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Westcliffe, Colo. —As a sea of stars, stripes and hats reading “Make America Great Again” moved down Main Street on July 4, the festivities gave the specter of a respite from the tensions that have built up since Independence Day II years ago.
A vehicle representing the Custer County Republican Party drew loud cheers and followed a woman waving a huge flag of Three Percenters, the far-right militia. In the back, a column of smiling men and women with guns hanging from their shoulders. .
George Gramlich, editor of the city’s far-right newspaper, Christ Sentinel’s Blood, watched the parade from the newspaper’s office on the street.
“Where else would you see a hundred other people with guns on the street and, hey, it’s not Beirut?” said Gramlich, who is in his 70s and moved here from upstate New York just over a decade ago.
Nearby, a “Trump won” sign placed on the newspaper’s lawn.
“He’s here to upset the liberals,” Gramlich said with a smile. He added that he personally does not believe the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
A few yards away, at Peregrine’s Coffee Roasters, Penny Logue sat on the patio in front of icy chai lattes, avoiding the parade.
Sitting on a lounger in the cafe’s enclosed garden, with a rifle resting on her shoulder, Logue wears a pink T-shirt with a center containing the colors of the trans flag, such as paint-stained shipping pants and black boots.
Like Gramlich, she is new to this rural farming network of just over 4500 people. In March 2020, Logue was part of a collective that bought land in Westcliffe and co-founded Tenacious Unicorn Ranch, an alpaca farm and shelter for transgender women.
Before coming to Westcliffe, Logue and the others had rented a ranch in northern Colorado, near the Wyoming border and not far from where Logue, 41, grew up. But they were looking to buy and the land in Custer County was cheap.
According to the Denver Post, Colorado’s recent push for inclusive policies has helped attract other people from other states. Changing your call and gender on state documents is simple here, and Colorado was the first state to require certain personal insurance plans to cover gender. affirming care.
A few months after his move, the Custer County Independence Day Parade was canceled due to COVID-19. Gramlich’s Sentinel organized her own informal and open parade.
Logue connected to Twitter and called it a “Nazi propaganda parade. “(As a trans woman whose grandparents survived the Armenian genocide, Logue said she was very attentive to fascism in the United States and wished to speak out against it. )During a small counter-demonstration, some of Unicorn’s tenacious pastors hurled insults at the Independence Day protesters. “They took it badly,” Logue says.
This year, they stayed away and instead held their same appointment in the Monday cafeteria to talk about left-wing politics with like-minded people.
Logue doesn’t regret the 2020 confrontation and even happens to savor it. He plans to host an LGBTQ pride occasion in the city next year. “It’s going to make other people angry,” said J Stanley, who also lives on the ranch.
Sentinel staff, however, are still furious. They say being “Nazis” and “fascists” helped set the tone for their relationship with the ranch.
Beyond westcliffe’s city limit, the July 4 clash ignited hostilities against Tenacious Unicorn Ranch, and Logue says it likely helped set the level for next March’s events, an incident ranchers call “the siege. “
On the 35 acres of the tenacious Unicorn Ranch, two hundred alpacas roam freely, nibbling on bales of hay and curiously taking an interest in the other animals on the property. There are huacaya and alpacas suri, with other types of fleece, which breeders shear and resell to suppliers. It’s not very profitable, but it helps keep the ranch afloat. Ranchers also paint small structures on nearby ranches and sell meat and eggs to locals.
The ranch was created as a place where trans women can live in freedom and security. Those who inhabit it are a higher percentage than its transit, but also a commitment to a certain vision of the world. They identify as anarchist leftists, have many weapons and need to be left alone to function jointly and communally. They are not enthusiasts of President Joe Biden or the progressive team, which Logue mocks as “center-right. “
Four other people live there permanently. Guests who bike with the animals and hold the assets in exchange for shared accommodation and meals. There are also several chickens, some cats and 8 dogs. Two of them, Gadget and Gizmo, were recently followed from a nearby wolf sanctuary.
“We’re in the middle of the storm,” Logue says.
It’s been a few hours since they returned from their cafeteria appointment, and some of the citizens in the ranch’s crowded living room before heading to their next event, the “not the 4th of July” party. Flags of non-binary, agender and lesbian pride were nailed to the walls of the dome-shaped ranch house. A gun is placed on a coffee table, next to the sofa.
Stanley, 28, sits at the dining table, while Logue searches for a cup of coffee among a pile of unwashed dishes.
They are beginning to tell the story of what happened here on March 6, 2021, when their small shelter attacked. “To be honest, everything is a little blurry,” Stanley says, thoughtfully.
