This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Satire and Opinion section. It employs parody, irony, and fictionalized scenarios for comedic effect; as such, it should not be interpreted as a factual news report. At Yellow Scene, our opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud (sometimes with a dose of irony).

Americans breathed a collective sigh of relief last Tuesday after the latest CPI report showed inflation was increasing only because of soaring energy prices, war in the Middle East, collapsing supply chains, and a slowly unraveling global economy.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, consumer prices rose 0.6% in April and 3.8% year over year, marking the highest inflation reading since 2023 as gasoline prices, airfare, shelter costs, and basic consumer goods continued climbing.

“Honestly, this is the best-case scenario,” said one visibly exhausted Federal Reserve economist while pouring lighter fluid directly onto a stack of economic forecasts. “At least inflation isn’t being driven by something scary like strong consumer demand or wage growth. This is just geopolitical instability, oil shocks, and broad-based pricing pressure spreading through the entire economy.”

Markets initially fell following the report before rebounding slightly after investors remembered there is no alternative to pretending everything is fine.

Economists noted that gasoline prices surged more than 28% year over year as oil prices remained elevated amid continued tensions involving Iran and the Strait of Hormuz.

“This is temporary,” explained one Wall Street strategist. “And by temporary, I mean until the next temporary inflation event happens.”

Meanwhile, Americans reported adapting to higher prices through a variety of practical measures, including canceling vacations, driving 11 fewer miles per week, replacing beef with despair, and pretending eggs are now a luxury item similar to caviar.

At press time, the Federal Reserve was reportedly debating whether to hold interest rates steady, raise rates again, or simply walk into the ocean.

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The post Americans Relieved Inflation Rising Due to Civilizational Collapse appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Satire and Opinion section. It employs parody, irony, and fictionalized scenarios for comedic effect; as such, it should not be interpreted as a factual news report. At Yellow Scene, our opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud (sometimes with a dose of irony).

In a bold reaffirmation that physics, geopolitics, and basic economic gravity are all optional concepts, luxury automaker Ferrari (NYSE: RACE) announced it will maintain full-year guidance despite a rapidly unraveling global situation, confidently betting that enough extremely rich people will remain standing to keep buying $400,000 toys.

Executives at Ferrari reassured investors that while wars, market volatility, and general societal unease may impact “normal companies,” Ferrari operates in what it described as a “completely different dimension where consequences are largely theoretical.”

“Normality is abnormality,” said CEO Benedetto Vigna, which analysts later confirmed is also what happens when your customer base is so wealthy that recessions are mostly something they read about in newsletters.

Despite a drop in shipments in regions affected by geopolitical tensions, Ferrari calmly noted that it simply shipped more cars somewhere else, like a luxury game of global musical chairs played exclusively by oligarchs and hedge fund managers.

It’s all about strategy

Market observers say the strategy hinges on a simple but time-tested assumption: when the world starts falling apart, the rich actually get richer, and more importantly, bored.

“Historically, economic collapse has been very bullish for people who already own everything,” said one analyst. “Once you’ve cornered commodities, housing, and the concept of money itself, what’s left? A limited-edition V12.”

Ferrari’s guidance implies that even if the global economy begins to resemble a slow-motion implosion, there will still be a robust pipeline of ultra-wealthy buyers eager to commemorate the end times with custom leather interiors.

“Sure, supply chains may break, currencies may destabilize, and entire regions may become un-investable,” the company reportedly explained. “But have you considered that someone, somewhere, still needs a hand-stitched dashboard?”

Middle East?  Never heard of it!

Investors initially expressed concern that escalating conflict in the Middle East might impact demand. Ferrari quickly clarified that while war may disrupt logistics, it does not materially impact the purchasing habits of individuals whose net worth exceeds the GDP of small nations.

The company also highlighted growing demand for customization, a segment in which clients pay additional sums to ensure their Ferrari is subtly different from the other 12 Ferraris they already own.

At press time, Ferrari was reportedly exploring new strategic opportunities, including a “Post-Apocalypse Edition” model featuring reinforced suspension, gold-plated cup holders, and a glove compartment large enough to store multiple offshore account documents.

Analysts say the biggest risk to Ferrari’s outlook is not war, inflation, or financial instability, but the unlikely scenario in which rich people stop existing.

“Look, if billionaires disappear, Ferrari has a problem,” one strategist admitted. “But until then, the thesis is simple: the worse things get, the more someone, somewhere, will want to celebrate surviving it – with a Ferrari.”

Like journalism like this? Consider becoming a sustaining supporter — and get our print edition delivered to your home each month.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. For 25 years, we’ve told the truth — your support helps us keep doing it for the next four and beyond. Administrations come and go. Our team stays ready to lead, no matter who’s in charge.

The post Ferrari Confirms Global Collapse Won’t Affect Product appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Satire and Opinion section. It employs parody, irony, and fictionalized scenarios for comedic effect; as such, it should not be interpreted as a factual news report. At Yellow Scene, our opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud (sometimes with a dose of irony).

In a development economists are calling “technically concerning but spiritually very on brand,” the United States confirmed this week that its national debt has officially surpassed the size of its entire economy, reaching just over 100% of GDP for the first time since World War II.

At a press conference, Treasury representatives emphasized that the government remains fully committed to fiscal responsibility, noting that it currently spends $1.33 for every $1 it collects, a ratio they described as “aggressive, but not technically illegal.”

Government Confident Debt Will Fix Itself Eventually

Lawmakers acknowledged the growing debt but stressed that meaningful action would require “difficult choices,” which they confirmed will continue to be postponed indefinitely.

“We absolutely have a plan,” one senator said. “Step one is continued borrowing. Step two is hoping interest rates remain friendly. Step three is retiring before step one stops working.”

Despite the milestone, markets remained largely stable, with investors expressing confidence that the U.S. will continue to meet its obligations, given the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.

“Sure, the debt is high,” one investor said. “But where else are we going to put our money? Europe? Japan? We all agreed years ago that this was a group project.”

Still, some economists warned that persistently high debt could eventually lead to higher interest rates, reduced private investment, and slower long-term growth. Though officials were quick to clarify that these risks remain theoretical until they become unavoidable.

Nation Reassured That Everything Is Fine, Probably

At press time, policymakers confirmed that, while the debt situation may appear concerning, it remains fully under control, provided that deficits continue, borrowing remains cheap, and no one demands immediate accountability.

“Look, we’ve crossed 100%,” one official said. “But it’s not like we’re going to 110%.”

He then paused, reviewed updated projections, and added:

“Okay, but we’re definitely not going to 175%.”

Like journalism like this? Consider becoming a sustaining supporter — and get our print edition delivered to your home each month.

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The post U.S. Debt Hits 100% of GDP, Experts Recommend Ignoring It appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The post Editor’s Note: Now What? appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

I love you. I really do. And I say that with all sincerity. Nobody champions local more than we do. We believe it is as close to a circular economy as we can get. We believe small businesses aren’t trying to bribe their elected officials. And we believe if you want to BDS, there is an easy fix: shop local.

I often joke that no one in their right mind stays in local journalism. I am a dynamo salesperson, an elite, a rainmaker. I could have left the field to make more money, but I didn’t. And the reasons have only compounded the longer I stay in local journalism and observe our world.

I got my first media job at the age of 21 and fell in love. I got my start in the sales department as an art college dropout. With zero training, knowledge, or experience, I landed a position where they gave me all the leads that never advertised and told me if I could sell them, I could keep my job.

So 21-year-old me, happy-go-lucky and extremely ADHD (I like to spell it Adhhhd), walks into the door of my first lead with the Christmas Guide I was supposed to sell. Promptly, the lady tells me to bugger off—she doesn’t want any.

Not knowing how the industry worked, obviously, I didn’t know what to say or do. So I went home and hand-sketched an idea for her. It was clever and funny, and different. Now, in hindsight, I am grateful I didn’t know that my industry didn’t help you with these things. So I carefully worked the concept out, even hand-lettering it.

Taking it back the next day, I told her I had an idea and held it up for her to see. She proclaimed no one had ever done something like that for her. She liked it, and she bought it. I fell in love. The idea that I could use my art skills to help hard-working business owners was deeply enriching. My career was born.

At this crossroads in America’s history, each of us has a decision to make about who we are supporting and why.

I have always worked in independent media. I was shaped by some brilliant journalists who poured the Kool-Aid down my throat: the 4th estate, the watchdogs, and the idea that democracy needs a free press.

Attorney Matt Simonsen (left) presents Yellow Scene’s argument to Court of Appeals judges (left to right) Stephanie Dunn, Gilbert Román and Craig Welling. (Credit: John Eisele, Colorado State University)

Recently, Yellow Scene appeared at a Court of Appeals hearing in Fort Collins at CSU in our case with the City of Boulder over police transparency. It’s a big deal and could set a state precedent. It’s also scary. But I am proud that we did it, as holding truth to power really does matter to us.

Corporatization is not just impacting journalism. Today roughly 90% of news media is owned by just a small handful of conglomerates. With the Ellisons expanding their control over more major media platforms, the ownership pool has shrunk even smaller. There is no doubt corporatization has had negative impacts on the United States’ democratic process, influencing policies that enrich a small few while consolidating power.

Corporatization is also coming for small business. Today, roughly 70% of vets and dentists are owned by corporate conglomerates. Other industries are seeing this as well—from mechanics and daycare centers to food sources, banks, and medical practices—all being gobbled up and consolidated.

Yet roughly 50% of businesses in America are still owned by a sole proprietor, a number that has declined 20% or more over the past two decades. It is a wonder we have them left, and we should be doing everything we can to protect them.

Downtown Louisville, CO

This is true for local business choices as well. As the last and only locally owned, independent news platform left serving all of Boulder County, you can imagine our frustration when we see our small business owners handing their advertising dollars to Meta.

I love our small business owners, but most are not masters of marketing. Too often it’s treated like the red-headed stepchild. I see folks jump from one shiny bandwagon to the next with less than 1% allocated to marketing, treating it like an expense instead of an investment, with messages that are dry, boring, and cookie-cutter, only to hear them say, “advertising doesn’t work.”

They are right. When approached that way, it doesn’t work. That is why we provide our Marketing Guidebook and Growth Objective Calculator, to help with crafting a strategy. It is also why we offer agency-quality copywriting and design, so the message has meaning instead of just telling people they exist.

But uttering the tired old line “print is dead” is lazy thinking as well. That was a sales pitch from the tech bros to convince business owners to give them all their money. Funny thing: 25 years after the tech revolution, we are so saturated that people are paying not to see online ads, and if they don’t, 86% have “banner blindness.”

Until AI starts spending money in the marketplace, we still need humans. Hopefully, we want a society where all humans can thrive, not just survive.

There is a reason we never gave up print. First, we didn’t buy that print was dead. Book sales only decreased for a few years, and it was about a 5% decrease. Today, books are on the rise. Additionally, e-books only capture about 15% of the sales.

Why would people prefer print over digital? Lots of reasons, but let’s start with the fact that human beings need connections. That is a biological fact. In fact, the more digital that is thrown at us, the more people burn out on it and start to seek authentic connections. Also, fun fact: we retain 7x more information from print than digital, so give your kids books—not tablets.

Yes, we have lots of online coverage, and our website is seen even more than our social media. But we have also learned that a surefire way to have a failed event is to only rely on social media. It takes nothing to like something and move on.

Yellow Scene has been committed to producing authentic journalism since we started. We are very proud of the stories we cover for the community on shoestring budgets. We could have more money if we accepted “sponsored content,” something a vast majority of platforms have taken to publishing. We won’t.

I am sorry, but a story about a realtor or insurance salesperson isn’t a feature. It’s called vanity marketing for a reason. It’s a disservice to democracy, to the advertiser, and to the reader.

And frankly, readers don’t go home on Friday night and watch infomercials. They watch well-produced shows. I can hear the conversations: “Hey, have you seen the latest infomercial? It’s got me on the edge of my seat!”

That’s exactly why we’ve never accepted pay-to-play articles at Yellow Scene. We have never taken money to write about any subject. Our calendar is free, press releases are free, and our journalists are free from influence. So if we wrote about you, it is because you had a story to share. Yellow Scene truly is your authentic local free press.

I have been in journalism my entire life; I am not going to start doing quid pro quo now. The struggles we face aren’t from not being able to get readers. We have a 97% pickup rate in stands and 75,000–100,000 views a month on the website.

After 25 years sustained by advertising, part of our work is helping small businesses understand that content is king, that local media serves the local community, that the latest fad is just that—a fad, and that we would rather help them craft strategies that incorporate a full-funnel approach. We work our asses off for our small businesses and love doing so.

But it sure would be nice if they stopped jumping on bandwagons and giving their money to all the tech-lords.

I started this work as a 21-year-old art school dropout, sketching ideas for small businesses. Four decades later, I still believe the same thing: when local businesses and local media support each other, communities thrive, and yes, people still read.

In the meantime, to remain truly free from corporate influence, we are moving to a sustaining supporter model. Yes, similar to NPR. In today’s world of corporate consolidation, advertising alone is no longer enough, and we have no interest in answering to a board. Being reader-supported means the only people we answer to are our community.

Whether you are a small business owner or a reader, if you value having one locally-owned platform committed to journalism standards in your backyard, supporting local media is a meaningful way to participate in local democracy.

Just $8 a month gets it delivered to your house and helps keep local journalism thriving.

And for the local business owners I care so much about, local media reaches the local community with more impact and for far less than digital advertising.

The post An Open Letter to Our Local Community, Including the Local Businesses That Serve It appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Editor’s Note: In the interest of public transparency and community dialogue, Yellow Scene Magazine is publishing this response to address recent criticisms of our investigative reporting. We remain committed to the facts as documented in the public record.

