Members of a union that represents government workers, including Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) workers, rallied today in downtown Denver in opposition to the Trump administration’s plans to severely cut the EPA’s budget and staffing.
“The mission of the EPA is without exception one of the highest in the land,” said Ean Tafoya, Colorado state director for GreenLatinos, addressing rally goers.
The rally was led by members of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3607, and was followed by a brief march.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, his administration has overseen harsh and sudden cuts to federal agencies and funding programs, spearheaded by billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In Colorado, these cuts have the potential to affect farmers who sell produce to USAID, students in public schools, and Medicaid, to name just a few.
Trump-appointed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has signalled support for making similar cuts to his agency: “I am saying to Congress and to the American public, please don’t send us tens of billions of dollars to spend this year,” he told Fox News in February. Trump administration spokespeople have cited “waste, fraud, and abuse” as the reason why cuts are necessary, but do not typically point to any significant instances. On top of this, Trump has already worked to dismantle the EPA’s environmental justice office.
“I can never look at what I do and try and classify it as waste, fraud, and abuse,” Miles Batson, Vice President of AFGE Local 3607, told the Colorado Times Recorder. “No one here at the EPA or in federal workers is against better efficiency, but it really feels like this is just, you know, trying to attack what we do. I guess I compare it to, like, I’m a big guy, right? I, you know, want to lose weight, but I’m not going to chop off my leg and say that I lost 40 to 50 pounds.”
The cuts associated with Musk and DOGE were a frequent target among both signs from the rally goers and the speakers.
“What I would say to the Trump administration is that … efficiency is when our people can wake up and breathe clean air, clean water, and live the American dream. They are stealing the American Dream from my community with missed days of school, with lower property value, with your inability to save and send your kids to college. God damn it, we want environmental justice,” Tafoya told the crowd.
Writ large, those cuts could mean staffing reductions for vital environmental work, opponents have said. Batson spoke to the impact that losing EPA members would have on issues that may fly under the radar for many Coloradans.
“We talk about benzene in water, we’re talking about PFAS, we are talking about metals contamination, you know, that occurs on, what people might not know, on a regular basis all over the place, including in this state,” he told the Colorado Times Recorder. “So it’s a constant battle and the fact that we might get reduced, it limits that battle.”
Batson also referenced the EPA’s ability to respond to environmental issues in Colorado, such as working on Superfund sites where environmental contamination requires a long-term response. In recent history, one such example was the 2015 Gold King Mine Spill, for which the Navajo Nation is still seeking financial restitution in federal court.
Following Tafoya as a speaker was Renee Chacon, a Commerce City Councilmember and community activist who co-founded Womxn from the Mountain. In her address, she drew attention to the bigger picture of ongoing environmental injustice, predominantly impacting marginalized communities, that long preceded Trump’s inauguration.
“One thing I also want to remind you is, the system isn’t broken,” she told the crowd. “It was working as designed. Trump was able to prove that we relied on nothing but a fucking house of cards in our equal protection. That’s how they were able to continue to create the blighted communities, red-lined communities around these industrial sacrifice zones that have killed my community for generations.”
She continued, “I cry with tears of protection and love for all of you. I ask that all of you work in that same action of love for communities, too. This should not be the last march if we really wanna live by what we believe in right now.”
