The Mesa County Democratic Socialists of America is promoting what they hope will be a massive, peaceful protest against fascism and white supremacist Jared Taylor’s appearance at Colorado Mesa University. Jared is scheduled to speak at 6:00 p.m. on March 27 in room 213 of the University Center.
Below is the press release about the event:
Here is the up to date link for the Grand Junction Hands Off! event.
Word about the supposed “cancellation” of the event (see below) is that the venue was changed, and in order to change the venue for the event online on Mobilize.us, organizers had to cancel the original event, wait 24 hours and the re-post the event with the new venue.
NOTE: I GOT AN EMAIL SAYING THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED BY THE ORGANIZER, BUT SIMILAR EVENTS ARE STILL TAKING PLACE IN MONTROSE, MOAB, GLENWOOD SPRINGS (SAYRE PARK) , EDWARDS (EAGLE COUNTY) AND GUNNISON.
The next national protest against the Trump/Musk regime is the Hands Off! National Day of Action on Saturday, April 5. Hands Off rallies and marches are taking place nationwide that day. In Grand Junction the event will be from 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. The exact location hasn’t been stated yet, but from the map it looks like it might be Lincoln Park.
Sign up to attend and get more information here.
Here is the description of the event from Mobilize.us:
About this event
Donald Trump and Elon Musk think this country belongs to them. We are fighting back!
They’re taking everything they can get their hands on — our health care, our data, our jobs, our services — and daring the world to stop them. This is a crisis, and the time to act is now.
On Saturday, April 5th, we’re taking to the streets to fight back with a clear message: Hands off!
This mass mobilization day is our message to the world that we do not consent to the destruction of our government and our economy for the benefit of Trump and his billionaire allies. Alongside Americans across the country, we are marching, rallying, and protesting to demand a stop the chaos and build an opposition movement against the looting of our country.
A core principle behind all Hands Off! events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values.
Check out handsoff2025.com for more information.
Accessibility
Mainly flat ground
Have accessibility questions? Reply to your registration email to confirm your requirements or request more information.
Lisa Rickerd Mills, former director of Mesa County Behavioral Health (Photo: Facebook)
Sources inside Mesa County say the County’s Director of Behavioral Health, Lisa Mills, was “voluntold” to resign on March 11.
Mills played a key role in convincing former Mesa County Commissioner Janet Rowland to push Dr. Jeff Kuhr out of his long time position as Director of the Mesa County Public Health Department in 2023. Kuhr had been director of the health department for 12 years, had assured the Public Health Department was well funded and efficient, and won accolades for helping the County successfully get through the pandemic.
About a week and a half ago several sources contacted AnneLandmanBlog saying Mills had “left the building” and been put on administrative leave. At that time, an inquiry to the County revealed she was currently still employed by the County, but had no County email address or office phone number, which seemed to verify claims she was on administrative leave.
CD-3 House Rep. Jeff Hurd, who represents western Colorado (Photo: X/Twitter)
CD-3 House Representative Jeff Hurd (R) has made VERY last minute changes to the time and way to participate in his promised telephonic town hall meeting scheduled for TODAY.
Previously constituents were told they had to call a number and give the person who answered their telephone number, and that THEY would get a call from Hurd at 6:00 p.m. today, at the established time the meeting was to begin, 6:00 p.m.
That’s all changed.
Screenshot of March 5 meeting at which City Council discussed moving forward with the 29 Road interchange project, even though it was resoundingly voted down at the ballot box just 4 months ago
Even though voters turned down the proposal to build a new interchange on I-70 at 29 Road in the November 5, 2024 election by a margin of 56.44% to 43.36%, a discussion of how to push forward with the project was on City Council’s agenda at their March 5, 2025 regular meeting. The proposal on last fall’s ballot asked voters to approve the City and County taking on $80 million in debt to fund the project, with a payback cost of $173,438,202.
At the time, the City’s finance manager told City council members at a workshop that the debt the from the project would “decimate city capital, basically.”
The City and County combined have already invested over $2 million in trying to make the project happen, and the City is now considering what to do with $800,000 remaining under a current design contract for the project.
Below are notes about the project from Council’s 3/5 regular meeting. Boldfaced emphasis was included by a person who lives on the 29 Road corridor and is following the project closely.