We appreciate the response from Mayor Pro Tem Brandon Bell regarding our recent investigative article. However, his response was also unfortunately inaccurate regarding the nature of our reporting. It is necessary to address his criticisms with the clarity that the public record demands.

Firstly, to address the claim that this reporting is an attack on faith: at no point does the article claim that either council member is a parishioner of St. Scholastica. In fact, the only claim made regarding Mr. Bell is that he was included in email chains and involved in specific discussions. Mr. Bell actually confirms this in his own response as he recounts conversations he had with staff, the church, and Mayor Moore. Furthermore, we have explicitly reported twice that there is no evidence Mayor Moore attends this church. His personal religious background is irrelevant to our reporting. Our work is driven by his own words, both in council meetings and in emails obtained through the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA). To frame this as a question of faith, rather than a matter of bureaucratic transparency, appears to be an attempt to politicize a standard investigative process.

Secondly, Mr. Bell asserts that he was accused of “backdoor dealings.” No such language appears in our article. Our reporting described the planning as being “privately underway” or “quietly pursued.” These descriptions are based on the following established facts:

“The CORA records reveal that a planning process involving St. Scholastica, Catholic Charities, a project management firm, the Mayor, and other Erie figures had been privately underway for at least five months before Moore raised it at the November council meeting. Aside from Pro Tem Brandon Bell, no other council members were included in the conversations Yellow Scene Magazine obtained.”

Our central point is that this planning process occurred for months without the knowledge of the broader Town Council or project managers. Mr. Bell does not attempt to refute this. In fact, he extends the timeline of these discussions by stating he participated in early talks about this plan as far back as “2022 or 2023”. Our statement that the majority of the council was left out of the loop was substantiated by two of Mr. Bell’s own colleagues on the council.

Thirdly, Mr. Bell criticizes our reporting for misrepresenting the consultants involved, stating, “These consultants were parishioners volunteering their time—not individuals hired by the Town.”

At no point did our article claim they were hired by the town. We stated they were involved in the planning and discussions, and we quoted their emails directly. Whether they are volunteers or people of faith is irrelevant to the fact that they were participating in government-level planning. Mr. Bell seems to be attempting to turn a systemic critique into a personal one.

In his response, Mr. Bell also admits to his misgivings about the further subsidization of affordable housing.

“[…] providing additional subsidies for affordable housing could lead to similar outcomes: vacant units that remain too expensive for those who need them and insufficient demand among those who can afford them.”

While this may be a valid policy position, it adds weight to our reporting regarding his and Mayor Moore’s potential opposition to using funds specifically intended for affordable housing for their original purpose. While Mr. Bell describes the legal room for ARPA funds to be used otherwise, that is a separate matter from the original intention of the funding or the needs expressed by the Erie community through last year’s survey.

Finally, I will address the allegation that our article is “purely hearsay.” If by hearsay Mr. Bell means that the article quotes the individuals involved and references their own emails obtained by process of CORA, then we have provided exactly that. Any allegations made regarding the actions of the involved parties are supported by their own words on the public record for any citizen to see.

It is telling that despite Mr. Bell’s framing, he fundamentally agrees with our primary claims. He, Mayor Moore, the church, and others began considering a project to relocate the church for several months and did not communicate these plans with the full council. In November, Mayor Moore framed the project as a new thought he was ‘tossing around,’ despite having discussed it extensively for months.

Yellow Scene Magazine holds a deep respect for all religious individuals and backgrounds. This is not a matter of partisan division, but a matter of transparency. Our article aims to start a dialogue about processes from which the community and other council members were excluded. Before publication of our article, we reached out to Mayor Moore and the church for comment and they declined to respond. We would still welcome their voices. We hold our reporting to the highest standards, and every claim we have made is backed by evidence.

Thank you, Mr. Bell, for continuing the conversation our reporting has started.

The post Facts are Not Partisan: A Response to Mayor Pro Tem Brandon Bell appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

There is a small, noble campaign centered in Boulder that seeks Refuser Protection (RP), legislation meant to protect those who refuse to follow illegal orders. RP laws would prohibit  retaliation or punishment of any person who refuses to follow any order or instruction that violates the Constitution, statute or any relevant regulations .

This campaign is led by Matt Nicodemus, founder of Sworn to Refuse (StR). Nicodemus has been engaged in this work for more than a decade and has drawn a few encouraging responses, but no definitive results, from legislators including Congressman Joe Neguse and Maryland colleague Jamie Raskin.

Niciodemus’s efforts gained elevated relevance as a result of the Trump administration’s unsuccessful attempt to indict a group of lawmakers, including Colorado Congressman Jason Crow, for making a video reminding the world that one can – must – refuse to follow illegal orders. The impetus for the video was, seemingly , the arguably illegal deployments of active military to American cities and the illegal actions of ICE agents that took place afterwards .

Rep. Jason Crow visits Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora, Colorado. (Photo: U.S. Space Force)

The lawmakers’ arguments included a broad claim that all members of the military are  already trained to know not to follow illegal commands. Congressman Crow went as far as to cite his own experience as an Army Ranger:

But let’s be really clear. The man (Trump) has never served a day in his life in uniform. I went three times to war for this country in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was a paratrooper and I was an Army Ranger. From my first day of boot camp, we were taught about the law of war. We were taught about the Constitution. Before we ever deployed, I sat my men down, my soldiers, my paratroopers, and I taught them about their obligations under the law and the Constitution. This is ingrained in service.

The video was more a publicity stunt than a selfless public service. While I support the lawmakers, it is baldly contradictory to claim that all members of the military are routinely reminded of this obligation and then say the video was to inform the military folks of their rights and obligations.

Crow’s statement is also not reflective of my experience.

I was drafted in 1966 at the height of the war in Vietnam. On my first day in boot camp we were not “taught about the law of war.” We did pushups and were taught to keep our mouths shut. For the next year I did pushups and tried to keep my mouth shut through boot camp, advanced individual training (AIT) and Officer Candidate School (OCS). In a year of training to potentially serve in an immoral war, I can’t recall a single mention of the Constitution. We were, instead, conditioned to dehumanize the enemy by using ethnic slurs (gook) and shoving bayonets through dummies painted with slanted eyes. I was lucky and served in Georgia and Thailand, not Vietnam.

Although the horrific slaughter of 504 women, children and elderly men in the My Lai massacre is emblematic of illegal military cruelty, we Americans killed as many as 2,000,000 innocent Vietnamese in our indiscriminate ignition of hellfire during the war. 

In his book, Vietnam: A War Lost and Won, prolific British author Nigel Cawthorne wrote:

“But what the Viet Cong and NVA feared most was the B-52 strikes.  They called them the ‘whispering death’ because the first they knew of the presence of the bombers high above the jungle canopy and the clouds was the whistling of the bomb.  Aerial bombardments could go on for days or weeks at a time. Even the most battle-hardened veterans lost control of their bodily functions, soiling their pants and shaking uncontrollably.  Some went mad and no one who survived could ever be cured of the abject terror a B-52 strike inspired.   A B-52 mission could drop up to 54,000 pounds of bombs on a single target . . . Tran Thi Truyen, a sixteen year-old nurse who served in a field hospital in southern Laos, recalled how intense American bombing denuded the jungle and there was no place to hide.  During her month-long march down the (Ho Chi Min) trail, she carried a rifle, a sixty-pound knapsack, and a shovel.  When American planes came overhead, her group would disperse and dig foxholes.  After the bombing had stopped, she said she could not focus her eyes and her head ached for hours.  Wounded Vietnamese soldiers were brought up the trail for her to treat in her underground hospital.   Most were so badly wounded, nothing could be done for them.”

I watched those B-52s take off from a Thai airbase, heavy with bombs, and return to the base in time for happy hour at the Officers Club. It was nauseating.

All these years later, I read with fresh horror of our slaughter of innocent Iranian schoolchildren – collateral damage on a smaller scale than our role in the genocide in Gaza, where 75,000 Palestinians are dead by way of our complicity in Netanyahu’s bloodlust.

While protecting the rare refuser is an important ethical obligation, what is needed is a broad reckoning of who we really are.

We refuse to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) because, to paraphrase our national narcissism, “Nobody can tell us what we can do!”

In a  frantic flailing after 9/11, we avenged 2,977 deaths by killing several hundred thousand innocent Iraqis, who had nothing to do with 9/11.

In Gaza, the ongoing slaughter and starvation of 75,000 Palestinians is retribution for the – admittedly horrific – deaths of 1,195 in Israel on October 7th.

In Iran, the deaths of schoolchildren and many other innocents are retribution for, perhaps, the attempts to expose the president’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein’s international child sex ring. 

Most soldiers would be hard-pressed to distinguish between legal and illegal orders. They, like their corrupt and incompetent commander-in-chief, are not well-versed in the Constitution or other legal or regulatory matters. A careful reading of proposed Refuser Protection legislation reveals good, but overly broad and overreaching, intentions. RP laws as suggested would encourage and protect those who refuse to do anything that appears to violate a law, a statutory clause, a pledge or oath, a rule or a workplace regulation. Given the predilections of many folks to litigate, I can imagine chaos ensuing as grievances proliferate.

I doubt that Nicodemus’s efforts will spark ethical legislation in a Congress that can’t reign in an absurdly incompetent, grandiose authoritarian wannabe. While useful to look after the rights of conscientious objectors, what we must do is focus on those who issue illegal orders, defy the Constitution, and possess the power to unleash mayhem within and outside our borders.

We don’t have to protect the powerless if we hold the powerful to account. 

Like journalism like this? Consider becoming a sustaining supporter — and get our print edition delivered to your home each month.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. For 25 years, we’ve told the truth — your support helps us keep doing it for the next four and beyond. Administrations come and go. Our team stays, ready to lead no matter who’s in charge.

The post Right to Refuse Laws Sound Good. One Veteran Isn’t So Sure. appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

There’s this old fogey in me that I usually try to restrain. I’m no “get off my lawn” guy. I love kids, small and large and generally tolerate popular culture.

Today the restraints gave way.

This country is in big trouble, in ways the media covers ad nauseam every day. An incompetent sociopath issues endless, senseless, illegal orders. He tries to jail political opponents or anyone who ever made fun of him. He thinks the military is a set of action figures he can deploy whenever and wherever his impulses.suggest. His cabinet makes a clown car look dignified and distinguished. He and his smarmy family members are bit-coining and scamming their way to billions. Nary a day passes when he doesn’t commit an act that would be impeachable in any other era. And so it goes.

But my inner fogey wishes to rant about an insidious coarsening of society that accompanies the governmental dumpster fire and will persist long after the MAGA era self-implodes by way of incomprehensible stupidity.

Let us begin with Snoop Dogg.

I love the Winter Olympics and have watched everything from curling to skeleton. Snoopy has his mug in every venue, hobnobbing with the athletes and the other preening celebrities.

It’s not that I am dismayed that a “rapper” has branded himself into America’s sporting life. I thought Bad Bunny’s halftime show was a pretty good cultural rebuke of white nationalism, although the slack-jawed members of that demographic were busy watching Kid Rock lip sync about two beats behind the crappy music.

But Snoop is a different matter entirely. He should probably be in jail and here he is cavorting for NBC Sports and flashing his peacock bling on Peacock. He’s like the mascot for the U.S. team. Of all the dogs, they chose this Dogg. A Golden Retriever would have been nice.

My inner fogey does not object to a little weed. I take CBD for various creaks and smoked a joint once in a while long before my joints gave out. But Snoop Dogg has branded himself as the pothead-in-chief of a nation full of impressionable teens. From what I can tell, his “art” is the kind of rhymes and rhythms a stoned adolescent could whip up. His background is disgusting and should be disqualifying. I pasted part of his Wikipedia resume at the bottom of this post. He’s a career criminal who is wrapping himself in the flag. The muckety-mucks at NBC know he draws eyes, so his sordid past is not a dealbreaker.

Enough about the Dogg.

Trump, who’s idea of culture is bad country music and cheeseburgers, has announced plans for our 250th birthday. If we had to have a tyrant, at least we could have had one with more refined taste. Benito Mussolini used opera for nationalistic propaganda. Trump has Lee Greenwood on retainer.

For our birthday we will have an automobile race through our historic monuments Lots of beer and beer ads.

And then, on the White House lawn, a spectacle just below feeding humans to the lions will commence. Men, and probably a few scantily clad women, will try to beat each other to a pulp in the distinctly American Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). The late Senator John McCain called it “human cockfighting.”

It seems that Americans have an insatiable appetite for watching people beat the crap out of each other. This commercialized savagery has desensitized a broad swath of the country that sees it as entertainment. The normalization of this brutality seeps into the milieu in which our children are steeped.

Over 70 million subscribers can watch all the fights on Paramount+. Families with small children can watch this brutality with their Doritos and Jellycats.

And then, the granddaddy of the “are you kidding me??” phenomena.

Gambling.

Scandals in pro sports are emerging left and right, but that will not inhibit the gamblers. In 38 states you can bet on the Winter Olympics. I’m not sure how they stop the other 12.

I wonder how many folks lost their sequined shirts by betting on figure skater IIia Malinin, the American shoe-in for gold, who went from Quad God to OH MY GOD!!!!! in four agonizing minutes.

If millionaire pro athletes get caught manipulating games, just imagine the potential for Olympic manipulation. You can find the odds for nearly every event at FanDuel.

A pussy-grabbing, vulgar liar at the helm. Snoop Dogg as American brand ambassador. Human cock-fighting and race cars for our birthday party. And you can bet on everything!

America the Beautiful!

