6 westword.com WESTWORD SEPTEMBER 11-17, 2025 | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Losing Steam TURNOUT HAS DECLINED AT RECENT DENVER PROTESTS, BUT ORGANIZERS ARE OPTIMISTIC FOR A COMEBACK. BY BENNITO L. KELT Y After a strong start early this year, Denver is now seeing relatively small turnouts at pro- tests against President Donald Trump and his administration. Local activists believe there’s still pleny of citizen outrage, however, and hope the larger crowds return soon. According to the Colorado State Patrol, around 500 people attended the Workers Over Billionaires protest at the Colorado State Capitol in Denver on Labor Day, Sep- tember 1. Like many other protests in Denver this year, Workers Over Billionaires was a nationwide action, organized in part by the 50501 organization. The event had a signifi cant turnout in other major cities, including upwards of 3,000 protesters in San Diego, estimates of 10,000 in Chicago and thousands in San Francisco. During protests through the fi rst half of this year, Denver saw thousands descend on the Capitol and then head downtown. The Fifty State Protest in February, the fi rst na- tional day of protest after Trump was elected, attracted more than 5,000 people. In March, a “Fighting the Oligarchy” rally held by Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexan- dria Ocasio-Cortez drew more than 30,000 to Civic Center Park. That same month, more than 4,000 protesters supporting teachers and children showed up at the Capitol to oppose plans by state lawmakers to cut edu- cation funding to balance a budget defi cit. In April, about 8,000 protesters were estimated to have attended the Hands Off! protest, another day of planned demonstra- tions across the country. In June, Trump sent the National Guard to California in response to protests in Los Angeles, where demon- strators were upset with federal immigra- tion raids and Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity. The issue sparked a local protest here in Denver in June, with more than 1,500 protesters at the Capitol and hundreds marching through Capitol Hill. A week later, another national day of demon- stration, the No Kings protest, brought out about 5,000 people in downtown Denver. Between these major protests were sev- eral demonstrations that brought hundreds of people to downtown Denver and the State Capitol. Then the dog days of summer hit. A national protest in July, Good Trouble Lives On, saw a little more than 2,000 protesters at the Capitol. An August 2 protest registered a measly 150 people at the Capitol, which was more than the combined attendance of two protests that followed: Only fi fty people went to an ICE! Out protest on August 22 and just sixty attended the Chicano Moratorium on August 29. Richard Woodruff, a Denver resident who frequents the city’s anti-Trump protests and attended the Labor Day demonstration, said on September 1 that the Sanders and AOC rally “was awesome,” but he’d noticed a steady decrease in turnouts since then. Woodruff added that he thinks fewer people are turning out because they’re focused on their personal lives, and because the issues at the heart of protests — the rising wealth gap, federal immigration enforcement and divisive politics — haven’t directly touched enough Coloradans. “People are really busy with their lives, and it’s not affecting them yet,” he said. “They don’t have the time, the interest un- til it hits them, whether it’s health care or food or mortgage prices. When they get it individually is when I think they come out.” Susie Coronado volunteers with local chapters of Indivisible, a national group that helps organize days of protest. According to Coronado, the messaging before and during these demonstrations makes a big difference, and if the protest causes and mottos don’t refl ect what people are most concerned about, then turnout will probably be low. “Certainly, this is a smaller crowd, and I think there’s a different attitude now,” Coro- nado said during the September 1 protest. “People want the most current thing to be the topic of the march. Today is Labor Day, so the topic is going to be labor. But people are like, ‘Why are we talking about anything but immigration or redistricting, or why are we talking about anything but the most important news of the day?’” Coronado said she’s worried that a fl ood of social media posts, event listings and web- pages can be hard to NEWS continued on page 8 KEEP UP ON DENVER NEWS AT WESTWORD.COM/NEWS About 500 people turned out for the Workers Over Billionaires protest on September 1. BENNITO L. KELT Y
