Several thousand people held aloft signs and marched through the streets of downtown Denver on Monday afternoon as part of a Labor Day demonstration that emphasized workers’ and immigrants’ rights.
But never far from the surface of Monday’s congregation at Lincoln Veterans Memorial Park in front of the state Capitol was an intense dislike of President Donald Trump and an overwhelming disapproval of his policies.
“Stop Trump’s War on Us” read one sign at the rally, which was part of a national protest effort dubbed Workers Over Billionaires. “The Death of Truth is the Victory of Evil” read another placard.
One person held up a sign showing Trump’s visage with an Adolf Hitler mustache appended and the word “Nope” splashed underneath the Republican president’s face.
“He hates unions and working-class people,” said Stephanie Jones, an Evergreen resident who has been to a number of anti-Trump rallies that have been held in the wake of the 47th president’s November 2024 electoral victory.
Linda Perkin, 75, came downtown from her senior community, Windsor Gardens, in Denver. Taking a breather across Lincoln Street from the Wells Fargo skyscraper as a boisterous crowd chanted praises for migrants and laborers and marched up the thoroughfare to the sound of a beating drum, she said she has been protesting for decades.
“I’m very pro-union, I’m very pro-worker,” said Perkin, wearing a ‘My Dog Hates Donald Trump’ sticker on her T-shirt. “I’m glad to see it and I want more people to join in.”
While many of the speeches delivered during the rally spoke of Trump’s purported disregard for the working class in favor of the super wealthy, November’s election results showed blue-collar constituencies spurning the Democratic Party in droves and voting for Trump in numbers not seen before.
It’s a dynamic that worries Perkin, who urged her fellow Democrats to “get down in the dirt.”
“The Democrats need to get a spine,” she said, critiquing lofty messages about fascism and autocracy as out of touch with people trying to get by paycheck to paycheck.
Attempts to project defiance and strength at Monday’s gathering were plentiful. Zander Kaschub, who works in the Jefferson County School District’s food service department, took to the microphone under blue skies to extol labor’s political power — should it choose to wield it.
“From the fields to the classroom, we are powerful and we are rising,” he said.
Colorado Education Association Executive Director Kooper Caraway exhorted the crowd to “knock that door down” when politicians refuse to take their concerns seriously.
“Let’s take to the streets and knock every damn door down,” he shouted, just before the crowd began their march up Lincoln Street.
An alphabet soup of left-wing social activist groups manned booths at Monday’s rally, including the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Denver Communists and Colorado Indivisible. The group Notes of Dissent featured a largely brass band blasting out a White Stripes tune to a head-nodding audience.
The Workers Over Billionaires rally is the latest in a series of anti-Trump demonstrations that have taken place in Denver this year, including a rally in early April against the administration’s cuts to federal jobs and an even larger turnout in June for the No Kings rally that targeted all things Trump.
Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.