Signs of all sorts dotted the crowd at Paepcke Park Saturday, March 8 at a rally organized by Carbondale resident Linda Lafferty that drew roughly 350 people. Speakers included Pitkin County Commissioner Greg Poschman, Alan Muñoz Valenciano of Voces Unidas de las Montañas, Mountain Action Indivisible and journalists Andy Stone and Annalise Grueter.
Residents of the Roaring Fork, Colorado River and Eagle River valleys were present — some angry, some sad and some out of work — ready to send various messages to lawmakers at all levels. “Lunatic at the helm”; “Grow a Spine Congress”; “Americans Against Oligarchy”; and “Speak Before it Becomes Illegal” were some of the slogans and suggestions from the crowd. An effigy of CD3 Congressman Jeff “(Un)Hurd” sat in a chair with his fingers in his ears, mocking Hurd’s dearth of town halls in this part of the district. (Note: Hurd offered a tele-town hall at 6:30 pm Tuesday, March 11.)
Stone, a former editor of the Aspen Times, told the crowd that Donald Trump has declared the press as the enemy of the people. He spoke of news deserts, billionaire-owned media and recent Trump lawsuits against broadcasting giants ABC and CBS.
“Donald Trump sued [ABC] for $15 million because a reporter said [Trump] had been found guilty of rape,” he recalled. “Everyone thought there was no way Trump could win. But ABC settled. They gave $15 million to the Trump Foundation.”
“You’ve got to maintain the free press,” he added, citing local media outlets. “These are important things. We need to fight for them.” He encouraged the crowd to vote, organize and reclaim the country, step by step. “Standing against unconstitutional actions is not an act of rebellion,” he said. “It’s an act of fidelity to the ideals of justice.”
Muñoz Valenciano, regional manager for Voces Unidas de las Montañas, fired up the crowd on a cold late afternoon before talking about immigration and the need for racial equity. He said immigrant communities have been marginalized by both Trump administrations. “They have been told to ‘Put your head down because you don’t know the risks that might come from an administration like this,’” he said.
He added that the result has been the weaponization of anti-immigrant narratives based on hate and racism. “That is not the reality of immigrants that live in our valley, that live in our state or across the country,” he explained. “The impacts of immigrants in our community are fundamental and describe who we are.”
Roseann Casey from Eagle is one of those out of work. She lost her job on Feb. 7, four days after an executive order effectively shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) office in Washington, D.C.
“I worked for a company managing a contract supporting the Africa Bureau,” she told The Sopris Sun. “We recruited and hired technical and administrative staff who implemented projects across the subcontinent.”
She had two years left on a five-year contract when the plug was pulled. “I saw the writing on the wall when we first got a stop-work order that said there’s going to be a 90-day freeze on all projects and we’re going to do a review and see where there is potential for cuts or improvement,” she said, adding that within a week, thousands of contracts were terminated. “It was just a way to create a fake premise around why they were cutting projects, and then to just kind of wholesale get rid of U.S. foreign assistance projects.”
She said the loss of USAID could be dangerous for locals who worked for the U.S. government or its partners. “We have left a lot of them without jobs,” she explained. “With all the propaganda and rhetoric saying that USAID employees are corrupt, that they’re unqualified and that they were doing fraudulent projects, we have now also made local staff in the countries where they work vulnerable to people accusing them of corruption.”
Casey worked remotely from Eagle so she avoided the pain of having 15 minutes to clear out her office like many of her colleagues. “Most of the people [in D.C.] convened outside the building to clap for each other, hug each other and make it an event where they showed their support for each other,” she recalled. “It’s just unreal the way this has unfolded and to watch the name being taken off the building.”