At 3 or 4 a. m. , they say, a volunteer rancher acting as a guard discovered two intruders armed with rifles on the property. The intruders, dressed in bulletproof vests, had taken the dirt road and tampered with the locks on the ranch’s front door, before crossing a fence and entering the property.
The guard, who saw them a hundred meters away, threatened to shoot. The intruders fled the assets so temporarily that they dropped their weapons in the dust and then ran to retrieve them.
Stanley says they didn’t report the incident to police because they didn’t think they would do anything about it. (In fact, there is no criminal record of the incident, and the Custer County Sheriff’s Department did not respond to Insider’s request for information. ) They also refused to call the breeder there, so as not to compromise the suitability and protection of the person, they say.
“We never call the police for anything we do,” Logue says. “If it was another world where cops were trustworthy and treated homosexuals, we could have called the police. “
The incident reached the press and a wave of comments surfaced describing armed trans alpaca breeders who had opened the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch in this conservative Colorado stronghold.
Since the siege, ranchers have had no intruders, but harassment has taken a new form, largely through Kiwi Farms.
Kiwi Farms is a web forum committed to the doxing and trolling of so-called “lolcows”, a “lol” and “cows” coat rack that has a niche meme that is used to describe other people who can be “treated” to laugh. Thread committed to Tenacious Unicorn Ranch spans over 800 pages.
Anonymous Kiwi Farms users post daily, giving the herders offensive nicknames, ridiculing their appearance and accusing them of animal abuse. They take pictures of videos from social media and Google Earth and, at least once, a drone flew over the property. violent fantasies.
Breeders do not take into account the comments themselves. His friends sometimes monitor him for possible threats of violence, helping pastors determine if they want to increase their safety.
The ranch now has 10 security cameras around the property. They bring firearms and visitors provide visitors with bulletproof vests. They do a night patrol of the premises to check for imaginable intruders.
“We’re on the lookout,” Stanley says.
“This is The Wild West 2. 0,” says Logue.
Logue, who has two children from past relationships, is the matriarch of the ranch. Those who live there count on her for their recommendation and support. It provides warmth, but it can enter moments of gravity, a remnant of his time of service in the army.
“There are a lot of other people who are very welcoming here,” he says. “It’s just the right-wing extremists we clash with. “
Stanley grew up in a circle of white, conservative military relatives in Texas. When he can no longer stand his parents’ opposition to the Black Lives Matter protests, he said, he left home. A supporter of Bernie Sanders, she says her ideology is now more in line with the militant policies of the Black Panthers.
Eventually, he heard about the ranch from friends. Living here gave her the space to expand and express her own criticisms and, she says, to begin her gender transition based on her parents’ judgment.
The purpose here is self-sufficiency: to create your own small island here in Custer County. “Giving your strength to representatives will never end for you,” Stanley says.
The endings. It’s time to go.
Stanley comes out and whistles to his favorite alpaca, Mocha, who gets his call from his brown huacaya “teddy bear. “He is a fearless explorer, walking alone to explore the barriers of the property.
The herd appears, with Mocha behind. Behind them, Stanley closed the doors with a double turn. Four breeders get on a truck and head to the “no on july 4. “
When the breeders arrive, a lesbian couple adds the red, white, and blue frosting to their middle-finger cookies “fuck you. “The couple, who recently returned to Colorado after living in New Zealand for years, invited members of Tenacious Unicorn Ranch to their old ranch to commemorate Independence Day in their own way.
There is a surplus of food; jalapeño meat burgers, pretzels and sauces, and a cheese board. Guests serve beers and prepare cosmopolitan cocktails in the minibar of a renovated cottage.
Inside, a blonde with a radiant smile sits in a camping chair. A plate of paper with biscuits swings on one knee and a pamphlet of a political crusade, with its call in ambitious handwriting, rests on the other.
She introduces herself as Deb Adams, chair of the Custer County Board of Tourism. She says she is a candidate for the Board of County Commissioners. “Are you registered here to vote?” he asks.
Stanley frowns, excited at the direction the night took. How, he insists, would Adams be different from other politicians?
Adams is an unaffiliated candidate, she tells them. She rejects labels.
Adams moved to Colorado in 2017. Prior to that, he lived in Santa Barbara, California for 25 years. It supports the Second Amendment, as well as a culture of “safe gun ownership. “It takes inspiration from Biden and former President Donald Trump, saying they are “too old” to run again. The Sentinel (“the voice of conservative Colorado”) recently described her as a “really difficult and stalwart leftist. “
The verbal exchange becomes more lively when Stanley and Logue recommend to the room that armed resistance would be more effective than voting. Didn’t Malcolm X have more influence than today’s career politicians?
