Learning of the Mayor’s intentions to fire Town Manager, Malcolm Fleming, citizens of the City of Erie rallied together, sending their district representatives’ emails and offering public comment. It is clear that Mayor Moore’s intention of doing this quietly, and in secret, would not materialize. 

However – despite the resistance from community and council members alike – in a four to three majority, the council voted to terminate Malcolm Fleming at the end of the evening. 

The council session began with presentations on public art projects and a proposal to increase the town’s airport fees. For hours, careful consideration and thoughtful questions were circulated between town leaders on an issue of obvious importance to locals. As many had come to discuss this issue during public comment as did the town manager.

As the aeronautic talk concluded, Mayor Moore introduced the motion to bring the body to executive session, Mayor Pro Tem Brandon Bell reading the agenda item to be discussed: personnel.

Councilman Dan Hoback called a point of order, “this executive session matter was started in public session, I believe it should continue in public session.”

Mayor Moore listens to public comment while the Town of Erie Council discusses his future with the city. The body would vote 4-3 at the end of the meeting on February 17, 2026, to terminate their contract with Mr. Fleming. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

The mayor curved toward Mayor Pro Tem Bell, and urged they take the vote, and if there were not enough votes, they would proceed in public session. Though the majority votes were for executive session – four to three – Mayor Moore needed five. This meeting would remain open to the public.

Council members Baer, Hoback, and Pesamarelli all asserted their case that Malcolm not lose his position. 

Council member Baer endeavoring to persuade her colleagues, affirmed, “[The mayor] did not have consensus or a majority, originally, to bring this forward, and I’m very hopeful to my fellow council members that that remains the case; that you hold your ground, that you’re brave right now, and not strong armed to do the mayor’s bidding.”

Council member Pesamarelli appeared to resign himself to the fact that he would not be able to change the council’s mind; their decision was stated to be already made. From the three council members who fought in Malcolm’s corner, attention shifted to the four who didn’t.

Malcolm Fleming listens while the Town of Erie Council discusses his future with the city. The body would vote 4-3 at the end of the meeting on February 17, 2026, to terminate their contract with Mr. Fleming. “I wish everyone well and encourage them to honor the pledge enshrined in the Erie Town Charter to, “uphold the principles of democracy, equity, and justice, and to foster a community that is inclusive, diverse, and welcoming to all,” he told Yellow Scene Magazine. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

Council member Mortellaro was quiet, but Council member O’Connor and Mayor Pro Tem Bell scolded Pesamarelli, Baer, and Hoback for wanting this conversation privy to the public. 

Councilman O’Connor called it “inappropriate” to have this discussion in the open.

“I wish we could have had that discussion in exec, because what I wanted to see was that we could have a mutual agreement to part ways…  I think Malcolm wanted to have that conversation. I sincerely regret that we can’t have that conversation right now, because I feel that would have been better,” Councilman Bell said, addressing his colleagues,“And that’s due to three people up here wanting to make this a public show.” 

Mayor Moore set the vote in motion by expressing, “[Malcolm] told me, ‘If there’s four votes, then I would rather just be able to negotiate the separation agreement.’ And I said, ‘I don’t know if I have the four votes, but I do know I want to find out if I have the four votes.”

Yellow Scene received this statement from Mr. Fleming the following day: 

“Erie has a fantastic team, including great Town staff throughout the organization. I loved working with them, as well as with current and past members of the Town Council and advisory boards and Planning Commission. I will miss them all and I am proud of the long list of accomplishments we achieved together.

Erie is a great place. Our teamwork over the past 7 years made it even better and positioned the Town to prosper in the future. I wish everyone well and encourage them to honor the pledge enshrined in the Erie Town Charter to, “uphold the principles of democracy, equity, and justice, and to foster a community that is inclusive, diverse, and welcoming to all.”

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The post Town of Erie Fires Town Manager Malcolm Fleming appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

In a mostly empty town hall chamber, after a lone person offered public comment calling on the town to pledge protection for constituents from ICE and CBP followed by a hearing on sign regulations, Erie Mayor Andrew Moore looked calm and cool as he began the proceedings to move the meeting to executive session.

“Point of order,” a calm voice interrupted. Addressing the Mayor, Councilwoman Emily Baer continued. “I would like to discuss the town manager’s review in the public meeting rather than in executive session.”

Flustered, Mayor Moore shifted in his seat, turned toward Malcolm asking if this was alright. Malcolm, without batting an eye, responded, “Yes, I’m comfortable with that happening in a public meeting.”

Forty-five minutes later, the gavel restarted the public meeting for a conversation intended to happen in executive privacy. For the second time in the first year of his term, Mayor Andrew Moore would make the case for firing town manager Malcom Fleming. 

Previously catching the rest of the town council off guard during an earlier meeting, the decision was made to table the conversation until another time, when the members could be more prepared to make an informed decision.

Erie Town Manager Malcolm Fleming is described in his HR evaluation as one who “often pushes staff to challenge their status quo, which drives innovation, and he’s always open to and excited by new ideas.” (Town of Erie Headshot)

This time, with less than a day’s notice, the council received communication via email from Mayor Moore that they would again be bringing the matter to executive session the following evening. A performance evaluation – referred to as Fleming’s 360 – had been conducted. 

Mayor Moore and Mr. Fleming had access to the 360, some members of the council did not until only a few hours before the conversation began, others wouldn’t see the document until the following day. 

“He provided us an email about 24 hours before the meeting, and that is not adequate time,” Erie Town Councilman Dan Hoback told Yellow Scene. “The manager’s evaluation did not come from him; it came from the town manager himself. And [the Mayor] kept that in his hip pocket, and he didn’t send it until the next day. The day after the council meeting… I thought that was very underhanded on the part of the mayor.”

Opening the now public conversation, Mayor Moore cited his reasons for why Fleming should be terminated, reading from a statement he’d prepared for his colleagues. 

“Leadership by omission – whether intentional or not – creates a situation in which I cannot effectively preside over our meetings. Getting caught off guard on the County Line to Airport Drive visibility scope, the $19M parks and open space facility, the Redtail Ranch information for the public not being disseminated, misinformation about the use of ARPID funds, and council volunteers being excluded from the holiday party are just some of the more recent challenges.” 

Erie’s Mayor read for several minutes, first from his email requesting the conversation and then from what would have been his opening address to Council in executive session, concluding that he believed there had been an ongoing  lack of communication on Fleming’s part and little else. 

“The thing is, see, everything looks so childish now,” Councilman Pesaramelli told Yellow Scene. “He doesn’t have any points because we brought it on the record and not between the four walls [executive session]. In the four walls, when this topic came up,[the Mayor] didn’t have a consensus that Malcolm should be fired… And what would have happened in that four walls is unimaginable.”

“The mayor has wanted to get rid of him now since day one,” Councilman Hoback told Yellow Scene Magazine. “He came into office wanting to get rid of him, and I think it is probably because he is ideologically out of alignment.”

Before joining the city staff, Fleming spent over ten years as city manager for Louisville and as interim city manager for Manitou before that. He was appointed to the role in Erie in January 2019

Yellow Scene Magazine obtained a copy of Mr. Fleming’s 360 evaluation, which he said from the dais he was comfortable seeing published. In it we see a portrait of an absolutely adequate employee, referred to as a consummate professional, constantly calm presence, and consistently informed manager.

A screenshot of the first page of the human resources 360 report for colleague feedback for Mr. Fleming.

The anonymous reflections assert that he is knowledgeable, experienced, and committed to exploring every avenue even if it means trying something new. Always room for improvement, it is noted that he sometimes lapses in communication, though regularly producing a cumulative and comprehensive – if delayed – response. 

A five out of five star rated employee in “contributing to a positive and inclusive work culture,” he manages a complex system of public and private bureaucracies facilitating connections and the sharing of resources. 

“The amount of information that flows from the community, businesses, regional partners and Council is significant and overwhelming at times,” one 360 reflection of Fleming reads. It continues the he should seek improvement in maintaining the flow of information because “this Council is more impatient than others.”

Despite the metaphorical firehose from which he drinks, the HR report speaks of a competent employee with an above average performance and below average need for improvement. One with whom so many in the city find ease in maintaining a professional relationship, Mayor Moore not counted amongst them.

“If things are done for the betterment of the town, I’m all for it,” Councilman Pesaramelli told Yellow Scene. “But when you come with things like erasing DEI or the scare tactics, we can be a model and let other towns know Erie did this. We stood up against national bullying.”

Councilman Pesaramelli, Councilman Hoback, and Councilwoman Baer were upset that Moore came to this conclusion by himself, when council is meant to decide something this important together. When informed there would be a decision made despite protest, the three council members all voiced opposition to terminating Fleming’s position.

“Why is this going into a rush?” Councilman Pesaramelli mused during a followup conversation. “We already talked about it, and there was no consensus from the council for him to move to the next step or do another executive session.”

Some would discuss Mayor Moore’s insistence on adherence only on background, others commented openly on the parallels as they perceived them.

“He keeps saying he’s not MAGA, but he runs Council like he is,” Councilman Dan Hoback said to Yellow Scene Magazine. 

A screenshot of Erie Town Manager Malcolm Fleming’s Council Feedback Form, indicating the average of all five members of Erie’s Town Council’s ratings for various professional metrics.

Authoritarian overreach continues to grow as a standard in civics conversations. Federally, the Trump Administration demonstrates the ability for unscrupulous leaders to demand their directors change reports – and disavows those which won’t – to match policy positions. The same tactics some allege are used by Mayor Moore. 

“Staff can hear the mayor yelling at Malcolm through the walls even when the door is closed,” reads the 360. “Malcolm stays focused and professional and speaks clearly and directly.” 

In line with the strong man caricature some politicians project, complaints continue that Mayor Moore will bully employees, becoming increasingly frustrated when facts don’t fit his narrative, and asserting aggression to accomplish his ends. 

“People are hurting. People are afraid of losing their jobs,” Councilman Hoback told Yellow Scene. “People are afraid and they don’t want to engage with him.”

When negotiating his most recent contract, Fleming was faced with the difficult decision of forgoing protected severance in exchange for a standard raise. With the possibility that a newly-elected leader with a well-known intention of focusing on raising homeowners’ property value may replace him, Fleming was forced to concede his safety net. 

“One of his first courses of action was to basically force Malcolm to renegotiate his contract and lower his severance package, essentially,” Councilman Hoback told Yellow Scene. “The mayor said, ‘You will either reduce your severance package from twelve months to six months, or you won’t get a salary increase this year at all.’ Malcolm’s already severely underpaid for our region.”

Under the new contract, Fleming would receive 6-months of his salary, about $91,344, a direct cost to the taxpayers for the town manager’s replacement. Compensated well below the mean for this position, his replacement could start at a salary closer to Longmont’s $242,902 or Lafayette’s $190,800.

Some members of Town Council and Mayor Moore did not respond to requests for comment before publication.

The agenda for Erie’s February 17, 2026 Town Meeting includes an item in the evening’s executive session concerning personnel “pursuant to C.R.S. § 24-6-402(4)(e), concerning the Town Manager’s evaluation and contract.”

Like journalism like this? Consider becoming a sustaining supporter — and get our print edition delivered to your home each month.

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The post Erie Mayor’s Attempts to Fire Town Manager Made Public appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Hair whipping in the wind, the late morning sun obscured by the towering federal courthouse behind, and a smattering of news teams pointed their cameras and microphones. Before the media, holding placards above their head, were the plaintiffs in a newly filed federal lawsuit.

Friends, families, their attorneys and Colorado state representative Meg Froelich joined Dawn Russell, Dr. Claudia Folska, and representatives of Atlantis / ADAPT as they laid out their grievances plainly in the cold air.

Dr. Claudia Folska speaks during a press conference in front of the federal courthouse in Denver, Colorado on Monday, December 8, 2025. Dawn Russell, Dr. Claudia Folska, and representatives of Atlantis / ADAPT filed a federal lawsuit with law firm Newman | McNulty alleging that Colorado’s Regional Transportation District violated the American with Disabilities Act through recent budgeting restructuring and service options impacting the disabled community. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

After an introduction from civil rights attorney Andy McNulty of Newman | McNulty, fresh from lobbying the federal legislature in Washington, D.C., Dawn Russell rolled her wheelchair toward the makeshift c-stand lectern.

Institutionalized as a child following her diagnosis with cerebral palsy, she found an avenue for her voice and fiery commitment when she joined Atlantis / ADAPT in 1996. Living with a disability, she had a lifetime of experience having to advocate for herself. It was time to use that experience lifting everyone around her.

Through almost there decades with ADAPT she has seen success in preserving and protecting the Affordable Care Act and Medicare, access to transportation for all, is an active participant in the assisted suicide policy discussion, and is currently working toward housing equity fighting to pass the LaTonya Reeves Freedom Act.

“It’s been fifty years since the Gang of 19 fought for our right to ride public transportation,” Russell read unflinchingly, beginning her brief statement. “Yet, today ADAPT must again ask a court to make RTD honor it.”

ADAPT was founded in Denver in 1975 by disabled members of a nursing home community founding their own housing solution, Atlantis, with collaboration from Reverend Wade Blank.

The organization got their organizing start protesting for accessible public transit. The organization, and their infamous Gang of 19, set national precedent by winning a lawsuit against RTD requiring the addition of lifts and ramps to public transit vehicles.

“RTD lied,” Russell told the amassed press and their audience. “To you and to me. We should be outraged.”

Attorney Mari Newman speaks during a press conference in front of the federal courthouse in Denver, Colorado on Monday, December 8, 2025. Dawn Russell, Dr. Claudia Folska, and representatives of Atlantis / ADAPT filed a federal lawsuit with law firm Newman | McNulty alleging that Colorado’s Regional Transportation District violated the American with Disabilities Act through recent budgeting restructuring and service options impacting the disabled community. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

The Regional Transportation District, or RTD, made the decision to raise the costs and limit the access to a hard-won option for mobility in the disabled community: Access-on-Demand. The program allows qualifying users to call for rides from third party platforms for curb-to-curb transit, subsidized by RTD.

For those with few route options, the inability to drive to a park and ride, or who have to carry cumbersome equipment, the program allows for autonomy for the disabled with low barriers through proximity to transportation.

“What is she supposed to do, quit her fulltime job and just drive me around?” Dr. Folska asked rhetorically during her time at the microphone, standing next to her adult daughter.

A former RTD Director herself, Dr. Folska founded All Access Transit Solutions in 2020. Blind most of her life, she has worked as a nonprofit director and disability activist throughout her life.

“It causes me great pain and disappointment to see where RTD is today. Today, RTD is killing Access-on-Demand for thousands of people with disabilities when in fact it’s the best service they’ve ever had,” she said.

Taking effect January 2026, the Board of Directors voted in fall 2024 to lower the maximum amount they’d underwrite, increase fares for its use, and create a base fare for all users. RTD says that they are operating with an expected nearly $230M budget deficit for the new year and hope these cost increases for the disability community will alleviate some of that burden.

Dr. Claire Folska and Dawn Russell reflect together after announcing a federal lawsuit during a press conference in front of the federal courthouse in Denver, Colorado on Monday, December 8, 2025. Dawn Russell, Dr. Claudia Folska, and representatives of Atlantis / ADAPT filed a federal lawsuit with law firm Newman | McNulty alleging that Colorado’s Regional Transportation District violated the American with Disabilities Act through recent budgeting restructuring and service options impacting the disabled community. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

“We are outraged by the fact that RTD is treating the rights of people with disabilities as some sort of line item that can just be cut,” Mari Newman, who is representing the plaintiffs. “People have been working for half a century for these rights that they’re entitled to.”

Folska, Russell, and Atlantis/ADAPT say that these changes, and their impacts’ ripples, are in violation of the ADA. The lawsuit reads that disabled users will be “excluded from participation in and deny the benefits of services, programs, or activities provided by RTD,” including equitable access to transportation, in violation of Title II of the ADA. The filing asserts that RTD is denying those with disabilities service, while providing greater access for Coloradans without disabilities.

“To the hundreds of folks who rely on Access-on-Demand for their freedom and independence – you showed-up and spoke-up for two years of RTD Board Committee meetings, and we thank you,” Russell said during her speech. “Let’s make RTD relevant for everyone.

Filed with motions for a preliminary injunction and to have the hearing expedited, the attorneys for Newman | McNulty hope to be able to prevent any interruption to existing service by delaying immediate implementation.

“Getting a federal lawsuit together in about a month is a tough thing to do and that’s what we did here,” McNulty said, answering a question after prepared statements concluded. “We’re looking to stop the wrong and unlawful cuts to RTD services.”

The ones who dared to fight City Hall.

 When Boulder denied public access to police body-cam footage, we took it to court. Our fight for transparency is now before the Colorado Supreme Court — because accountability doesn’t stop at the city line.

Through December 31, every gift to Yellow Scene will be matched — dollar for dollar — through the Colorado Media Project’s Matching Grant.Give & Get Democracy this Holiday Season. Your $8 recurring monthly support not only gets you YS delivered to your house, but it’s matched for the entire year, bringing that $8/month to $192.

Because Independent journalism isn’t just about telling stories. It’s about protecting your right to know, holding power accountable, and keeping democracy in the light. This is #newsCOneeds Becoming a sustaining supporter today for $8 a month!

The post Disability Activists File Federal Lawsuit Against RTD in Denver appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Fists clenched in their pockets protecting from the cold – in the Capitol’s driveway before the building’s western steps and below an American flag flying half-staff – some standing with their feet shuffling as others squeezed between chairs and strangers, hundreds gathered. Greetings were exchanged, many had shared this space before. For protest or proclamation, for demonstration and celebration. Today, it was in grief and recognition. 

State lawmakers were remembering a colleague. For organizers, a coworker. Community members, an advocate. For many, most simply, a friend. 

Colorado State Senator Faith Winter died in a car accident on Interstate 25 in Arapahoe County on November 29. The Broomfield senator represented District 25 in the Colorado State Senate and was entering her twelfth and final year in the legislature, due to term limits. While the investigation remains ongoing in the series of multivehicle accidents which resulted in Winters’ death, it is immediately apparent how she will be remembered for the impact she had during life.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis speaks before hundreds of community members gathered on the west side of the Colorado Capitol on Friday, December 5 to celebrate the life of state Senator Faith Winter, who died at 45 in a car crash on the eve of Thanksgiving 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

The Chair of the Transportation and Energy Committee, and serving on Business, Labor, and Technology and the Legislative Council, she is remembered by friends and family as a fierce warrior for women, the disabled, and the underprivileged. Colorado Public Radio credits her for making culture change in the Capitol after the expulsion of Democratic Rep. Steve Lebsock after she publicly accused him of sexual harassment.

She was also a vocal proponent for more color, for being authentic in every space, and for making the space for people to safely be themselves. An example her friends recall she set to be followed. Her refusal to wear jeans, and commitment to hiking in flip-flops, were a regular anecdote through the carousel of speakers. 