Snoop’s qualifications to represent the United States at the Olympics:

1989–1990: Felony possession of drugs and three-year prison sentence

Shortly after graduating from high school in 1989, Snoop Dogg was arrested for possession of cocaine and for the following three years was frequently in and out of prison.[23] In 1990, he was convicted of felony possession of drugs and possession for sale.[299]

1993–1997: Traffic violation, gun possession and guilty plea

In July 1993, Snoop Dogg was stopped for a traffic violation, and a firearm was found by police during a search of his car. In February 1997, he pled guilty to possession of a handgun and was ordered to record three public service announcements, perform 800 hours of community service, pay a $1,000 fine and serve three years’ probation.[300][301][302]

1993–1996: Murder trial and acquittal

While recording Doggystyle in August 1993, Snoop Dogg was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in connection with the shooting death of Philip Woldermariam, a member of a rival gang, who was actually killed by Snoop Dogg’s bodyguard, McKinley Lee, aka Malik.[28] Snoop Dogg had been temporarily living in an apartment complex in the Palms neighborhood in the West Los Angeles region, at the intersection of Vinton Avenue and Woodbine Street—the location of the shooting.

Both men were charged with murder, as Snoop Dogg was purportedly driving the vehicle from which the gun was fired. Johnnie Cochran defended them.[303] Both Snoop Dogg and his bodyguard were acquitted on February 20, 1996.[304] In February 2024, the case was sealed.[29]

1998–2010: Misdemeanor marijuana charges

Snoop Dogg has also been arrested and fined three times for misdemeanor possession of marijuana: in Los Angeles in 1998;[305] Cleveland, Ohio in 2001;[306] and Sierra Blanca, Texas, in 2010.[307]

2006–2007: Airport arrests and convictions

On April 26, 2006, Snoop Dogg and members of his entourage were arrested after being turned away from British Airways’ first class lounge at Heathrow Airport in London. Snoop Dogg and his party were denied entry to the lounge due to some members flying in economy class. After being escorted outside, the group got in a fight with the police and vandalized a duty-free shop.[308] Seven police officers were injured during the incident. After a night in jail, Snoop Dogg and the other men were released on bail the next day but he was unable to perform a scheduled concert in Johannesburg.[309]

In September 2006, Snoop Dogg was detained at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, by airport security after airport screeners found a collapsible police baton in his carry-on bag. Donald Etra, Snoop Dogg’s lawyer, told deputies the baton was a prop for a musical sketch. Snoop Dogg was sentenced to three years’ probation and 160 hours of community service for the incident, starting in September 2007.[310]

He was arrested again in October 2006 at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank after being stopped for a traffic infraction; he was arrested for possession of a firearm and for suspicion of transporting an unspecified amount of marijuana, according to a police statement.[311]

The following month, after taping an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, he was arrested again for possession of marijuana, cocaine and a firearm. Two members of his entourage, according to the Burbank police statement, were admitted members of the Rollin’ 20s Crips gang and were arrested on separate charges.[312]

In April 2007, he was given a three-year suspended sentence, five years’ probation and 800 hours of community service after pleading no contest to two felony charges of drug and gun possession by a convicted felon. He was also prohibited from hiring anyone with a criminal record or gang affiliation as a security guard, talent manager or driver.[299]

2015: Sweden arrest for illegal drug possession

Snoop Dogg, after performing for a concert in Uppsala, Sweden, on July 25, 2015, was pulled over and detained by Swedish police for allegedly using illegal drugs, violating a Swedish law enacted in 1988 which criminalized the recreational use of such substances – therefore making even being under the influence of any illegal/controlled substance a crime itself without possession. During the detention he was taken to the police station to perform a drug test and was released shortly afterwards. The rapid test was positive for traces of narcotics and he was potentially subject to fines depending on the results of more detailed analysis.[313][314] Although final results “strongly” indicated drug use the charges were ultimately dropped because it could not be proven that he was in Sweden when he consumed the substances.[315] The rapper uploaded several videos on the social networking site Instagram criticizing the police for alleged racial profiling; police spokesman Daniel Nilsson responded to the accusations, saying: “we don’t work like that in Sweden”. He declared in the videos, “Niggas got me in the back of police car right now in Sweden, cuz”, and “Pulled a nigga over for nothing, taking us to the station where I’ve got to go pee in a cup for nothin’. I ain’t done nothin’. All I did was came to the country and did a concert and now I’ve got to go to the police station. For nothin’!”. He announced to his Swedish fanbase that he would never again go on tour in the country because of the incident.[316][317][318]

Civil2005: Alleged assault of a fan and lawsuit

Snoop Dogg, Compton rapper Jayceon “the Game” Taylor and group Tha Dogg Pound, were sued for assaulting a fan on stage at a May 2005 concert at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn, Washington. The accuser, Richard Monroe Jr., claimed he was beaten by the artists’ entourage while mounting the stage. He alleged that he reacted to an “open invite” to come on stage. Before he could, Snoop Dogg’s bodyguards grabbed him and beat him into unconsciousness.[319] He claimed attack by crew members; Snoop Dogg and Taylor were included in the suit for not intervening, but both parties denied ever having any involvement.[320][321][322] The lawsuit focused on a pecuniary claim of $22 million in punitive and compensatory damages, battery, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.[323] The concerned parties appeared in court in April 2009; Snoop Dogg was cleared of the lawsuit in May. However, Snoop’s label Doggy Style Records was found liable.[324]

Death Row bankruptcy case and compensation loss

In May 2016, through the Death Row Records bankruptcy case, Snoop Dogg lost $2 million.[325]

Sexual assault lawsuits

In January 2005, Snoop Dogg was sued by a makeup artist who claimed that Snoop Dogg and several others drugged and raped her backstage at a Jimmy Kimmel Live! taping in 2003.[326] Snoop Dogg had filed an extortion lawsuit against the woman a month before she brought her case. In August 2005 the two parties settled, with the accuser stating “the matter has been resolved amicably”, and Snoop Dogg’s representative stating no money was exchanged.

In February 2022, a woman sued Snoop Dogg for $10 million, alleging that he sexually assaulted her in May 2013 following a concert in Anaheim, California.[327][328][329] Only a few months after its filing, the suit was withdrawn, then reintroduced in July.[330] In May 2023, court documents revealed that the case had been dismissed.[331]

Regional or international banishments

2006–2010: United Kingdom

On May 15, 2006, after his arrest on vandalism charges in London, the region’s Home Office decided that Snoop Dogg would be denied entry to the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future and his British visa was denied the following year.[332][333][334] As of March 2010, however, Snoop Dogg was allowed back into the UK.[335] The entire group was banned from British Airways “for the foreseeable future”.[336] According to Snoop Dogg, Queen Elizabeth II overturned the ban, saying: “This man has done nothing in our country. He can come.”[337][338][339]

2007–2008: Australia

In April 2007, the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship banned Snoop Dogg from entering the country on character grounds, citing his prior criminal convictions.[340] He had been scheduled to appear at the MTV Australia Video Music Awards on April 29, 2007.[341] The Australian DIAC lifted the ban in September 2008 and had granted him a visa to tour Australia. The DIAC said: “In making this decision, the department weighed his criminal convictions against his previous behaviour while in Australia, recent conduct – including charity work – and any likely risk to the Australian community … We took into account all relevant factors and, on balance, the department decided to grant the visa”.[342] He later visited for the 2014 Big Day Out festival, the 2023 “I Wanna Thank Me Tour” and is expected to provide entertainment for the 2025 AFL Grand Final.[343][344]

2012–2014: Norway

Snoop Dogg was banned from entering Norway for two years in July 2012 after entering the country the month before in possession of 8 grams (0.3 oz) of marijuana and an undeclared 227,000 kr in cash, or about US$29,400 in 2022 terms.[345][346][347]

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The post America the Beautiful appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

(Community Corner is provided as local contributions from experts in their field as well as local residents.)

As communities across the country continue to voice valid concerns about ICE, it is crucial that people understand their rights in Colorado and the many ways we can protect ourselves and our immigrant communities. Every person has constitutional rights, regardless of immigration status. Those rights include:

• You are permitted to film and voice record ICE activity.
• You have the right to remain silent and do not have to answer questions about your immigration status.
• In Boulder County, local law enforcement officers will not ask any questions about one’s immigration status and, if it is learned, will not report it to ICE.
• You do not have to open your door unless ICE presents a federal warrant approved by a judge. Civil immigration detainers are not warrants under Colorado law (C.R.S § 13-1-403). To determine if the document is a warrant, look for the word “warrant” and the name and signature of a federal judge.
• If you encounter ICE, you can ask if you are free to leave. If the answer is yes, you may calmly walk away.
• If you witness misconduct by ICE or other federal agents, you can report it to 911, your local District Attorney’s Office or the Attorney General’s Office.
  • District Attorney 303-441-3700
  • Colorado Attorney General’s Office 720-508-6000 or online at www.coag.gov
• Colorado law prohibits civil immigration arrests at courthouses, probation offices, medical facilities, or schools (C.R.S § 13-1-403 and 13-1-402).
• If you are engaging in a protest or encounter, please do so safely. Do not obstruct or put yourself and others at risk. You can, and should, document and report any misconduct.
• If there is an incident in Boulder County involving ICE, there will be a full investigation and charges brought for any illegal activity. No one is above the law.
• The Boulder County District Attorney’s Office offers Know Your Rights trainings on the role of ICE, legal protections for immigrants, how to protest safely, and the authority of local law enforcement and prosecutors. To inquire about these presentations, please email boulderda@bouldercounty.gov.

Michael Dougherty, District Attorney

• Boulder Office: Justice Center 1777 6th Street|Boulder, Colorado 80302|303.441.3700
• Longmont Office: 1035 Kimbark|Longmont, Colorado 80501|303.441.3700
• https://bouldercounty.gov/district-attorney/|TDD/V: 303.441.4774

The post Community Corner: Michael Dougherty on ICE and Knowing Your Rights in Colorado appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Press releases are provided to Yellow Scene Magazine. In an effort to keep our community informed, we publish some press releases in whole. Update to reflect the corrected press release sent in following this statement. Representative Joseph is not currently sponsoring a bill, but worked on language to help potentially get a bill introduced.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 26, 2026

BOULDER, Co. – What happened in Minnesota should never have happened. Another person is dead at the hands of ICE agents, and there is no justification—none—that makes this acceptable. It should have never happened. There’s not enough explanation in the world that would make this okay. This is now the second time ICE agents have killed someone who was exercising their constitutionally protected rights. Two lives lost. Two families devastated. And still, no meaningful accountability.

These are not isolated incidents. They are the predictable result of an enforcement system that operates without transparency, without restraint, and increasingly without regard for human life. When armed federal agents can act with anonymity and impunity, tragedy is not an accident—it is inevitable.

In Colorado, ICE agents have been leaving behind so-called “death cards” after detaining immigrants. Let’s be clear about what that means: fear is being weaponized. Trauma is being normalized. Communities are being terrorized long after agents leave.

This country is built on the backs of immigrants. Immigrants are our workforce, our caregivers, our innovators, our neighbors. And yet, federal policy continues to treat immigrant communities as expendable. That is why I am running a bill to prevent law enforcement officers from concealing their faces while carrying out their duties. Accountability is not optional—it is foundational to public safety and democracy.

Some argue that masking keeps agents safe. I do not agree with that argument. A mask will never keep anybody safe. It creates a profound accountability problem. If a police officer can detain or kill someone without identifying themselves, then anyone can show up to me, to you, or to anyone else and claim to be law enforcement. That is not safety. That is chaos.

The actions of ICE do not just affect immigrants—they affect everyone. People across our communities are afraid. Afraid that they may be next. Afraid that their rights mean nothing in the face of unchecked authority. We cannot accept a system where armed agents operate in secrecy, kill civilians, and move on without consequence. We cannot accept fear as a governing strategy. And we cannot accept silence in the face of injustice.

This moment demands accountability, transparency, and real reform—because lives depend on it.

Media Contact:

Office of Representative Junie Joseph
303-866-2915
junie.joseph.house@coleg.gov
###

Representative Junie Joseph 

Colorado House District 10 

Member of House Environment & Energy Committee

Member of the Appropriations Committee

Member of the Committee on Legal Services

Democratic House Majority Caucus Co-Chair

1525 Sherman Street SSB-622 Denver, Colorado 80203

Cell: 720-432-6009

junie.joseph.house@coleg.gov

Junie4colorado.com

Twitter: Junie4colorado

Facebook: Junieforcolorado

Together we will leave no one behind

---

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — CORRECTION

January 26, 2026

BOULDER, CO — A previous release issued in response to the deaths of individuals at the hands of ICE agents in Minnesota stated that Representative Junie Joseph was sponsoring legislation related to law enforcement face coverings. To clarify: Representative Joseph was not sponsoring that bill. She had been working on developing the policy language with one colleague but ultimately decided not to move the bill forward. Key elements of the work were shared with other colleagues who are introducing related legislation, ensuring that the ideas could continue advancing through a different legislative vehicle.

This statement was issued in the context of the tragic deaths of Alex Pretti, a 37?year?old ICU nurse, and Renee Good, a 37?year?old mother and poet, both of whom were shot and killed during immigration enforcement actions in Minneapolis.

Representative Joseph remains committed to accountability, transparency, and policies that protect communities from unaccountable enforcement actions. She also continues to support policies that protect immigrant communities and expand access to education, training, and workforce opportunities while strengthening civil rights and public safety. She believes that all Coloradans should be able to participate fully in their communities, and that accountability, transparency, and dignity are essential foundations for a safe and thriving state.

