{"id":23223,"date":"2025-03-08T15:24:38","date_gmt":"2025-03-08T22:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/residents-lambaste-federal-firings-musk-at-international-womens-day-march-in-durango\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:29:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:29:52","slug":"residents-lambaste-federal-firings-musk-at-international-womens-day-march-in-durango","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/residents-lambaste-federal-firings-musk-at-international-womens-day-march-in-durango\/","title":{"rendered":"Residents lambaste federal firings, Musk at International Women\u2019s Day March in Durango"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Shannon
Shannon Cruise dressed as the Ghost of History during the International Women\u2019s Day March on Saturday as Durango-area residents took to Main Avenue. They marched to Fifth Street and then to Buckley Park via East Second Avenue. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

About 80 Durango-area residents gathered at Buckley Park in Durango to raise their collective voices for the International Women\u2019s Day March on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The group set out from Buckley Park at 1 p.m. for a march through downtown.<\/p>\n

Fort Lewis College students, Indivisible Durango members, federal workers and impassioned residents waved signs with slogans such as \u201cDeport Musk,\u201d \u201cVote Like Your Kids Live Here\u201d and \u201cStop Stealing from the Poor to Benefit the Rich.\u201d<\/p>\n

Durango resident and march organizer Elli Morris said pedestrians going about their day joined the group as it looped through downtown back to Buckley Park.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hosted it for people to have an opportunity to show our collective voices for any issues that are affecting the people that we love or the lands and water that they love,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She said she is not a member of any organization, and the march, which is usually formally organized by activist groups, was completely grassroots on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere wasn\u2019t a Women\u2019s Day March in Durango. I was surprised,\u201d she said. \u201cI contacted various people, and the ones that are usually pulling together these events are all out of town. So I thought, well, here we go. And I just stepped up \u2026 so that we could all fight back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"After
After gathering in Buckley Park, participants in the International Women\u2019s Day March made their way down Main Avenue on Saturday. Durango-area residents, Fort Lewis College students and activist group members turned out to raise their voices and make noise as Elon Musk\u2019s \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency\u201d fires federal workers and promises more firings are on the way. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Durango residents Mike and Terry Woodrow said they were marching on Saturday to stand up for federal workers and public lands.<\/p>\n

Federal workers in Southwest Colorado<\/a> and across the country find themselves under the thumb of President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency\u201d that has already resulted in firings and threatens the jobs of thousands of federal workers<\/a> in the name of increasing productivity and curtailing reckless government spending.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s totally illegitimate. He doesn\u2019t care about anything but his own interests. I think he\u2019s a very, very dangerous man,\u201d Mike said about Musk. \u201cIf, when things settle down, he will find himself in a very bad place. You can\u2019t do the things he\u2019s doing without building a tremendous amount of backlash.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he\u2019s worried the U.S. is becoming a lawless country, and Musk plays a major role in that.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou lose that, you lose everything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Durango
Durango resident Elli Morris said she organized the International Women\u2019s Day March on Saturday because the annual event\u2019s usual organizers were out of town. She rallied a crowd of about 80 people gathered in Buckley Park before marching down Main Avenue to Fifth Street and then to the park via East Second Avenue. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A federal employee for the U.S. Forest Service in Southwest Colorado who attended the Women\u2019s March in Durango said they received over 30 emails from Musk and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.<\/p>\n

They declined to identify themselves for fear of retaliation, saying, \u201cYou don\u2019t know how bad it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

At first, they and their colleagues thought Musk\u2019s emails were phishing attempts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe never get an email that just says \u2018from OPM,\u2019 and so that was very odd. And then I started hearing what was really happening: that he (Musk) had brought his own private server into the Office of Personnel Management, and then was kind of making sure he could push one button and hit all employees at one time,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

\"About
About 80 Durango area residents gathered at Buckley Park to raise their collective voices for the International Women\u2019s Day March on Saturday. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

They said people who were fired received no severance pay.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe scariest thing is just not knowing what\u2019s coming next, because they\u2019ve proven that they will go above and beyond any law that\u2019s on the books,\u201d they said. \u201cWhen they come out with an executive order and then later it just disappears off the website, you start to wonder, do we have any laws at all?\u201d<\/p>\n

They said the idea of Musk, a private citizen, making demands and issuing orders to federal workers via email is \u201cridiculous.\u201d Why should workers even bother to respond, they asked.<\/p>\n

Upper management and bosses at the U.S. Forest Service in Southwest Colorado were caught just as off guard and don\u2019t know how to respond or what to tell their employees, they said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely demoralizing,\u201d they said. \u201c\u2026 You can\u2019t be head of a company and then go out in public and then talk bad about your people who you supposedly hired and were happy with at the time. You can\u2019t call them fat and lazy and stupid and that they\u2019re unproductive. You know, they were wanting us to quit so that we can be in a better, more productive job. They wanted us to leave government, to go for more productive work. And you\u2019re sitting there going, \u2018Well, what am I doing if I\u2019m not doing productive work? Why am I here?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

cburney@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"About
About 80 Durango-area residents gathered at Buckley Park to raise their collective voices for the International Women\u2019s Day March on Saturday. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"About
About 80 Durango-area residents gathered at Buckley Park to raise their collective voices for the International Women\u2019s Day March on Saturday. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"About
About 80 Durango area residents gathered at Buckley Park to raise their collective voices for the International Women\u2019s Day March on Saturday. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"About
About 80 Durango-area residents gathered at Buckley Park to raise their collective voices for the International Women\u2019s Day March on Saturday. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"About
About 80 Durango-area residents gathered at Buckley Park to raise their collective voices for the International Women\u2019s Day March on Saturday. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018You can’t be head of a company and then go out in public and then talk bad about your people\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[950,896,28,714,265],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango","tag-government","tag-headlines","tag-human-interest","tag-politics"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78024,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23223\/revisions\/78024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23223"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}