The press conference convened to roll out House Bill 1230 – the Ralph Carr Freedom Defense Act – was held in the blazing sun Thursday at noon and drew a crowd of supporters who lined up on the west steps of the Capitol behind the speakers.

The press conference acted like another rally for multi-cultural solidarity in the Trump era. The bill, which is being heard in the House Judiciary Committee Thursday, would bar officials in the state from providing any information that could be used by the federal government to unconstitutionally monitor or detain Colorado residents based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, immigration status or religious affiliation.

“Registration never works out too well for the registered,” Scott Levin, director of the Mountain States region of the Anti-defamation League, told the crowd.

“People ask, ‘Why is this bill necessary at this time? After all,’ they say, ‘talk of a registry was just loose campaign talk, where the president and the people around him talked of registration and cited the horrific internment of Japanese Americans as it were a positive precedent. He was just pandering for votes,'” said Levin. “Well, my friends, we have seen other loose campaign talk become the basis for policy and executive orders…

“The time is now, when we must make it clear that the state of Colorado does not fear the immigrant, does not fear the Muslim, or anyone else based on gross generalizations. This bill sends an important message that Colorado stands with all of its residents.”

Wednesday night came news that the President’s second executive order travel ban had been stayed by Hawaii U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Kahala Watson. “The record before this court is unique,” he wrote in his decision. “It includes significant and un-rebutted evidence of religious animus driving the promulgation of the Executive Order.” He argued that the motives behind the order were plainly articulated and cited as one example a Trump campaign document which stated that “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

Salazar had been drafting and talking about what he calls his states’ rights bill for months before introducing it last week. Salazar didn’t speak at the rollout event, however. He left it to co-sponsor Daneya Esgar, a Democrat from Pueblo, to say why she supported the bill.

“When [Salazar] asked me to be part of this bill, I was humbled, excited and afraid all at once,” she said. She talked about the large immigrant and undocumented population in Pueblo that was alarmed with the rhetoric of the Trump campaign. “This is something I can’t sit by and watch,” she said.

“I know what it means to have good allies. Being an openly gay woman I know how important allies are and I stand here today with all of you who are feeling threatened and I promise to be the best ally I can possible be,” she said.

The most powerful speeches came like bookends on controversial chapters of American history.

Jo Ann Ota Fujioka recounted her experience as a survivor of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which forced the removal and internment of some 120,000 Japanese Americans in camps set up around the country. More than 60 percent of the people detained were U.S. citizens.

“I was a toddler, when the order was issued,” she said. “Though separated by this policy of fear and xenophobia by nearly a century, it seems that our country has learned nothing from our suffering and deprivation as we are on the brink of falling into the same political trap.”

She described the guarded bare-bones facility her family was sent to in the Arizona desert. The effect the internment had on her family, how her parents struggled, her mom died of cancer because doctors refused to treat her. She praised Ralph Carr, the Republican governor of Colorado, for pushing back against FDR’s executive order.

“He stood steadfastly despite the hatred he faced. His bravery and sacrifice of his political career is remembered today by the introduction” of House Bill 1230.

Iman Jodeh, of the Colorado Muslim Society and Interfaith Alliance, said she was dumbfounded that the United States was wrestling to protect civil rights on the most basic level – not on the sometimes gray area of street arrests and institutionally biased criminal justice systems, but on the level of sweeping national policy.

“I am a Muslim. I am a child of a refugee, I am an Arab and I am an American,” she said. “I am proud to say, I have family in the Armed Forces defending this country… and my family, my community has given back to this nation, whether through job creation, their careers as engineers and doctors or small business owners. We are a part of the fabric of this society and we will continue to be just so… We are the people you want as neighbors.

“These policies and these bigoted ideas coming out of our nation’s capital are a violation of the most sacred documents of our land.

“I am Jo Ann, 50 years later,” she said, her arm cast around Ota Fujioka’s shoulders, “This should not be happening. I should not have to go through what she went through. If Muslims are forced to register or go to an internment camp in 2017, this is a disgrace to our forefathers and what they stood for.”

In introducing his bill in the Judiciary Committee later in the afternoon, Salazar called his bill historic. “No bill like this has ever been introduced in any other state, ever,” he said.

Esgar wanted to state clearly that the bill only aims to prevent Colorado authorities from cooperating with illegal federal policies, that it wouldn’t stop federal authorities from carrying out legal policies. “There has been much that has been written about the bill, not all of it accurate, but that’s what it would do,” she said.

The bill has already drawn much attention. Testimony in committee will center on personal experience of the darkening political climate and on Trump administration policy proposals. Salazar said the list of groups who support the bill keeps growing. Most observers believe the bill will pass in the Democratic-controlled House and fail in the Republican-controlled Senate.

– john@coloradostatesman.com