kind of soul-sucking,” says Erica, a protester who would rather dance on an overpass or at busy intersection while dressed as an infl ated psychedelic mushroom. “It just didn’t feel as energizing. The thing with when they have music, and you’re on a bridge or on a corner, you’re having fun, and traffi c will engage with us more because we’re having fun.” Erica isn’t alone. She borrows the psyche- delic mushroom costume from Lori, a small, gray-haired woman who now dresses as a big blue bunny. When they protest near traffi c, Erica the Mushroom and Lori the Bunny usu- ally dance to a playlist of songs like “Arrest the President” by Ice Cube and “THREAT LEVEL ORANGE” by Earth to Eve – but they wouldn’t be able to blast music without Rich, who dresses up like Darth Vader and has a knack for making noise and homemade lightsabers. “I found my people, and this is what I want to do,” Erica says. “The biggest thing that drew me was that they had music. It just changes the whole thing. It changes the whole vibe.” Meet the Colorado Bridge Trolls, a group of Denver protesters who strap signs that say things like “Fuck ICE” and “Release the Files” to the sides of overpasses above the metro area’s busiest highways, all while pumping up the jam to keep the resistance going. Lori, Rich and Erica are part of a core that includes a walking taco who also goes by Sarah Huston, and Rich’s wife, Rey, who some drivers around town may know as the Statue of Liberty. At times, Chet Nelson, a fellow Troll, paints his face orange and his hands purple to look like President Donald Trump. As in fairytales, most of these Trolls keep their names anonymous, out of fear of being doxxed or harassed. But you’ll still see them in public, on dozens of bridges from Golden to Denver to Aurora, and from Republican Congressman Gabe Evans’s district in the north metro to parts of Congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s district in the south. Some of the Trolls are retired, some are veterans. Some have lived in Denver their whole lives, and others moved here as adults. But when they’re out on a bridge, they’re one entity, holding party- style protests that have been drawing more and more people, especially in the wake of violence by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis earlier this year. A Dichotomy of Craziness Last March, Lori found a kindred spirit on social media in a fellow protester named Crystal, one of the few people who responded to a post looking for people interested in dem- onstrating on a pedestrian overpass in Little- ton, above South Wadsworth Boulevard near the intersection with West Bowles Avenue. “It was a little scary when we fi rst started, because it was just two of us,” Lori recalls. “It was just her and I and whatever ran- dom people we could scrape together and convince to be out there with us,” Crystal says. “It felt a little bit dangerous having just Lori and I up there.” At the fi rst bridge protest, Lori and Crys- tal were joined by about a dozen personal friends and teenagers who brought Pride fl ags and hung signs comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler. The message upset one driver so much that he pulled over and walked up to the small group “to tell us he was disgusted by young people carrying Pride fl ags and that he had a gun in his truck,” Lori remembers. Crystal sat on a bench and talked to the man for about 45 minutes, “not trying to change his mind, just trying to mellow him out,” Lori says. The man reiterated his is- sues with the fl ag and sign, but left without harming protesters. “That was our very fi rst feet to the fi re,” Lori recalls. “It was scary, but also we had someone come up and drop off sunscreen and bottles of water. It was such a dichotomy of craziness.” When Lori and Crystal started demon- strating on bridges last March, other groups were building off the success of the Fifty State Protest, a nationwide event that drew upwards of 3,000 people to the Colorado Capitol on February 5, 2025, the same day ICE raided apartments in Denver and Aurora. A reported 34,000 people showed up to a rally in March hosted by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Civic Center Park, just down the hill from the Capitol. Nationwide protests continued over the next few months, with local groups pulling permits and posting details on social media re- garding rallies in Denver that drew thousands of people to the Capitol. Usually the result of a “call to action” by the national 50501 move- ment (the number 50501 comes from the idea of a protest in all fi fty states, in all fi fty capitals, on one day), these events included the March 4th for Democracy; a March 20 protest that brought 4,000 demonstrators to a rally for education and teacher compensation; two Hands Off events in April, the fi rst drawing 8,000 and the second 4,000 people; and A Day Without an Immigrant in May. Meanwhile, Lori and Crystal stuck to the bridges over Interstate 225 and Interstate 25, as well as the pedestrian bridge over Sixth in Golden, “and there were many times Crystal and I were the only people there,” Lori says. “People told us that it was performative or ‘blah, blah, blah.’ They don’t agree with your brand of protesting.” As they struggled to persuade people to hit the road with them, they wondered if it was worth it. “Most of the time, it was fi ve or less of us,” Lori says. “It took us some time to build enough of a core to know we could count on people to come.” Their small numbers made them easy to bully, too, Lori says, and they were “periodi- cally” confronted. Most drivers who were angered by their protests or signs would usually fl ip a middle fi nger, but some called the police and accused them of throwing items off the bridges. “We had a guy pull over and come up with an Xacto Knife, yell at us and start shredding our banners, shredding them to pieces,” Lori remembers. “We’ve had another guy come by and rip banners off their moorings. That happened a lot more when it was just women on the bridges.” Crystal remembers a “pretty scary” in- cident where she and her daughter were confronted by “a guy who threatened us with a gun and threatened my kid” while on the South Wadsworth Boulevard overpass. But there’s no platform like a bridge, Lori believes, and she’s stuck with them because she knows thousands of people are seeing her message. Crystal NEWS continued on page 8 KEEP UP ON DENVER NEWS AT WESTWORD.COM/NEWS Everyone knows the Portland Frog, but the Colorado Bridge Trolls deserved some attention. The Colorado Bridge Trolls started out as a small group, but they could still electrify a bridge with lights, music and resistance. BENNITO L. KELT Y COURTESY OF THE COLORADO BRIDGE TROLLS
