Denver Protesters Hit Dog Days of Summer as Attendance Declines

After a strong start to the year, Denver is now seeing relatively small turnouts at protests against President Donald Trump and his administration. However, local activists believe citizen outrage is still present, and hope the larger crowds return soon.

According to the Colorado State Patrol, around 500 people attended the Workers Over Billionaires protest at the State Capitol in Denver on Labor Day, September 1. Like many other anticipated protests in Denver this year, Workers Over Billionaires was nationwide, organized in part by the 50501 organization. The event had a significant 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.

Through the first half of summer, Denver saw thousands descend upon the Capitol and downtown. The Fifty State Protest in February, the first national 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 Alexandria 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 to the Capitol to oppose plans by state lawmakers to cut education funding to balance a budget deficit.

In April, about 8,000 protesters were estimated to have attended the Hands Off! protest, another day of planned demonstrations across the country. In June, Trump sent the National Guard to California in response to protests in Los Angeles, who were upset with federal immigration raids and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) 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 demonstration, the No Kings protest, brought out about 5,000 people to downtown Denver.

In between these major protests in Denver were several demonstrations that brought hundreds of people to downtown Denver and the State Capitol.

Then the dog days of summer started to hit. A national protest in July, Good Trouble Lives On, saw a little more than 2,000 protesters. An August 2 protest saw a measly 150 people turnout at the Capitol, which was more than the combined attendance of two protests that followed it: only fifty 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 Denver’s anti-Trump protests and attended the Labor Day demonstration, said the Sanders and AOC rally “was awesome,” but he’s noticed a steady decrease in turnouts since then. Woodruff believes that fewer people are turning out because they’re focused on their personal lives and the issues at the heart of protests – the rising wealth gap, federal immigration enforcement and divisive politics – haven’t directly touched enough Coloradans yet.

“People are really busy with their lives, and it’s not affecting them yet,” he said. “They don’t have the time, the interest until it hits them, whether it’s healthcare 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 reflect 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,” Coronado 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 is worried that a flood of social media posts, event listings and webpages can be hard to sift through, and that “people are having a hard time finding the centralized information of how to get here.”

However, Coronado said she was still “pleased” with the turnout, adding that “for a hot holiday, I would say it’s not too bad.”

Protesters at Denver’s Workers Over Billionaires event had some energy despite not having the same numbers as other cities. There was also an activist fair, a common feature of recent national days of protest, with informational tents and an ice cream vendor set up across the street from the Capitol, at Lincoln Veterans Memorial Park. Two marches, including one to the Governor’s Mansion to demand state leaders oppose more federal actions (even though Governor Jared Polis doesn’t live there), sprouted from the protest, as well.

Denver resident Dee Davis attended the Workers Over Billionaires protest with friends and noticed the lower turnout, but she thought people were just busy celebrating the holiday with their families.

“I was kind of hoping for more people. I’m hopeful it’s just because it’s the holidays, and they’re doing family things,” she said. “There’s not many here compared to No Kings and at the Bernie [Sanders] one. That one was huge.”

Davis said that putting workers over billionaires and stopping ICE are the two most important issues for her, and those issues “are still as important as ever.”

But Jennifer Bradley, who helped start the 50501 Colorado chapter earlier this year to help organize large protests, believes people are feeling worn out, and these protests are more of a collective marathon than individual sprints. Bradley said she started getting tired in July, so she took the month off from protesting so she could continue fighting for what she believes in down the road. According to Bradley, activism exhaustion is just what Trump administration wants.

“The issues are constant, and the agenda of fascism is to wear you down,” Bradley said. “Everybody gets burnout, and it’s really important to take breaks. Sometimes people need to rest. Consistent work is hard work.”

Bradley recommends people take time off if they’re feeling exhausted, and that people who feel ready to protest should keep coming out and not be discouraged by the lower turnouts. She and Coronado are confident that protest attendance in the winter months will go up, not down.

“We’re coming up on election season, and that will energize people,” Coronado added. “The point of the regime is to wear us down, and we have to fight against that.”

National protest organizers hope to see a return to form during another No Kings protest across the country on October 18. Denver saw around 5,000 people come out for the first No Kings demonstration in June, but reaching that number will take a big swing in momentum after Labor Day’s relatively low turnout.