Media Contact:
Office of Representative Junie Joseph
303-866-2915
junie.joseph.house@coleg.gov

Representative Junie Joseph 

Colorado House District 10 

Member of House Environment & Energy Committee

Member of the Appropriations Committee

Member of the Committee on Legal Services

Democratic House Majority Caucus Co-Chair

1525 Sherman Street SSB-622 Denver, Colorado 80203

Cell: 720-432-6009

junie.joseph.house@coleg.gov

Junie4colorado.com

Twitter: Junie4colorado

Facebook: Junieforcolorado

Together we will leave no one behind

The post Rep. Junie Joseph Statement Condemning the Killing of a Minnesota Resident by ICE Agents appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

Nelson’s Corner

A vicious, radical leftist was shot dead by a heroic ICE agent in Minneapolis this week after she attempted to murder the agent and his fellow officers by running them over with her compact SUV.

Or . . .

An innocent 37 year-old mother of three was murdered by an incompetent, cosplaying ICE agent who resented her failure to instantly comply with illegal orders and attempts to illegally extricate her from her car, without cause or warrant.

So, shall we believe the President of the United States, the Secretary of Homeland Security, many “dignified” members of Congress . . .?

Or . . .

Our own lying eyes?

We know that Trump and his band of merry sociopaths lie like a posse of pre-schoolers caught with fingers in the M&M bowl. But this incident is unusual in that the world has seen videos from multiple angles showing that the ICE version and the shameful characterizations made by Trump et al are, to quote Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, “BULLSHIT!”

The murder victim, Renee Nicole Good, was born and raised in Colorado, graduated Virginia’s Old Dominion University, was a fine poet, and has been uniformly described as kind, generous, and sensitive.

Kristi Noem, decked out in high fashion, cowboy hat and Botox-saturated epidermis, called Good a “domestic terrorist.” I suspect that no human on Earth has called Kristi Noem kind, generous or sensitive. A woman who brags of shooting her own dog is not likely to be a good judge of character.

If you have been spared the video experience, here is an executive summary:

Good’s car was parked in the middle of a snowless, one way street, perpendicular to the flow of traffic. Conjecture supposes she was protesting ICE activities, but there was ample room for traffic, including ICE agents to proceed. ICE agents and onlookers were milling around. An official vehicle arrived, ICE agents got out and briskly approached Good’s car. The first to reach the car aggressively tried to open the driver’s door, yelling obscenities while ordering her to get out.

In a few short seconds, the shooter had gone around the car and stood at the left, front bumper. Good backed up briefly to position the car to drive away. As she turned and tried to flee, she was shot through the windshield, followed by two shots from the side, just for good measure.

Given the real possibilities in this context, one can imagine what Renee Nicole Good might have felt with a small gang of unidentified men with guns drawn surrounding her car and violently yanking the door handle. Countless women, children and men have been abducted and “disappeared.” She was likely aware that being a citizen was thin protection. She had a hell of a lot more to fear than the brute who killed her.

There was no evidence that the shooter was even grazed by the fender as she passed, and he was observed, after her car crashed into a parked vehicle, strutting to the scene and strutting back without having offered any assistance to the dead or dying woman. The video showed the car’s interior, air bag deployed and blood splattered profusely.

Every BULLSHIT rationale offered by the government officials is refuted by video and multiple eyewitness accounts. The somewhat legitimate media, New York Times et al, tiptoed gingerly and refrained from calling it “murder.”

Writing for legitimate media, I’ll offer no such restraint. Renee Nicole Good was murdered in cold blood at the twitchy hand of a unqualified goon who appeared to be looking for any slight provocation that would allow him to fire his surrogate member. Renee Nicole Good had about as much of a chance as Kristi Noem’s dog. And to ICE, and the amoral thugs who enable their wanton violence, Good’s life had about as much value as Kristi Noem’s dog.

Public outrage has flared because the victim is sympathetic, but that detracts from the grim truth about ICE, immigration policy, and the lawlessness of the actions in Minneapolis and elsewhere. This incident would be equally horrifying if the victim had been an undocumented, brown-skinned immigrant.

Like the decaying rot that emanates from a fish head, this culture comes directly from the salmon-colored head of state. From early campaign rallies to daily social media screeds, Trump has encouraged violence against any person who dares challenge his – well, his anything. He too is a thug, just in fancy suits and too cowardly to act on his own orders. I was in Southeast Asia while he pulled his golf socks over his bone spurs, so I have special qualifications to call him a chickenshit. I have seldom typed a sentence this absurd, but I would respect him more if he had the balls to execute his own vile impulses.

There has always been a police inclination to expect immediate compliance with their every directive. It is often necessary, including for their safety. But many, if not most, police officers are trained to modulate this inclination and follow the rules of engagement that are crafted to protect all involved. A well-trained police officer would seldom do what we all saw in Minneapolis. (I recognize the deep irony of that assertion in light of the fact that Derek Chauvin snuffed out the life of George Floyd, only 8 blocks from Good’s murder.)

We have become a third-world nation, streets patrolled by unqualified men with anger issues; locked, loaded and trigger happy.

At least 16 people have been shot by ICE agents, four dead. Another 32 died in ICE custody in 2025. I challenge any reader to name a single one.

A murdered white woman draws disproportionate attention. That doesn’t minimize the tragedy of her death, but it shouldn’t overshadow the deaths of the others.

Perhaps her murder will bring some belated justice for the others.

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The post Murder in Minneapolis appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Earlier this month, we reported on The debate surrounding House Bill 1208, legislation affecting tipped minimum wage in Colorado. Since publication, Rep. Steve Woodrow, a Colorado state representative and one of the bill’s sponsors, criticized our reporting. In the interest of transparency and accountability, we are publishing his full response and explaining where we believe his critique falls short.

Rep. Woodrow wrote:

“Respectfully, this is very strange ‘reporting.’ HB25-1208 was passed back in April. The version that passed doesn’t lower anyone’s wage. It DOES allow local governments to adjust their tip credit to ensure that mandatory local minimum wage increases don’t force restaurants to keep raising menu prices, furlough workers, cut shifts, eliminate benefits, and close entirely. Why the author didn’t reach out to me or the other sponsors to discuss this, and why this is being published with grossly inaccurate information months after the bill was already passed into law, is bizarre to say the least.”

First, our reporting is consistent with coverage from peer outlets including the Colorado Sun and Boulder Reporting Lab, both of which are cited in the article. While each outlet emphasized different aspects of the bill, our framing was well within the mainstream of how this legislation has been covered. The suggestion that our reporting was unusually inaccurate or outside the norm is not supported by the broader media record.

Rep. Woodrow also takes issue with the timing of the article. While HB 1208 passed earlier this year, our article clearly notes that the bill was introduced in early 2025. Our reporting focused on the ongoing divide between labor organizations, restaurant owners, and policymakers, not simply the legislative vote. We published less than two weeks after a protest planned around a Nov. 20 public hearing involving labor groups. Passage of a bill does not end its public impact. The conflict, organizing, and community response around this legislation have continued, and that discourse warranted coverage. Our newsroom does not aim to be a breaking news outlet. We prioritize follow-up reporting that examines consequences and unresolved tensions after a bill becomes law.

On accuracy, our reporting is careful because the policy itself is nuanced. We explicitly state that the bill does not reduce the total wages tipped workers are legally entitled to earn. We also report that it allows cities to lower the guaranteed hourly base pay for tipped workers, increasing reliance on tips and exposing workers to greater income instability. That characterization is accurate. Rep. Woodrow’s own explanation reflects this reality. When he argues the bill prevents restaurants from raising menu prices or cutting costs elsewhere, he is acknowledging that the policy reduces labor expenses. That reduction comes through changes to wage structure.

Rep. Woodrow also criticizes our sourcing. While we did not directly interview him or every single sponsor of the bill, we extensively quoted Sen. Judy Amabile of Boulder, a bill sponsor, whose comments are among the most frequently cited in the article. We included her arguments that the bill could prevent restaurant closures, rising prices, and job losses. We also included responses from labor advocates and studies that challenge those claims. Presenting competing evidence and allowing readers to draw their own conclusions is the purpose of this reporting.

We have published positive coverage of Sen. Amabile in the past, and even endorsed her. Rep. Woodrow’s response reads this article as partisan rather than analytical. Our intent was not to take a side, but to document an ongoing conflict tied to a broader national debate between restaurant owners and labor advocates. Rep. Woodrow may disagree with our framing, but we reject the characterization of our reporting as strange or misleading.

The ones who dared to fight City Hall.

 When Boulder denied public access to police body-cam footage, we took it to court. Our fight for transparency is now before the Colorado Supreme Court — because accountability doesn’t stop at the city line.

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The post Editor’s Note: Why We Stand by Our Boulder Tipped Wage Reporting appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread,” – Anatole France, French author and Nobel Laureate

Ah, the majestic equality we’re living today! The kind that finally allows the much beleaguered white man to have his manifest disadvantages take their rightful place in the pantheon of injustices.

If history survives with any clarity, ours will be known, in part, as the age of the Grand False Equivalence.

My morning reading this week included an eminently “reasonable” piece in the New York Times crafted by a Harvard sophomore. As always, the comments surpassed the essay, both in volume and grievance. You should read it all, if your post-holiday stomach can take it.

The essence of the actually pretty well-written piece was: The progressive, “woke” excesses of the past few decades were horrid, but the conservative response has been little better. Progressive orthodoxy has been replaced by conservative orthodoxy on Harvard’s campus.

An excerpt from my 2016 book is relevant in challenging this equivalence:

Conventional wisdom, or what passes for wisdom among many folks, is that the progressive era of the late ’60s and early ’70s ruined virtually everything. Moral values disappeared in a haze of marijuana smoke. Highly sexualized music and an epidemic of free love led to a decline in marriage and erosion of family values. Progressive political values created a spineless, dependent populace, which accounts for the tens of millions of feckless “takers” who look to the nanny state for care and feeding.

And permissive progressive education created a generation of self-indulgent brats who were told everything they did was right when, in fact, they didn’t learn anything at all. This misrepresentation of progressive education suggests that child-centered means spoiling children, that self-esteem means every child gets a trophy, and that in progressive schools the teachers wear Birkenstocks and flax shawls and smoke weed as their students run wild and barefoot. This caricature is often advanced by folks who seem to have lingering resentment over the “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” era. (I’ve always suspected that their resentment lingers in part because they didn’t get enough of those things.)
There are many problems with this narrative, foremost of which is that none of it happened, at least not to an important extent.

As a veteran of the ’60s, I testify from experience. The vast majority of young folks who joined the counter-culture, wore bell bottoms, smoked weed, went to Woodstock and protested the war, were no more genuine than Justin Bieber wearing saggin’ pants, lots of bling and a big brimmed cap on sideways. Most hippies were no more Che Guevara than Bieber is 50 Cent. It was almost all costume and fad or, to use a more current quip, all hat and no cattle.
I attended many anti-war demonstrations in the late ’60s and early ’70s and most protestors couldn’t find Vietnam on a map! In my middle/upper middle class community, many bra-less girls and bell-bottomed boys had been Brownies and Cub Scouts a few years earlier, and would be aspiring bankers and real estate agents a few years later. At the core there were, as now, small numbers of deeply committed activists, but the majority of folks were along for the ride – and it was a fine trip!

But the bigger lie is that the progressive educational practices of the ’60s and ’70s eviscerated standards and account for the allegedly miserable state of education today. So-called reformers want rigid accountability, more structure, longer school days, longer school years, more tests and more discipline. Undoing the damage of those loosey-goosey progressive practices is arduous work!

That didn’t happen either.

There was a brief flurry of progressive activity in the ’60s and ’70s, when some schools adopted open floor plans and a few humanistic and humane programs poked through the dull homogeneity of public education. Most schools were designed in spirit-numbing form, and curriculum and pedagogy trudged along in the same rote, uninspiring way.
Here too I’m a veteran and I testify as both participant and witness. I graduated high school in 1964. My younger brother went to the same schools in the late ’60s and ’70s. I had children early and my daughter began school in the same community in 1975, my son three years later. That’s pretty good coverage of the alleged progressive era. All of this happened in one of America’s most progressive suburban communities (Cleveland Heights, Ohio)

Progressive education never happened there … or most anywhere around the country.

What existed at Harvard and other campuses before Trump – and the anti-woke complaining – was so distant from progressive power as to be laughable. The power has always rested with fabulously wealthy trustees and donors and the mostly compliant leaders they hire. The things that irritated them were futile efforts by powerless people to address actual injustices: Like undeniable racial injustice, pitiful representation of women in positions of power (along with low wages), insufficient progress for LGBTQ+ people (especially violent rejection of trans folks), and many more.

The powerful take satisfaction in diminishing these justice advocates by calling their actions“cancel culture,” calling them “social justice warriors.” They then lend a sympathetic ear to the privileged white majority who had their feelings hurt now and then. Of course there were loud and excessive examples to cite as woke-run-amok when, for example, young women and men tried to keep virulent racists and homophobes from speaking. And, of course, affirmative action was swept into history’s dust bin because, gee whiz, today’s brilliant white kids are not responsible for what happened generations ago. And all this absurd pronoun business!

As in my excerpt, the fact is that progressives have very little power and never have. Intractable wealth inequality and poverty are proof enough. As a nation we have primarily excelled at breaking the promises offered in our founding documents. The insufficient granting of civil rights in the 60s and the grudging acknowledgement of gay rights were signs of progress, but real power then, as now, was consolidated in the private and institutional clubs of white men.
For the Harvard student and, seemingly, the majority of white Americans, the current pendulum swing is equivalent.

That view is intellectual and ethical malfeasance.

First, there is a factual and moral difference between those who fight for racial justice and those who claim that there is no injustice. There is a moral difference between those who support transgender humans and those who despise them and deny basic rights and dignity. I would offer more examples of non-equivalence, but leave you to consider them yourself.

But the most egregious violation is willful blindness of the role of power. The reversal of human rights gains, the imposition of conservative curricula and faculty, the denial of trans rights, the erasure of gender studies, the elimination of DEI programs, the canceling of research grants, closing of entire departments . . .

