Nick Coltrain

nickcoltrain@coloradoan.com

Organizers for Tuesday's protest of President Donald Trump's travel ban expected maybe 800 people to join the march on Shields Street in Fort Collins. As a precaution, they printed enough petition forms to accommodate 1,000 signatures.

But 30 minutes before the start of the march, hundreds had gathered in west Fort Collins. The parking lot at nearby Rolland Moore Park filled with cars as Fort Collins Police Services community service officers arrived to help direct traffic.

All told, an estimated 2,500 people gathered Tuesday, waving signs and chanting as they patrolled a half-mile stretch in front of Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner's office and beyond.

The march, organized as a rally in support of area Muslims and immigrants, played out in front of a backdrop of a nation divided on Trump's executive orders to ramp up efforts to build a proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and bar immigrants and green-card holders from traveling to the U.S. from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday showed that 49 percent of U.S. adults surveyed agreed with Trump's travel ban, while 41 percent disagreed and 10 percent said they didn't know. About 31 percent of respondents said the ban made them feel more safe, while 26 reported feeling less safe and a third of respondents said the ban would not make any difference to U.S. safety.

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Toward the end of the lunch-hour march in Fort Collins, members of Colorado State University's international fraternity, Sigma Lambda Beta, chanted with Muslims and other protesters that "the people, united, will never be divided!" It was one of many protest chants to echo through the different bands of marchers. Each was delegated to a different block of Shields Street sidewalk in an effort to minimize traffic disruptions.

"It wasn't just CSU students," Ivan Omar said, a touch of amazement in his voice. "It was all of Fort Collins."

Omar had the Colorado flag draped over his shoulders like a cape; other fraternity brothers wore a U.S flag and a Mexican flag in the same fashion. They wanted to show the relationship between the three, Omar said — they or their families might have immigrated from Mexico, but Colorado is their home and America is in their blood.

"It's where we built our dreams," Omar said.

The outpouring in Fort Collins reassured Omar and his fraternity brothers, if only for the day, that swaths of residents of their city have their backs.

But, as protesters returned to their cars, jobs and day-to-day lives, Miguel Dejesus had a lagging question: "Now what?"

It's a question event organizers have been grappling with, especially as turnout for each new protest seems to balloon beyond expectations.

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"We got two and a half thousand people on a Tuesday at noon," organizer Andrew Bondi of Fort Collins for Progress said. "A lot of people that work, a lot of people that have classes, that work two or three jobs, they don't have the time to go and do this. ... they want real change."

Already, Bondi said, he's taking heart. Gardner has broken rank with some of his Republican colleagues to criticize Trump's order on the immigration ban, Bondi noted.

In a statement, Gardner said that he personally supports stronger immigrant screening and securing the country's border, but Trump's order "goes too far" and lawful residents of the United States should be allowed to enter the country.

Bondi noted that while the 1,000 petition signatures — maybe more, since petitioners started signing some on the blank reverse side — and about 950 online signatures were delivered to Gardner's office, the petition was addressed to all of Colorado's congressional delegation and Fort Collins' state legislators.

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The petitions asked the politicians to "publicly decry and vote against" any efforts to use tax dollars to pay for the U.S.-Mexico border wall, to force community law enforcement into enforcing federal immigration laws or to restrict the country's ability to aid refugees.

Alex Siciliano, a Washington, D.C.,-based spokesperson for Gardner, said in a statement that constituent services remain a top priority for the senator. The office has responded to more than 50,000 letters and has received tens of thousands of phone calls just this year, he said.

Bondi said Fort Collins for Progress is looking to expand beyond marches and rallies and into local politics. Not that the rallies will go away; Fort Collins for Progress has been working with local organizer AJ Kelley to plan a pro-Planned Parenthood rally on Feb. 11.

"People are smart," Bondi said. "This belief that they're stupid and just fall in line and listen to what the talking heads say, I think that's changing. People want information, they want to be able to make decisions about what's happening in our community and in our country, all the way from president to our local dog catcher."