One which drew a knowing, mournful, chuckle at each mention. 

“I hope you remember her for the life she lived, not just the roles she held, for the hikes, the kayaks, for the orange dresses, for the flowers she adored, for the animals at her foot,” Winter’s close friend Hazel Gibson told the crowd through choked-back tears. “She lived in full color and she loved in full color.”

The following day, her life would be celebrated in full color at the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster. As friends, neighbors, and fellow legislators gathered to honor the work Faith devoted her career to, a quiet truth threaded through every conversation: Faith Winters was, simply, a genuinely good person.

“Faith’s passion and dedication for building a brighter Colorado future and brighter future for the country, really shone,” Governor Jared Polis told the crowd at the Capitol. “Faith always made time to connect with people. To find ways to brighten every day.”

Through her legislation raising fees on fuel and certain car gig economy providers she was able to amass billions of dollars for state transportation projects. In the 2025 Session she sponsored a bill, now law, which will add a voting and a nonvoting youth member, between 14 and 21 years of age, to the DPHE Environmental Advisory Board and creates a grant program to finance environmental mitigation projects.

Sienne Snook remembers her mother, speaking before hundreds of community members gathered on the west side of the Colorado Capitol on Friday, December 5 to celebrate the life of state Senator Faith Winter, who died at 45 in a car crash on the eve of Thanksgiving 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

Her political career started, apparently, in high school when she ensured through organizing that her friends would be elected to each and every dance court. She herself was voted prom princess.

“She wanted me to tell that story at an event, I just didn’t think it would be this one,” lifelong friend Jessica Walker admitted through tears. “The belief that she could make a difference and impact change has always been a part of who she was.” 

Her start in public office was from 2007 to 2014, when Winter served as a member in the Westminster city council. She was elected on a policy vision of racial and economic justice, helping to build progressive think tanks and organizations in community with her efforts from office. 

In spring 2024, she checked into a rehabilitation facility citing alcohol abuse after she appeared to be drunk while attending a Northglenn city council meeting in her role as Senator. Months earlier, in fall 2023, she had been hospitalized after a crash while riding her bike to the state Capitol.

“People say grief is love with nowhere to go and I believe this resonates deeply with who my mom was,” Senator Winter’s daughter Sienna Snook, told the audience. “My mom put so much love into the world which is why we feel her absence so strongly.”

In the cold chill, a warmth was palpable as many could reflect on their own moment that memory manifested. With a breath, and a respectful quiet, the final speaker took the microphone. Another friend who had been in the trenches of electoral politics with Senator Winter, Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen greeted the crowd.

Once a mentee of the late Senator, Congresswoman Pettersen told a story about being convinced to follow her friend up the ladder and to fight for a new kind of representation from our elected representatives. The first woman to represent Colorado’s 7th District, who got national notoriety for casting votes with her infant, remembered it was Winter who first told her how important it was to be someone who didn’t look like who usually runs for office.   

“She believed in the mantra: we lift as we rise. And it is something that she lived every day,” Congresswoman Pettersen reflected.

Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen speaks before community members gathered on the west side of the Colorado Capitol on Friday, December 5 to celebrate the life of state Senator Faith Winter, who died at 45 in a car crash on the eve of Thanksgiving 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

Vincent Chandler

Best known for capturing striking content from the frontlines of social movements, Heartland EMMY-nominated filmmaker and photographer Vince Chandler has spent 20 years creating art and documentary visuals across the U.S. They served as Communications Director for Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, Digital Content Strategist for the National Cannabis Industry Association and Colorado Rising, and Chief Content Officer of ƒ/4.20 Films. Vince’s political experience includes working for local and regional campaigns and lobbying on Capitol Hill. Vince has earned national recognition for their work as a visual journalist for The Denver Post, the publication that brought them to Denver in 2014 to serve as founding Multimedia Editor for Denver Post TV and weekly cannabis industry news show The Cannabist. Vince was the principal cinematographer for the feature documentary film Running With My Girls, which premiered at the 2021 Denver Film Festival. Vince holds degrees from Pennsylvania State University in Journalism and History, and they have lectured on journalism at Arkansas State and Penn State.

___

The ones who dared to fight City Hall.

 When Boulder denied public access to police body-cam footage, we took it to court. Our fight for transparency is now before the Colorado Supreme Court — because accountability doesn’t stop at the city line.

Through December 31, every gift to Yellow Scene will be matched — dollar for dollar — through the Colorado Media Project’s Matching Grant.Give & Get Democracy this Holiday Season. Your $8 recurring monthly support not only gets you YS delivered to your house, but it’s matched for the entire year, bringing that $8/month to $192.

Because Independent journalism isn’t just about telling stories. It’s about protecting your right to know, holding power accountable, and keeping democracy in the light. This is #newsCOneeds Becoming a sustaining supporter today for $8 a month!

The post Colorado State Senator Faith Winter Remembered As Fierce Advocate for Women appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The room was tense, despite the late hour energies were running high and colliding as voices mixed and ideas flowed. The overlapping noise intermixed conversations, the group exchanging their thoughts in a twining mix. A ringing crescendo culminating in the decision to designate a remote control the talking stick.

Slowed down, the group of leaders listened intently as individual voices rang through sudden silence, discussing how to get their friend out of jail.

Seven in the room had been arrested earlier that day at the Dirksen Senate Building Cafeteria, one remained behind bars for allegedly resisting arrest during the nonviolent protest they’d staged. They had travelled to their nation’s capital to spend a week raising their voices for the Heartland, sent by their neighbors in Kansas to be heard.

The Free State Advocates, a coalition of political action groups from the Sunflower State, were going to be sure they were.

“I feel like in my local group, there’s only so much you can do holding a sign and attending a rally, or making phone calls, and we’ve done a lot locally but we don’t feel heard,” says Michelle Jones. “I wanted to make a statement not just for myself, but to show the people in my local area that you can do big things. You can be scared, and it’s OK to be scared, but it’s simple actions and it’s daring moves. I want to be able to give a voice to the voiceless to those who are afraid.”

One day earlier, they were a group of virtual strangers, many meeting for the first time as they boarded planes or arrived at Washington, D.C. hostels. Some flew, others drove their trademark Freedom Van over a thousand miles filled with supplies sent from home. Protest signs, a sizable collection of homemade buttons, stacks and stacks of zines to be distributed, hundreds of handwritten notes from Kansans to their Senators scrawled on yellow notecards.

Arriving in Arlington, Virginia the first task in getting to know one another was dinner. Heading to the grocery store they pulled the list of dietary restrictions and shopped cautiously, adhering to meet the group of fourteen’s needs with as broad a selection as possible. Plant-based dairy free cheese was found while ingredient labels read twice to be sure they were free from mushrooms.

The care taken in the early stages reflects the intentional, careful consideration that had united these organizers, activists and fueled the trip to D.C. Weeks earlier, an article discussing the initial decision by President Trump to deploy National Guard troops into Washington was shared into a statewide group chat. Shelby Hermosillo, from Salina seized her Jerry Maguire moment and asked who was going with her.

“It all just happened so fast, it was kind of like ‘are you kidding me?’” Hermosillo told Yellow Scene, reflecting on the quick build and immediate reception of her idea. “It was my last straw, because we’d been standing out there protesting every week, doing the things, making yard signs, doing all these little things and as much as it matters I didn’t feel like we were getting anywhere. I was ready to go to DC and face it. I messaged the group chat and just asked ‘anyone want to go to DC? Let’s rally together, let’s go.’”

Soon, the group had leadership from twelve statewide organizations equaling fourteen people were confirmed. Reigning the momentum, the group of experienced organizers transitioned from ideation to activation. Immediately, fundraising began and plans were made.

A rental home in their budget was found only miles from the Capitol, one they could all share. Virtual meetings were set to share personal experiences and plan for everyone’s role. For some, this would be their first time traveling to the east coast, their experiences building movements at home were extrapolated and applied. Representatives from Leading Kansas, Midwest Unrest, Sunflower Coalition, Noisy but Necessary, Kansas Impact Coalition, Central Kansas Activists, Arc of Justice, Franklin County Action Network, KC Women’s Action Collective, 50501 Kansas, Boots on the Ground, Indivisible, and “likely more,” coordinated and collaborated, concluding in an action plan.

“It was just inspiring, ” Malice, an organizer in Kansas City for KC Women’s Action Collective, told Yellow Scene. “We had so many people from different backgrounds, from different areas with different levels of experience and reasons for being involved. We had queer people, we had disabled people, we had young people, we had old people, seeing people that were so diverse coming together for the same purpose is what we want to see around the country. This was an example that it could happen.”

“I’m biracial, and looking back in history at the civil rights movement, we’re following the pathway that has created change, movement, for the rights we have now. I felt as though I was doing a very similar thing protesting in this way, causing civil unrest like my grandparents and great grandparents stood with in the 60’s.” says Olivia Philips, who was one of the eight arrestees on September 10. “ We come from the center of the country and we’re not getting heard. I feel like it’s monumental for us to travel all the way to D.C. and make a stand like this.”

The first question to be answered: what would they like to accomplish? They wanted to carry the voices of their neighbors, the messages from the signs which surround them in their separate corners of Kansas, to their elected leaders. They wanted to confront the National Guard and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They wanted to speak directly with their representatives in Congress. Some were willing to risk arrest to take a stand.

“I’m not the leader of any particular organization, I’m just somebody who shows up and jumps in where I see something that can be done,” Sara Gillum, of Lawrence, Kansas, said. “If you had told me that I would be doing this four months I would’ve wondered who you were talking about.”

Her family, her husband and children, encouraged her to attend despite her reservations. Once she was in, Gillum was all in.

“If you’re feeling helpless and messed up, to create something out of nothing is such a good way to make sure you don’t feel hopeless, to fight back against feeling inadequate,” she reflects. “Especially with resisting this whole situation, to feel like you’re just a drop in an ocean, to have something tangible to hold is progress.”

For those who were fired up to take the legendary John Lewis advice to get into good trouble, a new partnership arrived a week after word spread of their impending adventure. Popular Democracy, a nationwide group who “unapologetically demand transformational change” approached Leading Kansas team leader Josh Fredrick asking if they wanted help.

Leading Kansas is a nonpartisan group of Kansans dedicated to holding elected officials accountable to the people, they stage regular readings of the U.S. Constitution in a weekly rotation outside of their Senators’ offices and coordinate town halls with officeholders. Planning to travel with the newly forming Free State Advocates, Fredrick brought the offer to the group.

“I wasn’t even initially a part of the group, to be honest. I saw the GoFund Me being advertised, reached out and asked if I could come, I’d like to do anything I can do to help” Fredrick says reflecting on how he joined the Free State Advocates coalition. “I had someone approach me at a protest and it really was a game changer. We wouldn’t have been able to bring as many people as we did without them, getting fourteen people there.”

They now had the institutional knowledge and organizational support to take their action to the next level. The first stop after arriving in D.C. would be a training on staging nonviolent civil disobedience on federal property, including what to expect as Capitol Police affix zip ties or handcuffs. To be sure their efforts wouldn’t go unnoticed they’d participate in a press conference with a member of Congress and activists from across the country sharing the stories of what brought them to this moment.

For the first night, though, ahead of tomorrow’s excitement the attention was on what was for dinner. The first four off the plane, shopping to fill the fridge for the week and paying so much attention to allergy concerns, landed on a spaghetti dinner. For this group from Kansas, of course corn would also be included.

Sara Gillum, of Lawrence, Kansas, finishes preparing a spaghetti dinner on her first night in Washington, D.C. with the Free State Advocates. Free State Advocates is a Kansas grassroots network of powerful leaders and activists traveling nationwide to uplift Kansans & fight for human rights. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

Around the dinner table that evening, conversation turned to the events ahead. Concerns were shared about the consequences of their actions, hopes exchanged about how they could have impact. There to fight against proposed cuts in the proposed appropriations bill before Congress to Housing and Urban Development, personal experiences were passed around. Some had experienced varying levels of unsheltered homelessness, all carried the weight of housing insecurity.

At eleven, the stove was restarted and the meal reheated in anticipation of the Freedom Van’s arrival. Making the 22-hour trek from the midwest, four more Free State Advocates arrived at the house bringing a fresh spark to the evening, unloading their supplies for the week and chattering hurriedly about next steps as they fixed their plates with the hot meal ready for them. Only staying to introduce themselves and to fill their stomachs, they soon departed to meet the other half of the group in downtown Washington, where they were staying a stone’s throw from the Capitol.

In the morning, with the excited sense of a child’s first sleepover, the house buzzed with an eager energy. Today was the first day of a long week of coordinated actions, ranging from nonviolent civil disobedience to scheduled meetings with their lawmakers. A cold breakfast was foraged by those for whom coffee alone didn’t suffice, and with the sun barely breaking behind the grey, raining clouds they set off.

Walking into the basement of a church, it could be Bingo night. Rows of folding tables and chairs are arranged before a small lectern, the walls lined with additional seating, spare a/v equipment, and a short buffet where breakfast was being laid out. In minutes, the quiet space is transformed to a boisterous, busy meeting room. From across the country – from Colorado, Florida, California, Pennsylvania, and of course Kansas – activists were learning how their day would go, through conversation, instruction, and role play.

Introductions are brief, there’s a loaded agenda and getting to the heart of the planned action was centered in the palpable urgency. Today, the group was gathering to fight for housing. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that under the U.S. House’s proposed 2026 spending bill, 181,900 fewer households would be served, while under the Senate’s proposed bill 107,800 fewer households would receive rental assistance. The loss of these vouchers would disproportionately affect older adults, people with disabilities, and families with children.

Highlighting the need for the average American to take a united stand against the removal of the social safety net for the nation’s most vulnerable populations, a member of each state represented was selected and asked to speak. With rain still pouring outside the basement windows, the scheduled press conference was moved at the last moment from the Capitol grounds to the church basement.

Eyes turned to watch members of the media stream through the door, placards distributed to the activists as they gathered in a semi circle under a large banner set behind a lone microphone. A murmur of gasps and a wave of excitement rippled as their keynote speaker entered the room: Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Talib, the first Palestinian American elected to federal office.

“In my community the housing has gotten so bad,” Congresswoman Talib told the gathered crowd. “You’re here to tell people ‘you’ve got us in survivor mode, and we’re tired.’ We should be able to thrive, we shouldn’t have to worry like this. I don’t care who is in the White House, this housing crisis has not been addressed with the urgency that’s needed.”

Congresswoman Talib continued her rally cry, highlighting policy positions she has introduced to assist with home ownership, food and medicine assistance, and better education opportunities. She passed the mic to speakers from Philadelphia, PA, Little Rock, AR, Oakland, CA, and – of course – Salina, Kansas. Shelby Hermosillo approached the lectern taking a deep breath.

Shelby Hermosillo, of Salina, Kansas, speaks following Congresswoman Rashida Talib during a Popular Democracy press conference before staging an act of nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol. “I had this weight over me, knowing that I was leaving my family back home, losing money because I’m here to do this, but it matters more than making sure we had a check at the end of the week,” Hermosillo said. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

“This comes from the heart,” she started. “A year ago I had a great life. We were living life comfortably, and then life happened and it wasn’t. We started getting behind, and we got so far behind on our rent and behind on our bills that we could never catch up. Our electric got shut off. Our gas got shut off. Our internet got cut off. Our kids couldn’t play the games that were the only distraction from what Mom and Dad were going through. Having to watch our kids watch their Mom and Dad cry together because we lost our home…and now fighting with HUD.”

“This fight is personal for me, I speak for many people I know and love who are also going through the same thing, as embarrassing as it is to admit my own story I hope it can help bring awareness and help others find hope and stand with us,” she concludes as the crowd around her closed in embracing the Kansas mother and chanting to answer the call, find dignity for all.

Fired up and ready to go the group split into two, some headed to occupy Senators’ offices demanding they recognize the needs of their constituents and some headed to the Dirksen Senate Building to disrupt a quiet lunch cafeteria.

A packed room of tables, the sounds of cutlery scraping on plates while smells of pizza and hamburgers waft through the air, office staff, lobbyists, and lawmakers sit together to eat. Sharing space and talking in low voices, this is a moment to pause from the day’s stresses and find some nourishment. Suddenly, voices start ringing across the room shouting that housing is a human right.

Deploying two large pop-out tents, representing the shelter that so many Americans find from harsh outdoor conditions while living unhoused across the country, the activists sat down making noise and sharing their stories in a united voice. Within minutes, Capitol Police had surrounded them, warning that if they didn’t desist they’d be detained. After a third warning, they began to arrest the group of fourteen people from across the country, many strangers to one another only a few hours earlier, now united in their cause.

Becky Norlin was the last person removed, and as she was pulled from the cafeteria she found every camera she could, being sure her voice was clear. For her effort, she was given an enhanced charge for resisting arrest, the only member of the group who wouldn’t be processed and released that day she’d spend the evening in a jail cell in D.C.

Gary Phillips, of Salina, Kansas, raises his fist overhead while surrounded by Capitol Police arresting his group for staging a nonviolence sit-in in the Dirksen Senate Building Cafeteria. he Free State Advocates travelled to Washington D.C. to join Popular Democracy for an act of civil disobedience protesting proposed cuts to the Housing and Urban Renewal in the recently proposed appropriations bills. Congress has until September 30 to reach a temporary funding agreement to avoid a federal government shutdown. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

The decision would alter the plans for the Free State Advocates, forcing them back to the drawing board for the next day’s planned protest. Suddenly, they had to offer court support.

“I am from the heartland of America, the middle of America, the line in Kansas and I want the world to know that there is a spark in the middle – even – of the United States,” Norlin told Yellow Scene following her release. “I am in love with the people in my country and my community, and the people that I work with every day. This was a no-brainer for me.”

Knowing that their peer would not be proud of them pausing, the Free State Advocates decided to continue with their efforts to meet with law makers and continue to strive toward equitable policy decisions benefitting their midwest neighbors, meeting their needs.

The next day, after a short break in the hot late-summer afternoon sun, the swampy humidity forcing a stop for water and some shade, the Kansans mount their scooters and head off toward the White House. The only evidence they had been there: a single homemade zine left tacked to the wall they’d been resting on, waiting to be found and read.

Access to medical care, cuts to education, the loss of SNAP benefits, and an impending cut to housing assistance compounding their concerns and pushing a ripple of anticipatory anxiety about whether their voices would suffice with their Senators, they headed back to Capitol Hill, where a majority of the group had been detained and charged fewer than 24 hours earlier. With a meeting scheduled with Senator Jerry Moran’s office, they decided to attempt to drop-in with Senator Roger Marshall and their members of the House.