These are not cultural or policy swings of the pendulum. They are direct manifestations of an increasingly authoritarian government which uses immense economic power and, frighteningly, military power to effect the changes they desire. And almost all of these things are in service of providing comfort and control to white men who feel their hegemony slipping.

The occasional excesses of the so-called woke movement and the full force of the United States government are not remotely equivalent.

As with the progressive era of the 60s and 70s, the progressive uprising the conservatives are now crushing never happened either.

The post It’s All About the Power appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

“I don’t know, because I am the least racist person you will ever meet.”

This whopper was Donald Trump’s response to Wolf Blitzer’s query as to why white supremacists were drawn to him.

Trump would not be the least racist person at a KKK rally.

Two recent cases in point were particularly striking, although singling out any particular racist utterances is a bit silly.

In a broad salvo, Trump called Somalia and all Somalians “garbage,” especially noting the Minnesota Congressperson Ilhan Omar. He showed the breadth of his good taste by calling Minnesota Governor Tim Walz “seriously retarded.”

As reported in the New York Times: “We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’”

It’s worth noting that VP Vance pounded the table with undisguised glee as his boss spewed verbal sewage.

Omar responded, “His obsession with me is creepy. I hope he gets the help he (Trump) desperately needs.” JD could use some help too.

In his first term, Trump bemoaned immigrants from “shithole countries,” Somalia among them. Humorist Andy Borowitz wrote a typically clever “news” release claiming that Somalians were no longer willing to emigrate to countries with “shithole presidents.”

More recently Trump called ABC reporter Rachel Scott “obnoxious” when she dared ask him a question about releasing the video of Caribbean murder. He had blithely agreed to release the video, then denied saying so, despite video evidence to the contrary. He also called her “a terrible reporter,” a phrase he seems to reserve for any reporter who asks questions in lieu of fawning praise.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Omar and Scott are women of color, because he is the least racist person. It’s also a coincidence that they are women, because he loves women. I believe he is also the least misogynist person you will ever meet, although “misogynist” is beyond his vocabulary. Misogynists hate women and would never, ever, “grab ‘em by the pussy,” as is his frequent wont.

Please pause with me to consider that in my first 300 words I’ve typed “garbage,” “retarded,” “shithole” and “pussy,” all in the journalistic service of accurately quoting the President of the United States.

I could be somewhat juvenile and point out that each of these pejoratives might be examples of rhetorical projection. But I won’t.

What with the mountains of lies, the litany of illegalities, the too-ridiculous-to-parody narcissism and just terrible decorating taste, there is just so much overload. Any reasonably dispassionate observer could cite several instances a week that would have sunk any other presidency. He has been called “Teflon Don,” because so much doesn’t stick. But it’s more like throwing spaghetti at a wall and finding it doesn’t stick because the wall is already covered with spaghetti.

But put all of that aside.

The most succinct descriptor of our president is “indecent.” The man is manifestly, malignantly, magnificently, majestically “indecent.”

His indecency is without equal. With all the self-claimed superlatives and the nauseating sycophancy of his supplicants, here is an area in which he is indeed peerless. He needn’t cheat, take surreptitious mulligans or pay millions of dollars to get phony prizes and honoraria.

He may not be the cruelest or least competent leader in human history (or may be), but his indecency stands alone, even in the company of the world’s greatest despots.

In a Senate hearing in 1954, U.S. Army chief counsel Joseph N. Welch responded to Senator Joseph McCarthy after McCarthy insulted a young lawyer in Welch’s firm:

”Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. … Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

Trump makes McCarthy look like Emily Post.

The post Indecency appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

At my age, running a fool’s errand is foolish. There is scarcely time to run the errands that have good odds for success.

Using my inelegant words to describe the poetic documentary, Come See Me in the Good Light, is like taking up a paint roller to explain Picasso.

The film is a love story, often comic, about the late Colorado Poet Laureate Andrea Gibson (they, them) and their partner Megan Falley as they love and live into death. Gibson had incurable cancer and died in July, a month shy of 50. Much of the film is sited in or near their Longmont home.

The love story is poignant and painful, not unlike other love stories – perhaps like all love stories. The film captures the poignancy and the pain with raw brilliance. Love is complicated, but the film is like a gently boiling pan, the complexity evaporating as death nears. Love is all that’s left when the steam has gone. It is exhausting and exhilarating.

In a January interview, Gibson offered perspective that has stayed with me for days.

“I was known, I think, as a fairly optimistic writer that leaned toward the light,” they said. “But when I got diagnosed with cancer, I just thought, ‘Oh, look at all this that I’ve been missing. There’s so much beauty here.’ I could truly feel every second of the day as this very generous gift. And so it changed my writing.”

I am also a “fairly optimistic writer,” although my prose is a basket of rocks compared to their thimble (a nod to Ms. Falley) of gemstones. I’ve also been diagnosed with cancer, though there too I’m no match.  My prognosis leaves me with years, not seconds, as generous gifts.

I am taken with the idea, from where I don’t recall, that age would be better measured from the end backwards than from the beginning forward. At 49, Gibson was older than I am at 78.

Whether at 49 or 78, the end drawing nigh (ish) invites – requires – one to see beauty. A diminishing remainder of sunsets makes each one slightly more compelling. My wife and I gaze at our wheat grasses in the evening sun with reverence once reserved for drives through Vermont’s Green Mountains in October. (Ok, not quite. Get a grip.) But beauty is as we behold it, even when the field of vision narrows.

I don’t mean this to be as maudlin as it sounds in my mind’s ear, but age leads to reckoning that a great many things may be for the last time. When buying appliances or sturdy boots, that’s a good thing. But when touching loved ones or hearing Bach, the thought of “last time” is unbearable. But thoughts of “last time” also make moments of unspeakable beauty.

There is so much to learn about life in death. I suppose we don’t recognize the lessons because they’re often too late. The documentary’s gift was to give a preview for those open to it. We were.

When living in Vermont we had the great pleasure of acquaintance with the late Grace Paley, a marvelous poet and short story writer. At a reading in a tiny café in rural Vermont, Grace fielded questions from a small audience of aspiring poets and political progressives who just liked being in her feisty presence. One pretentious looking fellow in full flax, goatee and beret, asked Grace what her poem “meant.” She looked piercingly and responded, “I don’t know. You decide.”

There is a lifetime of wisdom in 104 minutes of Come See Me in the Good Light. The film is a poem. Perhaps you’ll find meaning as we did. (Update: This marvelous film received an Oscar nomination in January, 2026.)

Watch the film and you decide.

The post You Decide appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

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Dear Champions of Local News,

The first Yellow Scenes

It’s hard to believe 25 years have passed since Yellow Scene first hit Boulder County. I had just left Boulder Weekly and was living in Erie, thinking East County could use its own local source. Funny how times change. I sold ads before I even had a product—or, for that matter, a business. It proved how much local businesses needed a true community voice.

That same spirit of taking a risk on a hunch still drives us today. We look for what the community needs and strive to fill it. Most people pick up the magazine and say, “There’s interesting stuff in here.”

It’s startling that people are surprised by the quality of reporting in a local magazine. Having started in media at 21, my career has been rooted in local journalism. I grew up believing in its mission, which is simple: Who has the power? And who is causing the harm?

With 85% of U.S. media now controlled by six major conglomerates, what we’re served often protects those in power—or worse, isn’t journalism at all. We have plenty of “lifestyle” magazines filled with sponsored content.

Yellow Scene is the last locally owned, independent publication serving all of Boulder County—and we still print. Even though it could ease the financial challenges of independent media, we refuse pay-to-play content and hold ourselves to high standards. Being interesting is the point.

Over the years, we’ve never shied away from hard subjects. Recently, one of our reporters went undercover at the ICE facility to talk to a detainee not receiving the medical care they needed. Another zigzagged through the heartland, talking to people resisting the current administration—sleeping in his car to keep costs down. Our lawsuit against the City of Boulder isn’t for money; there’s no payout if we win. But the people of Colorado will benefit, because a win would set a statewide precedent for transparency and the public’s right to know.

Local advertising alone can no longer sustain a newsroom. We could have made it easier on ourselves—taken the sponsored content and played it safe—but that’s never who we were. We chose the harder path: to stay people-powered and independent. This is the kind of journalism your support makes possible.

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The post The Ones Who Dared to Fight City Hall — and Why It Matters appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

Correction: This editorial incorrectly stated that Chief Stephen Redfearn approved the ketamine injection of Elijah McClain. He arrived after the use of force and ketamine injection, while McClain was still alive, and later changed the CAD report from “suspicious person” to “assault on an officer” before any investigation was completed. Court proceedings have established that McClain did not assault or threaten officers. The article has been updated to reflect the public record.

Last night I dined at a top restaurant in Boulder with my roommate. We chose to sit at the bar. I’m the type of person who loves to talk to strangers. I like learning where people come from, their beliefs, and their views. Sometimes it leads to meeting lovely people; sometimes it’s an opportunity to see how the other half lives. Sometimes the conversations start nicely but end less so.

There’s a myth about Weld and Boulder Counties, the idea that everyone in Boulder is liberal and everyone in Weld is MAGA. Colorado, including Weld County, has seen tremendous growth over the last 30 years. It’s not like realtors are asking for voter registrations before selling a house. “I’m sorry, you’re registered D; we don’t sell houses in Weld County to D’s.” Not happening.

Erie gets scooped up in that analogy, and I’ve even seen reporters stand on County Line Road for a story outlining that notion: “Here’s the Boulder County side, which is liberal, and here’s the Weld County side, which is Republican.”

First of all, in the 2024 election, Boulder County voted approximately 76 percent blue, and Weld voted 60 percent red. Those are facts. But when it comes to Erie, those numbers change. In 2020, Erie voted 68 percent blue, and the 2024 council elections saw three progressive candidates take the lion’s share of votes, with the more conservative mayor squeaking by with a mere 500 votes.

There’s also the idea that everyone in Boulder is liberal. An old editor I worked with 27 years ago at the Boulder Weekly once told me, “Boulder is a bunch of Republicans too afraid to vote that way.” That dinner conversation reminded me that fascism doesn’t always wear a uniform. In Boulder, it can wear a Patagonia vest.

Boulder recycles, bicycles, and supports the LGBTQ community. The city has recently passed mental-health measures to address addiction and a lack of services. But it’s not the progressive bastion folks think it is.

While the rest of the country voted for progressives in this year’s elections — not just New York, but also places like Aurora, Westminster, and Colorado school boards — Boulder elected three of the four billionaire-backed candidates. Approximately 32,000 to 35,000 people voted out of about 70,000 active registered voters in Boulder. 

Most people don’t know this, but roughly 57 percent of Boulder rents, with students making up about 20 percent of that number. Only 19 percent of households have children under 18. There are a lot of young people in Boulder. Unlike New York City, they didn’t vote and often don’t vote in city elections, allowing those with power and influence to make decisions for those without. 

In Weld, right-wing extremism is worn loud and proud; in Boulder, it’s tucked into coded language.

Boulder’s billionaire-backed slate didn’t run on more affordable housing but on removal, even promoting ads urging voters to oppose the two candidates who fought to end the blanket ban, Boulder’s ordinance that criminalizes the city’s unhoused residents by making it a crime to sleep outside with a blanket.

Homelessness and the firebombing of Jewish protestors demanding the release of the hostages were used to stoke fear, turning “law and order” into a political weapon to justify police escalation and the criminalization of poverty. Meanwhile, the city keeps paying out millions for police violence and just hired Stephen Redfearn as police chief — a decision so controversial the NAACP Boulder County chapter fractured over it and ultimately collapsed. He later changed the CAD call type from “suspicious person” to “assault on an officer” before any investigation was complete, a decision his critics say helped frame a false narrative in the case and remains at the center of ongoing controversy and legal cases in Boulder.

This is “safety” as cover: no divestment from companies profiting off the Gaza genocide, no real reckoning with policing, and a blanket ban for the homeless.

But back to last night’s dinner. My roommate and I ate at the bar. I began talking to the man next to me because he was dining alone. He ordered everything with garlic, and I joked he wasn’t going home with anyone that night. He said his wife was home sick and he was indulging, so we kept chatting while Luna and I ate. For the most part, it went all right; he seemed open-minded enough to talk with.  He was a retired banker, the kind Boulder has in surplus: friendly, articulate, and convinced civility is the same as morality.

Then I noticed a bottle on the shelf called Revolution, with what looked like an old white guy’s face on it. I made a joke about that, and our friendly diner got offended. He lectured me on the stereotypes white men suffer under. “Fair enough,” I said. “I know some white dudes who are fighting the power.”

I said what we’re witnessing is fascism in our government, and he scolded me for using the word fascist.

“Fine,” I said. “How about authoritarianism?”

He told me we’re not witnessing fascism or authoritarianism, and that when it comes to basic human rights, they don’t exist. He said rights are privileges granted by the government.

While I love me some good contractarian philosophy, and lean more toward Locke than Hobbes, his comments offended me, so I ended the conversation. After three glasses of wine, I probably could have ended it better. But by then, White Banker Guy from Boulder was telling me the system is the way it is, and we have no human rights unless the system grants them. Coupled with his denial of authoritarianism, it was too much. We told him to get lost, paid our bill, and left.

Here’s why that logic is dangerous. When you redefine rights as privileges, you hand their ownership to the state — or whoever holds power next. From there, every abuse becomes justifiable: slavery becomes economics, fascism becomes order, genocide becomes policy. It’s the same argument echoing from the far right today, that losing rights isn’t oppression but “the system working.”

We are a nation of laws founded on a social contract, which means agreeing that some harms; rape, murder, theft, are intolerable. I grew up believing that as a nation, we fought for others’ rights. But a country that elevated property rights over human rights for centuries — through 400 years of chattel slavery and our own genocide — doesn’t flip overnight. What I was taught as a child doesn’t match what we do in practice.