The debate is running out. Adams is unfazed and continues to smile and socialize. (He later said he felt his reaction had been favorable. )
Tenacious Unicorn breeders walk away and talk about the next step. Stanley’s temper has visibly deteriorated and he whispers to Logue that it’s time to go home, to move on to the flag party they had originally planned to host next.
“Don’t worry, we can do it any day of the week,” Logue says, as he sorts out his things.
While bringing his Ford Explorer to the ranch, Stanley continues to divulge his disagreements with Logue.
“The formula doesn’t work,” he says, in part because politicians don’t have to say where they stand on things. She says she doesn’t accept as true that the government addresses the issues that concern her to the fullest: climate collapse. , “trans genocide”, an imaginable civil war, protective of other people like her.
All of this brings us back to the ranch and the need for them to be self-sufficient.
Logue nods. ” The main way to undermine the state is to be self-sufficient,” she says.
If the events of july 4 have frustrated members of Tenacious Unicorn Ranch, Gramlich, the editor-in-chief of The Blood of Christ Sentinel, is jubilant. Participation in the parade was higher than he had had in years and Gramlich was excited.
Gramlich stands in the Sentinel’s main street office, which wouldn’t be out of place in a spaghetti western movie if it weren’t for former President Donald Trump’s life-size cutout dominating the room. In a dusty corner, there is a kind of memorial-minibar, where ancient weapons from the Vietnam War are arranged next to half-empty whiskey bottles. Between the plaques on the wall, it reads: “Warning: don’t play well with the liberals. “
It is said that in this city there are weapons, and one is sitting on one of the wooden tables in the room. When Gramlich turns around, his pistol, located on a stable boy, is prominently displayed.
“We are resolute and absolutely conservative,” Gramlich says. “Hyperpartisan supporters. “
Conservatism is deeply rooted in Custer County and is accompanied by a Christian and libertarian bent. Gramlich says the prospect of existing in what seemed like a bygone era was a component of what drew him to dominance 12 years ago. “This is the America of the 1950s here,” he says. This is old America. There are real cowboys here. “
Prior to all this, Gramlich had been a farm animal breeder in upstate New York, but he was tired of Democrats “ruining” the state with liberal policies. He and his wife came to Colorado as “essentially political and Second Amendment refugees,” he said. said in a podcast interview.
Custer County has voted Republican in each and every presidential election over the past 58 years and has only voted once for one Democratic governor: Richard Lamm in 1982. The county also has a penchant for electing members of Congress willing to fight in Washington. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who repeated QAnon’s conspiracy theories and allegedly asked permission to take her Glock pistol to the Capitol Grounds, won that district with 76% of the vote.
In April, he advised LGBTQ Americans to be 21 before they can make “life-changing decisions about their sexuality and identity. “dogs because they don’t have guns and accused same-sex marriage of “undermining masculinity. “
But Gramlich disappointed that his new neighbors seemed discouraged and tired of politics. Shortly after President Barack Obama’s election victory in 2012, Gramlich held talks with members of the local Tea Party and made the resolution to create a right-wing local newspaper.
For a newspaper representing a rural farming community, there are a significant number of observations on national policy issues in the pages of the Sentinel. Recent editions include articles criticizing “Soros-aligned” politicians, gun control laws, and sex replacement procedures for teens.
The Tenacious Unicorn Ranch is a common goal. After an article in the High County News portrayed ranchers as queer pioneers, Gramlich published an annotated edition of the article. In it, he accused ranchers of “left-wing fascism” and suggested readers pray for their “lost and lost souls. “
“Who are the bigots?They are the classic progressive vehicle, ‘accuse your warring parties of doing precisely what you are doing’ to attack us,” he wrote.
Logue doesn’t have much interaction with the Sentinel, which she sees as a hate dealer. “We’re here to communicate about building communities,” he said.
Logue’s hope is that self-sufficient and inclusive communities like Tenacious Unicorn Ranch will grow across the country.
“Our vision is to have one of those ranches in one and both states, so we can network with others and allow other people on a limited budget to access,” he said.
They’re in talks with other people in Texas who need to create one, Logue says, and there’s a tentative plan for Oregon.
And right now, they’re helping an organization of gay Indian people find land to buy in Arizona. Once they have found an affordable property, breeders intend to co-sign it, provide a herd of alpacas, and help them develop a detailed plan for success.
Part of that plan, Logue said, describes how to be attacked by right-wing agitators.
“Because I don’t see a long term where we’re not facing that kind of thing,” he said.
Read the article on Business Insider