“If you knew what was going on, you would be fighting for us,” said Norlin, who would not be making the trip with the group because of a personal ban from the property stemming from her additional charges. “We’re not gonna stop, and we could travel all the way to D.C. because we have a wonderful team of people in Kansas that we represent who got us here. We’re trying to sound the alarm bell, wave the flag.”

Only hours before they’d been in the D.C. Municipal Courts, providing support for the final member of their group who had been held in jail overnight. They had travelled across the country to their nation’s capital city to raise a united voice, bringing to the forefront of national politics their crisis in the center of the country.

The Free State Advocates travelled from House offices to Senate offices, popping in to ask to talk with their leadership or aides. In Congresswoman Sharice Davids’s office, they were allowed a comfortable impromptu meeting with Senior staff who heard feedback on the needs to protect immigrants, the poor, and the queer community.

“Right now, the only people they’re listening to are the people who can drop a dime and fly across the country on a moment’s notice and that doesn’t represent the majority of American people,” says Josh Fredrick. “If that’s all they’re listening to, that’s all they’ll know. We need to make sure that the underrepresented has a voice in this conversation.”

In Ron Estes’s offices aides met the group with a sense of reservation, asking them to state their issues and were quickly asked to depart. For their meeting with Senator Moran’s staff, they were brought to an internal conference room where they sat around the table discussing concerns about National Guard deployments to Wichita – where the crime rate is four times worse than in D.C. – about education, and about preservation of the federal safety net.

Jesseka Greene speaks with Congresswoman Sharice Davids’s staff in their Capitol office, where they were allowed a comfortable impromptu meeting with Senior staff who heard feedback on the needs to protect immigrants, the poor, and the queer community. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

“I’m the only trans member of the group, I need to push my voice just as much as I’m helping to push everyone else’s,” says Jesseka Greene, from Abilene, who travelled with the group to advocate for special education funding. “There is no difference between my civil rights and your civil rights. Some people feel uncomfortable with me, but that’s their deal and has nothing to do with me. In Moran’s office, I felt heard. I felt the emotional response I got when I got into the details of my experience as a trans woman looking for a job, after a lifetime of struggling through school needing more support.”

Following what they saw as a successful day on Capitol Hill, where some members of Congress gave them time to talk and others left them feeling unheard and frustrated, the group paused for a human moment. Finding a Thai restaurant, they took a moment to celebrate Becky being released, and group member Mary’s birthday. Around the table, stories were shared about the excitement of participating in civil disobedience which resulted in arrest and hope was eschewed that not only could they individually have impact but that their efforts could inspire their neighbors at home to follow their lead.

Becky Norlin smiles during a pause in conversation at a dinner celebrating group member Mary’s birthday and Norlin’s release from police custody. Eight of the Free State Advocates were arrested the previous day and released in hours, Becky was held overnight on additional charges of AOP Resisting Arrest. Arraigned the next day she was released to an enthusiastic cheer from the crowd for her action. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

After dinner, they weren’t done. With such limited time in the capital city, there was little rest or recovery to be found in the week. Not with work to be done. The final day of the 30-day deployment order originally issued by President Trump and the sun now sinking below the horizon, the group readied themselves to again hit the streets. They were going to get first-hand experience of night time in what they called “occupied D.C.”

In a silent city, absent from the normal late-night clamor of lobbyist cocktails and tourists, they rented scooters and bikes and set out. Rolling across the streets, their eyes peeled for ICE vehicles or armed Guardsmen, there was a tense sense of unease. They were not certain what they would find, and they were most certainly not in Kansas anymore. MAGA Republicans had rallied outside the White House earlier that day, with J6 activists leading the charge for further liberation for those who supported the administration.

All was quiet, though, and hours later as the Freedom Van returned to bring them back to their rental their attention was now on the next morning and their final protest action: guiding their legislators back to heartland value. In classic Kansas style, they’d be doing it by building a yellow brick road for them to follow home.

Jesseka Greene, Christie Peterson, Michelle Jones, Sara Gillum, and Miranda Bachman (L-R) work to construct a yellow brick road, built with “bricks” carrying messages from Kansas constituents, to bring to their representatives in the U.S. Senate. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

For weeks, they had gathered hundreds of handwritten notes on yellow note cards asking Kansans to share what they’d like their lawmakers to focus on. Healthcare, housing, humanity, the topics ranged far and represented the red state’s people’s priorities. Some included asks to end the genocide and occupation in Palestine, others called for protection for immigrant workers. At daybreak the work was begun to build the road.

50 feet of “road” was made by laying the cards as bricks across cloth, something easy to roll up and carry to the Capitol. The Free State Advocates headed back to The Hill for the third straight day carrying the concerns of Kansas, off to see the wizard. Debuting the reference to Dorothy’s iconic pathway, they took a group photo and spoke to tourists and curious passersby about their project before beginning its rapid deconstruction to deliver the notes to their Senators.

Jesseka Greene and Christie Peterson were selected to represent the group in the offices.

“People on the coast tend to have more power, because of access. They are closer to where the decisions are being made, I think here in the middle we have to raise our voices really really loud to be heard. I don’t think the plight of the farmers is being heard by politicians on the coast.” Peterson, who is a State Organizer for Kansas 50501, and had been arrested at the Dirksen Senate Cafeteria only days earlier, told Yellow Scene. “The call is for people who believe in upholding the Constitution, ending executive overreach, maintaining the three coequal branches of government, and equality for all. As far we’re concerned these should be no-brainers.”

Their first stop would be Senator Moran. Entering the office with a shaking, calm voice, she explained the yellow note cards came from constituents in Kansas asking for their Senator to be heard. She played a video of the yellow brick road being constructed and displayed at the Capitol, explaining that this won’t work if it’s just a cool video – they need people to join the call and they need their representatives to hear them. Within minutes, a silent alarm had been pushed and she found herself again surrounded by Capitol Police.

“It was like a gut punch. The fact that they couldn’t even talk to me, or tell me that they’d like me to leave the office… I was talking to them so reasonably and as a constituent, to have them call the police on me really felt like feeling the voices of Kansans to their office was somehow a threat,” Peterson reflects. “They did allow me on my mission to continue my mission of bringing the voices to Senator Marshall’s office.”

Christie Peterson, of Kansas 50501, talks with Capitol Police outside of Senator Roger Marshall’s office. They had escorted her to deliver messages from constituents after being called to remove her from the office of Senator Josh Moran moments earlier. The Free State Advocates had carried hundreds of handwritten messages to their Senators from neighbors in Kansas, written on yellow paper and briefly turned into a yellow brick road, hoping to lead their representatives home to heartland values. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

That office was locked and the door remained unanswered. Christie signed the guest book outside, leaving a note promising to mail the Senator his collection of cards, thanked the officers for their personal escort through the building, and departed.

“I wanted to go into this with an open mind, I wanted to meet with other organizers and learn what next steps could be,” Miranda Bachman, of Salina, told Yellow Scene after the week’s events. “I was really happy with being able to spread our message and there’s no way that [Senator] Marshall didn’t know we were out there.”

Since the event, Senator Marshall has responded to press inquiries spinning his constituent’s messages asking for attention to be paid to their values as threats of political violence.

“I think it’s important for people to realize that as red as some of these states or cities vote, there are people out here who didn’t vote for this,” Bachman continued. “Medicaid cuts are really going to hit rural Kansas, and as we feel this we’re going to be more in your face. I think that’s what we need, it’s important to write your legislators and call them, but they’re not listening. We need to stay peaceful, but speak with a loud voice until we’re heard.”

“You’re capable, you can do it,” Malice said after returning home already planning the next direct action in her hometown of Kansas City. “Organizing in Kansas isn’t the same as organizing in large cities like Chicago or New York, but I don’t want anyone to think that’s a reason to not do it.”

The work that could be done now done, the group retreated to their shared temporary home for a final evening of reflection. Sitting together while the Freedom Van was packed, they stayed up late into the night talking about what they felt they’d accomplished, discussing lessons learned, and sharing ideas for what to do next. Some went to bed as the clock ticked past midnight and others swapped stories as those who had driven started to ready their departure.

“It was a little hard to say goodbye to each other, especially recognizing that we may never be in the same room again,” said Josh Fredrick, looking back at the sudden end and departure after three days of intense direct action and police interaction.

With promises that they’d do all they could to build on their momentum, tears were shed and embraces held for more than a few beats. In the dark of night, the first group started their trek back to Kansas with Becky Norlin starting the van’s engine and taking the wheel. They’d return, and they’d do it with more of their neighbors.

This November, with a shared pulse from the Heartland, the Free State Advocates plan to bus hundreds of Kansans to Washington D.C. carrying their demands and raising their united voice insisting to be heard.

Best known for capturing striking content from the frontlines of social movements, Heartland EMMY-nominated filmmaker and photographer Vince Chandler has spent 20 years creating art and documentary visuals across the U.S. They served as Communications Director for Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, and Vince has earned national recognition for their work as a visual journalist for The Denver Post. Vince was the principal cinematographer for the feature documentary film Running With My Girls, which premiered at the 2021 Denver Film Festival.

______________________________

What does resistance & resilience look like in the Heartland of America?

Sometimes it’s a protest outside an ICE detention center. Sometimes it’s a rural nurse explaining how Medicaid cuts will shutter the town hospital. Sometimes, it’s a law professor teaching systemic racism at a University in a state where CRT is banned in public schools.

As Trump’s second term unfolds — and the One Big Beautiful Act guts healthcare, empowers ICE, and reshapes American life — independent journalism is more vital than ever. However, the national press rarely shows up in the places where policy has the most impact.

We do.

These American Crossroads is a collaboration between Vince Chandler, Emmy-nominated visual journalist, and Yellow Scene Magazine, Boulder County’s only independent newsroom.

Become a sustaining supporter for just $8/month: https://fundrazr.com/Crossroads

The post 8 Kansans Arrested, 3 Days of Protest in D.C. appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The sun set hours ago. Despite it being a Sunday night, the coffee shop crowd continues to sip their hot beverages, smoke cigarettes, and chat amongst themselves. Their energy ripples through the dark sidewalks where people walk to the bus stop, glancing at their phones as they head to their evening’s next destination. Just down the street, a small group of 20-somethings are gathered on a bar patio, their excitement palpable, chattering away below billowing Black Lives Matter, Trans Pride, and Progress Pride flags.

Only blocks from a quiet residential neighborhood, separated by an active railroad track, in the Rust Belt city of Cleveland, they were there for an evening of art, community, and political discourse. As the first sounds of the show start to drift past the security at the door, the group disappears inside the venue, No Class.

Cleveland’s second-best gay bar, the space’s dive-y aesthetic and all-black sticker-covered interior sets the expectation immediately that you’re there to see a punk or metal band on stage. Any other night, you probably could, venue owner Emma Jochum has a lifetime of experience booking and producing shows for bands who play what she calls “extreme music.”

Tonight, though, Cleveland’s queer scene is here for a drag show. Ostensibly set to celebrate the birthday of host Bram Stroke-Her, you’re asked at the door to make a contribution to TransOhio, an organization dedicated to protecting and advancing the rights of trans, nonbinary, intersex, and gender nonconforming people in the Buckeye State.

Drag performer Homer E. Rodick points to the sky while show host Bram Stroke-Her faces the audience during a performance raising funds for TransOhio at No Class in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller re-established Cleveland as a prosperous city of wealth during the second Industrial Revolution, building the city in his image of splendor while creating distinct divides between the baron class owners and the workers who generated his fortune. Like other industrial cities in the region, it has felt the impact of the departure of manufacturing, slipping into disrepair bearing signs of dilapidation.

Clevelanders in this eastern gateway to the Heartland insist, however, that their city is worth fighting for. Cognizant that they’ve been left picking up the tab for political corruption, they see the wealth gap that fuels the profits of billionaire developers and energy conglomerates, while leaving themselves and their neighbors behind. Recently, there has been a push back at the continued exploitation of the lakefront midwest metropolis, as the people work to build community first campaigns and organizations to reinvigorate and revitalize their town from the grass roots.

To do that, it takes people. Those people need the place to gather safely. At No Class, they find solidarity in a space where art and conversation can thrive. Existing for years as Now That’s Class before Jochum took ownership, the space organically transformed from crust punk hovel to its current existence as No Class, what can only be described as a gay metal bar. Show attendees may not know it when they walk through the door, but they’ve entered a political space.

No Class owner Emma Jochum speaks with people at her bar during a drag performance benefitting TransOhio on Sunday, September 14 in Cleveland, Ohio. The metal and punk venue hosts queer performances and politican functions, as well as local and nationally touring music acts. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

“It’s really hard to make people care, and I just care,” Jochum says, sitting on the venue’s back porch moments after finishing a board meeting with a local community development corporation. “Trying to get other people to give a shit about stuff has been a struggle, but we’re working on it.”

Tonight, the effort to combat ennui would be through drag. Stroke-Her produced their birthday show with the TransOhio fundraiser attached and invited queens and kings to take the stage – and microphone – advocating for their rights, to discuss political violence, and to keep the community organized. The sounds of bumping dance music pulsed through the doors to the quieting avenue outside, while inside cheers erupted and joy was shared.

No one can enter this space without feeling the impact of local politics. Naloxone hydrochloride is available at the bar, a brochure rack near the restrooms is laden with notices for upcoming mutual aid group meetings, protest and direct action flyers adorn the wall. The drag show will obviously bring its own messaging of liberation and resistance, and on nights when heavy metal or punk rock acts take the stage canvassing and campaigning will be entwined.

“A lot of metal dudes are not into politics at all, or if they are, they’re into the wrong politics,” Jochum continued. “I’ve definitely caught some heat for being public about my opinions but ultimately, I don’t care. We do a lot of extreme metal, black metal and stuff, and there have been a few times where I didn’t vet the bands properly and had to cancel a gig.”

Platforming voices she feels need to be heard isn’t the only direct action the bar and venue owner takes. Serving on the Northwest Neighborhood CDC, covering Cleveland’s Edgewater and Gordon Square neighborhoods, is where she sees her impact the most. Combatting gentrification while advocating for community-driven growth through affordable housing and locally-owned business anchoring their neighborhood, she makes the time between her day job and No Class duties on the evenings and weekends to lend her voice.

Knowing she can’t do it alone, she utilizes the platform she’s built in No Class to raise the voices of local leaders, political candidates, and issues organizers. In June, her bar hosted a Punk is Political meet-and-greet for city council candidate Tanmay Shah. An Indian immigrant, union organizer, lawyer, and truck driver, Shah is a democratic socialist with popular support who has spent his fifteen years in Cleveland defending tenants against unethical landlords in housing court and organized a union at the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland.

Hosting canvass launches and candidate meet-and-greets isn’t enough for Jochum, though, she wants every person who passes through her venue to remember that punk rock is most certainly rooted in politics. In the months to come, as city and state elections near, she intends to host candidates like Shah and local organizers like Justin Strekal on-stage during shows, between sets, to tell the moshing crowds where else they can direct that energy.

“When we have bigger shows, bigger punk shows or even bigger drag shows, where I know that people give a shit about politics and will sit and listen, I want to get people on stage in the middle of the show and hopefully introduce a wider audience to candidates, let them hear what they’re running for and why and hopefully mobilize some more voters,” Jochum says. “It’s dangerous, and it’s hard, and it sucks a lot, but it needs to be done and the work is important.”

In Vice President JD Vance’s home state, where President Trump won by twelve points, organizing for progressive issues and candidates can be an uphill journey. The community identifying and supporting a safe venue for that work is important, and whether it was set up with intention, or completely by accident as is the case with Emma’s No Class, they fill a vital role in red states. She stresses the importance of not waiting until you’re told to do something, or think you have all the resources, but working with what you have, mobilizing, and getting to work.

Tonight, on an otherwise innocuous Sunday evening, the crowd came together to cheer on drag performers, to laugh after a week fraught with national stories of targeted violence and fear, and raised more than $500 for an organization which will continue to carry that message. Tears were shared, proverbial cups filled, and through joy and celebration of life, their mission continued.

Best known for capturing striking content from the frontlines of social movements, Heartland EMMY-nominated filmmaker and photographer Vince Chandler has spent 20 years creating art and documentary visuals across the U.S. They served as Communications Director for Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, and Vince has earned national recognition for their work as a visual journalist for The Denver Post. Vince was the principal cinematographer for the feature documentary film Running With My Girls, which premiered at the 2021 Denver Film Festival.

______________________________

What does resistance & resilience look like in the Heartland of America?

Sometimes it’s a protest outside an ICE detention center. Sometimes it’s a rural nurse explaining how Medicaid cuts will shutter the town hospital. Sometimes, it’s a law professor teaching systemic racism at a University in a state where CRT is banned in public schools.

As Trump’s second term unfolds — and the One Big Beautiful Act guts healthcare, empowers ICE, and reshapes American life — independent journalism is more vital than ever. However, the national press rarely shows up in the places where policy has the most impact.

We do.

These American Crossroads is a collaboration between Vince Chandler, Emmy-nominated visual journalist, and Yellow Scene Magazine, Boulder County’s only independent newsroom.

Become a sustaining supporter for just $8/month: https://fundrazr.com/Crossroads

The post Punk Rock is Political, Cleveland’s Gay Metal Bar Won’t Let You Forget appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The morning is quiet as you turn down a main street, either side of the wide avenue lined with two-story buildings housing shops and restaurants. The small cafe has a few people seated outside but on this Labor Day morning the town center is nearly empty.

The Weld County seat, this northeastern Colorado town challenges the largely rural reputation for its area an hour east of the Front Range city, Fort Collins. Originally named Union City it was settled and financed by its contemporary namesake, newspaperman Horace Greeley, as a realization of his Free Soiler call for northern anti-slavery Americans to go west.

The original town moniker foreshadowed the strength of organized labor in its future. Colorado is a state settled by miners and ranchers, the industry brought along to support their efforts including railroads and power. The state was founded during the end of the industrial revolution, when unions were fighting for dignity for the working class and their members were engrained in the region’s DNA.

In 1914, in southeastern Colorado town called Ludlow, at a mine operated by John D. Rockefeller, 21 people were killed as the union struck for better working conditions – including the company following state safety laws. In 2024, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 organized against allegations of human trafficking and abuse of immigrant labor at a Greeley meat packing plant.

On Labor Day, 2025, though the streets were quiet near the cafes, a crowd was building in the city’s Lincoln Park in support of organized labor. Across the country, tens of thousands will join in solidarity as the Workers Over Billionaires day of action sewed a cohesive message of labor solidarity from town to town, coast to coast.

Rally goers hold American flags and protest signs aloft as they listen to a carousel of candidates and union leaders speaking in Greeley, Colorado, during the Workers Over Billionaires day of action on Labor Day, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

With protests planned in Denver, Golden, Loveland, Boulder, left-leaning towns across the Square State, what would this call to action look like in a worker-strong county where President Trump won by 21 points?