The rise of Trump and MAGA isn’t new; it’s regression. And now we hear, “America isn’t a democracy; it’s a republic,” a talking point used to rationalize the authoritarian impulses of the Trump era. Aside from the bad civics, it’s the casualness that chills — the ease with which people defend the erosion of rights.

The fight for human rights shouldn’t be a fight, but in a world that values personal property more than human life, it is. And silence is complicity. Whether it’s Boulder’s polite cruelty or Washington’s open authoritarianism, people are stripped of dignity while power congratulates itself for keeping order. 

America is facing a moral dilemma, and we each have to choose who we will be — the people who helped on the Underground Railroad or those who turned Anne Frank in. I may not change that over dinner, but I can damn sure name it out loud.

The ones who dared to fight City Hall.

When Boulder denied public access to police body-cam footage, we took it to court. Our fight for transparency is now before the Colorado Supreme Court — because accountability doesn’t stop at the city line.

Through December 31, every gift to Yellow Scene will be matched — dollar for dollar — through the Colorado Media Project’s Matching Grant. Give & Get Democracy this Holiday Season. Your $8 recurring monthly support not only gets you YS delivered to your house, but it’s matched for the entire year, bringing that $8/month to $192. 

Because Independent journalism isn’t just about telling stories. It’s about protecting your right to know, holding power accountable, and keeping democracy in the light. This is #newsCOneeds

The post White Banker Man from Boulder appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

Years ago I argued against the prevailing argument about climate change. It was fashionable in liberal circles to demonstrate the many ways that good environmental practices are profitable.

My rebuttal, in brief, was that the logic was ethically compromised. Harnessing environmental responsibility to profitability gives tacit permission to abandon good environmental practices if they are not profitable. This is among the many reasons that global warming marches on with relatively feeble resistance.

A similar concern dampens my enthusiasm over recent election results. Yes, it was mildly encouraging but – with the exception of Zorhan Mamdani – the Democratic winners are just a tad to the left of moderate Republicans. It was hardly a progressive triumph.

The parallel with environmentalism is the incessant focus on “affordability.” It became the blaring Democratic mantra. “Everything is too damned expensive and electing me will improve your life.” If I never hear “food on the table” again, it will be too soon.

I suppose I needn’t, but I will acknowledge the economic stress endured by too many families. High prices require real sacrifices that my relative privilege can avoid.

But the pragmatic benefits of campaigning to pursestrings leave other issues to rot on the political sidelines. So-called culture wars must be assiduously avoided in service of electing candidates who promise to lower the cost of eggs. To listen to 2025 political rhetoric is to believe we are a society that subsists on eggs alone.

So heres’s the rub and the analogous problem:

It is a given that Republicans do not give a tinkers’s damn about a warming planet or its most vulnerable inhabitants. Environmentalism, social justice and human rights writ large are subjects of mockery and disdain. So Democrats are reluctant to embrace anything that might risk any loss of centrist or crossover votes. Even campaigns resisting authoritarianism are placing affordability above anti-authoritarianism. This only makes sense alphabetically.

So we promise lower egg, gas and housing costs. May I remind of Hoover’s (incorrectly attributed) “chicken in every pot” promise in 1928? The great stock market crash of 1929 made chickens and pots unaffordable.

A more honest assessment of the state of our world would highlight: precipitous reversing of racial justice advances of the last 60+ years; threats to LGBTQ+ rights, including anti-trans violence and humiliation; terrifying, unmitigated consequences of human-driven global warming; wealth disparity that would make the robber barons blush; and the unconscionable treatment of immigrants, documented and otherwise.

I don’t suggest that successful Democratic candidates don’t care about these things. They may, but their convictions seem lukewarm. I suppose a charitable reading would acknowledge that having I LOVE DEI!! posters might not be a winning theme.

On the other hand, as in the environment/profitability case, if the promises of “affordability” are not kept, the rationale for electing Democrats is erased. Any sentiments toward social or Earth justice will be irrelevant, and the teeter-totter will tilt back toward the current crew of rapacious capitalists and capitalist enablers.

This dilemma is the inevitable consequence of the shift toward living in an economy rather than living in a society. While not the prime driver of the current moral bankruptcy, this shift rapidly accelerated during the Clinton campaign when James Carville coined, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Even the economy we live in is predicated on lies. Free enterprise is an oxymoron. Trickle down is stale urine. Ever since St. Ronnie, Americans have believed that their ships will soon come in. Never going to happen, since the entire fleet is owned by a handful of billionaires. Neither they nor the politicians they’ve purchased will ever say that we need to buy less and consume less. We live in a self-destructive system that is predicated on more people, more products, more consumption, more waste and more degradation of our planet. Even when terror struck the Twin Towers, we were urged to shop our way out of it.

I don’t see a solution, and it saddens me – for my children and grandchildren.

So, yes, the off-year elections were better than nothing. But a pragmatic nod to “affordability” is watery gruel when we need a revolution.

The post A Dash of Cold Water appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Last week, we published a story examining the role of independent political groups in Boulder’s election. Election coverage always attracts scrutiny, especially when it touches on dark money and the influence of private spending. That’s expected, and we welcome it. Our coverage of money in politics is ongoing. This isn’t the first or last time we’ll report on organizations shaping local elections.

This year’s New York City’s mayoral race, won by Mr. Zohran Mamdani, reflected more than local divides. It touched on the national split between corporate Democrats and progressives, rising affordability issues, and even foreign policy debates like Gaza. One thread deserves more attention: the growing divide between candidates backed by deep pockets and those running grassroots campaigns. Mamdani often contrasted himself with his opponent Andrew Cuomo by calling out his alleged billionaire donors and emphasizing his own independence. That framing resonated because Americans across the spectrum are increasingly uneasy about private money, gerrymandering, and other forms of influence shaping elections.

At Yellow Scene, our job is to help voters understand who’s funding what and how that funding shapes local politics. “Dark money” isn’t a simple topic. The funding streams are often complex, and organizations are not monolithic. Each group operates differently, with its own goals and methods. While broad trends matter, we agree that nuance is essential.

We stand by our reporting on Boulder but recognize that some details deserve clarification. In the interest of transparency, we’re addressing a few of the critiques directly.

Firstly, a letter sent to us from one organization.

Letter from Open Boulder

Dear Mr. Clichenbeard,

Your reporter, Bella Farris, wrote an article on dark money in Boulder politics. She included Open Boulder as an independent political organization leveraging undisclosed funding and no funding caps.

Actually, Open Boulder formed a UCC (unaffiliated candidate committee). All contributions and expenses are disclosed, and donations are capped at $100. We have followed the rules down to the letter of the law and have not co-mingled funds as other organizations have done.

In fact, our public filings show every donor and every expense. Your inclusion of Open Boulder in a “dark money” discussion is slanderous. What will you do about it?

—Open Boulder 2025 UCC

A quick note before we respond: our editor hasn’t been Austin Clickenbeard for a while now, though his work helped define Yellow Scene for a time. Angry letters about our current coverage should instead be directed toward me, Destiny Hale. I read them all, I promise.

Now, to the point.

The accusation is that we slandered Open Boulder. To be clear, the article’s primary focus was on Engage Boulder. Here’s the full and only mention of Open Boulder:

“Caruso is not the first to form an independent political group in Boulder. Open Boulder, a civic organization with a more centrist reputation, has endorsed several 2025 candidates — including Jenny Robins, Rob Kaplan, Matt Benjamin, and Mark Wallach. Both groups reflect a broader trend in local politics: small organizations and well-funded individuals seeking to shape Boulder’s political direction outside formal campaigns.”

A fairly tame and accurate statement hardly indicative of slander. That said, grouping Engage Boulder and Open Boulder together was somewhat imprecise. Open Boulder has endorsed candidates that Engage Boulder opposes and operates more transparently. It’s fair to acknowledge that difference. But it’s equally fair to note that Open Boulder remains a private organization seeking to influence elections, as its own materials make clear. Our role is to help voters understand those dynamics and then many people vying to influence their vote.

Comment on Dan Caruso

“Why am I not surprise that you would lie to your readers. Dan Caruso is not even close to being a billionaire. In fact, he’s not even worth a $100 million. For every billionaire representing the Republican party there are two representing the Democratic party. As journalist espousing to speak the truth, the only truth here is your lying. Spreading misinformation and disinformation. It is shameful and necessary for me to call you out. Please do better and start by admitting to not researching you statements in this article and that it is misinformation. Although you risk losing some readership (subscribers) will earn some respect from many of them.”

Our article described Dan Caruso as a billionaire. Public records suggest his net worth is closer to the hundreds of millions, not billions. However, companies he’s led have managed and negotiated investments worth billions, and his role as a venture capitalist makes precise valuation difficult. Calling him a billionaire may have been an overstatement; calling him a major financial power player is not. The broader point about large financial interests shaping Boulder’s elections remains accurate.

The more serious criticism here is about bias. Yellow Scene Magazine has clear values: transparency, accountability, and fair elections. We’re loyal to those principles, not to any party. We’ve called out dark money and election manipulation by Democrats and Republicans alike. Mamdani’s race in New York and the Democratic establishment’s quiet backing of Cuomo are just one example that this issue cuts both ways.

Private organizations and wealthy donors continue to shape outcomes. The candidates backed by Caruso and Engage Boulder performed strongly. And ignoring that would be a disservice to Boulder voters.

Final Word

Our commitment is simple: report the facts, show our work, and correct when precision demands it. The role of journalism is to exam and critique power. Boulder’s voters deserve transparency from everyone shaping their democracy, including us.

The post An Editor’s Note – Dark Money in Boulder & Transparency appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

“If the West Wing is the mind of the nation, then the East Wing is the heart.” – Betty Ford

There is evidence that a fifth plane was almost hijacked on 9/11. It was scheduled to fly to Los Angeles that morning. Several passengers onboard raised red flags with the crew. When the FAA made the decision to ground all flights in the US later that morning, boxcutters were found left behind in the seats.

According to interviews with the men who planned 9/11, the target of United Flight 93 was the US Capitol. United Flight 23, the possible fifth plane, was likely targeting the White House. The dome of the US Capitol is is made of wrought iron; had it been hit it would have rained molten metal on whoever was still inside. As for the White House, we don’t have to imagine too hard about what that horror would have looked like. We have only to look at this week’s news.

Workers begin the demolition of the East Wing of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 21, 2025. Photo © Sizzlipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

The Trump Administration has used the chaos of the latest government shutdown to demolish the East Wing of the White House. The current costs are estimated at $300 million. Trump has said that he plans to replace the East Wing with a lavish ballroom. For Trump, the poor man’s idea of a rich man, “lavish” means gold on every surface. Civil rights attorney Ken White was spot-on when he described the plans as “What is Uday Hussein ran a Ramada Inn?” The destruction of the East Wing came not from radical terrorists, but a different ideology: the untrammeled worship of human greed and the thirst for power.

The US Capitol was spared on 9/11 thanks to the men and women Flight 93. This included the captain, a Denver native named Jason Dahl. Before he was murdered, it appears that Dahl made efforts to alter the plane’s radio frequencies. He hoped the hijacker’s messages on the intercom would instead be relayed to air traffic control. This may have, in turn, given crucial information to the FAA in its pivotal decision to ground all flights.

The names of passengers and crew members of United Airlines Flight 93 are inscribed on Panel S-67 of the National September 11 Memorial’s South Pool in New York City, photographed on April 28, 2012. Photo by Luigi Novi

The passengers and crew of Flight 93 are honored in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Captain Jason Dahl is honored at Denver International Airport. Every time I fly out of Denver, I stop by the black stone memorial in Concourse B and pay my respects.

In 2025, the Trump Administration has given pardons to the men and women who stormed the Capitol on January 6, some of whom sought to kill legislators and called for the hanging of the Vice President. The polemicist Charlie Kirk, who plead the Fifth to the January 6 Committee about his role in the attack on the Capitol, was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And now the White House, seat of the US Presidency for 225 years, sits surrounded by rubble.

The images from this week brought up a small chapter from my own life. For two years, I volunteered for a local Historic Preservation Board. I reviewed the application for landmarking and demolition of properties. For any property in town at least 50 years old, we reviewed the demolition application based on the building’s cultural and historical significance. The builings in town, especially those dating back to its coal-mining past, are a record of the city’s history, and the board served as a check on the erosion of that history.

We were not a popular group. Every public comment section of an application had at least one screed from a citizen about our perceived uselessness. We were told that we held back growth and kept blight in town. It was common to be asked why “we” needed to keep “that old thing”, meaning whatever historic property was on the agenda.

I didn’t always feel good about the work, either. It felt like any efforts at educational outreach, the thing that might get the public to understand us, took years to plan. There were attempts to create public signage about local history; another city department said they would cost ten grand apiece to manufacture. Calling someone in another department was treated like an international incident. You would be surprised to this was a “have your people call my people” kind of place; so was I.

For anyone who has bristled at red tape with older properties, myself included, let’s all turn on the news and watch the dust rise from the debris of the East Wing. Those are the images of a world with no concept of history as part of the common treasury. A world where all property stands at the whims of its current resident. A world where nothing is of, for, or by “the People.”

Trump is the embodiment of “It’s mine, I’ll do what I want with it,” even if it’s the most famous house in the country. Even when it’s not home to just a man, but a country’s sense of itself, its heritage, both good and bad, its fears and its hopes. It’s the manifestation of Margaret Thatcher’s assertion that “There is no such thing as society, there are only individuals.”

I have known my share of people who thought “local character” and “sense of place” were punchlines, code words for stagnation. The question this week is: if “character” and “place” are not aspirations in the local township, why would they be respected at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Ongoing demolition of the East Wing, White House, Washington, D.C., Oct. 21, 2025. Photo © Sizzlipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

The post The Heart of the Nation in Ruins: The East Wing Demolished appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

We are not only losing our democracy, we are losing our humanity.

