Denver protesters against President Trump, Elon Musk decry immigration actions, mass firings

More than 2,000 people gathered outside the Colorado State Capitol and marched through Denver’s downtown Monday afternoon as part of a national protest against President Donald Trump and his billionaire lieutenant Elon Musk.

The crowd, which began gathering around noon, chanted and waved signs criticizing Trump, four weeks after the Republican president’s return to office. After listening to several speeches on the Capitol’s steps, the protesters marched down Colfax Avenue and later 15th Street before circling and returning to the steps and the area around Civic Center Park.

The throng was large enough that even after its front had returned to the Capitol, its tail wasn’t yet visible back by Denver’s city hall.

Early on, Deborah Helmers, 70, stood near Lincoln Street with a sign that said “Resist, persist.” She said she’d been at another recent Capitol protest a few weeks ago and had attended anti-Vietnam protests decades before that.

She was mad at Trump, she said, but she was even angrier at Congress “for allowing our democracy to be dismantled.”

“This will set us back decades,” Helmers said. She said she felt safe but was concerned about immigrants, transgender people and younger Americans.

“It really is too much,” she said.

Attendees held signs that said, “I will not go quietly back to the 1950s” and “Hate never made anything great.” Several signs criticized Project 2025, a Trump administration blueprint drafted by conservative activists. Some protesters dressed as the red-cloaked women from “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a novel about a dystopian United States.

Anti-Musk signs were as common as those criticizing the president. The protesters called on the billionaire to be deported and fired, and one sign accused Musk of “looting America’s future,” an apparent reference to his pursuit of mass firings of federal workers and other cuts. One speaker called for a boycott of Tesla, the automaker Musk runs.

The event was organized by the Denver-based Common Ground People’s Collective and by 50501, a national group that coordinated protests across the country — including at the Colorado Capitol — on Feb. 5. That was the same day that federal immigration authorities raided several apartment buildings in metro Denver.

Demonstrations played out in other states on Monday, too, in protests dubbed “No Kings on Presidents Day” by the 50501 Movement, the Associated Press reported. One chant in Denver said that Nazis and kings aren’t “American things.”

“Do you know who (50501) is?” one speaker, Jackie Burt, who is with a community group called Showupforgood, called to the crowd in Denver.

Scattered “No” replies came back. “Me neither!” Burt said cheerfully, before telling the crowd to love each other and continue protesting.

Several Democratic state lawmakers were in the crowd and spoke. Rep. Lorena Garcia, of Adams County, carried a cardboard sign that read, “Tesla sucks,” while Rep. Chad Clifford of Centennial told the attendees they were the “pillars” upholding America’s three-part government.