Colorado Mesa University’s Western Culture Club is hosting an out-and-out white Supremacist as a speaker on campus later in March. (Time and date erased because we don’t platform nazis).
A new campus club, the “Western Culture Club,” appeared on campus in early March promoting a talk by Jared Taylor to be held at Colorado Mesa University (CMU) later in March. Taylor is an avowed white supremacist and author, and this is just the latest escalation by bigots on campus, seemingly with the blessing of the CMU administration.
When students started a new semester at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction on January 20th, the same day Trump took office, the campus seemed different.
Emboldened by the inauguration of an openly racist and openly fascistic president, racist students on the campus have begun a now months-long sticker campaign. The stickers call on students to fulfill “civic duty” to “report any and all illegal aliens” to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
Republican House Rep. Jeffrey S. Hurd, CD-3
House Rep. Jeff Hurd plans to hold a telephone town hall meeting on Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 6:00 p.m.
Local TV news stations KJCT and KKCO are reporting that Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) is terminating the leases of four federal Agencies in Grand Junction:
Homeless people hang out in a part of the street that used to have angle-in parking spots in front of the main Post Office on 4th Street in downtown Grand Junction. The angle-in parking is coming back as soon as it gets warm enough to re-paint the street.
In a conversation on February 15, 2025, City Councilor Randall Reitz said the City is going to restore the original angle-in parking in front of the Main Post Office in downtown Grand Junction “in April, when it’s warm enough to repaint.”
Last fall the City re-vamped 4th and 5th Streets to be more friendly to bicyclists. Unfortunately, the new arrangement made the area in front of the Post Office far less friendly to motorists by narrowing it one lane and requiring motorists to parallel park into parking spots located about 12 feet into the street. The new parking arrangement accommodates fewer cars in front of the Post Office and often caused a single motorist to hold traffic behind them while parking. Once parked, motorists were faced with opening their doors into oncoming traffic squeezed into the single, narrow lane.
Reitz said the parallel parking situation turned out to be “not a good model.”
Many City residents have clamored to have the angle-in parking restored in front of the Post Office. Come April, they’ll get their wish.
A Mesa County Library card holder posted a 3-page letter on Instagram that is being sent to library users announcing that the Orchard Mesa (OM) Library at 230 Lynwood is facing several problems that threaten its existence, including the sharply rising cost of rent, decreasing usage and a lower budget in 2026 due to changes in Colorado property tax laws.
Section 4 of Article X of the Colorado Constitution exempts public libraries from paying property taxes, but the OM Library doesn’t own its building. It rents the space, and the rent increased 21% in 2023. Also, in the last few years, Colorado has passed laws cutting property taxes to relieve pressure on property owners for rapidly increasing property valuations amid the housing shortage. The result is that less money is flowing to local governments to help fund public amenities like libraries.
A crowd of about 350 people turned out at noon today to loudly protest the ongoing coup of the federal government by convicted felon, adjudicated sexual abuser and President Donald Trump and his unelected provocateur Elon Musk, the richest billionaire on Earth who purchased the ability to use Trump’s presidency for himself with a $250 million donation to Trump’s presidential campaign. Trump and Musk have been in almost continuous violation of the U.S. Constitution and U.S. laws since Trump was inaugurated January 20. The two have been working together quickly to destroy entire federal agencies that Americans rely on for essential services, that help starving and sick people and that distribute foreign aid, and they’ve been working to hobble the federal government’s ability to keep U.S. citizens safe in the air, safe from financial fraud and grift, and safe from attacks on U.S. soil.
Colorado National Monument (Photo: National Park Service)
The Trump administration has started reviewing the boundaries of protected public lands with the intent of increasing mining for minerals and drilling for fossil fuels, actions that could drastically change existing national monuments, a category that includes the Colorado National Monument.
Trump’s newly-appointed Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, issued a 7-page directive (pdf) on February 3, 2025 to implement Trump’s January 20 Executive Order #14154, “Unleashing American Energy,” which has a goal of boosting mineral mining and fossil fuel exploration and production on all federal lands. Burgum’s directive orders federal officials to consider redrawing the boundaries of federally-protected areas that were set aside by past presidents to protect their unique landscapes and cultural resources.
