Police escorted several people from a town hall with two Colorado Democrats Wednesday night after they shouted that the officials aren’t doing enough to protect the environment and push back against President Donald Trump’s administration.
A heated crowd in Golden heard U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen of Lakewood answer questions about Democratic leadership in Congress, the legality of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, preserving the integrity of the judicial branch, and concerns about a lack of tangible actions to hold the Trump administration accountable. Hundreds gathered for the town hall at the Bunker Auditorium at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, which sits in Colorado’s 7th Congressional District, represented by Pettersen.
Several people affiliated with activist group Climate Defiance Colorado handed fliers to town hall attendees as they entered the venue and stood at their seats holding signs during the event. They shouted out criticizing Bennet’s votes in support of several Trump cabinet nominees and for failing to push back against the president’s actions. Others accused Bennet of “killing the planet” and taking money from oil and gas, which Bennet denied.
Since Trump took office in January, he has fired thousands of federal employees, frozen federal funding approved by Congress and resisted court orders, among dozens of other extreme executive actions.
The auditorium erupted between people shouting at Bennet and people rebutting in defense of Bennet.
“You can’t compromise with fascists,” one person yelled.
“You’re attacking the wrong man,” a woman shouted back.
“We’re not going to do it this way,” Bennet said. He told one person, “What you’re saying is totally false. It’s not true.”
Later in the night, other attendees who were also removed from the venue called out to criticize continued U.S. support for Israel despite the thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza. “Stop spending more on bombs than you do on schools,” one attendee said.
Police escorted out just under 10 people throughout the night after Bennet’s staff attempted to talk them down.
“I know that these are intense times and that we can have disagreements, but I don’t think that engaging in that way is helpful,” Pettersen said.
Despite the interruptions, Bennet said he would still encourage his Republican colleagues to hold town halls and hear directly from constituents.
“This is a free country. People have the right to express themselves,” he said to reporters after the town hall. “There are always going to be instances like that, but we also were able to have the conversation that we needed to have tonight.”
Bennet also hosted a town hall in Greeley Tuesday night and will host one more in Colorado Springs on Thursday. Progressive groups are holding “people’s town halls” in Republican congressional districts around the country where Republicans are declining to engage directly with constituents.
The first constituent to ask a question Wednesday said “words are great” but that he wasn’t seeing any action, and attendees asking for more substantial answers and actions to oppose Trump policies continued throughout the night.
Amanda Arlington, a Parker resident who worked at Denver Public Schools when Bennet was the district’s superintendent, said she saw him show up for kids in classrooms at the schools regularly, but she hasn’t seen that translate to similar action during his time in the Senate, she said. Arlington said she hasn’t heard a plan for how Democrats are actually working against Trump, and she asked Bennet and Pettersen to share one.
“I feel like you’re talking pretty,” Arlington told Bennet while asking a question during the town hall. “I want to see obstruction.”
Bennet said that with Trump in the White House and majorities in both chambers of Congress, Democrats have to find other methods of pushing back.
“It doesn’t do anybody any good for us to pretend that that’s not real,” Bennet said of Republican control in Washington. “But it’s not an excuse for not continuing to push. It’s not an excuse to not continue to lift our voices.”
Democrats need to “obstruct everything,” Arlington told Newsline after the town hall, because Republican plans at the federal level “are terrifying.”
“We need leadership to say no, because we’re not in Washington,” she said. “I mean Republicans have been doing that for years. They have a lot of power and they stopped a lot of (President Barack) Obama’s agenda … I want to see that from the Democrats, and I’m not seeing it.”
She added that Republicans are “going to devastate the economy. They’re going to devastate kids. They’re going to devastate health care, and devastate rural America.”
Jake Kotula from Denver said Republican actions are “a huge departure from the norm,” and he hasn’t seen any different behavior from Democrats to react to the new political landscape.
“The question I was going to ask them was, ‘What distinctly are you going to do differently now that the rules of engagement are different?’” Kotula said in an interview with Newsline after the town hall. “Give us actionable steps about how you are bucking the norm the way that the Republicans are bucking the norm, the way they are eroding democracy.”
Both Colorado Democrats at the town hall should “weaponize the bureaucratic foundations of legislative proceedings” like the Senate filibuster and encourage others in their chambers to do the same to support the judiciary, Kotula said. He got to tell Pettersen his thoughts after the town hall concluded. Both elected officials talked to people in the audience.
Ron Meehan from Lakewood said many people have “deeply rooted and valid concerns” about protecting federal assistance programs, democracy and the climate, and residents want to know what Democrats are doing to respond to those concerns, and how they can get involved.
“I am hopeful that they will have a more unified front, and they will be able to pull the public more in, because we know that the public right now is engaged,” Meehan said in an interview with Newsline after the town hall. “They are furious about the real impacts that these (decisions) are having on people’s lives and their ability to get by, and we have to have really meaningful action on that.”
Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com.