As the scheduled start time approached, more than one hundred people were walking along the tables set up by organizations and volunteers with further calls to action, more opportunities to raise their voices. Some carried signs, prepared for the march starting in an hour. With a tap on a microphone, a chant was encouraged by the amplified voice starting the programming.

Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, newly created in response to population change, stretches from the north Denver suburbs of Thornton and Arvada stretching to its farthest northeast population center in Greeley. Between lays a spectrum of exurban and rural communities, housing quite the range of philosophical and political ideologies.

Currently represented in the House of Representatives by Republican Gabe Evans, the seat was founded in 2024 by Democrat Yadira Caraveo. Now, it is widely considered one of the most competitive race in the fight for control of the Capitol. As the Governor rejects following California and Texas in redrawing districts (and Missouri joins that conversation), this Colorado race is one that could decide the balance of the U.S. legislature in 2026.

And to recognize Labor Day, the unions and political organizers did not miss the chance to make that clear. For an hour, the microphone was passed between candidates – vying for city council, mayor, and Representative Evans’ Congressional seat, including State Treasurer Dave Young – and union leaders.

“We are in a moment in history where the trials and tribulations of our ancestors are not so foreign to us…and the very people with the power and intent to keeping it that way want nothing more than us to be distracted,” AFL-CIO organizer Len Harris told the crowd. “The moment we decide to reach across the divide, to stand in solidarity with our community, to fully reckon with and understand that ‘an injury to one of us is an injury to all of us’ is the moment their rule over us falters.”

The crowd chanted, hooted, and hollered as speakers paraded personal anecdotes alongside calls to action and messages for support. The local candidates mentioned concern about federal policies impacting their growing prairie metropolis. The disappearance of neighbors by ICE in the nearly 50% latino community, cuts in funding for medical care and education, attacks on the state’s electoral processes.

“We can, we must, and we will do all the things,” Amie Baca-Oehlert, a candidate for Congressional District 8 said during the rally. “We must pull on all the levers.”

Protestors rally during a march through downtown Greeley, Colorado, chanting and waving signs at passing traffic during the Workers Over Billionaires day of action on Labor Day, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

As the sun rose higher and the shade hiding the crowd shrank, marshals wearing orange high visibility vests held a banner aloft. The rallygoers picked up their own signs and voices filled the air. Chants of “si, se puede” rose from the throng as they navigated the narrow sidewalks around the park and toward the town center.

Car horns soon joined the protest’s chorus as marchers reached the busier main strip. Some making their way through the protest made a show of covering their ears, a quiet way to counter with their own dissent. A handful voiced support for MAGA and President Trump as they passed quickly, one person asked the activists how much they’d been paid to be present. The majority of this Monday morning in Greeley, though, greeted the sentiment of workers over billionaires with an excited energy.

The next federal election is still more than a year away and members of this community are already mapping out how they can flip this MAGA slice of Colorado. While thousands rally in Denver, and tens of thousands more find a backyard and a barbecue, one hundred rallied, raising their voices, around workers and winning elections in Greeley.

Best known for capturing striking content from the frontlines of social movements, Heartland EMMY-nominated filmmaker and photographer Vince Chandler has spent 20 years creating art and documentary visuals across the U.S. They served as Communications Director for Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, and Vince has earned national recognition for their work as a visual journalist for The Denver Post. Vince was the principal cinematographer for the feature documentary film Running With My Girls, which premiered at the 2021 Denver Film Festival.

______________________________

What does resistance & resilience look like in the Heartland of America?

Sometimes it’s a protest outside an ICE detention center. Sometimes it’s a rural nurse explaining how Medicaid cuts will shutter the town hospital. Sometimes, it’s a law professor teaching systemic racism at a University in a state where CRT is banned in public schools.

As Trump’s second term unfolds — and the One Big Beautiful Act guts healthcare, empowers ICE, and reshapes American life — independent journalism is more vital than ever. However, the national press rarely shows up in the places where policy has the most impact.

We do.

These American Crossroads is a collaboration between Vince Chandler, Emmy-nominated visual journalist, and Yellow Scene Magazine, Boulder County’s only independent newsroom.

Become a sustaining supporter for just $8/month: https://fundrazr.com/Crossroads

The post Workers Over Billionaires on Labor Day in Greeley, Colorado appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The Missouri river creeps along, moving quietly but not silently as the sun starts to break across the Iowa-Nebraska line. An early morning boat cuts its way across the water as cyclists start to flow along the edge’s trails, funneling from connecting arteries into downtown Omaha.

Passing through Heartland of America Park on this cool morning, a relief after weeks of sweltering hot, they pass a small group of volunteers erecting tables and tents. Banners are strung between poles as a flag is stretched between two trees.

The energy is already high, day-of enthusiasm and months of preparation colliding as the dozen people prepare the infrastructure for the hundreds on their way. A wagon with speakers piled high is wheeled through the maze of extra water bottles, t-shirts, and art supplies being prepared and laid out on tables. Morning greetings are exchanged ahead of swapping shared expectations for the day.

In support of liberation, for peace and dignity, for the Palestinian people more than two hundred Nebraskans were gathering to raise funds for pediatric health care. While the Heartland continues to rally, raising their voices and marching silently to end the forced famine in Gaza, today’s event was rallying support through competition.

Organized in coordination with Ohio-founded HEAL Palestine, this midwest waterfront park was hosting a 5k and fun run named for Hind Rajab, a five-year-old girl who the IDF publicly killed alongside the paramedics saving her life following a previous by Israeli forces. In the first attack, 335 bullets were fired from a tank at the car occupied by children, while Hind’s 15-year-old sister called for help on the phone. Hind was the only one to survive, only to be killed when help arrived.

To remember Hind, and to raise direct aid for children like her who are experiencing the occupation, today’s 5k offered an opportunity to educate and advocate without confrontation. Collaborators from local organizations offered their individual expertises to provide medical training and care, production equipment and entertainment.

Registrants sign in for the Hind’s 5k race in Heart of American Park in Omaha, Nebraska. The event, named for a 5-year-old girl killed by Israel was held to raise funds for pediatric medical care in Palestine. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

After registering and receiving your official race bib, you walked the path through the park past mutual aid organizers and representatives from HEAL Palestine. Nearing the starting line brings a wave of pregame jitters, that nervous anticipation athletes permeate as they prepare for their event. Families with newborns in their jogging strollers, teens taking selfies in their friend groups, millennials stretching and warming up (because they came to win).

A snack table laden with BDS approved goodies and water opened up to where the speakers stood, the first starting to tap the microphone. Kayla, the day’s emcee and event organizer, takes a moment to remind everyone of what brought everyone together today before a moment of silence in remembrance of Hind and the children of Palestine.

“To carry her memory, to honor her life, and to stand for the right of every Palestinian child to be safe and free.”

The evening before, a group gathered for a seder dinner to discuss. In the basement of a Lutheran church, a sign of interfaith cooperation in Omaha, Jewish Voices for Peace were preparing for shabbat blessings. Scout, a Gen Z leader in local organizing, looked out at the group gathered around the large table before he began reading from Deuteronomy.

In solidarity with those experiencing famine in Occupied Palestine, there would be no meal served at tonight’s supper. Nebraskans for Palestine successfully raised $10,000 for mutual aid kitchens in the West Bank and Gaza during a hunger strike in coordination with JVP members earlier this month.

Cat King, a Jewish organizer in Omaha, contributes to the discussion about helping your neighbor during a seder dinner hosted by Jewish Voices for Peace in August 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

As Scout concludes his reading, he repeats a line from 15:4 “there shall be no needy among you,” starting the evening’s discussion. Who is included in that needy amongst you, your immediate friends and family? Your clan? Everyone?

As day became night, ideas were traded in a thoughtful back and forth. Ping ponging in an overlapping across the table no voice went unheard. Children interrupted with questions which were addressed with intentional honesty, a forgotten clause was allowed space to return after the conversation had cycled past. More than one person produced a book to highlight their point or to resolve curiosity, this group knew they didn’t have every answer but worked together to progress toward one.

With the flow threatening hours more to talk about, a final time check accompanies a hurried end with eager asks for the next opportunity to gather. The next day’s 5k was mentioned, some needed the early bedtime knowing the sunrise start ahead. For those who belonged to the local temple, tips on continuing to stand by their principles while a community they love rejects them were exchanged.

“Zionism is antithetical to Judaism,” Scout told Yellow Scene while cleaning up the room. “There’s obviously the secular moral standpoint that what’s happening in Palestine is wrong, but from a religious and a Jewish standpoint it’s incredibly wrong. It’s antithetical to everything that we’re taught.”

Nurse Willy, who has worked with HEAL Palestine and served on medical missions to Gaza and the West Bank, walks amongst the crowd of 5k participants carrying his phone while video calling Wissam Hamada, Hind’s mother before the start of the 5k named for her departed daughter’s memory. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

At the next morning’s starting line, a roar rips through the gathered crowd. Nurse Willy, who has traveled for medical missions to Palestine, was walking through the runners holding a phone aloft. Wissam Hamada, Hind’s mother, was on a video call sharing the moment from across the world with those gathered to run in her daughter’s name.

With a countdown from the microphone, they were off. The soon-to-be-winners rocketed from the line toward the riverfront route, followed by not-taking-it-seriously students and families with fresh facepaint. Walkers, the elderly, some kids who refused to walk in anything but looping circles and their laughing adults sipping coffee made up the rear.

An hour later everyone was back in the park, their necks wearing medals for the finishers. Water and electrolytes flowed as they sweated in the still-sleepy city. For those who had energy to spare, Dabkeh lessons were offered and a circle of dancers swarmed the stage while others colored with chalk and played with bubbles. The line at the face paint station was always present, though no one waited long before walking away adorned.

The celebratory, relaxed mood set a tone of rest between the work to be done. While some headed out to their day’s social events, others scrolled social media looking for events to add to their calendars. Worry about the promise of National Guard troops coming and reflections on recent attacks on journalists punctuated plans for lunch. Labor Day is right around the corner and 50501 is planning a massive national day of action, plans were made to carry the day’s message with them into the new week.

Best known for capturing striking content from the frontlines of social movements, Heartland EMMY-nominated filmmaker and photographer Vince Chandler has spent 20 years creating art and documentary visuals across the U.S. They served as Communications Director for Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, and Vince has earned national recognition for their work as a visual journalist for The Denver Post. Vince was the principal cinematographer for the feature documentary film Running With My Girls, which premiered at the 2021 Denver Film Festival.

______________________________

What does resistance & resilience look like in the Heartland of America?

Sometimes it’s a protest outside an ICE detention center. Sometimes it’s a rural nurse explaining how Medicaid cuts will shutter the town hospital. Sometimes, it’s a law professor teaching systemic racism at a University in a state where CRT is banned in public schools.

As Trump’s second term unfolds — and the One Big Beautiful Act guts healthcare, empowers ICE, and reshapes American life — independent journalism is more vital than ever. However, the national press rarely shows up in the places where policy has the most impact.

We do.

These American Crossroads is a collaboration between Vince Chandler, Emmy-nominated visual journalist, and Yellow Scene Magazine, Boulder County’s only independent newsroom.

Become a sustaining supporter for just $8/month: https://fundrazr.com/Crossroads

The post Fun Runs and Torah Study, Omaha Organizes for Palestine appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Lunchtime in Topeka, Kansas. Under a heat advisory, the streets are especially quiet as the Saturday morning becomes afternoon. Despite the high temperature, a dozen people are gathered in the shade before the wide avenue on the western side of the state’s Capitol.

A case of water was set out as a handful of others parked their cars, waving as they exited before turning back to grab their signs, banners, or flags from the back seat. Even as smiles were shared between the growing group, anxiety was palpable through the hot air.

Many recognized one another, the dedicated activists serve regular roles organizing the various weekly and monthly demonstrations taking place across the eastern plains of the Sunflower State. A sign-up sheet for the Kansas 50501 organization is on-hand for any new faces.

And new faces soon joined, brought to direct action after seeing their screens filled with images of the national guard swarming the nation’s capital as President Trump wrestled for local control of the police from the people, giving that power to his attorney general. Some mentioned the increased cooperation with ICE, including checkpoints established in Washington, D.C., as well as the understandable concern about what city could be next.

The event was a rapid response protest to the federal administration’s military encroachment on D.C. only the Tuesday before. The street was lined with the fifty who had seen the call through one of the organization’s communications channels and came outside to voice their opposition.

Vehicles passing couldn’t avoid confronting the topic, banners across the block reminding them of what was happening today a thousand miles east. Honks of support, thumbs up and enthusiastic waving, are the prominent response. Some display their own protest signs as they drive by, others do multiple laps making more noise with each pass.

A car passes protestors on the west side of the Kansas Capitol in Topeka, waving their own signs voicing discontent with the federal administration’s military occupation of the nation’s capital on August 16, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

The response isn’t all positive, a handful offer a refrain of support for President Trump’s authoritarian approach. Some rude gestures and angry words are lobbed from the occasional pick-up truck window. A touring group of scouts looked on curiously, their adolescent perspectives absorbing contemporary adult politics.

Only blocks from Washburn University, the small Scout troop dramatically skewed the age of those gathered at the Kansas Capitol that afternoon. The majority were of retirement age, acknowledging that they felt they had the time and experience at this stage in their life to be present and to organize, and seemed genuinely concerned about the lack of younger adults participating.

A constant chorus from those who are building for mass mobilization to ask whether or nots the students will show up?

Earlier that morning, in an empty parking lot in Pittsburg, Kansas, a few teenagers laid cones and erected signs, steering new arrivals to their designated dorms. Even at sunrise it was already humid, but the southeast Kansas college town had a buzz in the muggy morning. The start of move-in at Pittsburg State University, the students were returning. Mini fridges are being carted down the sidewalks as stressed parents navigate a supportive good-bye. Enthusiastic volunteers bubble as they help people find the correct building in the maze of campus one-way and closed streets.

At 10, the Kansas Young Democrats are wasting no time discussing how to organize on campus this fall. In partnership with the state party and local groups like the Liberal Ladies and Democratic Socialists of America, 150 were gathered to try to answer that consistent question: Will Gen Z show up?

David Hogg, recently ousted as Vice Chair for the Democratic National Committee, speaks from stage at Pitt State University during an event hosted by the Kansas Young Democrats on Saturday, August 16, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

Gathering the crowd into an auditorium, the emcee opened with remarks on the United States’ potential to be a great nation, should the republic entirely embrace the ideals of liberty embodied at its founding. Millennial Congressional candidate Jordan Herrera took the stage encouraging more mentoring, bringing young people along in their party and listening to and applying their input.

“Young people are demanding we lead with clarity and decisive action,” Herrera told the audience of precinct and party leadership gathered.

The emcee asked for those younger than 35 to stand, about 10% of the room rose. When an audience member requested similar acknowledgement for those over 70, more than half the room stood.

Kansas Democratic Party Chair Jeanna Repass was on the stage with a message for the younger generation in the room, asking they take it with them to their friends and peers. The daughter of a civil rights activist, she reflected on a moment in her youth when her mom encouraged the family to continue the fight for equity. To build on her generation’s progress rather than accepting their strides as enough.

She reminded her children that they couldn’t coast on the accomplishments of an earlier time. The laws of physics even against them, if they don’t create their own momentum the smallest force can stop – even push back – a coasting object. Standing before the audience that day, Repass implored the crowd to not coast, to actively get involved and to listen to younger voices as they work to build a coalition in support of American liberties.

With a roar of applause, she concluded and introduced the morning’s headline speaker: David Hogg. The Gen Z organizer and gun regulation activist strolled on to the stage, cooly and calmly grasping the microphone. The recently ousted former Vice Chair for the Democratic National Committee recounted how hard it was to be a voice in a room of leaders where no one else is under thirty.

“The biggest obstacle to success for our party – and I believe the best is yet to come – is that we’ve become the part of ‘we can’t,’” he told the packed house. “It feels like we’ve become the party of incrementalism in the face of atrocities that are happening and blatant violations of the Constitution. I’m tired of being the party of strongly worded letters.”

It’s a sentiment shared by many young activists across the Heartland. In Missouri, students at Mizzou lamented feeling overwhelmed by needing to survive while being asked to solve an issue they were handed as they became adults. In Iowa, where critical race theory was banned in public school curriculum, future lawyers are working with their teachers to ensure their peers graduate with the context they need to understand the moment.

In another Kansas college town, those who have been holding space and raising their voices in opposition to MAGA policies hope to see an influx of new faces and voices because they are also tired after a summer protesting in the sun. For 25 consecutive weeks, community members in Lawrence have gathered in their town’s center to protest and now they wonder whether the returning University of Kansas students will join their effort.

Community members gather at the corner of Massachusetts and Ninth in downtown Lawrence, Kansas, for a weekly hour of dissent. Nearly 200 Kansans come together in the college town each Sunday to picket, organize, and strategize while platforming issues for their neighbors and passersby. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

The day after the Democrats were planning strategy in Pittsburg, some who had been present in Pittsburg shared what they learned. The youngest discussed how to talk to their classmates. Millennials circulated a QR code for a signal group to plan a protest during an upcoming football game. A retiree handed out information on joining a direct action newsletter she’d built, aggregating the region’s protests and political movements into one place.

Nearing 1,000 subscribers, she noted a change of reception as more students returned to town. Anecdotally about 80% of her interactions through the summer had been positive, people enthusiastically taking the information and many following through on subscribing. Lately, though, she felt a swing to the inverse, with students greeting her effort with indifference if not disinterest.

For an hour, hundreds gathered along the roadway, overflowing from sidewalks and occupying any piece of spare shade on the four corners. From one side of the street Derek leads chants through a megaphone, under an American flag held aloft by Rose. On the corner opposite, his calls are met with a response amplified by the hundreds surrounding him and their own speakers.

Some brought sculpture and art projects masquerading as protest signs, others let their dissent be projected through performance. A 6-foot chicken made frequent rounds through the protestors, leaving many with a high five and the friendly conversation of whether they were an effigy of President Trump Always Chickening Out, or their own state’s U.S. Senator Roger Marshall. Senator Marshall has been avoiding his Kansas constituency lately.

One truck slowed and carefully revved their engine to spill black diesel smoke from their tailpipe onto a section of the crowd, taking particular interest in pausing at a group of disabled protestors in wheelchairs. Greeting the moment with a gentle call that they’ve seen worse and are going to stay, attention was returned to the ever-present honks and waves of encouragement by a majority passing through.

While returning students made their way to brunch, they walked through the crowd being asked by many to join. If they don’t have the time to stop today, please take this flyer for the next one. If they don’t want to carry something, just follow an organization on social media. Setting an easy path for however they want to find their way into the movement was clearly a goal.

“I think it’s time for some new leadership,” David Hogg told his crowd the day before. “The resource that Democrats lack more than anything is courage and competition. Comfortability does not spur innovation”

In Kansas, whether in party politics or direct action organizing, creating pathways for multigenerational coalition is top of mind. Across the Heartland, there are humans of all ages who are horrified by the loss of due process, federal government occupation of cities, the construction of internment camps in their states.

