A few dozen Denver protesters marked the fifth anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., with cosplay and live music at the Colorado State Capitol during a small rally today, January 6.
Upwards of sixty protesters were part of a gathering at the State Capitol Building’s west steps organized by Solidarity Warriors, a group of Denver area activists. Denver Communists and Rise and Represent, two other local activist groups, were also involved.
Local punk rock bands and hip-hop groups like Poison Politix, Radio Fry and Hoodie Hilltop played live music to a crowd that included protesters dressed as Kermit the Frog, Darth Vader and the Statute of Liberty. Some of them were part of the Colorado Bridge Trolls, a group that’s rallies over major roads to hold up signs protesting Trump.
Despite the playful, colorful tone of the small rally, the event was meant to remember the shocking events of January 6, 2021, when President Donald Trump incited an angry mob to attack the U.S. Capitol and interrupt the confirmation of former President Joe Biden as the election winner. An estimated 2,500 rioters broke into the Capitol and tried to capture members of Congress, which led to at least four deaths that day, and five officer deaths in the following days.
Denver resident Chet Nelson showed up with his face painted orange and hands purple to mock Trump and his unexplained bruising that some theorize are signs of illness or IV injections. Nelson remembers “people smashing windows, people climbing up walls, smashing in doors” on January 6, 2021.
“It was not a peaceful protest,” Nelson says. “They were ramming barricades into police officers. It was a very violent day.”
Linda Milne, who took a bus from her home in Boulder to protest in Denver, remembers the January 6 attacks as “horrific” and “can’t imagine that people have turned their back on it” by reelecting Trump.
“I almost lost my faith in humanity that people turned their backs on what happened. People died. He ruined their lives,” Milne says. “It’s not fake. It’s true…people are just ignoring it, letting him get away with it.”
George and Jennifer Molnar, a Douglas County couple, brought up Trump telling the angry 2021 mob to “fight like hell” before it marched up Pennsylvania Avenue to invade the U.S. Capitol.
“We’re gonna fight like hell,” the president’s now-infamous words went. “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country any more”
Trump was never convicted of criminal charges for the January 6 attacks. In late 2023, he pleaded not guilty to federal charges, including conspiracy to defraud and obstruct the United States. In July 2024, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling gave Trump broad immunity from those charges, and then a federal judge dismissed the remaining charges later that year.
More than 1,500 people were charged with participating in the attacks on U.S. Capitol, including over two dozen people from Colorado. One of the first actions Trump took when returning to office on January 2025 was issue sweeping pardons to about 1,500 people, including members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, both extremist far-right groups.
Now heading into the second year of his new term, Trump has started off 2026 with a forced regime change in Venezuela, a continuation of his mass deportation efforts and vindictive plays against Colorado.
On December 31, Trump vetoed funding for clean water pipelines for southeastern Colorado as the state refuses to release former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters from prison despite his attempt to pardon her nine-year sentence for voter fraud. Peters is currently locked up on state charges. This came days after news dropped that the Trump administration planned to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which is based in Boulder.
Denver protesters say they are anxiously watching 2026 unfold. Part of the reason Jennifer Molnar was at the State Capitol on Tuesday was to say that “the invasion of Venezuela is not okay.”
Protest organizers hope they can repeat the success of 2025 in terms of the turnout, as early 2025 protests and the second No Kings rally in October attracted thousands. Local photographer Howard Paul says he attended nearly every Denver protest since February 5, when the Fifty State Protest kicked off a short-lived wave of activism in 2025.
Paul expects huge crowds back in the spring.
“Once we got to the fall, the frequency started to diminish, and the fervor started to diminish,” Paul recalls. “They didn’t seem to have the vigor of April, May and June, when they were really raucous. Do people think that this was going to be taken care of in six months?”