A recent New York magazine article is among the pieces of necessary journalism capturing the wanton cruelty visited upon children, women and men by masked ICE agents and other deputized thugs. This piece wields its power through images – exquisitely unbearable. You should look, if you can bear it.

Fear and despair are etched on faces, mainly brown and Black. It has always been so. It is easier to dehumanize brown and Black people. It is the ugliest truth of systemic and unrelenting racism.

I don’t write to dissect immigration policy or weigh in on the manifold complexities of race and class. There is something far more horrifying running through us. We are losing, or have lost, our capacity to feel the consequences of what is being done by us and to us.

Gradual numbing and normalization glaze moral vision. It has been going on for all of human history, but seems at a new, generalized level of anesthesia in the United States. Our political leaders and a sizable plurality of citizens are only temporarily discomforted by our complicity in blowing Palestinian children to bits in Gaza, cavalierly exploding boats in the Caribbean, or tearing screaming brown children from their parents’ arms and shelter beds in Chicago. Worse, if such a bland adverb suffices, is that many men – and they are mostly men – appear to enjoy the process and the product. Indifference or enjoyment are co-equal exhibits of raging anger or deep sociopathy.

Distance offers no excuse. The masked monsters who throw women to the pavement or manhandle terrified children are directed or enabled by men and women in fancy suits and suites who justify the cruelty without so much as a single teardrop. They are as guilty of war crimes and urban felonies as a psychopath who hires a hitman to kill his wife.

These images of real-time socio-pathological violence are deeply unsettling, but just the tip of America’s frigid indifference to the suffering of children, here and abroad. We seldom see pictures of the tens of thousands – or more – of malnourished children who depended on USAID to cling to life. How are the actions of American leaders different than snatching pieces of bread from the bony hands of starving children? Is it less vile if we don’t see it?

An estimated 50,000 children under age 5 die from preventable malaria each year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria is agonizing, often ending in coma and death from multi-organ failure. Our abandonment of just one such child is a profound moral failure.

Groups of smiling white men – Donald Trump, Russell Vought, JD Vance, Stephen Miller, Mike Johnson, et al – slash budgets and agencies, killing brown children as surely as if they slashed their throats.

I’ve often ridiculed the idea of American Exceptionalism. I was wrong. We are exceptionally cruel, exceptionally arrogant, and exceptionally calloused. Even before the needless government shutdown, resources for the most vulnerable among us were being withheld under the American doctrine of “you get what you deserve and deserve what you get.” In a matter of days things will get exponentially worse as Trump golfs, preens like a vainglorious baboon and takes literal and metaphorical wrecking balls to our shared history.

No Kings Day was necessary but wholly insufficient. Every day we should line the streets and the empty halls of Congress with images of the pain being inflicted on the world’s children – and our own – with our silence as proxy.

I can’t – or perhaps don’t want to – believe that all ICE agents and other officials derive pleasure from watching other humans cower in fear or scream at the terror of losing a child. Instead of blind obedience, we need civil disobedience. I know and understand the objections to comparing our authoritarianism-lite to the rise of the Third Reich. But the difference is in scale, not nature.

Are there no people of moral courage in the chains of authority? Can no military man say, “No sir, I will not fire on a boat in international waters.” Can no government agents step in front of a helpless family and say, “You cannot do that to a child.” Have we lost all ability to see our own children and grandchildren in the terrorized or emaciated faces created by our actions and inactions?

Preserving our democracy and preserving our humanity go hand in hand. If we save one, the other will follow.

But we cannot, must not, look away.

The post Losing Our Humanity appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

Some news out of Texas A&M reminded of a similar dark moment in Colorado’s history, and the leadership that met that moment.

First, the present. Earlier this month, Texas A&M president Matt Welsh III fired senior lecturer 

Melissa McCoul. McCoul was giving a lecture on children’s literature, and mentioned that there were more than two genders. In an exchange recorded on video, a student objected to this statement, warning that it ran contrary to an executive order from President Trump, and her own religious beliefs. 

Initially, Welsh defended McCoul in a conversation with the student who had complained. When this conversation was leaked to Texas state representative Brian Harrison, the pressure was turned up. Harrison called for the government to investigate. Texas’ elected Board of Regents promised audits of the entire Texas A&M system, the largest university in America. 

Welsh fired McCoul, claiming she had taught material different from what was on the posted course curriculum. He also fired the head of the English department, and demoted the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the dean’s removal was “good”, and then said that Welsh must “also be fired.” 

Just last week, and effective September 25, Welsh announced his own resignation, saying it was “the right moment for change.” 

And now from present, to past.

In the late 1920s, the state of Colorado was run by the Ku Klux Klan. Their control extended from Governor Clarence Morley, a Klansman who banned sacramental wine to undermine Catholic churches, all the way down to the local level. In my hometown of Lafayette, more than one mayor was a Klansman, as were members of the city council. The city of Denver has had to reckon with this Klan past, as the Stapleton neighborhood changed its name to dissociate from its namesake KKK mayor.

Within Colorado, the Pillar of Fire Church, which still operates the radio station KPOF, was the Klan’s most prominent religious ally. Its founder Alma White, a former resident of Erie, helped organize Klan marches and proclaimed the Klan “a liberator of white Protestant women.” Many cross burnings were given a prominent venue at Crown Hill in Westminster, the highest point in Adams County. 

In the mid-1920s, Governor Morley told Norlin that the state legislature would receive its budget for the year if it expelled its Jewish and Catholic students and faculty. 

Writer and philosopher C.S. Lewis wrote that “Courage is… the form of every virtue at the testing point,” and this is where George Norlin and Matt Welsh III differ. The Klan had the power to bring the University of Colorado to its knees. I’m sure Norlin had boosters meet with him, saying it wasn’t worth ruining good ol’ CU for those Jews and Catholics. He had the state legislature, one of the state’s largest Protestant churches, against him.

George Norlin was tested that year, and he told the Governor no. He did not betray his principles, or the Jewish and Catholic members of the university. 

There were consequences. The university’s budget was cut off. Defending the university’s freedom had a very real financial cost. CU had to survive off a property tax written into the state constitution. These lean times would be a foreshadowing of the Great Depression that was to come. Still, for Norlin, a university where a student or teacher could be kicked out because of their religion was against everything a university stood for. The 1926 election saw the Klan lose power in state government, and the university budget was restored.

In 1932, Norlin accepted a position from Columbia University as Professor of American Life at the University of Berlin. In Berlin, he saw the decline of a flawed republic into “Hitlerism”, as he called it. His memoir of those years, Facism and Citizenship, is, as nonfiction, more instructive than Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here. I would encourage people to read it. 

It may not be tomorrow, in a month, or in a year, but everyone in this country will know soon enough how much George Norlin they have within them. We know Matt Welsh III at Texas A&M didn’t have any. As for me, when that time comes, I hope I’ll have enough of Norlin in me to count for something.

The post What Texas A&M Can Learn From CU Boulder’s Darkest Hour appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

Being retired, if not exactly retiring, I spend entirely too much time reading political analyses. I find most less than enlightening, a few quite cogent, and occasionally a mix of nauseating and infuriating.

A nauseating case in point was the recent mewling by Times columnist Ezra Klein, who opined that Charlie Kirk was essentially a good political operative and skillful debater. Of course Klein noted Kirk’s nastiness, but that notation was a mere sidebar.

Klein’s piece dismayed his friend Ta-Nehisi Coates, who was apparently offended by Klein’s rather casual diminishment of Kirk’s overt racism. Coates and Klein then published a dialogue in the Times, wherein they gently negotiated their differences. Therefore my nausea.

It’s to be expected from Klein, who is invariably a pragmatic insider, not a strong, clear voice for, well, much of anything. But I expected more from Coates, including better taste in friends.

In the Coates/Klein duet, many words were spilled over the dilemma for Democrats. Klein’s approach, which I will tersely summarize, is to bend principles beyond recognition in order to gain a seat or two here and there. For example, he suggested putting up a few pro-life Democrats in red or purple places, thereby giving them a leg up, sacrificing women a bit in the bargain. Nauseating pragmatism.

Klein also cited Obama’s shift on same-sex marriage, suggesting that he would not have been electable had he supported it pre-election. Perhaps it was a political calculation, and not the only one from the somewhat centrist Obama, whom I greatly admire and recognize the complexity of his achievement. James Baldwin would have been unelectable – even in 2008.

Just today, September 30th, the Times published another political analysis from historian Timothy Shenk. The essay, titled,” Democrats Are in Crisis. Eat-the-Rich Populism
Is the Only Answer,” offered a similar set of pragmatic steps Democrats should take to regain power. As the title suggests, Shenk proposes shelving all the culture war nonsense and getting back to the pocketbook issues that most voters care about. Sort of a reprise of James Carvilles’s “It’s the economy, stupid,” campaign slogan for Bill Clinton.

The extent to which racism, homophobia and transphobia have been normalized is astonishing. The posthumous legitimization of Charlie Kirk is full moral capitulation. He was a manipulative, opportunistic bigot, who used a cheap gimmick, pretending to “debate” college kids, when he was just drawing them into semantic tricks and traps. Having a man with an undeserved megaphone – Ezra Klein – treat him as a worthy ideological opponent is ethical and political malpractice.

It was unintentional, but take a gander at the roster of pragmatic apologists mentioned in my short piece:

Ezra Klein – white, privileged heterosexual male.

Timothy Shenk – white, privileged, heterosexual male.

James Carville – white, privileged, heterosexual male.

Bill Clinton – white, privileged, heterosexual male.

How easily and glibly they are willing to sacrifice 60+ years of social progress in service of pragmatic political strategy.  They all pay lip service to civil rights, but it’s hard to hear them as they furiously backpedal. And of course trans folk are entirely expendable, left to be run down in the streets by MAGA Clown Cars.

Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote in a recent Times Magazine essay:

Robin D.G. Kelley, a historian at U.C.L.A. whose scholarship on racial injustice also landed him on the Professor Watchlist, is struck by how rapidly our society has changed since Trump took office a second time.

Kelley pointed to the fact that Trump was widely condemned during his first term when he called the white supremacists who rallied in Charlottesville, Va., “very fine people.” Now, Democrats and political centrists were lining up to honor a man who promoted the same Great Replacement Theory that served as the rallying cry for that march. At a time when the president of the United States is using his power to go after diversity efforts and engaging in a mass deportation project, some progressives are arguing that people of color, immigrants and members of other marginalized groups who felt dehumanized by Kirk’s commentary, podcasts and debates have to find a way to locate common ground with his followers.

“There has been an extreme shift,” Kelley told me. “This treatment is authorizing the idea that white supremacy and racism is not just a conservative idea, but a legitimate one.”

The problem for Democrats is not their lukewarm commitment to social justice. The problem for Democrats is that they are battling a battalion of pathological liars.

Trump is a serial liar.

Nearly all Congressional Republicans are blatant liars.

Every employee of Fox News is a lying liar or too stupid to discern truth from fiction.

All the voices on Newsmax, OANN, Breitbart and Truth Social are liars and/or so drenched in their own nonsense that they’ve come to believe it.

Every member of Trump’s cabinet is a liar or brain-wormed disabled.

It is unclear whether all right-wing podcasters and social media stars are liars, or just saps that swallow all the lies emanating from the liar list above.

Although my social media consumption is mostly local, it is remarkable how consistently the MAGA folks cite information from the dishonest sources I’ve noted. That’s why Trump won and why many Republican candidates win in tight races. The margins are thin and the election deniers and conspiracy theorists are enough to turn an election.

This is what Democrats must attack head on and unapologetically. Call out the lies and the liars. Don’t engage in phony debates or try to find common ground with bigots.

And most of all don’t throw women, folks of color and LGBTQ+ folks under your campaign bus.

The post The Democrat’s Dilemma appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

I believe a new word has been coined: Kimmeled.

Little did I expect to be among the many to be Kimmeled over Charlie Kirk’s murder.

I offered a relatively mild piece suggesting that Kirk’s dismal record of bigotry made his lionization by the right wing quite astonishing. Flags at half staff, Medals of Freedom and all.

Apparently some local conservatives began calling YS advertisers, threatening to boycott their products and services because of my/our insufficient reverence. As is the case in communities around the nation, my hometown, Erie, CO, is quite divided along partisan lines. The current mayor, whom I’ve characterized as MAGA-lite, has moved the town away from its gay-friendly recent history and its tenuous commitment to affordable housing. He and his slate-mates hold a 4-3 majority on town council. It is not clear that he or his mates are actively encouraging the boycott effort.

The boycott group remains anonymous, except for first names, which may be fiction. I am routinely dismayed and humored that such folks are unwilling to be identified with their repressive efforts. My opinion pieces, which seem a major catalyst for their campaign, are always clearly attributed to me.

The group has started a petition at Change.org, seeking to gain more support for their efforts to silence the YS voice. The publication operates on a shoestring budget and the loss of advertising revenue is a serious threat. I decline a modest fee for my columns, as the income would be relatively inconsequential and the survival of independent journalism is more important.

The petition uses my pieces as evidence of the magazine’s “radical” and “hateful” content. One assertion is that I/we hate white men, which is only partially accurate. I do dislike many of my brethren, including the very white men leading my community and my country.

Among the choices made by the local, straight white men was to remove the Pride Flag during Pride month, citing some convoluted bullshit about proclamations, precedent and local statutes. They, like conservatives everywhere, are relegating diversity efforts to the sidelines and promoting patriotism and the town’s annual Biscuit Day.

This partisan dynamic is not new, but was doused with rocket fuel by the murder of Charlie Kirk. It seems that Kirk is a hero and martyr, dying for the manifold causes of bigotry, sexism, homophobia, Christian Nationalism and racism. Quite a hill to die on, Charlie.

