Everyone's Irish for Saint Patrick's Day!

Saint Patrick's Day is coming up, and last week I registered Tank, our amazing Ambulance/Camper/Rolling Billboard - to be in the revived Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in Fort Collins.  The parade had been “retired” in 2019 after a 40 year run, and had been previously organized by the Fort Collins Downtown Business Association.  The increasing popularity of the event reportedly made the complexities of traffic management and safety too much for the DBA to handle, but thankfully local non-profit organization NOCO Unify stepped up to the challenge and the parade will be back on March 14, 2026!  

The parade begins at 10 am at Peterson and Magnolia, and then heads North on College Avenue before ending at Mountain Avenue.  Wear your green if you don’t wanna get pinched, and watch from anywhere along the route - and stay downtown for all the festivities after!

What I think is amazing about this binding of community around the Irish spirit, is that the Irish of the 1840’s faced suspicion and persecution not unlike the Somali or Afghans or the Venezuelan immigrants of our time.  

The Irish lived on potatoes in the early 1830’s and early 40’s, which was one of the few crops that could flourish on the small plots of land allowed by the English landowners.  With most adults eating 10 pounds of potatoes per day, they were dangerously dependent on a single-source food, and when a combination of poor weather and blight destroyed crops for years running, a mass exodus occurred among desperate famine.  

Many of these refugees from hunger came to America, where they were looked upon as unskilled, uneducated, thugs, thieves, and rapists - and even worse, as Catholics they were pledged to a foreign leader - the Pope. When they could get jobs, it was the most dangerous and menial labor available - digging canals, working in textile mills, cleaning houses. Job listings for good jobs would sometimes put in print - “No Irish Need Apply”.

When we consider discrimination today, it’s often considered bias against “people of color” - the black and brown-skinned among us, in the various shades - but for the Irish, they were often whiter still than the surrounding population!  

By the late 1800’s, however, the culture had changed.  New waves of immigration from Eastern Europe and from China brought in new under-class populations, and the Irish were no longer the low-rung on the social ladder.  Additionally, they had organized in many cities and states, creating powerful voting blocks and in some cases dominating union representation.  Boston and Chicago especially saw Irish blocks playing power politics, even campaigning on policies such as “No More Chinese”!  

Much of the above is from a great short article on History.com, entitled “When America Despised the Irish” - check it out here if you’d like to dig a bit deeper.

Over the next few decades, the Irish flourished alongside the nation, served in the Mexican-American war and World Wars I & II, and when John F. Kennedy won the Presidency in 1961 as the first Catholic President the period of Irish discrimination was effectively over.  JFK was 100% Irish, with all eight of his great grandparents arriving from Ireland to America during the Great Famine of the mid-1800’s.  

I consider JFK to have been a great President, and a great Patriot, and the proliferation of Saint Patrick's Day parades and activities in the decades since have created wonderful community gatherings.  

As often, times are tense in America today, with ongoing protests over ICE arrests and deportations, partisan battles over budgets and voting rights, high drama over the Epstein files, a lot of freaking out about AI, and who knows - maybe World War III has already begun!  

My encouragement for everyone is to keep your thoughts and your activities local, and try not to get wrapped up in the theater.  Be the change, be your best you, love your neighbor as yourself, and let the drama slide off your back like water off a duck.  

If you do want to go to the theater, how about Bas Bleu Theater or The Lyric, both are great gathering spaces, or maybe go for a run!

You’ve got two great run options on Saint Patrick’s Day - The Sharin’ O’ the Green 5K in downtown Fort Collins (and finishing at Odell’s!) and the Lucky Brew Race - 5K, 10K, 15K and Half-Marathon on the Great Western Trail in Severance. It’s good for your body, and good for your brain.

By the way, we’ve launched a new short-form podcast on The LoCo Experience channel - The LoCo Pulse.  Co-Hosted with Kelsi Harris from This is NOCO, The LoCo Pulse will feature business and community news you want to know every week, in a bite-size format of less than 15 minutes.  If you enjoy my velvety voice in your earhole, but the 90-minute+ episodes of The LoCo Experience are too big to bite off, this might be your new favorite podcast!  Or - tune in for Kelsi’s wit and charm, even if you find me annoying!

Cheers, love you, tip a green beer this month in a toast to the Irish and to united communities.