Brass glimmered in the sweltering sun as a dozen marching band members tuned their instruments and practiced notes of familiar songs near the Colorado State Capitol.
Ahead of the third No Kings Day protest in Denver in late March, activist marching band Notes of Dissent met at their usual spot, next to the Liberty Bell replica in Lincoln Veterans Memorial Park. They were on a mission: to let the joy of music fuel the crowd.
Eight million Americans gathered across the country in protest of President Donald Trump’s administration. Thousands gathered in Denver.
Alix Farley, the founder of Notes of Dissent, fiddled with her flute as she packed a wagon with emergency supplies for the march, in case she was needed. Farley, who has some background in emergency medical training, signed up to be a backup medic for the mutual aid organization PULSE.
She would utilize any skill she had to support others during the protest, be it with a stretcher or a tuba.
With Notes of Dissent behind her, she hoped to reshape what activism can look like in Colorado beyond this singular gathering.
Notes of Dissent began as a cry for help.
Farley relocated to Denver with her wife in 2019, after Hurricane Michael devastated her small hometown in the Florida panhandle. She was already carrying the trauma of living through a disaster when President Donald Trump was reelected in 2024.
She feared for the rights of the LGBTQ community. As the granddaughter of an immigrant, she feared for immigrants in the country.
She felt stuck. Unable to leave her house for months, Farley often sought refuge wherever she could find it.
“I just basically was high all the time,” she laughed. “It's just not good to literally just be high every day, every moment of my life when I'm not at work. And I'm like, ‘Okay, I gotta do something.’ So I became more active in generalized activism.”
Farley needed to something. She wanted to amplify social justice issues across the state, but all she had was her old dusty flute from high school band.
One Friday night in April 2025, in an effort to find the community she sought, she screamed into the internet void: She made a Reddit post that lit a fire in fellow music lovers across the front range.
It read: “I would love to have a marching band at the next big protest/march. DM me if you can play an instrument that can be marched with and LETS MAKE SOME NOISE.” Attached was a meme of a dorky band kid holding a clarinet.
But at the same time, Farley’s wife sensed her stress, and whisked her away to the mountains for the weekend with one rule: no phones allowed. While she was away, she immersed herself in nature to clear her mind.
She had no idea that nearly 200 curious Redditors assembled a musical army in the channel she created on another app. Many began organizing and self-assigning roles. Farley was overwhelmed by the response, but also inspired. So were the people who showed up.
“I saw it just explode and I was like, ‘This is what I was waiting for,’” said Michelle Kimley-Carello, of Bennett, who was among the first people to join the band.
Much like Farley, Carello was house-bound before Notes of Dissent. She struggled with agoraphobia due to serious health issues. In the months before she found Farley’s post, she, too, had made posts on Reddit calling out to hobbyist musicians to form a protest band. She knew she had to join.
One month later, on a rainy spring day, five strangers who met on the internet showed up to a park in Arvada for their first practice. Under a pop-up tent, as drops of moisture gathered above them, they played “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine for the first time together.
“What was more of the emotional side of that day and kind of a precursor to what would be happening in the future, was that somebody was getting married in the same park that day,” Farley said.
The couple approached them, thrilled to hear them play during their ceremony.
The idea was already spreading. Not long after, chapters of the band appeared in parks around Fort Collins and Colorado Springs.
Notes of Dissent aims to build more than just a band.
As the band came to fruition, the members’ mission became clearer: To build a network of support for activist organizations across the state.
Courtney Binder, who plays the trombone in the Colorado Springs chapter, said music is the perfect way to achieve that goal. Movements need joy.
“It is community. It is friendship. It is transcending the barriers that we have between the left and the right through music, being able to bring people together — for not only the joy of music, but also the joy of community,” Binder said during a meeting of multiple chapters in Colorado Springs a few weeks ago.
Denver chapter members were on their way to Walsenburg to lend support to the community during a town hall meeting organized by Speak Up Southern Colorado.
Walsenburg, a small southern Colorado town with a population of just over 3,000, is one proposed site for a new federal immigration prison. That proposal has already sparked protests in the area. Some activists still protest every week.
“If that contract comes through, this is going to be a community where people with no criminal record, who have not been through the system — given their due process through day in court — they would be held here indefinitely until they could be deported,” said Allie Chilton, 32, organization liaison for Notes of Dissent during her speech at the meeting. Meanwhile, BluSky AI, a Utah-based company, bought 36 acres of land just north of town, sparking concern that a water-guzzling AI data center could be constructed nearby.
There’s a lot to organize around in Walsenburg. For Farley, threats to small Colorado towns hit close to home. So she was proud that Notes of Dissent, the cure for her own worries about this political moment, could lend a hand to a community that needed it.
“Our mission is to uplift the voices of various communities that otherwise would not be heard. And, I know in particular, I am very sympathetic on a personal level to small communities and their issues as someone who grew up in a town that is basically the same as Walsenberg,” she said.
At the latest No Kings Day protest, these musicians showed their mutual support.
Denver was packed with a buzzing energy as the protest began. Notes of Dissent members joked together on the lawn as they took in the moment. Then began warm-ups, beginning to fill the air with their sweet sounds. A jovial crowd grew around them, many dancing and recording the moment.
Band director Emmett Sexton led Notes of Dissent to the corner of Broadway and 14th Street, where they followed the protestors with beating drums and woodwinds.
But music was only one source of their power. They were there for each other, too
The route took protestors from Broadway onto 10th Avenue, where they faced a large hill as the sun beat down from above.
Kimley Carello thought she could complete the route until she began to see stars. Nearly halfway up the hill, she began to lose ground. Unable to catch her breath or the attention of her bandmates, she retreated to the sidewalk.
But then, she saw Farley running toward her with bottles of water. Chilton followed closely behind with the medic bag.
“That was one of the founding concepts, that we would back each other up,” Corello said, grateful that Farley was there. “We knew that things might go sideways.”
Just like they traveled south to help care for Walsenburg’s community, they could also show up for each other in small moments like this. Farley said she hopes that will continue, as the band she founded out of fear and anger helps more people find a sense of calm and community.
“I'm just a 38-year-old person who goes to work five days a week and has a dog and bills to pay,” she said. “I still started this somehow. If you see anything that you want to do that's in this community, put that Reddit post out there and see what happens.”
Denverite photojournalist Kevin Beaty contributed to this story.