“We are here to do the hard work. We know why it matters,” Hogg reminded the crowd gathered in Pittsburg, pleading they platform younger voices as systems are broken.

Community members gather at the corner of Massachusetts and Ninth in downtown Lawrence, Kansas, for a weekly hour of dissent. Nearly 200 Kansans come together in the college town each Sunday to picket, organize, and strategize while platforming issues for their neighbors and passersby. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

Best known for capturing striking content from the frontlines of social movements, Heartland EMMY-nominated filmmaker and photographer Vince Chandler has spent 20 years creating art and documentary visuals across the U.S. They served as Communications Director for Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, and Vince has earned national recognition for their work as a visual journalist for The Denver Post. Vince was the principal cinematographer for the feature documentary film Running With My Girls, which premiered at the 2021 Denver Film Festival.

______________________________

What does resistance & resilience look like in the Heartland of America?

Sometimes it’s a protest outside an ICE detention center. Sometimes it’s a rural nurse explaining how Medicaid cuts will shutter the town hospital. Sometimes, it’s a law professor teaching systemic racism at a University in a state where CRT is banned in public schools.

As Trump’s second term unfolds — and the One Big Beautiful Act guts healthcare, empowers ICE, and reshapes American life — independent journalism is more vital than ever. However, the national press rarely shows up in the places where policy has the most impact.

We do.

These American Crossroads is a collaboration between Vince Chandler, Emmy-nominated visual journalist, and Yellow Scene Magazine, Boulder County’s only independent newsroom.

Become a sustaining supporter for just $8/month: https://fundrazr.com/Crossroads

The post Kansas Organizers Call for Gen Z Participation appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The soft patter of the morning drizzle spattered on the pavement, the mid-Missouri humidity confounding the senses. The mind plays tricks, is it raining or simply the dampness in the air? As the trickle slows, it’s replaced by one of steadily arriving people, bringing with them an impending energy.

One pulls a child’s wagon laden with poster board, another carrying flags still furled. Waves and smiles are exchanged; calls of recognition. Another Saturday morning showing up for democracy in the show me state.

Missouri, a +18 President Trump state, seems to be in-line with many of the MAGA authoritarian decisions when looking at electoral politics. When voting for candidates with a party identity, for a representative, the GOP consistently wins statewide.

When the people are asked about policy, though, there are breaks from party platform standards. With practically an inverse voter split on the same 2024 ballot which gave the state’s ten electoral college votes to President Trump, voters overwhelmingly chose to raise the state’s minimum wage – also mandating that workers’ wages will increase with inflation – as well as requiring paid sick leave.

By an even wider margin they chose not to divert court fees to fund law enforcement retirement benefits. Those same voters also narrowly called to create a state constitutional amendment guaranteeing access to abortion.

The state’s Republican-controlled State House and courts, mirroring the federal administration’s authoritarian behavior, immediately got to work undoing the will of the voters. In July, Governor Mike Kehoe signed into law the bill repealing the voter-chosen paid sick leave decision and the workers’ wage increases with inflation.

On August 12, the state’s Supreme Court declined to decide on Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s challenge on the voter approved abortion amendment, deferring to a lower court. That particular attack on the rationale of the electorate will continue while the power individual voters can have will be brought into question.

Following the Texas legislature’s lead, the MAGA state house will begin to explore options to fulfill President Trump’s direct request to intentionally gerrymander Republican-led states in an effort to add party members to the U.S. House of Representatives. The legislature is responding by carving a changed district around Kansas City, Missouri, to fulfill the President’s request for only party loyal members being added to Congress.

With the decision of whether the voices of Missourians will be reflected accurately at the polls being made by their representatives, the people are finding consistent and constant ways to be heard in the streets. On this particular morning, about one hundred of them are lining the sidewalks holding signs, flags, and cowbells with speakers playing patriotic protest anthems raising their volume in support of saving their republic.

About one hundred Missourians gathered at a busy intersection minutes from the Mizzou campus in Columbia to demonstrate in defense of democracy. Issues like the Epstein Files, loss of due process, cuts to education and health care, global war and genocide brought the community together, united in their opposition to the creep toward authoritarian fascism by President Trump’s administration. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine).

The rain now entirely ended, the pavement dries quickly as the sun raises the heat. Standing on the sidewalks and medians, people surrounded the intersection calling for the restoration of due process and to heed the voters’ voices. Many cars passing enthusiastically met the demand of one sign reading “honk if you love democracy” while drivers smiled and waved to the activists. Some, with sour faces, chose to shout and respond with a more rude gesture.

Many of the sign wavers were traditional retirement age, lamenting the loss of the America they had grown up with. A 98-year-old lifelong Republican joined the crowd aghast and vocal. Veterans, grandparents, the group of elders made the handful of students from the local university stand out. A contemporary imagination may conjure a protest crowd as mostly young faces, but the morning’s action did not reflect that presumption. Some asked why more young people weren’t attending.

“I know so many people who can make it out on a random Friday, or who can make it out maybe one Saturday a month, but we’re tired, we’ve worked all week to survive,” 20-year-old Grace told Yellow Scene while reflecting on the weekend’s movement work from a downtown coffeeshop the following day after a hike. “And I get that, I understand where people are coming from. But, it’s worth it, because every one person that comes out and sees what it’s like is one more person that is less afraid of doing it again, you know?”

After a little more than an hour on the corner, the crowd stowed their signs and quickly started toward their cars. They were not headed to brunch or back home, though. They were headed to the next spot to make more noise. Some to an interstate overpass to hang a banner and picket to the passing cars and others to the Columbia City Hall to join another sign waving event in the town’s downtown corridor.

At the Keys to the City Sculpture, more familiarly known as The Keyhole, some from the previous protest joined a core group of activists who have held the space every day for more than 500 consecutive days. Organized by the Mid-Missouri Peaceworks, this daily demonstration originally began in support of peace and dignity for the Palestinian people. Since the re-election of President Trump, it has expanded to include the slew of issues arisen by his executive orders and policy decisions.

For more than 500 consecutive days, organizers from Mid-Missouri Peaceworks and Columbia community members have occupied the space during the noon hour in front of their city’s municipal offices calling for an end to the genocide in Occupied Palestine. Since the re-election of President Trump, they’ve also welcomed messages voicing dissent to his regime’s attacks on immigration, free speech, and civil liberties. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine).

“We have democratic input, but we’re at threat of losing it,” said Mark Haim, director of Mid-Missouri Peaceworks to Yellow Scene. They operate Columbia’s Peace Nook, and Mark is the organizer of the daily protest. “Of losing the most vulnerable, people who are undocumented and people who could be subjected to deportation – Trump has made no secret of his Islamaphobia, his transphobia – and we have all these losses of things that are so basic like health care, SNAP and food benefits, these things that people depend on to stay alive and be healthy.”

As the handful of humans on this corner ended the lunchtime hour they made their plans for the next protest. Not the weekend to follow, not the next day, but which one they would attend for the afternoon or the evening. The soonest opportunity to voice their dissent to federal decision making started in only an hour, organizers were readying for a march starting on the Mizzou campus at their first amendment zone, a space where a permit is not required to speak or rally.

The inalienable American right to free speech of course needing a space to be guaranteed at a university which has previously tried to ban certain topics.

Students, community members, and international activists were a part of the building crowd. This march was to garner continued attention to the ongoing Israeli forced famine in Occupied Palestine. There would be – however – no chanting, no yelling, and no banging of pots but for one lone percussive pulse. Walking in absolute silence and carrying banners, signs, and flags the protest made for a haunting, unsettling, visual as they walked off campus and into Columbia’s business district.

One passerby exited their vehicle to call the group ignorant, stating that half the crowd would be killed by a Palestinian. The bombastic and unfounded threat was greeted with no pushback, no audible anger, but with continued silence and a few peace signs. Frustrated that the ludicrous statement had not garnered the response anticipated, they returned to their car fuming. The experience and restraint shown by the solemn column was a powerful response, forcing the antagonist to either continue the attack or to leave still angry. They left.

“Silence can be just as powerful as words, if not more sometimes,” Rasha A. told Yellow Scene after the protests ended. “They want you to fall into that trap of arguing with them, they want you to get frustrated. So why not turn it around on them and let them get frustrated. When you don’t respond, it really gets to them because they suddenly hear how childish they sound. You’re a grown man or woman yelling at people walking quietly down the street protesting the killing of other human beings.”

“There is something reflecting on the inside of them that they do not want to admit,” the Missourians for Justice in Palestine organization leader concluded.

The marchers returned to Speaker’s Circle and broke their silence. Water and produce were made available for those who wanted some and announcements were made. Organizers were working with allies on the ground in the areas surrounding Gaza coordinating food trucks and the delivery of supplies when possible. Attendees plugged their daily and weekly picket events across Boone County, politicos invited attendees to their upcoming party events. It became clear that just like you were going to find a space to use your voice any day of the week, people were also actively engaged in the mechanics of the cause.

Marchers move in silence along the sidewalks of the University of Missouri, protesting in support of peace and dignity for the Palestinian people and an end to the genocide. Without any exchanged words, no chants, the soft shuttle of the steps and a solitary slow percussive ping of a pot to set the pace, the silence reverberated. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine).

“Try to look through the veneer that’s kind of stuck in front of us now, there’s so much inequality, inequities, even here in mid-Missouri there’s a ton of bigotry still, there’s a great deal of classism,” Jeff Stack told Yellowscene. He helps to coordinate the Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation. “I feel that one of the greatest strengths of this society and country is its potential. That’s what kind of gives me hope, there’s a lot that can happen for the good.”

“There is so much to unlearn,” said Grace on that sun-soaked cafe patio the following day. “I like using joy as bait. And there’s nothing more recharging than having people talk to you about this and make you feel like ‘I’m not crazy.’ Set up something with friends, meet at a coffee shop and at a specific time just talk politics. I see my best friend every day, and we talk politics but all the time can be exhausting. People can’t be one thing all the time, it’s just not realistic. A specific time, and to gather in joy, I find it way more helpful.”

With two thirds of the day now gone, some still weren’t done. Dinner would be eaten while their quest for world peace continued. In classic midwest tradition, they were headed to a potluck in a park – one where politics, war, and organizing would all be openly discussed, surrounding the solemn topics with joy. In observation of the 80th Anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, Missourians from across the state gathered with the hope of ending nuclear war.

Retired state poet laureate, Aliki Barnstone, began the evening’s programming with an original piece. The rapt crowd listened intently as the expert wordsmith brought them on a journey remembering those fateful August days when the United States of America ended the lives of more than 200,000 human beings in two short instances.

Recently retired Mizzou professor and former Missouri State Poet Laureate Aliki Barnstone smiles while greeting a gathered crowd recognizing the 80th anniversary of the American atomic bombing of Japanese civilians at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. She read a poem penned for the event’s event titled “On August 6,” rhythmically reflecting on the horrors of the violent days when hundreds of thousands of people were killed in an instant. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine).

“At 8:15 a.m. all simple, daily beauty is aflame. No justification.

Nothing, nothing,
Not I can

say. Yet I speak
anyway, anyway

any way I can.”

Student Kerra Lindbloom followed, delivering a fiery epitaph which left those gathered stunned for a moment in silence before erupting into applause. Ripples of reflection already passed through many attendees, her rhetoric delivered with a vehement prose emanating a maturity and experience beyond what could be anticipated from her young age.

Volunteers shared the words of survivors’ memories of those fateful days. Veterans for Peace President John Betz reflected on his time fighting in the Vietnam War, concluding that war will beget cruel tragedy, no matter the cause or weaponry. All day, attendees had constructed and decorated dozens of Japanese lanterns. Now, with presentations concluded, they headed to the park’s lake to ignite their candles and send them floating across the dark water. Watching them glow and glide, conversation turned to what was next. The day over, the next question now was more intangible than where to spend the following few hours.

It was whether there could be reasonable hope that their pleas for peace could be heard, much less met. Some had spent the day traveling between protests carrying the consistent call for a changed course. One day wouldn’t be enough, they knew that. But, could the seemingly steady growth of authoritarianism and warmongering in the United States be stopped?

Some would spend their following morning in houses of worship, asking their gods to bring peace. Some would be at family or friends gatherings, carrying memories of the day and sharing stories to try to persuade their communities to care. Others would be gathering in coffee shops to discuss partisan organizing, making plans to build political routes toward measurable change.

Many of the younger crowd planning for politics were not doing so in the binary systemic choices of far right Republicans or centrist Democrats. The Missouri Green Party was present at many of the protests, offering an option in experienced ballot organizing with institutional knowledge. With students returning to campus the following week, the Revolutionary Communists of America were planning recruitment drives for their organization. The Democratic Socialists held a large general meeting in the last days of the scholastic summer.

Paul Lehmann, who ran for governor on the Green Party ticket in Missouri, spoke with Yellow Scene during the day of protest.

“My view of the Green Party is that we’re like a voice in the wilderness. We have some solid principles, platforms that 80% of the people would endorse in a survey, but they’re afraid to,” Lehmann said when asked about the viability of parties outside the American partisan binary. “There’s a lot of hostility to the Green Party by the so-called progressives of the Democratic Party and that’s unfortunate that they don’t have enough courage to say that they’re wasting their vote.”

For most involved in any of the many political protests and actions taking place that day, it was clear that the work was far from over. In historically conservative-leaning Missouri, progressives project an understanding that change won’t be immediate. In a generational movement they maintain consistent and constant presence, utilizing diverse approaches to garnering attention and creating conversation. The protest isn’t the end, it’s the start, and they aren’t gatekeeping the instructions, encouraging those who want to to find their avenue to voicing their dissent.

“It’s literally as simple as treating other people as humans,” said Grace. “If you really feel like you can’t do anything about anything politically, you can at least feel the humanity. You can at least be there and feel it and recognize that. And if you deny yourself that, and deny yourself the joy of working to prevent tragedy, I think that you’re denying yourself a core part of the human experience.”

As the seasons begin to change and summer’s heat fades away, the Missourians with something to be heard are not going to spend their autumn preparing for a winter’s hibernation. They’re planning and building and ramping their efforts, recruiting their neighbors who are horrified by the federal administration’s stripping of due process, military occupations of American cities, or the defunding of medical and education systems. They don’t plan to let this slide happen in silence and the show me state is going to show up.

Candle-lit lanterns float across the water at Stephens Lake Park in Columbia, Missouri. The gathering is a call for peace everywhere as well as serving as a call for the mutual, verifiable, universal and incremental abolition of nuclear weapons. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine).

Best known for capturing striking content from the frontlines of social movements, Heartland EMMY-nominated filmmaker and photographer Vince Chandler has spent 20 years creating art and documentary visuals across the U.S. They served as Communications Director for Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, and Vince has earned national recognition for their work as a visual journalist for The Denver Post. Vince was the principal cinematographer for the feature documentary film Running With My Girls, which premiered at the 2021 Denver Film Festival.

______________________________

What does resistance & resilience look like in the Heartland of America?

Sometimes it’s a protest outside an ICE detention center. Sometimes it’s a rural nurse explaining how Medicaid cuts will shutter the town hospital. Sometimes, it’s a law professor teaching systemic racism at a University in a state where CRT is banned in public schools.

As Trump’s second term unfolds — and the One Big Beautiful Act guts healthcare, empowers ICE, and reshapes American life — independent journalism is more vital than ever. However, the national press rarely shows up in the places where policy has the most impact.

We do.

These American Crossroads is a collaboration between Vince Chandler, Emmy-nominated visual journalist, and Yellow Scene Magazine, Boulder County’s only independent newsroom.

Become a sustaining supporter for just $8/month: https://fundrazr.com/Crossroads

The post Showing Up For Democracy and Demanding Peace in Missouri appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

These American Crossroads: Stories of Resistance and Persistence from the United States’ Heartland

President Trump’s federal administration makes no secret of leaning into authoritarianism, from openly defying the courts’ Constitutional role to imposing illegal policies rooted in cruelty. Every average American will share in feeling the impact of policy choices defunding healthcare, eliminating education, xenophobic immigration rules, even challenging our understanding of the objective truth. While our nation’s most populous coastal cities get disproportionate media coverage, someone needs to keep an eye on the center of the country. Many of the electoral college votes for president in 2024 from these plains states went to President Trump, but many more chose to abstain or to vote otherwise. In the contemporary age of misinformation it has become more important than ever to share truthful stories from the ground, centering real American voices.

“These American Crossroads” is a collaboration between national award-winning multimedia journalist Vince Chandler, and Yellow Scene Magazine, Boulder County’s last independent newsroom. Community supported and in support of the community, Vince is embedding with activists and political organizers across the central U.S. to share stories about real people having real impact as they advocate and fight for their neighbors and our nation. Crisscrossing the country in a near-constant loop from Colorado to Ohio, you can follow along with Vince’s stories on your favorite social media platform and right here in Yellow Scene Magazine.

Help us raise the funds to support Vince’s work for “These American Crossroads.” Every dollar helps fuel the next leg of the journey — and gets us one step closer to building the only record of this moment that centers truth, dignity, and community, and we hope, influence policy changes that impact all Americans. We’re not stopping until Vince runs out of gas and they’re already on the road.

Click the headline to read more. This page will be updated as new stories are added to the series. 

8 Kansans Arrested, 3 Days of Protest in D.C.

Arriving in Arlington, Virginia the first task in getting to know one another was dinner. Heading to the grocery store they pulled the list of dietary restrictions and shopped cautiously, adhering to meet the group of fourteen’s needs with as broad a selection as possible. Plant-based dairy free cheese was found while ingredient labels read twice to be sure they were free from mushrooms.

The care taken in the early stages reflects the intentional, careful consideration that had united these organizers, activists and fueled the trip to D.C. Weeks earlier, an article discussing the initial decision by President Trump to deploy National Guard troops into Washington was shared into a statewide group chat. Shelby Hermosillo, from Salina seized her Jerry Maguire moment and asked who was going with her.

Shelby Hermosillo, of Salina, Kansas, is led out of the Dirksen Senate Building Cafeteria by Capitol Police after being arrested for participating in a nonviolent protest against proposed cuts to Housing and Urban Development in the 2026 Congressional Appropriations Bill. The Free State Advocates travelled to Washington D.C. to join Popular Democracy for an act of civil disobedience, eight Kansans, Miranda Bachman, Shelby Hermosillo, Olivia Phillips, Gary Phillips, Becky Norlin, Christie Peterson, Michelle Jones, Sara Gillum were arrested. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

“It all just happened so fast, it was kind of like ‘are you kidding me?’” Hermosillo told Yellow Scene, reflecting on the quick build and immediate reception of her idea. “It was my last straw, because we’d been standing out there protesting every week, doing the things, making yard signs, doing all these little things and as much as it matters I didn’t feel like we were getting anywhere. I was ready to go to DC and face it. I messaged the group chat and just asked ‘anyone want to go to DC? Let’s rally together, let’s go.’”

