OPINION: ‘No Kings’ Protests Square Neatly with Colorado History

This op-ed by Quentin Young appeared on Colorado Newsline on October 16, 2025.

Liberty is a core American value that is especially dear to Coloradans.

The state was established at a time when the nation’s founding principles underwent renewed appreciation and dramatic expansion, and it remains the kind of place where the governor is discussed as the most libertarian chief executive of any state.

That’s partly why the monarchy pretensions of the Trump administration are so repugnant to Coloradans, in addition to their shock at lawless immigration enforcement, acts of partisan cruelty and other federal outrages the state has endured this year.

One way residents have expressed antipathy toward the authoritarians in Washington is by showing up in large crowds to numerous local demonstrations, including a “Fighting Oligarchy” rally that U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said was the largest he had ever led — and the No Kings “nationwide day of defiance” in June. During the second raft of No Kings demonstrations planned across the country on Saturday, including 50 throughout Colorado, organizers expect more than 12,000 residents to make their voices heard in downtown Denver.

The people’s contempt for crowns squares neatly with Colorado history.

Colorado voters approved the state constitution on July 1, 1876, three days before the nation celebrated its 100th year and the ideals extolled in the Declaration of Independence. The constitution was “first crafted in an era when the concept — if not the precise definition — of liberty and equality were ubiquitous in American culture and life,” noted Tom Romero, associate professor at the Sturm College of Law at the University of Denver.

The centennial wasn’t the only reason the nation’s basic tenets were top of mind. The Civil War, during which a huge swath of Americans won liberty for the first time (in law, at least), was still a fresh national trauma. Colorado was the first state admitted to the union after adoption of the post-war “second founding” amendments — the 13th, 14th and 15th, prohibiting slavery, enacting birthright citizenship, establishing equal protection, mandating due process, and guaranteeing voting rights regardless of race.

The country was more anti-king than ever.

The state constitution was tuned to a diverse population in the Colorado territory, which included many Spanish-speaking residents. The original document called for laws to be printed in Spanish and German, and, 44 years before the 19th Amendment, it said the right to vote could be extended to women.

“The Colorado Constitution was drafted by a multiethnic collection of framers who felt the conflicting pressures surrounding the human rights demands of a diverse citizenry,” Romero said.

The constitution, reflecting 1870s reverence for the American spirit, at the outset enumerates a number of rights, many of which reiterate provisions of the national Bill of Rights, such as the right to free speech and “peaceably to assemble” — like in protest against a corrupt government.

But other rights Coloradans declared for themselves are absent from the U.S. Constitution. Colorado is one of 27 states that has a free elections clause in its constitution. “All elections shall be free and open,” it says, “and no power, civil or military, shall at any time interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage.”

This Colorado right will be implicated if the Trump administration follows through on right-wing proposals that could result next year in military patrols of polling places and other forms of voter intimidation.

The administration has already committed innumerable constitutional offenses against Colorado residents. The most grievous involve its extreme program of immigration enforcement. An estimated 12 residents, denied basic due process rights, reportedly were sent to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has kept immigrant-rights activist Jeanette Vizguerra, who is not accused of a crime, locked up for more than six months. While ICE arrests have dramatically increased in the state, most detainees have no criminal record or pending criminal charge, according to a Denver Post analysis.

Trump’s disdain for laws is exemplified in Colorado by his demand that Tina Peters be set free, solely because she’s a supporter. Peters was convicted of four felonies by a jury for her role in a scheme to breach the security of her own election office when she was Mesa County clerk, but the local U.S. attorney’s office, in brazen disregard of the justice system’s supposed impartiality, jumped right in to help spring her from prison.

Trump has repeatedly abused presidential power to collectively retaliate against Coloradans, only because Democrats occupy the state’s top offices. After the federal government shut down this month, the administration canceled more than half a billion dollars worth of clean energy grants to the state. The White House budget director was explicit about the intention of the cuts, saying they targeted “Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda.”

All this shameful behavior comes at a time when Trump is sending military troops into American cities as part of a baseless “law and order” mission, and there’s no reason to think Colorado will be spared a similar invasion.

This is what kings do.

The preamble of the state constitution mostly mirrors the U.S. Constitution’s opening words, including its commitment to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” The Colorado framers in 1876 were thinking of later generations, which they hoped could enjoy the freedom, justice and welfare for which the constitution provided a basis.

The No Kings participants will be demonstrating to preserve those blessings for the present, but the welfare of future generations depends on their success.