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A Colorado State University student explains his campaign for "Nobody 2016." Valerie Mosley

Protesters wave signs in support of the Affordable Care Act outside U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner's Fort Collins office Tuesday, January 10, 2017. A few dozen protestors met with staff members while others voiced their concerns on Shields Street to passing traffic.(Photo: Austin Humphreys/The Coloradoan)Buy Photo

Greg Speer never considered himself active when it came to politics. At least not when it came to waving signs or organizing protests.

Yet, there he was. The retired emergency room doctor was one of roughly 40 people atthe Fort Collins office of U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner last week, demanding that the first-term Republican preserve the federal Affordable Care Act.

Like hundreds of others in Fort Collins, Speer felt a new urgency following November's election, in which Donald Trump clinched the vote for president andRepublicans retained theirhold on Congress, giving the nation itsfirst unified Republican government in a decade.

Speer called the ascendancy of Trump the "greatest threat to our nation and our democracy in our lifetime." It's not an uncommon refrain inliberal-leaning Fort Collins, which overwhelmingly re-elected all of its Democratic legislators and pushed Clinton ahead of Trump in Larimer County.

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"I feel like I didn't really have an alternate but to resist the bad things coming down the pipe to the best of my ability," Speer said.

That urge to resist has spurred a groundswell of progressive efforts in the city that many say hasn't been seen here before. Half a dozen groups or more have organized since the election and are turning talk into action, be it midweek protests at Gardner's office or rallies in Old Town.

Gardner said he appreciates hearing from all constituents, and singled out those "devastated" by premium hikes, plan cancellations and other health care industry issues that he blamed on the ACA, also known as Obamacare. He is "committed to repealing Obamacare and working to repair its damage."

A woman shows her concerns outside U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner's Fort Collins Tuesday, January 10, 2017.(Photo: Austin Humphreys/The Coloradoan)

Speer heard about the Jan. 10protest at a meeting hosted by Fort Collins for Progress, the group that organized the downtown rally the weekend after Trump's election. Many people there were a part of the Northern Colorado Action Network, another group that formed following the election. Patricia Miller, who is helping to resurrect immigrant rights group Fuerza Latina in Fort Collins, also waved signs outside Gardner's office.

Elsewhere in the city, members of the newly forming chapter of the National Organization for Women, going by NOCO NOW, were renting buses to take supporters to Saturday's Women's March on Denver, a solidarity showing in response to the incoming White House administration. More groups still were working to form and find a way to fit into this blossoming new ecosystem of progressive organization.

"It's going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out and what sticks," Colorado State University professor Courtenay Daum said."It says a lot about how people feel like they have to do somethingand take some type of action."

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Daum herself is helping to organize NoCo Spark, a group seeking to spur progressive change and community in Fort Collins. (Daum said she is making sure to separate her efforts as a private citizen from her role as a professor and teacher at CSU.) For her, the movements could be described as every action having an equal and opposite reaction. Trump, after all, likes to describe his ascendancy as a "beautiful movement."

"There was a big groundswell of support for Trump from people who weren't happy with the system," Daum said."That sort of angst and frustration helped Trump win the presidency. And now, angst and frustration and uncertainty about what a Trump presidency will mean has driven a lot of other people to get active."

Janine Davis organizes a group of people outside U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner's Fort Collins office to meet with staff in regards to the possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act Tuesday, January 10, 2017. A few dozen protestors voiced their concerns with signs on S. Shields Street near the office.(Photo: Austin Humphreys/The Coloradoan)

The sheer number of local groups forming will also need to coalesce to stop from butting against each other, she warned. It's a danger many of the organizers are aware of. But it also means that potential activists have a lot of avenues for getting involved, said Mary Roberts, the outreach director for NOCO NOW.

Roberts, who joked that she's lost count of the number of protest marches she's joined in her life, said she felt the "flame of resistance" was ignited in both veteran protesters and people new to activism. She started looking for a new entry into activism when she found NOCO NOW and said it was like finding her tribe.

"I know that's what's happening with the other organizations, I know that," Roberts said. "You walk into a room and feel, 'I've found my people.'"

She and other organizers said the various groups are keeping in contact to make sure efforts are coordinated.

The different groups may overlap some social justice and equality are broad umbrellas, after all but theyalso carry subtler characteristics in efforts to appeal to different people, Roberts said. Her group may appeal to older folks she said many at meetings she's attended are 50-plus years old while others may hit younger demographics.

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Then there are groups like Fuerza Latina, with a relatively narrow focus. It aims to educate immigrants of their rights and to work with the community to help it understand a group of people organizers describe as seeking to build a better life.In the past, it has hosted legal clinics for people registering with the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and fought laws deemed anti-immigrant by its members.

"Our strength is in our flexibility," said Cheryl Distaso, a coordinator with umbrella organization Fort Collins Community Action Network. "So, we've been able to respond to positive things like (President Barack) Obama's DACA announcement, but we've also responded to deportations."

She added, "We don't know what the Trump administration is going to do, but it won't be positive for the immigrant community."

Miller, who legally immigrated as a young girl from El Salvador during its civil war, said her own history drove her to get involved, even if she had never been much of an activist before. She noted that Trump started his presidential campaign by describing Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals.

"The election of Trump removed a veil from a lot of us that everything was OK," Miller said. "That we lived in a progressive society ...but there are so many other forces at play."

She added, "Things that we fought in the '60s need to be fought again."

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An incomplete list of progressive action groups formed or starting to form in Fort Collins:

NOCO NOW:A National Organization for Women chapter.

NoCo Spark:A progressive group with the mission of spurring civic engagement via education, local nonprofit support and political mobilization.

Fort Collins for Progress:A progressive group that has been organizing protests and rallies.

Fuerza Latina:A group dedicated to preserving the rights of immigrants and building empathy for that group in the community.

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Spurred by Trump, Fort Collins progressives mobilize - The Coloradoan