Soon, the group had leadership from twelve statewide organizations equaling fourteen people were confirmed. Reigning the momentum, the group of experienced organizers transitioned from ideation to activation. Immediately, fundraising began and plans were made.

A rental home in their budget was found only miles from the Capitol, one they could all share. Virtual meetings were set to share personal experiences and plan for everyone’s role. For some, this would be their first time traveling to the east coast, their experiences building movements at home were extrapolated and applied. Representatives from Leading Kansas, Midwest Unrest, Sunflower Coalition, Noisy but Necessary, Kansas Impact Coalition, Central Kansas Activists, Arc of Justice, Franklin County Action Network, KC Women’s Action Collective, 50501 Kansas, Boots on the Ground, Indivisible, and “likely more,” coordinated and collaborated, concluding in an action plan.

“It was just inspiring, ” Malice, an organizer in Kansas City for KC Women’s Action Collective, told Yellow Scene. “We had so many people from different backgrounds, from different areas with different levels of experience and reasons for being involved. We had queer people, we had disabled people, we had young people, we had old people, seeing people that were so diverse coming together for the same purpose is what we want to see around the country. This was an example that it could happen.”

“I’m biracial, and looking back in history at the civil rights movement, we’re following the pathway that has created change, movement, for the rights we have now. I felt as though I was doing a very similar thing protesting in this way, causing civil unrest like my grandparents and great grandparents stood with in the 60’s.” says Olivia Philips, who was one of the eight arrestees on September 10. “ We come from the center of the country and we’re not getting heard. I feel like it’s monumental for us to travel all the way to D.C. and make a stand like this.”

The first question to be answered: what would they like to accomplish? They wanted to carry the voices of their neighbors, the messages from the signs which surround them in their separate corners of Kansas, to their elected leaders. They wanted to confront the National Guard and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They wanted to speak directly with their representatives in Congress. Some were willing to risk arrest to take a stand.

Punk Rock is Political, Cleveland’s Gay Metal Bar Won’t Let You Forget

Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller re-established Cleveland as a prosperous city of wealth during the second Industrial Revolution, building the city in his image of splendor while creating distinct divides between the baron class owners and the workers who generated his fortune. Like other industrial cities in the region, it has felt the impact of the departure of manufacturing, slipping into disrepair bearing signs of dilapidation.

Drag performer Homer E. Rodick points to the sky while show host Bram Stroke-Her faces the audience during a performance raising funds for TransOhio at No Class in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

Clevelanders in this eastern gateway to the Heartland insist, however, that their city is worth fighting for. Cognizant that they’ve been left picking up the tab for political corruption, they see the wealth gap that fuels the profits of billionaire developers and energy conglomerates, while leaving themselves and their neighbors behind. Recently, there has been a push back at the continued exploitation of the lakefront midwest metropolis, as the people work to build community first campaigns and organizations to reinvigorate and revitalize their town from the grass roots.

To do that, it takes people. Those people need the place to gather safely. At No Class, they find solidarity in a space where art and conversation can thrive. Existing for years as Now That’s Class before Jochum took ownership, the space organically transformed from crust punk hovel to its current existence as No Class, what can only be described as a gay metal bar. Show attendees may not know it when they walk through the door, but they’ve entered a political space.

“It’s really hard to make people care, and I just care,” Jochum says, sitting on the venue’s back porch moments after finishing a board meeting with a local community development corporation. “Trying to get other people to give a shit about stuff has been a struggle, but we’re working on it.”

Workers Over Billionaires on Labor Day in Greeley, Colorado

With protests planned in Denver, Golden, Loveland, Boulder, left-leaning towns across the Square State, what would this call to action look like in a worker-strong county where President Trump won by 21 points?

As the scheduled start time approached, more than one hundred people were walking along the tables set up by organizations and volunteers with further calls to action, more opportunities to raise their voices. Some carried signs, prepared for the march starting in an hour. With a tap on a microphone, a chant was encouraged by the amplified voice starting the programming.

Protestors rally during a march through downtown Greeley, Colorado, chanting and waving signs at passing traffic during the Workers Over Billionaires day of action on Labor Day, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, newly created in response to population change, stretches from the north Denver suburbs of Thornton and Arvada stretching to its farthest northeast population center in Greeley. Between lays a spectrum of exurban and rural communities, housing quite the range of philosophical and political ideologies.

Currently represented in the House of Representatives by Republican Gabe Evans, the seat was founded in 2024 by Democrat Yadira Caraveo. Now, it is widely considered one of the most competitive race in the fight for control of the Capitol. As the Governor rejects following California and Texas in redrawing districts (and Missouri joins that conversation), this Colorado race is one that could decide the balance of the U.S. legislature in 2026.

And to recognize Labor Day, the unions and political organizers did not miss the chance to make that clear. For an hour, the microphone was passed between candidates – vying for city council, mayor, and Representative Evans’ Congressional seat, including State Treasurer Dave Young – and union leaders.

Fun Runs and Torah Study, Omaha Organizes for Palestine

Organized in coordination with Ohio-founded HEAL Palestine, this midwest waterfront park was hosting a 5k and fun run named for Hind Rajab, a five-year-old girl who the IDF publicly killed alongside the paramedics saving her life following a previous by Israeli forces. In the first attack, 335 bullets were fired from a tank at the car occupied by children, while Hind’s 15-year-old sister called for help on the phone. Hind was the only one to survive, only to be killed when help arrived.

To remember Hind, and to raise direct aid for children like her who are experiencing the occupation, today’s 5k offered an opportunity to educate and advocate without confrontation. Collaborators from local organizations offered their individual expertises to provide medical training and care, production equipment and entertainment.

Registrants sign in for the Hind’s 5k race in Heart of American Park in Omaha, Nebraska. The event, named for a 5-year-old girl killed by Israel was held to raise funds for pediatric medical care in Palestine. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

After registering and receiving your official race bib, you walked the path through the park past mutual aid organizers and representatives from HEAL Palestine. Nearing the starting line brings a wave of pregame jitters, that nervous anticipation athletes permeate as they prepare for their event. Families with newborns in their jogging strollers, teens taking selfies in their friend groups, millennials stretching and warming up (because they came to win).

A snack table laden with BDS approved goodies and water opened up to where the speakers stood, the first starting to tap the microphone. Kayla, the day’s emcee and event organizer, takes a moment to remind everyone of what brought everyone together today before a moment of silence in remembrance of Hind and the children of Palestine.

“To carry her memory, to honor her life, and to stand for the right of every Palestinian child to be safe and free.”

Kansas Organizers Call for Gen Z Participation

Kansas Democratic Party Chair Jeanna Repass was on the stage with a message for the younger generation in the room, asking they take it with them to their friends and peers. The daughter of a civil rights activist, she reflected on a moment in her youth when her mom encouraged the family to continue the fight for equity. To build on her generation’s progress rather than accepting their strides as enough.

David Hogg, recently ousted as Vice Chair for the Democratic National Committee, speaks from stage at Pitt State University during an event hosted by the Kansas Young Democrats on Saturday, August 16, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

She reminded her children that they couldn’t coast on the accomplishments of an earlier time. The laws of physics even against them, if they don’t create their own momentum the smallest force can stop – even push back – a coasting object. Standing before the audience that day, Repass implored the crowd to not coast, to actively get involved and to listen to younger voices as they work to build a coalition in support of American liberties.

With a roar of applause, she concluded and introduced the morning’s headline speaker: David Hogg. The Gen Z organizer and gun regulation activist strolled on to the stage, cooly and calmly grasping the microphone. The recently ousted former Vice Chair for the Democratic National Committee recounted how hard it was to be a voice in a room of leaders where no one else is under thirty.

“The biggest obstacle to success for our party – and I believe the best is yet to come – is that we’ve become the part of ‘we can’t,’” he told the packed house. “It feels like we’ve become the party of incrementalism in the face of atrocities that are happening and blatant violations of the Constitution. I’m tired of being the party of strongly worded letters.”

Showing Up For Democracy and Demanding Peace in Missouri

Missouri, a +18 President Trump state, seems to be in-line with many of the MAGA authoritarian decisions when looking at electoral politics. When voting for candidates with a party identity, for a representative, the GOP consistently wins statewide.

When the people are asked about policy, though, there are breaks from party platform standards. With practically an inverse voter split on the same 2024 ballot which gave the state’s ten electoral college votes to President Trump, voters overwhelmingly chose to raise the state’s minimum wage – also mandating that workers’ wages will increase with inflation – as well as requiring paid sick leave.

By an even wider margin they chose not to divert court fees to fund law enforcement retirement benefits. Those same voters also narrowly called to create a state constitutional amendment guaranteeing access to abortion.

The state’s Republican-controlled State House and courts, mirroring the federal administration’s authoritarian behavior, immediately got to work undoing the will of the voters. In July, Governor Mike Kehoe signed into law the bill repealing the voter-chosen paid sick leave decision and the workers’ wage increases with inflation.

On August 12, the state’s Supreme Court declined to decide on Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s challenge on the voter approved abortion amendment, deferring to a lower court. That particular attack on the rationale of the electorate will continue while the power individual voters can have will be brought into question.

Following the Texas legislature’s lead, the MAGA state house will begin to explore options to fulfill President Trump’s direct request to intentionally gerrymander Republican-led states in an effort to add party members to the U.S. House of Representatives. The legislature is responding by carving a changed district around Kansas City, Missouri, to fulfill the President’s request for only party loyal members being added to Congress.

With the decision of whether the voices of Missourians will be reflected accurately at the polls being made by their representatives, the people are finding consistent and constant ways to be heard in the streets. On this particular morning, about one hundred of them are lining the sidewalks holding signs, flags, and cowbells with speakers playing patriotic protest anthems raising their volume in support of saving their republic.

Solidarity, Bipartisanship, and Satanic Protest in Kansas

Conservative Kansas is the contemporary reality in the state the Westboro Baptist Church calls home. While registered

Almost 500 Kansans gather on the south steps of their State House for a group photo in solidarity with the 50501 nationwide Rage Against the Regime protest organized in all fifty states on August 2, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine).

Republicans have decreased by more than seven thousand people this year already, a majority of the state’s voters are GOP members. Nearly a million. The only group of voters to grow in 2025, by about 3,000 people, is the second largest pool: the unaffiliated.

Kansas has a history of standing ten toes forward for their principles. Bleeding Kansas fought a small war against Missouri slavers to found their territory as a Free Soil state. Infamous abolitionist John Brown first made national headlines by violently fighting against the institution on the eastern plains, years before he’d be remembered forever for his failed attempt to start an enslaved persons revolt at Harpers Ferry. Touring the Capitol’s visitor center you’ll see that this radical history is still celebrated.

Bang the Pots, Colorado Protests Palestinian Starvation in Capital

Journalist Bisan Owda, in Palestine, has bravely shone a spotlight on these cruel tactics’ impacts on her people. Around the world, people scroll through their feeds of baking tips and hyperspecific interests with the occasional mention of the atrocities being committed on the coasts of the Mediterranean. Too many quickly scroll past, searching for the next placating escape.

Protestors for Palestinian liberation demonstrate on the west side of Colorado’s capitol building in Denver Colorado. Answering the call from Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda, hundreds of Coloradans gathered across the capital city to clang empty cookware in protest of the forced famine in the occupied Palestinian Territories on July 24, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine).

To circumvent this social media ennui, Owda made a simple request: get loud. Their pots, their pans, their stomachs are empty and while the Freedom Flotilla carves their way toward their shores, little other help seems to be fighting through the occupier’s embargo. So, the globe was asked to take their own empty kitchenware and demand that the Palestinian’s be filled.

In Denver, Colorado, under a grey sky threatening storms, hundreds of sympathetic people heard the call. The first sharp clanks or metal ladle on sauce pan were soon joined by the dull thuds of wooden spoons on lobster pots. Metal lids became improvised cymbals, 5-gallon paint buckets became plastic drums. A hammer hitting a sign post made a metallic rattle which could be heard blocks away.

“We don’t have the usual programming, we’re not doing speeches today,” organizers at the Capitol announced through their megaphones. “I don’t know what’s left to be said! We went from ‘free Palestine,’ to ‘ceasefire,’ to ‘stop starving them.’ What’s next?”

Faith Drives Direct Action in Nebraska

The Urban Abbey is a gathering space, a safe place, for the marginalized and ostracized in Omaha, Nebraska. Deliberately established between the gentrifying luxury condos in the historic downtown and the spaces where the poor and unhoused gather and camp, the coffee shop and bookstore are set up to be a catch-all for anyone looking for a third place and community.

Reverend Dr.Jane Florence speaks from the lectern during the Faith in Action Sunday morning church services at The Urban Abbey, in Omaha, Nebraska. “I had my own, calling into ministry, and it was undeniable…my own spiritual journey led me and it’s been good,” she reflected later to Yellow Scene while remembering her path to this progressive pulpit. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene).

Walking through the door, you do see less-than-subtle hints of the house of prayer. Holy water sits in a baptismal font, there are bible verses hanging framed on the exposed red brick wall. On the neatly arranged bookshelves titles like A People’s History of the United States sit only feet away from Marsha P. Johnson’s biography, on a shelf next to the gospel according to Mary Magdalene.

Founded by ordained Methodist minister Rev. Debra McKnight, Urban Abbey’s mission is to be “a space of radical hospitality connecting people to God and one another in everyday life.” They set out on a mission to not only reach people who felt disenfranchised or unrepresented by their church but to hear their needs and help see them be met. Even if it meant taking an activist’s approach.

Denver Demonstrators Demand Personal Privacy at Palantir Headquarters

Headquartered in Denver, Palantir is a technology company founded by PayPal architect Peter Thiel and his Stanford roommate Alex Karp. They create software systems meant to capture consumer and customer data and to quickly synthesize the information collected to drive decisions. Ones made by humans and artificial intelligence.

Protestors briefly occupied the plaza of The Tabor Center, where Palantir Technologies is headquartered in Denver, before Denver Police pushed them off of the private property to the sidewalk to join picketers and demonstrators assembled there, during an action to raise awareness about Palantir’s involvement in government surveillance of private citizens on July 14, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

In the private sector, that consumer data is used to help sell cheeseburgers or seat upgrades. With their largest clients, though, it’s used to choose who lives and who dies.

Last year, the U.S. Army, under the Biden Administration, gave Palantir more than $400,000,000 to help streamline their military force’s management of recruitment, deployment, and “readiness.” President Trump’s Department of Defense has since swelled their investment to more than $1,000,000,000 – anticipating a near future of increased need for military “readiness.”

In Iowa, Where Critical Race Theory is Banned, Retired Justice Teaches Race, Law and Iowa History

In 2021, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed a law banning public schools from teaching the historic and cultural impact of systemic racism or sexism. In a nation founded under principles of systemic exclusion, where women were not afforded the right to vote, own property, or even open a bank account and where Black Americans were first legally recognized as only 3/5 of a human being.Teaching that important context was no longer allowed in the classroom.

Retired Iowa Supreme Court Justice Brent Appel works on his computer in his office in the faculty bay at Drake University’s Law School, researching the connections and threads impacting Black Iowans through their legal system, from the writing of the state constitution to how it contrasts with contemporary federal law on July 10, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

MAGA Republicans had recently focused their ire on the scholarly and legal framework of critical race theory. Though decades old in academia, the term had been catapulted into the zeitgeist by then-former President Trump and his allies as an attack on the comfort of white Americans who – they believed – would be better served by not knowing about the rippling legacies of subjugation in this country.

Schools districts in the state have already ended their Black History Month programming as more teachers say they see self-censoring for fear of losing funding in their schools.

At Drake University, a young Black law student found an opportunity to be sure his peers in the law – at least – would graduate and enter their careers with the important historical context of the law with his instructor, retired Iowa Supreme Court Justice Judge Brent Appel.

Community Art, Music & Joy for Aurora ICE Detainees

Darkness crept around and it was decided it was time to turn up the volume and for the final three bands of the evening to take the stage – performing over the crowd before them for those locked inside behind.

Flobots frontman Jonny 5 gestures to a sign reading ICE while singing a bilingual protest song during a community action at the A large crowd of people fill the tree lawn and sidewalk outside of a chain link cage and prison windows, spilling in to the street around parked cars, while hanging an art installation and singing for the detainees inside a GEO private prison facility licensed as the federal ICE processing center in Aurora, CO on July 7, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellowscene)

“I don’t know if Tim Hernández is still here,” Flobots’ Jonny 5 said as the Denver hip hop group took the stage, “but I’m reminded tonight of something he once said. We cannot become the thing we hate.”

Referencing the Colorado educator and former State House Representative’s assertion that authoritarianism robs the community of creativity and joy, he reminded the crowd that we have to have energy to have power, and our power is rooted in collective good.

Closing the evening with a wildly high energy set which included their Billboard charting hit “Handlebars,” the crowd amplified their reminder of joy as resistance, allowing it to ripple through the concrete and steel separating families and communities from their loved ones inside.

Fourth of July in Trump Country, CO

As the Fourth of July approached and House Republicans worked through the night to garner the necessary votes to pass President Trump’s landmark One Big Beautiful Act by his Independence Day deadline, some in Colorado asked themselves what there could possibly be to celebrate this year.

Cylus smiles and watches the sparks from a handheld firework pour over his head as he awaited the night sky to get dark enough for the fire department to begin the large 4th of July firework show with his mom in Rocky Ford, Colorado. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellowscene)

The bill’s impact is projected to hit Colorado’s rural communities especially hard.

Estimates are that nearly 241,000 residents of the square state will lose their health care because of the bill’s $900 billion cuts to Medicaid and Medicare. Disabled and chronically ill residents will have to leap through new loops to continue to receive life-saving care.

As protests were planned in the state’s urban centers, where the majority of the population lives and where s plurality gave Colorado to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, the question remained: What were people celebrating in this moment?

And where to go, to find out?

On a clear day, the Rocky Mountains are just visible in your rear view mirror. They serve as a subtle reminder that you’re still in Colorado, though the plains rising to meet you begin to mirror neighboring Kansas.

Turning East from Pueblo, where voters flipped then flopped between Presidents Trump, Biden, and Trump again you enter the counties represented in Congress by Republicans like Congressman Jeff Hurd.

Here, you’re entering Trump Country, CO.

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Best known for capturing striking content from the frontlines of social movements, Heartland EMMY-nominated filmmaker and photographer Vince Chandler has spent 20 years creating art and documentary visuals across the U.S. They served as Communications Director for Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, and Vince has earned national recognition for their work as a visual journalist for The Denver Post. Vince was the principal cinematographer for the feature documentary film Running With My Girls, which premiered at the 2021 Denver Film Festival.

