The Problem with Waiting for Heroes

Dec 07, 2025

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

In this newsletter, we discuss why we need to empower ourselves to take action against the current administration. In addition, 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! ✊✊✊

Actions and Activities

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

Alamosa

12/20: 12:00 - 2:00pm - Key Lime/Denver Air Connection joint airport protest (San Luis Valley Regional Airport)

Arvada

12/14: 11:00am - 12:00pm - Pop Up Rally (Safeway at 80th and Wadsworth in Arvada)*
- ***Weather permitting - will be cancelled if it is below 40 degrees***
12/20: 12:00 - 2:00pm - Goodwill To All Protest Party and Collection for Community Table (Grandview/Wadsworth Overpass)

Denver

12/13: 10:00 - 11:00am - SPEAK NOW Taylor’s Friends (Wynkoop St and 19th St, Denver, Colorado, 80202)

Littleton

12/13: 11:00 - 1:00pm - Protest Against Tyranny (5700 South Broadway)
12/20: 11:00 - 1:00pm - Protest Against Tyranny (5700 South Broadway)

Loveland

12/13: 12:00 - 2:00pm - Hands Off (US 287 from US34/Sprouts to Tesla)
12/20: 12:00 - 2:00pm - Hands Off (US 287 from US34/Sprouts to Tesla)

Superior

12/13: 11:00am - 1:00pm - Weekly Rally in Superior (2 S Marshall Rd)
12/20: 11:00am - 1:00pm - Weekly Rally in Superior (2 S Marshall Rd)

The Problem with Waiting for Heroes

I’m a huge old-school geek. DC, Marvel, Star Trek, Star Wars — I’m here for all of it, forever. I grew up on worlds where good and evil snapped cleanly into place, where the right side always had someone ready to step forward when the stakes got high. Someone brave. Someone principled. Someone who could see the danger and charge into it with a shield, a starship, a lightsaber, or a plan.

Those stories shaped me more than I realized. They taught me that when darkness rises, light rises to meet it. That when the villains make their move, the heroes inevitably show up. That there’s always a moment — right before things break completely — when the music swells and someone does the impossible.

The real world does not do that for us. And that’s where the danger begins.

Authoritarian movements love the same myth structure I grew up loving. They benefit from a public trained to look for big villains with clear motives and even clearer costumes. They thrive when people expect danger to announce itself dramatically. Tanks in the streets. Martial law proclamations. The capital falling under some cinematic cloud.

But in reality, autocracy doesn’t cosplay as a supervillain. It doesn’t monologue. It doesn’t burst through a wall. It files motions. It rewrites rules. It fires inspectors general and calls it “efficiency.” It installs loyalists, purges truth-tellers, and describes the whole thing as normal governance. It starves people during a shutdown to force a political concession — and convinces half the country the cruelty was someone else’s fault.

These aren’t the beats we’re taught to recognize as evil. They’re procedural. They’re quiet. They’re boring until suddenly they aren’t.

The stories I love also taught me another instinct that doesn’t translate well: the idea that fighting evil means finding the right hero to match it — a stronger force, a bolder leader, a single symbol capable of rallying everyone else. In fiction, that works. In fiction, the hero is written to win.

In a democracy, no one is written to save us.

The risk of superhero logic is that it encourages waiting. We wait for the flashing moment when the villain finally “goes too far.” We wait for the hero who will “fix it.” We wait for one election, one ruling, one speech, one indictment to restore the balance. But authoritarianism doesn’t give us a single moment to recognize. It’s thousands of incremental moves that never look quite dramatic enough to count as the crisis.

And while we wait for the cinematic version, the real version continues.

Here’s the truth the fandom version of me had to grow up to understand: democracy is not defended by heroes. It’s defended by habits — attention, participation, accountability, outrage at the right scale. It’s defended by people who notice the early signs and refuse to normalize them. It’s defended by neighbors talking to neighbors, by voters showing up in odd-year elections, by communities refusing to let fear isolate them.

It’s defended by ordinary people doing unglamorous work long before things get dramatic.

Authoritarians actually love being cast as villains. It lets them cast themselves, in turn, as the only ones strong enough to defeat the “evil” they invent. That’s why they lean into moral panics. That’s why they speak in absolutes. Good versus evil is their home turf. It’s easier to claim you’re the hero of the story if you convince everyone else they’re living in one.

Democracy, meanwhile, is allergic to simplicity. It requires disagreement. It requires humility. It requires people who understand that no one is chosen by destiny to save the day — which means everyone has to decide to show up.

The stories I love will always mean something to me. I still cheer when the portal opens, when the Enterprise warps in, when the underdog finally stands tall. But I don’t mistake those moments for models. Fiction gives us catharsis. Reality asks something harder: that we act before the climax. That we intervene when the plot is still blurry. That we don’t wait for heroes because we can’t afford to.

In fiction, the world is saved when the hero arrives.
In real life, the world is saved when enough ordinary people stop waiting for one.

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, tag us on social media to let us know!