APRIL 10, 2025 | OPINION | By Grace Ersfeld-O’Brien
From the outset, I was taken aback at the degree of mobilization on such a cold and cloudy day – despite the relative inconvenience, the people of Colorado Springs were on the streets in numbers many said were unlike anything they’d seen in recent years. This past Saturday, April 5, I attended the “Hands Off!” protest at City Hall, one of the many such events occurring nationwide on that day, denouncing the Trump administration’s rapid encroachment on state power and civil rights. With that said, I noticed low-levels of Colorado College student participation, which surprised me. I think of the students on our campus as being fairly civically engaged, which made the lack of our physical presence at this rally, and the lack of discussion around it, something I want to call attention to.
EmRhys Jenkins ‘26 is the founder of Allies of Unhoused Youth at CC and helped to support the organization of the “Sit-Lie” protest at Acacia Park in collaboration with a local union directly following the protest at City Hall. “Sit-Lie” being scheduled somewhat in conflict with the City Hall protest’s timeline inspired Jenkins to reach out to “Hands-Off’s” organizers, striving to make the successive events as “feasible as possible.” When asked their thoughts on how to get more CC students actively mobilized, Jenkins noted the difficulty of reconciling what we talk about in classes with making political change at the grassroots level.
“So much of what we study is theory, and having those conversations is so important… the struggle is in how to not only have those courageous conversations, but to focus more on bridging that into what we’re going to do.”
They noted that organizing people is already hard as it is, and the momentum of the Block Plan makes it necessary to plan more than is typical ahead of time and to recruit students further in advance by “trying to find ways that are sustainable to get and keep people involved… trying new things, as well. ‘Sit-Lie’ had fewer students show up than I expected.”
With the challenge of mobilizing students comes problem-solving, and Jenkins says that organizing “Sit-Lie” was a learning experience.
“I think learning how to build consensus is so important. Talking with Allies, in how we were doing ‘Sit-Lie,’ there wasn’t much structure – you have to assign people; someone needs to do the work…That’s a big difference between mobilizing and organizing: for real organizing, everyone needs to feel a sense of responsibility and pride in what we do. I think that we have amazing mobilizing potential here.”
As I worked my way through the crowd, I stopped to interview people and ask them a few questions about the issues they were most personally impacted by.
Molly Vance ‘27 said that her dad and brother sent her photos of protests happening across America, encouraging her to find out if one was happening here in the Springs. “I think we’re in a kind of bubble at CC and have a lot going on, but I was really surprised that people weren’t posting about it online or talking about going.”
Faye Burke ‘27 says that the Bureau of Land Management Conference she attended during Block 1 this year is what inspired her to declare her major in Environmental Science, remarking, “so many of those events professors take their students to have been defunded. Which is crazy, because if I had taken that class Block 7 versus Block 1, I would have had a completely different experience.”
Kelly King, a real estate agent, said that the war on education is her largest concern, in what she called essentially an attempt to dumb-down the public. Lori Rigney, a stay-at-home mom, stated her concern that “… our country is falling apart before my two boys can even grow up and experience life for themselves.” With her mother on social security, Rigney said, “This administration is devastating on every front.” King shared the sentiment that the magnitude of turnout was “incredible for Colorado Springs.”
Keith Noble remarked that he hasn’t “done anything like this [protest] since Bush started the Iraq war; I was in Massachusetts, flew down to BWI and met my buddy from Missouri to take a train in… comparatively, there’s a lot of people here.” Asked whether he was surprised at the turnout, he replied with a definitive yes.
I also had the opportunity to speak to an organizer of the rally, Kathy Branch. She is a member of Indivisible, the grassroots national coalition protesting the current administration. According to Branch, 3,000 people were estimated to be at City Hall this past Saturday. However, upon finding out I was a CC student, she implored me to get her connected to student organization
groups on campus, noting that student involvement was particularly low.
There is so much happening politically in our state and local government that students can get involved in. Not only do organizations desperately want student help, but gaining hands-on experience in local politics is a great immediate way to take back a quantum of power in an increasingly unpredictable political climate.