Tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators were reported across Colorado, with
organizers estimating more than 25,000 in Denver. The estimated tally nationwide is
seven million, the largest protest reported to date.
About 300 people joined the No Kings protest in Paonia. Here are six who spoke from
the stage in Town Park. In order, they include conservation activist Pete Kolbenschlag,
teacher Nathan Clay, Physician Doug Speedy, poet Ben Bentley, real estate agent Bob
Panetta and writer and editor Betsy Marston. Organizer Christy Larson set the tone..
CHRISTY LARSON: I’m not going to sugar coat what we're facing right now, because
we all know what's happening. And it is grim. We've become entrenched in ugly and
bigoted, yet shockingly ham-fisted authoritarianism. But lucky for us, the administration
is doing things in such blatantly illegal ways that we will be able to stop it and to unravel
much of the damage being done.
PETE KOLBENSCHLAG: Our public lands are the very foundation of our identity here in Western Colorado. And they also represent a foundational value about who we are as Americans. Now we have an opportunity as well to show that we here in the North Fork, we're not subjects, we're a free people. It is a community-based public lands bill that's now in front of Congress, centered here in the Gunnison region. I'm going to talk about real quickly the GORP Act, the Gunnison Outdoor Resources Protection Act. It builds on a legacy of advocacy here in this valley and around the Gunnison Valley. It protects public lands around the Epperson-Gunnison Basin, including here in the North Fork, particularly on the Gunnison County side of the North Fork, but here in Delta County as well. It secures recreational access, including river access, and it secures vital habitat and important watershed lands. In the North Fork, it removes most of the BLM lands from the threat of future oil and gas leasing, including Jumbo Mountain, which is available for oil and gas leasing currently.
NATHAN CLAY: Freedom of speech enables us to share diverse points of view, allowing people to hear multiple sides of an issue, hearing one another out civilly in an actually human fashion, and accepting that each person comes with a worldview, a personal view that, no matter how antagonistic it may be to our own little scenic overlook on life, does not exclude them or ourselves from the freedoms that we all share. Media educators and individual citizens must be free to criticize, debate, and share information freely, even if it's unpopular or controversial. There was a poster on the wall of my classroom that said,
“What is right is not always popular. What is popular is not always right.”
DOUG SPEEDY: I've been a physician for 48 years. I've been in Delta County for 42 years. I've worked in Grand Junction, Montrose, and Delta. How will this shutdown affect healthcare? The shutdown is about health insurance subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, as well as Medicaid. Subsidies are set to expire at the end of 2025, unless renewed by Congress.
The Affordable Care Act premiums are set to rise by more than 75 % in 2026, according
to Kaiser Family Foundation, as well as John Hopkins. Also from the Kaiser Family
Foundation, I found this very interesting. More than three in four Affordable Care
Marketplace enrollees live in states that were won by Trump in 2024. Nationwide, 93 %
of enrollees in the Affordable Care Act received premium tax credits. The Congress
estimates that 4.2 million people will lose their insurance if these are not extended.
BEN BENTLEY: What if I told you right here and now, what if I said, Our president isn't human, that he is a man-algorithm hybrid who eats only outrage. Not a cyborg, no — a slop machine whose emotions are mere cobwebs of neural nets, trained on fracking your attention. Assume every interaction will be mined, every choice nudged, your autonomy eroded as we lose our mortal frames, clicking buttons for billionaires.
BOB PANETTA: So in the 60s, we all thought, all right, we stopped the war. We brought civil rights to all people. We did so much to stand up and make the country great that we could just sit back and relax now. But boy, we sure did let something slip by on us. Because what’s happening right now is everything we fought against in the 60s.
BETSY MARSTON: Hello, peaceful protesters! We all know why we're here. Our country is under attack from within. Democratic cities, historic sites, national parks, museums, they're all forced to lie about our dark pasts. Some of our universities are compelled to sell out academic freedom if they want federal aid. Under attack is climate science, cancer research, mothers, women who choose not to be mothers, black voting rights. Is there anything that is not under attack that we cherish as our freedoms? You and I are under attack, just by having opinions the Trump administration fears. It fears all principled disagreement and it even fears protesters dressed as chickens and frogs.