Burgum’s directive tells federal land managers to “suspend, revise, or rescind” previous conservation policies that include bans on oil, mining, and gas drilling in sensitive locations on public lands. Burgum gave officials at federal agencies until February 18 to submit plans on ways to comply with his order, which includes taking “actions to review and, as appropriate, revise all withdrawn public lands” to facilitate more fossil fuel production and mining for minerals.
National parks and monuments are considered “withdrawn,” or protected, from extractive industrial activities like mining and drilling.
Conservation groups are worried that changes in the borders of national monuments will shrink or eliminate them in favor of increased mining and drilling for fossil fuels.
First page of the letter sent to “District 51 families and colleagues” saying the District “will remain politically neutral,” and telling parents to update their student’s emergency contacts
On January 20, convicted felon, sexual abuser and now President Trump rescinded the decades-old federal policy (pdf) of not pursuing immigrants in “sensitive places” (pdf), including schools, hospitals, churches, synagogues, mosques, funerals, weddings, parades and public demonstrations like marches and rallies.
U.S. Department of Education policy says that in the U.S., all children are entitled to a public education (pdf) regardless of their immigration status.
News from today indicates Trump is going after immigrant kids. White House “border czar” Tom Homan, who is carrying out Trump’s mass deportation, says the data they seek on children won’t be used for enforcement, but rather to “ensure that children were placed in the best possible homes,” according to the Washington Post.
But Trump recently enacted a change in federal policy that will now allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents enter and arrest immigrants in these places.
As he started his term, Trump promised to prioritize removing “violent criminal” immigrants, but has since changed his stance and now considers every undocumented person in the U.S. to be a “criminal,” even though being in the U.S. without legal status is a civil and not a criminal violation.
Patrick Thomas Egan, 39, who attacked and attempted to strangle KKCO TV reporter Ja’Ronn Alex
KKCO TV News reporter Ja’Ronn Alex was followed and physically attacked December 18 by a Trump supporter who yelled “Are you even a U.S. citizen! This is Trump’s America now! I took an oath to protect this country from people like you!”
Charles Ashby
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In all my nearly 50 years in journalism, about half of which was in covering politics in Colorado, I’ve never heard of what happened during U.S. Rep.-elect Jeff Hurd’s election night watch party occurring anywhere else.
While it’s not uncommon to corral the media at political events, or even bar them from entry, what Hurd’s campaign did to the print, radio and television press at The Warehouse 25Sixty-five Kitchen & Bar on Tuesday night was unprecedented.
A community vigil will be held Saturday, November 16 at 2:00 p.m. at Long’s Park, 3117 Patterson Road, to honor Amanda Overstreet, whose remains were discovered in a freezer in the garage of a house on Pinyon Ave. in January of this year. The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office finally identified the remains on October 11, 2024 as those of the teenage daughter of the previous owner of the home. She was identified as Amanda Leariel Overstreet and was estimated to have been 16 years old at the time of her disappearance in 2005. Her disappearance was never reported. Her death is being investigated as a homicide.
With other highway interchanges being built elsewhere in Colorado, the developers who will benefit from these projects kicked in millions of dollars towards their completion, or paid the total cost of construction up front and will get reimbursed from the future taxes generated on the retail development it stimulates on the rest of their property.
That’s not the case with the proposed I-70 interchange at 29 Road. The owners of the land the interchange would be built on haven’t pledged a dime towards its construction, even though their land around it would likely skyrocket in value after it is built, and generate income for them far into the future.
City of G.J. Municipal Judge and School District 51’s in-house legal counsel and Tammy Eret
On September 23, 2024 the Colorado ACLU sent a 5 page letter (pdf) to Grand Junction officials notifying them that Grand Junction Municipal Judge Tammy Eret has been engaging in “blatantly unconstitutional” and “harmful” practices in City court sessions. The letter accuses Eret of “persistently and illegally” denying incarcerated people access to court-appointed counsel, coercing uncounseled guilty pleas, and imposing “lengthy, uncounseled, illegal jail sentences.” The letter gives detailed examples of such instances, even including some of the the in-court dialogue between Eret and the people who were before her in court.
