PERRY: ‘Good trouble’ troopers say they will triumph in Aurora

Linda Savage was looking for trouble in Aurora yesterday afternoon. She and about 150 other Trump protesters found it.

“I’m done just complaining,” Savage, a longtime Aurora resident, said as cars honked in support of the protest at Havana Street and Parker Road. “We mean business.”

Savage and a boisterous crowd of mostly older protesters were the local part of a national wave of “Good Trouble Lives On” rallies, rebuking policies and actions made by Trump and congressional Republicans since the former president was re-elected.

The “Good Trouble Lives On” national day of action honors the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. Protests were held across Colorado and the nation at state capitols, city halls and busy streets like Parker Road.

Colorado Newsline reported protests were planned across the state, including Alamosa, Denver and Fort Collins, organized by a bevy of statewide and local groups. A simultaneous protest near the state Capitol drew more than 1,000 people Thursday afternoon.

The Aurora crowd was as varied as their messages.

William joined the Aurora protest and came from Centennial.

“I’m a lifelong Republican,” he said. “I’m not the only one out here who feels like Trump and his administration have gone too far. What he’s doing is flatly illegal, immoral and unacceptable on any level.”

William said changes in Medicaid upending the lives of elderly people in assisted living centers is “beyond the pale.”

He waved his sign saying “No Kings” at the endless honks and whoops of support from cars as they whizzed by, waving it in his own face from time to time to offset the July heat radiating off the sea of pavement.

One woman walked slowly from protester to protester, offering Popcicles. Others offered each other water and support.

Two protesters were up front along the busy street from wheelchairs. They’d come via RTD Access-a-ride to join the protest at a tricky spot to get to among a jungle of office and commercial buildings abutting one of the busiest intersections in the metro area.

Other protesters said they, too, could point to local Republicans in the crowd and others who say everyone must oppose Trump’s policies on Medicaid cuts, education cuts, his violations of the rule of law and indifference to due process as part of his mass-deportation schemes. One protester shouted above the din of traffic and supportive honks that “this is the non-partisan challenge of our generation.”

“If you get this many people who are in their 70s and 80s and normally home this time of day out here in the heat to make a statement, the country needs to pay attention,” Julia said in agreement, waving at the seemingly endless honking cars as they passed.

One protester who said he’d joined rallies at several Front Range sites agreed that the Aurora motorists were the most supportive he’d encountered over the past few months.

Many of the protesters’ signs targeted Trump’s mass-deportation strategy.

“He told us when he came to Aurora that he was going to arrest and deport criminals,” Sonja said, her protest sign attacking Trump for his lack of veracity. “He’s sending out ICE squads to round up lawful immigrants like the Gestapo or something. I won’t stand for it.”

Aurora has been ground zero for Trump’s immigration chaos for almost a year. It all started rolling when he first repeatedly and falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating dogs and cats in Ohio. That morphed into equally false claims that Venezuelan gangsters had overrun Aurora, and even the state.

While much of the city seems exhausted by the tsunami of alarming headlines linked to Trump’s rabid lies and his disdain for immigrants, the dozens of mostly white protesters on Havana Street on Thursday said they had hope the current wave of racism and bigotry would recede, and the response of the people in cars boosted that optimism.

“This is Aurora,” Vaughn said as a car filled with cheering, honking supporters slowly rounded the curve from Parker Road to Havana Street. “I love living with people from all over the world from all kinds of backgrounds. I wouldn’t live anywhere else.”

There wasn’t much real trouble among the protesters, who came early and stayed into the evening, absorbing the cheers and honks from their “good trouble.”

“As scary as this has become since Trump was sworn in, this gives me hope,” Savage said. It inspires her to do more to push back.

“No more,” she said. “Everyone here agrees, ‘no more.’”

 Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com