______________________________

What does resistance & resilience look like in the Heartland of America?

Sometimes it’s a protest outside an ICE detention center. Sometimes it’s a rural nurse explaining how Medicaid cuts will shutter the town hospital. Sometimes, it’s a law professor teaching systemic racism at a University in a state where CRT is banned in public schools.

As Trump’s second term unfolds — and the One Big Beautiful Act guts healthcare, empowers ICE, and reshapes American life — independent journalism is more vital than ever. However, the national press rarely shows up in the places where policy has the most impact.

We do.

These American Crossroads is a collaboration between Vince Chandler, Emmy-nominated visual journalist, and Yellow Scene Magazine, Boulder County’s only independent newsroom.

Become a sustaining supporter for just $8/month: https://fundrazr.com/Crossroads

The post These American Crossroads appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The red sun still laying low over the far away horizon, rolling hills and glowing roads guide the way as you arrive in Topeka, Kansas. Navigating the sleepy avenues toward the state’s Capitol. The air is cool and humid and the limestone building reflects the warm light, an omen of the hot day to come.

A dozen volunteers are setting up canopies, pulling wagons loaded with water and speakers. A microphone was just plugged in at the foot of the stone south steps. Greetings are exchanged as tables erected for an art station, a volunteer check-in, first-aid. Hours before hundreds of people would join, a handful of smiling people handed out walkie talkies and shared sour sentiments about Sesame Street.

Spirits were high, despite the underlying sense of dire urgency which had called this group to spend their Saturday morning building the infrastructure to protest their own government. A jobs market in sharp decline, the forced famine in Palestine, President Trump and the Epstein List; conversations swirled between topics which elicited tones of real concern and uncertainty. Some topics contrasted in conversation, questioning a lack of youth particpation while criticizing the growing support for populism and socialism in younger voters.

Representatives from Indivisible Kansas discuss the day’s events with rally attendees while selling yard signs as a fundraiser for the ““Real Kansans. Real Voters. Real Fed Up,” billboard campaign in the Sunflower State. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

“I would ask people to talk to their neighbor, and not in a way that says ‘hey idiot..’ but more in the ‘are you aware’ way,” Kansas 50501 organizer Scott McFarland told Yellow Scene during the protest. “[We need a] connection to the younger generation to work with us and help in clearing the apathy. There’s a lot of dislike of capitalism, they’re being labeled as socialists, but it’s just that they’re tired of the corruption in capitalism.”

As support organizations and political parties continued to arrive, the crowd grew. A visible majority were people over 40, many old enough to recall their experiences seeing the unrest around the Vietnam War while discussing today’s events. There was a voiced sentiment of shock that they were seeing authoritarianism in their lifetimes and a concern for disinterest and acceptance by younger Americans.

Previous 50501 protests have attracted thousands to the streets of the Kansas capital. Each week in cities across the state, grassroots activists maintain consistent presences in the +16 Trump/Vance state. Organizers for today’s “Rage Against the Regime” event were cautiously conservative with their expectations for attendance, hoping to see a few hundred.

Ultimately, almost 500 Kansans were gathered as our day’s sole speaker approached the microphone and greeted the crowd. With a flowing, energetic speech matching her audience’s inertia, she spoke for a fiery thirty minutes, leading them in chants between reflecting on her personal experiences extrapolated to the national policy conversation. A sexual assault survivor, she outlined her rage that day being fed by seeing a credibly accused sexual predator sit at the Resolute Desk, using his power to pardon other assailants.

Kansans from across the political spectrum rally together on Veterans’ Walk in front of the state Capitol in Topeka ahead of a march through the downtown urban center. Organized as a “Rage Against the Regime” the 50501 protest are a “a decentralized rapid response to the anti-democratic and illegal actions of the Trump administration.” (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

Wrapping up with a moment of silence for the children of Gaza, the energy returned like a shockwave carried on the wall of sound produced from hundreds of hand-made noise makers breaking the quiet calm. From the steps of the Capitol, where attendees had gathered for a group photo, they stepped off down the Veterans’ Walk toward the town’s major thoroughfare.

Keeping to the sidewalks, marshaled by volunteers who maintained adherence to street signals and crosswalks, the hundreds of unified Kansans marched through the city center. Along commercial roads on a path which brought them past the county’s Republican offices, they raised their voices declaring their dissent to authoritarianism, the loss of due process, and cuts to public services like health care and education.

The line of protestors carrying signs, clanging pots, blowing horns, and chanting loudly stretched for blocks. Passersby honked encouragingly, waving and cheering from their windows as they passed. Not without opposition, some shared crude hand signals with anger on their faces.

An inarguable Republican stronghold, a Democrat hasn’t won the presidential ticket since before 1980 and their U.S. House representation has been overwhelmingly red in the same period, one district never seeing a Dem victory. Statewide and locally, though, there is some partisan flexibility, the Governor’s seat has been blue since 2018.

In the same time period, the population of Kansas has not kept up with national growth trends, seeing a state increase of less than 3% in the previous census. Kansas lost a seat in congress in 1990, and in the presidential race lost some influence with ten electoral college votes falling to only six. The fastest-increasing portion of their population is 65+.

Civic engagement is split into two majority coalitions, registered Republicans making up the largest group and only a few thousand behind are non-participants. Of the two million registered voters in the state, nearly 800,000 chose to stay home in November 2024.

Young voters continue to connect more with social issues and movements over partisan idols and party politics. At the county Democrats’ annual fundraiser following the 50501 protest, politicos grappled with how to translate the evolution of local engagement for ballot initiatives specific to issues like abortion and the economy into capturing votes for candidates.

Current electeds, alongside candidates vying for their own seats, shook hands with constituents while volunteers prepared a buffet of picnic staples. Awards and recognition were distributed for service to the chapter and speeches were given highlighting the party’s want for coalition building and grassroots persuasion.

“A couple times during the presidential election, I went to bed thinking that change was really going to come for our country, and then I woke up disappointed,” Topeka Mayor Michael Padilla told the crowd assembled in the IBEW hall. “But that doesn’t mean that that disappointment makes me less determined to make that change happen with the help of fellow Democrats, independents, and – yes – Republicans.”

Topeka Mayor Mike Padilla, a Democrat and former police officer, speaks on the need to reach out to everyone with a tone of kindness and a resolve committed to Democratic values during the annual Shawnee County Democrats Picnic, telling the crowd “it’s necessary for us to speak up. I get pushback, and its because they want to silence my personal opinion simply because I’m in opposition to what they seek. When asked why they oppose these ideas of democracy, and freedom, and civil rights for everyone. They’re usually hard pressed for answers.” (Photos by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

Reflecting the sentiment, a majority of the conversation was centered on moving those who cast their ballots regularly from the more conservative Republican ticket to the centrist-leaning Kansas Democrat platform. While the state’s place in the abortion rights movement was rightfully celebrated, and the need to expand access to affordable housing was constantly mentioned, the theme centered openly on the need for bipartisan cooperation and converting existing voters rather than finding the messaging which would create new ones.

The historic vote rejecting the ban on abortion in the  Sunflower State saw an measurable shift in partisan response, illuminating the importance of elevating issues’ impacts above partisan and candidate politics. The Republican state voted against the ban, with more people casting a vote in the decision for abortion than the decision for president.

The sometimes apathetic unaffiliated voter in Kansas was engaged in this vote, legally unable to cast a ballot in the parallel primary elections but able to make a decision in the referendum. Almost 200,000 voters not affiliated with the two major political parties participated. In the lead-up to the election, Kansas was also the third most engaged state for young voters aged 18-29, with registration leaping from 2018 numbers and the Gen Z / Zillenial vote increasing their influence to the highest levels in thirty years.

Nearly 40% of registered voters under forty in Kansas cast their ballot in 2022, during a traditionally low turnout midterm primary election, called to action by an issue more than a person. In 2024, during the presidential race when voter turnout is traditionally at its highest, fewer than 2% of the same group went to the polls.

“One of the things that Kansans are good at, especially in some of the rural districts where I knock doors, is that we all have different opinions and we give each other time to talk,” Shawnee County Democrats Vice-Chair JP Porter told Yellow Scene Magazine at the event. “Right now, it’s time to build those relationships, just talk to people. Hear them out, make sure people are comfortable.”

As the Shawnee Democrats wrapped up their fundraising raffle with a 50/50, back at the Capitol another protest was beginning to be set up. While the morning saw hundreds rallying against the authoritarian creep in policy and posture by the federal administration, a few dozen were gathering to protest their state government in support of personal liberty and religious freedom.

The Satanic Grotto, an offshoot of The Satanic Temple formed in pursuit of increased autonomy, were returning for the first time since a series of dramatic moments during a previous protest they organized in March resulted in scuffles, police intervention, and four arrests. That event drew thousands to the Capitol grounds, a majority counterprotestors. Tonight, fifty gathered, including the police and five antagonists carrying crosses and warnings of eternal damnation.

While counter protesters and some attendees exchanged loud sounds and short statements, most stayed close to the newly erected sound system, once again at the bottom of the building’s south steps. Speakers and musicians exchanged the stage, bringing a mix of concert and rally to the crowd. Activist Ms. B spoke on the need to not be complacent, to not be lazy, in a moment that required presence and action. She illustrates her call to action with reflection and accountability for moments in her own past when she wished she’d done more.

Author, activist, and former local elected Mike Trapp quoted from his book “The Practical Guide to Building a Better World” offering his eleven suggestions to coalescing in movement work. He outlined his decades of experience advocating for a better world, discussing bearing witness to the slide from what he calls “friendly fascism” into something even worse. He encouraged looking past contrasts in aesthetic or approach to build allies aligned with the civic work to be done at a local level, in City Halls and on school boards, where individuals can have the most impact.

After a full concert set from Girard, Kansas metal outfit Rage Is My Rival, Satanic Grotto president Michael Stewart took the mic warning those still gathered as the sun sank below surrounding buildings that he was definitely going to cry. He thanked his peers, organizers, lawmakers, community members, and even the Capitol police who practiced their principles of supporting individual and religious liberty by fighting for the Grotto to secure the required permits for the protest to occur uninterrupted that evening.

The Satanic Grotto president Michael Stewart leads attendees on an umbrella march around the Kansas Capitol, stopping on the four cardinal coordinates and leading those gathered in a synchronized chant meant to evoke and emanate personal power. The Not Quite Witching Hour protest organized by The Satanic Grotto marked the end of a months-long battle to return to the spot exercising their first amendment rights after a briefly-chaotic culmination to the group’s previous event, a Black Mass held in the same spot in March 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine).

He remembered aloud his assault and arrest at the Capitol earlier this year. He reflected on how people’s perceptions and preconceived assumptions often inhibited the message he was advocating for. He cited specific legislation being discussed inside the government chambers he stood before while gave encouragement to those in attendance to get involved. Offering testimony, contacting representatives, organizing neighbors, his plan for action mirrored that of the organizers earlier in the day: participation.

“We cannot be the only ones fighting,” Stewart told those gathered. “The intersectionality converges right here on this battlefield. Hiding from it will not make you safe, it will only make you an easier target. Everyone, everywhere, needs to pick their battle and drive it the [expletive] forward.”

From the jump, a group of political organizers identifying themselves as Satanic is going to cause controversy. Some will find it easy to discount their message because of the container in which it is distributed. Some write them off as unserious performative art, others take their cartoonish construct literally and refuse to listen for fear of devil worship being the core talking point. Their consistent pushback at over-encroaching authoritarian policy and intentional organizing messaging, in tandem with their undeniable regionally and nationally rippling impact – though – suggest that their efforts should be seen more seriously.

“From a marketing perspective, their ‘extreme’ branding definitely gets their group plenty of attention and free press, but then people just judge the book by its cover and don’t actually look into their really solid ethics and organizing tactics,” Nebraska political organizer JD Hanson told Yellow Scene while reflecting on how other Heartland movements see and feel their influence locally. “Some people just hear satanic and then completely tune out everything else.”

Conservative Kansas is the contemporary reality in the state the Westboro Baptist Church calls home. While registered Republicans have decreased by more than seven thousand people this year already, a majority of the state’s voters are GOP members. Nearly a million. The only group of voters to grow in 2025, by about 3,000 people, is the second largest pool: the unaffiliated.

Kansas has a history of standing ten toes forward for their principles. Bleeding Kansas fought a small war against Missouri slavers to found their territory as a Free Soil state. Infamous abolitionist John Brown first made national headlines by violently fighting against the institution on the eastern plains, years before he’d be remembered forever for his failed attempt to start an enslaved persons revolt at Harpers Ferry. Touring the Capitol’s visitor center you’ll see that this radical history is still celebrated.

Kansas resident turned activist Molly Tolly distributes hundreds of protest placards she handmade at her “Sign Library,” a pop-up table she erects at actions across the state. She has attended 38 protests so far in 2025, often bringing more than 100 signs, she allows attendees to borrow them for the day, seeing at least 80% returned after the event. Not sure what she could offer the movement as an individual working as a family caretaker, she identified this art as activism project as one small way she could have a large impact. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine).

Less than a mile from the heart of the state’s government stands the historic site for the Brown Versus Board Supreme Court Decision. A court case that could have only happened in Kansas, because segregation in the state which had rejected slavery in its constitution was considered at the time the “gold standard” for the immoral act. Kansans relegated legal segregation only to large population centers and only by local control. While some cities outlawed it outright, others segregated children while spelling out in the law equal distribution standards for resources, in contrast to some of the more cruel forms of legal racism in the deep south.

It was for these reasons that the NAACP chose Kansas schools as their battleground to elevate the fight against state-protected bigotry to the nation’s highest courts. If the organization could prove that the midwest standard for the Plessy Versus Ferguson “separate but equal” doctrine – which many people found acceptable – still created disproportionate harm to non-white students, then in contrast more violent forms in places like Louisiana or Arkansas couldn’t possibly stand.

Wherever they align ideologically, personal liberty is at the front of progressive movements in this central prairie state. Individuals find their place by measuring capacity and staying in their lane after it has been identified. Collecting impact statements from their neighbors and creating conversations on shared values, hoping to move them away from MAGA authoritarianism. Creating a pathway to political participation for ostracized weirdos or creating hundreds of handmade signs to distribute on loan at protests. Inside political party infrastructure or through autonomous grassroots organizing. In a moment that calls for many approaches converging toward a shared end, each individual voice creates a choir singing in chorus, though may be still finding the harmony.

_______________________________________

Best known for capturing striking content from the frontlines of social movements, Heartland EMMY-nominated filmmaker and photographer Vince Chandler has spent 20 years creating art and documentary visuals across the U.S. They served as Communications Director for Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, and Vince has earned national recognition for their work as a visual journalist for The Denver Post. Vince was the principal cinematographer for the feature documentary film Running With My Girls, which premiered at the 2021 Denver Film Festival.

______________________________

What does resistance & resilience look like in the Heartland of America?

Sometimes it’s a protest outside an ICE detention center. Sometimes it’s a rural nurse explaining how Medicaid cuts will shutter the town hospital. Sometimes, it’s a law professor teaching systemic racism at a University in a state where CRT is banned in public schools.

As Trump’s second term unfolds — and the One Big Beautiful Act guts healthcare, empowers ICE, and reshapes American life — independent journalism is more vital than ever. However, the national press rarely shows up in the places where policy has the most impact.

We do.

These American Crossroads is a collaboration between Vince Chandler, Emmy-nominated visual journalist, and Yellow Scene Magazine, Boulder County’s only independent newsroom.

Become a sustaining supporter for just $8/month: https://fundrazr.com/Crossroads

The post Solidarity, Bipartisanship, and Satanic Protest in Kansas appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The quiet evening air is suddenly pierced by a dampened thwack. As the grey clouds start to tease above the still dry air, suggesting rain which will never fully arrive, the soft static crackle of a megaphone is followed by a short chorus of more muted metallic drum beats. Flags are unfurled and the dozen or so people standing outside of the Colorado Capitol in Denver raise their voices in response to the amplified call now coming from the front.

“Free, free Palestine!” they chant in unison, accompanying their message by hitting kitchen utensils against the bottoms of their cookware.

Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda had taken to her digital platforms only a few days earlier, highlighting the inhuman conditions her neighbors and peers were being made to live in because of the forced famine in their occupied territories.

Answering the call from Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda, hundreds of Coloradans gathered across the capital city to clang empty cookware in protest of the forced famine in the occupied Palestinian Territories on July 24, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine).

One third of those forced to live only inside the confines of the West Bank and Gaza are going days without eating. Because of Israeli blockades, food and aid have been long unable to reach their homes, some walk for hours in a desperate hope to secure the raw ingredients needed to feed their families. Too many are killed by soldiers as they search for something to eat, becoming targets at distribution centers.

The United Nations reports that one hundred thousand people in occupied Palestine are now suffering from “severe acute malnutrition,” and as empathetic Americans like the now-ostracized Ms. Rachel beg their audiences to recognize the humanitarian crisis, to see the starving children as they would their own, the world continues to choose to not intervene.

Human Rights Watch, an international organization which investigates abuses occurring globally, reported in 2024 that following the October attacks in Israel, the nation has intentionally deprived the Palestinian people of adequate clean water, necessary medical aid, and food.

With the intentional targeting of hospitals, schools, and religious institutions with their missiles, the United Nations has said that the concerted efforts of the Israeli Defense Forces have permanently put at risk the possibility of any future for Palestinians. 90% of educational facilities in Gaza – grade schools, universities, etc. – have been destroyed or converted for military staging, leaving nearly a quarter million children without access to learning nearly two years.

Now, more than one million Palestinian people suffer under the very real reality that they don’t know where, when, or even if, their next will come. 70% of the population is experiencing the most catastrophic levels of hunger, weakening their bodies past a point of no return. Forced famine, having your caloric intake dictated by a hostile government, is an internationally recognized war crime.

Journalist Bisan Owda, in Palestine, has bravely shone a spotlight on these cruel tactics’ impacts on her people. Around the world, people scroll through their feeds of baking tips and hyperspecific interests with the occasional mention of the atrocities being committed on the coasts of the Mediterranean. Too many quickly scroll past, searching for the next placating escape.

To circumvent this social media ennui, Owda made a simple request: get loud. Their pots, their pans, their stomachs are empty and while the Freedom Flotilla carves their way toward their shores, little other help seems to be fighting through the occupier’s embargo. So, the globe was asked to take their own empty kitchenware and demand that the Palestinian’s be filled.

In Denver, Colorado, under a grey sky threatening storms, hundreds of sympathetic people heard the call. The first sharp clanks or metal ladle on sauce pan were soon joined by the dull thuds of wooden spoons on lobster pots. Metal lids became improvised cymbals, 5-gallon paint buckets became plastic drums. A hammer hitting a sign post made a metallic rattle which could be heard blocks away.

