50501 CO Update - 5/18

Bringing Coloradans the latest protests and actions

Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of our 50501 CO newsletter!

In this newsletter you’ll find information on upcoming activities from the 50501 calendar, actions you can take outside of protesting, and also find out about additional ways to connect with us.

See you on the streets! ✊✊✊

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Actions and Activities

(The below list contains details on all actions this week which have been submitted to our 50501 CO calendar; click the link above for more details and the full calendar)

• All cities

  • 5/20-5/26: Walmart boycott

  • 5/20: 5:30 - 6:30 PM - The State of the Media In America (virtual)

  • 5/21: 10:00 - 11:00 AM - Basic Bluesky Skills for Social Storming (virtual)

  • 5/21: 5:30 - 6:30 PM - What does Congress EVEN DO? (virtual)

  • 5/22: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM - Register Democrats Summit 2025 (virtual)

  • 5/22: 5:30 - 6:30 PM - Finding Trusted News Sources in the Disinformation Era (virtual)

  • 5/25: 4:30 - 5:30 PM - Rapid Response for Our Freedoms (virtual)

• Aurora

  • 5/19: 6:00 - 8:00 PM - Jeanette Vizguerra Vigil (Geo Group Inc/ICE facility, 3130 N Oakland St, Aurora, CO 80010)

• Berthoud

  • 5/18: 1:00 - 3:00 PM - Berthoud Indivisible Meet-Up & Potluck in the Park (Berthoud Town Park, 200 N 7th St Berthoud, CO 80513)

• Denver

  • 5/24: 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM - Fox Takedown (100 Speer Blvd, Denver, CO 80203)

• Grand Junction

  • 5/20: 6:00 PM - Resistance and Snacks (sign up at link for location details)

• Greeley

  • 5/23: 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM - Protest Gabe Evans (Gabe Evans Greeley Office, 3400 West 16th St, Building 1S, Suite C, Greeley , Colorado 80634)

• Littleton

  • 5/20: 4:30 - 6:00 PM - Teslatakedown Tuesday (5700 South Broadway 80121)

• Louisville

  • 5/18: 2:00 - 4:00 PM - Together Colorado Boulder County Spring Assembly (Christ the Servant Lutheran, 506 Via Appia Way, Louisville, CO 80027)

• Northglenn

  • 5/23: 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM - Protest Gabe Evans (Gabe Evans Northglenn Office, 10701 Melody Drive 80234)

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Non-Protest Actions Bingo

The below bingo card contains a list of actions you can take (other than protesting) to help further the cause. If you get a bingo (or heck, a blackout), tag us on social media to let us know!

1. Those who are unable to protest themselves for any reason can still assist by offering to provide transportation, take care of the children of others who will be able to attend, or coordinate bail and legal representation in case of arrests (among other things). If you know of anyone with legitimate reasons to not participate in protests, it may be worth reminding them that there are still other ways to help us get out the voices on the street that we so desperately need.

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The Invisible Work: Care as Infrastructure

Movements are held together by those who make the food, clean the space, hold the babies, and stay up to answer late-night texts. This work is rarely visible—but it is the infrastructure. Without care, nothing stands.

We must name it. Resource it. Celebrate it.

As Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha writes, “Care work is hard. It’s not cute. It’s the skill of knowing how to keep a body from dying.”

This includes disability-forward design, multilingual resources, and networks that reach across both geography and access. Our infrastructures must include those often left out: disabled folks, undocumented communities, people without internet access, neurodivergent organizers, and those living rurally or in surveillance-heavy zones.

Conflict and Repair

No movement sustains itself without rupture. But decentralized spaces don’t avoid conflict they create tools for repair.

• Transformative justice processes

• Community accountability pods

• Collective grief and rage rituals

We create ways to name harm, to witness rupture, and to rebuild trust without replicating the punitive logic of the systems we oppose. Accountability in a decentralized world is not about hierarchy. It’s about practice, relationship, and return.

Joy as Resistance, Joy as Blueprint

We build in joy. Not because we’re naive, but because it’s what keeps us from burning up.

There are dance parties in protest zones. Poetry circles in blockaded streets. Glitter on handmade signs. The refusal to surrender joy to fascism is a tactic. But it’s also a birthright.

We don’t just mourn the old world; we make the new one delicious.

Building It Now: A Starter Timeline

If you have 1 hour:

• Map your care pod. Who do you call when something goes wrong?

• Share a mutual aid spreadsheet in your neighborhood or school.

If you have 1 week:

• Host a skillshare (zine-making, know-your-rights, first aid, anti-surveillance).

• Volunteer with or donate to a local bail fund, fridge, or community defense group.

If you have 1 month:

• Start a rotating tool library or community pantry.

• Organize a decentralized reading group or political education pod.

• Collaborate with others to form an affinity group around a shared purpose.

If you have 6 months:

• Build a neighborhood rapid response network.

• Launch a mini-festival of resistance arts and music.

• Join or create a land trust, housing co-op, or free school project.

You don’t need to wait for permission. You don’t need funding. Start small, stay consistent, build with others.

A Final Word: This Is the Work

Decentralization is not the absence of power. It is power reimagined.

When we stop centering the state, we start centering us. The messy, aching, visionary us. The ones who hold each other through the worst and build anyway.

We are not just resisting. We are rooting.

We are not just surviving. We are scaffolding new worlds.

We are not just imagining futures. We are practicing them.

And we are doing it now — in borrowed kitchens, on cracked sidewalks, inside Signal threads, and in late-night rides to wherever someone is waiting to be held.

Poetic Glossary: Language for the Work Ahead

• Decentralization: Not a lack of structure, but a refusal to replicate systems of domination. It’s the decision to spread power, not concentrate it.

• Affinity Group: A small group of people with shared trust and purpose who act in solidarity together.

• Pod Mapping: A tool to identify who you can turn to in a crisis—emotionally, logistically, materially.

• Liberatory Infrastructure: The behind-the-scenes systems that hold movements: food, care, rides, translation, tech, rest.

• Narrative Sovereignty: Telling our stories on our terms, without relying on institutions that distort or erase us.

• Consensus: A decision-making practice that centers collective agreement rather than top-down authority.

• Horizontalism: Organizing without hierarchy. Power circulates. Leadership rotates. No one above.

• Transformative Justice: A practice for addressing harm and accountability without punishment or exile.

• Mutual Aid: Shared care based on solidarity, not saviorism. We give what we can and take what we need.

• Direct Action: Strategic acts of disruption or intervention carried out by the people most affected.

• Joy Work: Any act that insists on life, creativity, humor, and pleasure in the face of systemic harm.

• Illegibility: The refusal to be legible to power. A tactic. A survival strategy. A freedom.

• Practice: The daily, imperfect, persistent effort to build toward the world we deserve.

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