In the center of a bustling intersection in the heart of downtown Colorado Springs is a statue of city founder William J. Palmer astride his horse. Palmer was a lifelong civil rights advocate, a Quaker abolitionist who broke the religion’s doctrine of nonviolence to become a general in the Union Army, writing to his church leaders that he did so “because slavery is a greater evil than war.” (Read “Springs founder William Jackson Palmer was a riot-inciting civil rights activist” by The Gazette for a great quick portrait of Palmer.)
If Palmer were alive today, one might imagine he’d be critical of the Trump administration’s massive immigrant roundup, which has sparked protests around the country, including in Colorado Springs. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says federal immigration agents currently pose “a variety of threats to civil liberties” including concerns around “the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, the constitutional guarantee of due process, and the constitutional guarantee of equal protection and freedom from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and national origin.”
Next to the statue of Palmer and his horse is his namesake high school…