“We don’t have the usual programming, we’re not doing speeches today,” organizers at the Capitol announced through their megaphones. “I don’t know what’s left to be said! We went from ‘free Palestine,’ to ‘ceasefire,’ to ‘stop starving them.’ What’s next?”

The discordant wind chime continued to percuss for another 90 minutes, the wall of sound surrounding attendees and drowning out the traffic sounds on the 5-lane wide boulevard before them. The air horns of passing trucks rose above the rumble as drivers pumped their arms and added their support. Cars honking and waving as they past certainly increased the decimals, though everything blended into an almost-melody as the hundreds banged their pots.

Protestors for Palestinian liberation demonstrate on the west side of Colorado’s capitol building in Denver Colorado. Answering the call from Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda, hundreds of Coloradans gathered across the capital city to clang empty cookware in protest of the forced famine in the occupied Palestinian Territories on July 24, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine).

No speeches, just the deafening – determined – sounds of empty pots demanding they be filled. No marches, this wasn’t about disrupting the day-to-day but about being sure to be seen and heard. They’d chosen this spot on the Capitol lawn not because of proximity to lawmakers, but because a majority of those leaving the city for their evening elsewhere would have to pass by.

They would have to consider the children being starved in the West Bank, to think about the father in Gaza dodging American bullets at an aid distribution site, to weigh what they would do if they were the mother not sure she’d see her family grow old.

Across the city, another group of dedicated Denverites heeded the call from Owda. Hearing the request to bang their pots everywhere, they opted to host a separate event in solidarity, aligned with the gathering at the Capitol. This one was along the city’s busy urban highway corridor, Speer Avenue, outside of Colorado’s senior Senator Michael Bennet.

Senator Bennet has continually ducked Palestinian liberation activists, often mis-characterizing the end of Palestinian subjugation as antisemitic. In February he voted to send an additional $3.8B in unconditional military aid to continue the occupation, while also introducing a non-binding resolution requesting that aid be allowed in.

Outside of his office, which had a layer of plywood encircling its ground floor to greet his nonviolent constituents with their cookware, 50 people banged and clanged. Occasionally they walked through the traffic paused at the red light, waving signs with the Senator’s phone number and asking folks to call their representative.

In front of the César E. Chavez Memorial Building, in Denver, Colorado, protestors gathered at the home of Senator Michael Bennet’s office answering the call from Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda, hundreds of Coloradans gathered across the capital city to clang empty cookware in protest of the forced famine in the occupied Palestinian Territories on July 24, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine).

On the plywood put up to protect the building from having empty pots bonked loudly out front, demonstrators affixed their signs, photos of dead children and journalists, and excerpts from internationally recognized reports on the forced famine.

Some passersby would roll their windows up, insulating themselves from the sound. An occasional sneer or thumbs-down toward protestors indicated definitely their disapproval of the advocates. One, enthusiastically needing their middle finger be seen, swerved their oversized truck into the next lane nearly colliding with a family sedan.

A majority of public feedback, however, was positive. Horns tooting in support were accompanied by flags, keffiyehs, smiles, and loving words put through their windows. One or two pulled over to join the fray.

Into the evening, as rush hour traffic slowed, the cacophony continued. No longer separated by multiple lanes of cars rushing past at more than 35 miles per hour, smiles were shared and streets were crossed to fill the sidewalks on each side. Banners were raised on the bridges over trickling Cherry Creek.

Like the famine they were protesting, there was no cataclysmic crescendo, no catastrophic point where it was easily identifiable as the end. Instead, simply the slow loss of sound as people quietly departed, the few who remain redoubling their efforts to remain as loud.

Until no one was left and there was silence.

Answering the call from Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda, hundreds of Coloradans gathered across the capital city to clang empty cookware in protest of the forced famine in the occupied Palestinian Territories on July 24, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine).

Best known for capturing striking content from the frontlines of social movements, Heartland EMMY-nominated filmmaker and photographer Vince Chandler has spent 20 years creating art and documentary visuals across the U.S. They served as Communications Director for Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, and Vince has earned national recognition for their work as a visual journalist for The Denver Post. Vince was the principal cinematographer for the feature documentary film Running With My Girls, which premiered at the 2021 Denver Film Festival.

______________________________

What does resistance & resilience look like in the Heartland of America?

Sometimes it’s a protest outside an ICE detention center. Sometimes it’s a rural nurse explaining how Medicaid cuts will shutter the town hospital. Sometimes, it’s a law professor teaching systemic racism at a University in a state where CRT is banned in public schools.

As Trump’s second term unfolds — and the One Big Beautiful Act guts healthcare, empowers ICE, and reshapes American life — independent journalism is more vital than ever. However, the national press rarely shows up in the places where policy has the most impact.

We do.

These American Crossroads is a collaboration between Vince Chandler, Emmy-nominated visual journalist, and Yellow Scene Magazine, Boulder County’s only independent newsroom.

Become a sustaining supporter for just $8/month: https://fundrazr.com/Crossroads

The post Bang the Pots, Colorado Protests Palestinian Starvation in Capital appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The clanking sounds of an espresso machine pulling its next shot swirls with the hissing steam, frothing oat milk for a latte ordered by the waiting stranger at the counter before you.

Stickers adorn the back of the machine – advocating for queer rights, stating that Black lives matter, calling for unity in their community. Nearby, murmuring voices get a little louder as those browsing the bookstand behind you find a title they’re excited about. In the cafe, teens relax on a couch while an older couple in the corner talks quietly over their small table. Walking in from the street, you may never know you’ve just stepped into a church.

A choice made deliberately by its founders.

Located just off of Old Market in downtown Omaha, Nebraska, The Urban Abbey is a Methodist Church, coffeeshop, book store, and gathering space for the city’s progressive community. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellowscene)

The Urban Abbey is a gathering space, a safe place, for the marginalized and ostracized in Omaha, Nebraska. Deliberately established between the gentrifying luxury condos in the historic downtown and the spaces where the poor and unhoused gather and camp, the coffee shop and bookstore are set up to be a catch-all for anyone looking for a third place and community.

Walking through the door, you do see less-than-subtle hints of the house of prayer. Holy water sits in a baptismal font, there are bible verses hanging framed on the exposed red brick wall. On the neatly arranged bookshelves titles like A People’s History of the United States sit only feet away from Marsha P. Johnson’s biography, on a shelf next to the gospel according to Mary Magdalene.

Finding the inclusive restrooms, you stroll past a corkboard laden with fliers and notes including locations for anarchist-organized free kitchens, emergency contraception services, an upcoming 5K race in support of medical care and liberation for the Palestinian people, and the weekly Faith in Action services right there in the coffee shop chapel.

Founded by ordained Methodist minister Rev. Debra McKnight, Urban Abbey’s mission is to be “a space of radical hospitality connecting people to God and one another in everyday life.” They set out on a mission to not only reach people who felt disenfranchised or unrepresented by their church but to hear their needs and help see them be met. Even if it meant taking an activist’s approach.

Driven by a diametric division between conservatism and contemporary principles of acceptance and community, most religious organizations have seen a steady decline in active attendance and congregation attendance over the past 20 years.

While there has been a growth in polled people stating that they simply don’t believe in a monotheist almighty ruler, the majority of those who responded to Pew Research assert their lack of attendance is rooted more simply in feeling a disconnect between the teachings in their texts, and how they seem them wielded by church leaders.

“To see something vibrant and alive and growing and attracting younger folks and families, it’s the like mindedness of the passion for social justice and the progressive theology that people are looking for,” Reverend Dr. Jane Florence, the Abbey’s Spirtual Formation Pastor, said while sitting at one of the cafe tables under the Abbey’s picture window front after the morning’s services.

Reverend Dr.Jane Florence speaks from the lectern during the Faith in Action Sunday morning church services at The Urban Abbey, in Omaha, Nebraska. “I had my own, calling into ministry, and it was undeniable…my own spiritual journey led me and it’s been good,” she reflected later to Yellow Scene while remembering her path to this progressive pulpit. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene).

“People who don’t align, there’s lots of other opportunities, but for folks who have been wounded by the church in the past, or it just doesn’t make sense anymore, they are typically very grateful to find us.”

A growing group of those like-minded civically engaged worshippers come to the Abbey’s dual Sunday morning services. The small cafe overflows, kids playing amongst the bookshelves on laid-out cushions while strangers share their tables with one-another, making space for the folks still coming in the door.

Some found the Abbey when they saw them marching in Omaha’s PRIDE parade or organizing groups of parishioners to offer comments and testimony at their City Council and the State House in the nearby capital city, Lincoln. Another had moved to downtown Omaha three years ago and simply searched for the nearest church to a new home, now she drives past many to return every week, watching the live stream when she travels.

“One is not a Christian just for oneself,” the Reverend said, reflecting on the church’s mission of allowing scripture to build community and to motivate direct action. “It’s not about personal salvation. It’s about the care and wholeness of all, to let go of the notion of separation. We are not separate. We are one.”

While the Abbey has found a mostly peaceful existence in the River City, when topics like drag queen storyhour became an outrage flashpoint in conservative media, they faced backlash for hosting the events. Threatened with violence, including bomb threats, the staff and attendants prefer to stand by their principles.

“I have been labeled unchristian and a witch and everything else,” said Reverend Florence while reflecting on those times, some still recent in the memory. “You know, everybody’s where they are.I would like to think that people are doing the best they can with the information that they have, and that it is not up to me to judge them.”

The church focused their sermons this summer on the small screen, combining allegories from the Gospel of Mary with popular culture. Today, Reverend Florence talked to her flock about The Golden Girls, highlighting the groundbreaking strides the show had platforming queer storylines during Prime Time.

By using their privileges – “how can you censor grandma” a producer once quipped – Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia could model for the average American tolerance and kind curiosity, to learn about and not fear the new or unknown. A jaunty sing-a-long of the familiar theme song “Thanks for Being a Friend” transitioned the congregation from contemplation through communion.

The Director of Ministry took the lectern and the weekly political and news update was given. Updates on the threats to Omaha’s cultural institutions with a move in the U.S. House to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a workshop series centered on the city budget, an upcoming youth tour of a local news station, and a book discussion on urban planning; there were going to be opportunities provided to be engaged.

The service ended and conversation continued. Friends shared stories from their recent travels while other groups went to look one more time through the book stacks. Fliers were distributed to those curious about events, a space was set up for those who needed an ear or a shoulder. The coffee bar re-opened and the sounds of steam again filled the air.

This Sunday morning in Omaha, community came together to not just discuss hope, but to harness it for collective action.

With concerns of outgrowing their space, each service is now averaging an attendance of 50 congregants in the small coffee shop space, the spiritual leadership at The Urban Abbey is adding more service options and discussing expanding in to a larger space in tandem with the Abbey’s bookstore outreach. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene).

Best known for capturing striking content from the frontlines of social movements, Heartland EMMY-nominated filmmaker and photographer Vince Chandler has spent 20 years creating art and documentary visuals across the U.S. They served as Communications Director for Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, and Vince has earned national recognition for their work as a visual journalist for The Denver Post. Vince was the principal cinematographer for the feature documentary film Running With My Girls, which premiered at the 2021 Denver Film Festival.

______________________________

What does resistance & resilience look like in the Heartland of America?

Sometimes it’s a protest outside an ICE detention center. Sometimes it’s a rural nurse explaining how Medicaid cuts will shutter the town hospital. Sometimes, it’s a law professor teaching systemic racism at a University in a state where CRT is banned in public schools.

As Trump’s second term unfolds — and the One Big Beautiful Act guts healthcare, empowers ICE, and reshapes American life — independent journalism is more vital than ever. However, the national press rarely shows up in the places where policy has the most impact.

We do.

These American Crossroads is a collaboration between Vince Chandler, Emmy-nominated visual journalist, and Yellow Scene Magazine, Boulder County’s only independent newsroom.

Become a sustaining supporter for just $8/month: https://fundrazr.com/Crossroads

The post Faith Drives Direct Action in Nebraska appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

At the Colorado Capitol, overlooking Downtown Denver’s glass skyscrapers and Greek Revival municipal buildings, flags were unfurled while hand-made placards and posters were distributed to the few dozen who had gathered there.

On this Monday afternoon, rain teasing to disrupt the summer’s sun but never coming, concerned Coloradans discussed the state of artificial intelligence and surveillance. Conversations included apprehension about recent restrictions on civil liberties paired with being tracked and traced by widely unregulated technology funded by tax payers.

Coordinated with demonstrations in Palo Alto, Seattle, and New York City, Palantir Technologies’ presence in their cities that day is what had commanded their cries of dissent.

Headquartered in Denver, Palantir is a technology company founded by PayPal architect Peter Thiel and his Stanford roommate Alex Karp. They create software systems meant to capture consumer and customer data and to quickly synthesize the information collected to drive decisions. Ones made by humans and artificial intelligence.

In the private sector, that consumer data is used to help sell cheeseburgers or seat upgrades. With their largest clients, though, it’s used to choose who lives and who dies.

Last year, the U.S. Army, under the Biden Administration, gave Palantir more than $400,000,000 to help streamline their military force’s management of recruitment, deployment, and “readiness.” President Trump’s Department of Defense has since swelled their investment to more than $1,000,000,000 – anticipating a near future of increased need for military “readiness.”

Protestors carry anti-Palantir signs through the streets of Denver, demanding the artificial intelligence technology company working with military and police forces on civilian surveillance move their headquarters out of the city on July 14, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

Before the Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed into law by President Trump, making Immigrations and Customs Enforcement the largest federal policing force, ICE was already giving $30,000,000 to the artificial intelligence technology company, using it to make individual and mass detainment decisions.

As Stephen Miller continues his calls to increase arrest numbers, and now with a new $170,000,000,000+ budget, increased investment in the platform is expected. Some deaths in Palestine have been labeled accidents, like the 2024 killing of World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza, while Palantir allegedly partners with the IDF to aid in their targeting and decision-making.

Marching through the streets of Denver, the protestors chanted slogans carrying the names of company and government leadership, demanding that technologies of war not be used unethically and to stop the intentional targeting of marginalized and subjugated communities. Their banner at the front of the march read “Palantir is Watching You,” and some in the crowd wore facial coverings, acknowledging the technology they protested could likely see them.

Former Palantir employee and whistleblower Juan Sebastian Pinto leads a march from Palantir HQ to the Colorado Capitol in Denver, Colorado on July 14, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

One uncovered face in the crowd, though, was steadfast and sure as the march approached The Tabor Center in downtown Denver, home headquarters of Silicon Valley expat Thiel’s company. This was former Palantir employee and whistleblower Juan Sebastian Pinto. Parking a pick-up truck to be a makeshift stage, crowd members were invited to a microphone to speak their mind. Sentiments of being over-policed were shared, one Quaker activist sang a pointed song they’d written, and then Juan took the mic.

“I think fundamentally, what we are all here to represent is support for the families that are broken by these technologies,” he told those assembled, to nods and cheers of agreement. “And to bring a wider awareness to everyone in our city, where Palantir is headquartered, that we don’t support economies of mass resettlement, of deportation, or of genocide.”

While a majority remained to picket, Juan wrapped up his comments and invited 10 members to try to gain entrance to the building via a rented meeting space he had secured before the day’s event. Walking past a lone private security guard and signs reading the private plaza and building were closed to anyone who didn’t have permission to be there – the rented space inside provided them that permission in theory – they attempted the front door.

Behind the locked doors, militarized police waited in the lobby. They obviously weren’t going to get inside, let alone be permitted to make the case that they had a meeting. The group linked arms and sat down outside the doors. Delivering a short speech, Juan was soon interrupted by the arrival of Denver Police, clearly identified and wearing no masks, on the plaza.

Trying to reason with their police point of contact, explaining their right to protest, the officers gave no quarter and encouraged them to return to the sidewalk if they wished to continue. Otherwise, should they remain on the private property, they would be forcibly detained and arrested. With curious onlookers from the building above peering out the high rise windows, the protestors allowed themselves to be pushed back down a ramp and re-joined the picketers.

Protestors temporarily blocked the entry way to The Tabor Center, home to Palantir headquarters, after being denied entry by building security and Denver Police on Monday, July 14, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

They demonstrated, they demanded, they spoke with curious passersby, educating and distributing literature. Then, they continued on, hoping to continue to raise awareness in the hometown of Palantir HQ. Marching a new route through downtown and back to the Capitol, Juan spoke from the pick-up truck turned mobile stage while signs and chants filled the street around him.

Resolved to return, the organizers’ remaining snacks and water were distributed to those in need in the large parks in the state’s government center. Dates and times for the next demonstration were made clear. This wasn’t going to be over today, but for now today was over.

The following afternoon, talking by phone with Yellow Scene Magazine, Juan reflected on the day’s action.

“It’s impressive to see so many people come out on a Monday, in the middle of the day, knowledgeable on the issue,” he said before bringing the conversation to the group of 50 activists who had disrupted Denver’s economic corridor, peacefully and openly walking the avenues with their voices high, unarmed.

He contrasts that by being greeted with an intentional display of overarmed militarized police, “It gives us a sense of power, the feeling was crazy to me. Alex Karp and Peter Thiel could not walk through the streets of Denver like that, because they’re afraid of how people would react if they were seen in public. They can hide behind a bunch of money as much as they want, but they don’t have that freedom.”

Along the route, and while picketing, Juan and the group of activists took careful care to greet curious onlookers with kind conversations, asking them to not think about the political motivation of the moment but the encroachment of civil liberties. While Americans push back at challenges and oversteps to due process, the issue of personal privacy being lost is raised.

“Consumers themselves have to pay attention. America hasn’t taken up the fight for privacy like Europe or other places have. The fight for privacy is not about you and your secrets, more than that it’s about your autonomy and freedom of choice,” he mused, the sounds of the street swirling in the background, as he walked into a late lunch.

Best known for capturing striking content from the frontlines of social movements, Heartland EMMY-nominated filmmaker and photographer Vince Chandler has spent 20 years creating art and documentary visuals across the U.S. They served as Communications Director for Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, and Vince has earned national recognition for their work as a visual journalist for The Denver Post. Vince was the principal cinematographer for the feature documentary film Running With My Girls, which premiered at the 2021 Denver Film Festival.

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What does resistance & resilience look like in the Heartland of America?

Sometimes it’s a protest outside an ICE detention center. Sometimes it’s a rural nurse explaining how Medicaid cuts will shutter the town hospital. Sometimes, it’s a law professor teaching systemic racism at a University in a state where CRT is banned in public schools.

As Trump’s second term unfolds — and the One Big Beautiful Act guts healthcare, empowers ICE, and reshapes American life — independent journalism is more vital than ever. However, the national press rarely shows up in the places where policy has the most impact.

We do.

These American Crossroads is a collaboration between Vince Chandler, Emmy-nominated visual journalist, and Yellow Scene Magazine, Boulder County’s only independent newsroom.

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The post Denver Demonstrators Demand Personal Privacy at Palantir Headquarters appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.