Truth Isn’t Violence

Sep 28, 2025

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

In this newsletter we discuss the deployment of the US military to Washington, DC. 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)

All Cities

9/29: 6:00pm - 7:30pm - Artificial Intelligence Overreach: Uses, Abuses, and People Power in Colorado (Virtual)
10/1: 6:00pm - 7:00pm - Team ENOUGH Welcome Session (For Young People Under 26) (Virtual)
10/8: 6:00pm - 7:00pm - Team ENOUGH Welcome Session (For Young People Under 26) (Virtual)

Denver

10/4: 1:00pm - 2:00pm - Fox Takedown (100 E Speer Boulevard, Denver, CO 80203)
10/11: 1:00pm - 2:00pm - Fox Takedown (100 E Speer Boulevard, Denver, CO 80203)

Littleton

9/30: 4:30pm - 6:00pm - WE THE PEOPLE (South Broadway and Littleton Blvd, Littleton, CO 80121)
10/4: 11:00am - 1:00pm - Protest Against Tyranny (5700 South Broadway)
10/11: 11:00am - 1:00pm - Protest Against Tyranny (5700 South Broadway)

Northglenn

10/3: 11:00am - 1:00pm - Protest at Gabe Evans' Northglenn Office (Northglenn District Office, 10701 Melody Dr, Northglenn, CO 80234)
10/10: 11:00am - 1:00pm - Protest at Gabe Evans’ Northglenn Office (Northglenn District Office, 10701 Melody Dr, Northglenn, CO 80234)

Steamboat Springs

10/2: 5:30pm - 6:30pm - Worth Fighting For - Routt County In-Person Meeting (RSVP for the exact location for this in-person meeting. City listed may not be the true location.)

Truth Isn’t Violence

There’s a strange new chorus rising up in American politics. It doesn’t come from the far-right alone—it’s echoed by pundits, even some moderates: stop calling people fascists. Stop saying “authoritarian.” Tone it down. Don’t use words like “Nazi.” That rhetoric, they warn, could lead to violence.

But what are we supposed to call Trump, Stephen Miller, JD Vance, Brendan Carr, and the rest of this project? When someone uses the machinery of government to strip rights, to erase communities, to stack courts and agencies with loyalists, to flood the system with lies, to openly promise dictatorship—what word fits if not authoritarian?

This is the trap: they want the truth itself to feel dangerous. They want you to second-guess whether calling a fascist a fascist is the real problem, rather than the fact that fascists are running the country.

History shows us how this works. Autocrats don’t just crush opposition with force—they police language. They make words like “dictator” or “propaganda” unsayable in polite company, so by the time everyone agrees, the damage is done. As one German writer said of the 1930s: it wasn’t that people didn’t know. It was that they had learned not to name what they knew.

Today’s argument—that saying the word could cause unrest—isn’t neutral. It’s asymmetric. Because the right isn’t toning down its rhetoric. They’re calling immigrants “vermin.” They’re calling teachers “groomers.” They’re calling opponents “enemies of the state.” That language has already fueled violence. From synagogue shootings to pipe bombs, people act on those words.

So when critics urge us to use softer language, what they’re really saying is: let one side dehumanize and radicalize freely, while the other side whispers careful euphemisms. That’s not balance. That’s surrender.

Let’s be clear. Words do have power. They can inspire, they can inflame. But telling the truth is not the same as incitement. Incitement is when you direct people toward violence. Truth is when you describe reality, even if it’s ugly. Pretending that reality is neutral is just another way of making lies comfortable.

And here’s the irony: authoritarianism thrives on lies, but it also thrives on silence. If speaking plainly about it feels “too risky,” then the censors don’t need to do their work. We do it for them.

So no—I won’t stop saying it. We live in an era of rising fascism in America. We live under a president who has already used troops in our streets, already purged independent officials, already turned the law into a weapon against critics. These aren’t predictions. These are events.

Naming them doesn’t cause violence. Ignoring them does. History’s warning is sharp on this point: silence is complicity.

But let’s also be precise. Naming fascism isn’t the end goal. It’s the beginning. Words open the door to action. Calling it what it is helps us resist normalization, helps us organize, helps us see through the daily firehose of distraction. It keeps our moral compass steady when the spectacle is designed to disorient.

That’s why movements like 50501 exist—not just to resist, but to orient. To remind ourselves and each other that democracy doesn’t defend itself. It needs voices willing to say the thing out loud, even when others tell us to hush.

Because if the truth makes people uncomfortable, that’s the point. Comfort is how autocracy spreads. The work of democracy isn’t to soothe power—it’s to check it. If calling fascism by its name rattles some nerves, good. Better rattled nerves now than shackled freedoms later.

We’re not responsible for the violence of those who hate democracy. We are responsible for whether we tell the truth about them. And the truth is: they are what they are. Fascists. Authoritarians. Enemies of a free people.

So we’ll keep naming it. Loudly. Plainly. Persistently. Because democracy doesn’t die when people shout too much. It dies when people stop shouting at all.

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!