Having barely finished disappearing the Pride flag, the leaders of the Emirates of Erie lowered the Stars and Stripes to half staff, conforming to the commands of the despot-in-chief. Remarkably, Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a gay man, joined right in the honoring of a man who dishonored him. Polis has triangulated more than a geometry teacher or geocacher so it wasn’t shocking.

Charlie Kirk did not deserve to die, of course. Nor did a Minnesota lawmaker and spouse, whose savage slaying merited nary a peep from local or national “leaders.”

Jimmy Kimmel didn’t deserve what he got either, although he will not suffer.

I asked town council why they lowered the flag for this man:

Mr.Kirk  was a fierce proponent of Stop the Steal, preaching to his young acolytes that the 2020 election was stolen.

He spread misinformation about Covid-19, arguably leading to unnecessary illness and death.

On his opinion of Black people:

“If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”

“We know, you (Black women) do not have brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously.  You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”

On Martin Luther King, Jr:

“MLK was awful… He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.”

On transgender people:

“I refuse to lie. I will not call a man a woman or a woman a man, like, I refuse to do that. And in fact, I reject the entire premise of transgenderism. I don’t think it really exists. I think it’s a mental disease, and we’ve allowed it to all of a sudden become an identity… Transgenderism is a brain problem, not a body problem, and that’s how we should go about it.”

On feminism:

“…it is the leading feminist organizations in the country that are either silent or complicit in pushing this [transgender rights], because feminism was never about advancing female rights. Feminism was about hating men. What better way to hate men than to take young boys and chop off their parts?”

On Jewish people:

“Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them… It is true that some of the largest financiers of left-wing anti-white causes have been Jewish Americans..”

On immigration:

“America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.”

On what women should really want:

“The biggest thing is this: more younger women need to get married at a younger age and start having kids. The single woman issue is one of the biggest issues facing a civilization.

We have more single women in their early 30s that are the most depressed, suicidal, anxious, and lonely in America’s history because there’s a biological clock that’s going off and they realize that they’re not going to be able to have kids, that they’re not as desirable in the dating market or in the dating pool, and so they start to lash out on the rest of society by voting Democrat.”

On the importance of keeping Americans armed:

“Yes, people die from gun violence. It’s tragic. But that’s the price of freedom. Unfortunately, it’s worth it to keep the Second Amendment intact.

I think it’s worth it. It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights. That’s a prudent deal. It is rational.”

The Mayor responded politely, saying the President ordered it. Following this president is a moral failing. So much for courage.

Btw, I was not Kimmeled, despite the local cancel campaign. YS publisher, Shavonne Blades, said, “You just keep on doing you.”

If only wealthy, powerful media people had such ethical clarity.

You can help by supporting our advertisers and subscribing to YS and other responsible local media.

Like journalism like this? Support the local press that’s been telling the truth for 25 years. Become a sustaining member and get our monthly print edition at home. We’ve weathered 9/11, floods, fires, economic crashes—and some deeply chaotic years. With your support, we’ll keep going. Because democracy still depends on journalism.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.

The post Kimmeled in America appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author in their role as Publisher, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

This is our 25th Commemorative Issue, and I had planned to write something about how we started and why we still do investigative journalism and even still print monthly. But such is life; even reaching 25 years doesn’t promise smooth sailing. The world is always changing.

I am very proud to have reached this milestone, and I am also proud of the work we have delivered to Boulder County over the last 25 years. The fact that we’ve helped connect a large part of the growing East County residents to local businesses since our inception makes me feel good about our contributions. Today, Yellow Scene is the last and only locally-owned, independent publication doing authentic journalism for the entire county. We never accept sponsored content, and we never charge people for stories. Restaurants don’t pay to be featured. Our calendar is free. There is no paywall. Our coverage has always been focused on civics, education, health, sports, arts, entertainment, and in general, our lives. Which we have been recognized 209 times for excellence in reporting over the last 25 years. We are, in fact, the Free Press.

For 25 years, Yellow Scene has chosen to report truthfully and honestly. That commitment has earned Yellow Scene a loyal audience, but it has also drawn out a few haters over the years. But I know they don’t reflect the character of this county. I know the heart of our community because I speak with people every day and see the values they uphold at the ballot box. 

Three issues in, I published letters to the editor about a developer’s shady practices. This resulted in phone calls to advertisers claiming we were “violating election law.” It wasn’t true, but the harassment was real. I am forever grateful to the legendary Percy Connaroe, whom I often disagreed with, for coming to our defense.

When 9/11 happened, Yellow Scene was just one-year-old. I had to decide: do we shy away from the hard truths, or report them? We chose truth — documenting why the invasion of Iraq was a bad idea. We received hate mail, angry calls, and threats. The same happened when we supported Proposition 112, when we covered police accountability, and even when we made a joke about “Freedom Fries.” At one point, we were even doxxed by Joseph Camp, deemed Colorado’s notorious “supertroll” by Westword, now in prison in Belize, where laws against doxxing are stricter. 

Now, in our 25th year, we are facing the same pattern again. The same circle who have harassed me and others for over a decade is targeting our advertisers with a smear campaign about me and Yellow Scene. The flashpoint was our coverage of Charlie Kirk and a social media post that said, “Imagine that, half-mast for a Nazi.” Whether you think it was right or wrong, the point stands. We did not lower flags for the Evergreen students terrified by gun violence that same day, or for Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after January 6th, or for Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, who were murdered in a politically motivated attack. The Trump administration didn’t even lower them for Jimmy Carter. But they were lowered for a billionaire-backed podcaster whose legacy is being whitewashed, and those speaking out are being vilified. 

The gun violence that killed Charlie Kirk is a stain on America. Nowhere else in the world experiences gun violence the way we do. And while Kirk should not have died from it, that does not erase the words he used in life. Kirk defended the idea of America as a “Christian nation” rooted in white European heritage, pushing narratives that non-white immigrants are “diluting” the country. He dismissed systemic racism as “a lie,” attacked Black Lives Matter as a “terrorist organization,” and mocked Black women leaders as unqualified “DEI hires.” He called LGBTQ acceptance a “contagion,” smeared schools as “grooming” children, and compared gender-affirming care to “child abuse.” He suggested political enemies should be punished or even executed publicly. He insisted the 2020 election was “stolen” and encouraged January 6th attendees to “fight for Trump.” He was a staunch defender of gun rights and said: “I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”

I do not recall any of Jesus’ teachings calling for a white-ethno state. 

None of these comments warrants justifying violence. But if his words are protected under free speech, why are critics punished for pointing them out? This week, Jimmy Kimmel was fired for comments, joining a growing list of journalists, teachers, and others who have been punished for speaking out. Free speech protects Kirk’s words, but those who highlight his violent rhetoric are canceled. The irony isn’t lost: the same people who have screamed about “cancel culture” for a decade are now running their own cancel campaign — a national tactic now showing up in Boulder County.

The folks gunning for Yellow Scene are not new. They’ve called our advertisers before, left vicious online reviews, and harassed us and our neighbors over Pride, Black Lives Matter, and oil and gas regulation. Our former Black mayor was harassed endlessly; at his job, at his children’s school, even in his own yard. They are doxxing neighbors who speak up, and now they’ve packaged their bullying into a slick “boycott packet” designed to scare local businesses. They claim to represent “thousands,” but it’s the same small group of Erie names recycling the same old tactics. This isn’t about Charlie Kirk. It’s about silencing truth.

America is on the very slippery side of the slope toward authoritarianism. The POTUS is using the military against citizens; he is illegally snatching people off the street and imprisoning them without due process; and he is targeting dissent by criminalizing protest and arresting people simply for speaking out. We are facing a moral dilemma as a nation. Yellow Scene is clear on where we stand: with democracy, truth, and our community.

Through all of this, Yellow Scene continues to do what we have always done: connect our communities, and that includes our local businesses. 

If you value local journalism in your backyard, I encourage you to support our advertisers, tell them you shop with them, and consider becoming a sustaining supporter of Yellow Scene. We honestly can’t afford to lose advertisers, and thankfully, many are finding these threats offensive. They are not making a list of which businesses to boycott; they are making a list of which ones to support. 

We may be facing one of the darkest times in our history, but I believe connecting with our community is absolutely critical to everyone’s survival. Shop Local. Support our advertisers. Support local journalism. Support democracy.

Support the local press that’s been telling the truth for 25 years. Become a sustaining member and get our monthly print edition at home. We’ve weathered 9/11, floods, fires, economic crashes—and some deeply chaotic years. With your support, we’ll keep going. Because democracy still depends on journalism.

The post Everyone Should Be Fired Over Charlie Kirk appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author in their role as Associate Editor, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

Last week, Charlie Kirk was assassinated on a college campus. First, it must be said: this event has left a wife without a husband, a family without a father, and countless witnesses shaken by trauma they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. There is no downplaying that.

And yet, in the aftermath, I’m struck by the way this tragedy is being iconized and weaponized.

Charlie Kirk was a known political figure, though far from the stature of a Ben Shapiro or Joe Rogan. Much has been said about his legacy — but we can’t ignore what he actually stood for. Kirk spent years belittling Black people’s skills, questioning whether Black professionals earned their positions by merit or “affirmative action.” He once suggested he wouldn’t trust a Black pilot because of his race. He also believed the Civil Rights Act a “mistake” and “an anti-white weapon.” He championed the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, casting immigrants as pawns in a Jewish plot to erase white America. He denounced feminism, told women to “submit,” and consistently ridiculed LGBTQ+ people, religious minorities, and anyone outside his worldview.

None of this justifies his death, nor do I raise it to attack his grieving family. But to have a serious conversation about this moment, we must be honest about what Kirk contributed to. He didn’t simply “debate across the aisle.” He stoked a politics of division and fear, one that normalized hatred and, in some cases, inspired violence. The “great replacement” myth, which Kirk openly promoted, has appeared in the manifestos of multiple mass shooters. Kirk once told his listeners: “Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact.” Is it any wonder that young white men radicalized by this narrative have gone on to kill?

That’s why I cannot agree with those rushing to say Kirk was “practicing politics in exactly the right way,” as Ezra Klein recently wrote. Nor do I see Kirk as a martyr of “free speech.” If anything, his career shows how words have impact, and how rhetoric shapes the environment in which violence thrives.

We also need perspective. Some on the right are treating this assassination as a new turning point in American life. But political violence did not begin here. Last summer, a Democratic caucus leader was gunned down with her husband. In 2022, Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked in his home by a man who intended to kill her. The year before, January 6th rioters sought to execute lawmakers. These events were minimized, mocked, or even encouraged by many on the right — Kirk included. When violence targeted their opponents, it wasn’t treated as existential.

So no, Charlie Kirk’s death is not “the end of civil conversation.” It’s part of a longer pattern: political violence becoming normalized in America. The difference now is that figures who once fanned the flames are beginning to feel the burn.

Meanwhile, those who refuse to glorify Kirk are facing their own backlash. MSNBC’s Matthew Dowd was fired after suggesting Kirk’s rhetoric may have contributed to the circumstances of his death. Our own outlet, Yellow Scene Magazine, has received threats for publishing criticisms of Kirk. Ironically, the assassination is now being used as justification to silence critique of Kirk and his agenda, even though he was the one constantly parading as a defender of “free speech.”

We have a choice. We can pretend this assassination is an isolated tragedy, a break from civility in an otherwise healthy system. Or we can confront the ideologies of hatred and grievance that created the conditions for this violence, ideologies that Kirk himself helped spread. If we choose the former, more people will die. If we choose the latter, we might begin to reckon honestly with the politics that brought us here.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.

The post Let’s Have an Honest Conversation about Charlie Kirk appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Photo Credit – OpenArt AI

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

Allow a moment for the requisite sympathy for Charlie Kirk’s wife and children. Sympathy, not empathy, because Charlie didn’t believe in the latter.

. . . . .

Moment’s up.

Political assassinations are 3rd World stuff, oddly apt given the 3rd World state of our disunion.

The reactions from the political right and left have garnered as much press as the assassination itself. Locally, my progressive friends have, by and large, acknowledged the horror of the shooting and the grief experienced by his family and friends. Many have then quickly segued to the trail of ugliness he left for all to consider.

I avoid right wing dens, so my observations are fewer, but the political righters, locally and nationally, cite the same horror and similarly acknowledge the grief. They then also segue, but take a different trail.

It presents another grandly false equivalence. Rather like comparing January 6th with a Quaker peace gathering.

My wise wife suggests an extended time of just shutting up. There is something tawdry about itemizing Charlie’s vitriol before the blood is dry. There is also something tawdry about sanitizing and lionizing a man who made hatred more palatable by offering it up on a seemingly “dignified” platter. I’ve listened to Charlie. He was just a bit better dressed and schooled than the average racist Christian Nationalist.

But since our media-saturated society has no appetite for a period of just shutting up, an examination of the noise is unavoidable.

Kirk’s record speaks for itself. He thought the Civil Rights Act was a grave mistake. He thought women should be submissive. He thought more people should have guns – ironic, that. He promoted the Great Replacement Theory. He thought there should be no separation between church and state. Homosexuality is a sin. Transgender care should be illegal. George Floyd was a “scumbag.” MLK, Jr. was a “bad guy.” A Black pilot is a great risk because of affirmative action.

He was a fierce proponent of Stop the Steal, preaching to his young acolytes that the 2020 election was stolen.

He spread misinformation about Covid-19, arguably leading to unnecessary illness and death.

There’s this dandy from 2023:

“WE KNOW, YOU (BLACK WOMEN) DO NOT HAVE BRAIN PROCESSING POWER TO OTHERWISE BE TAKEN REALLY SERIOUSLY.

YOU HAD TO GO STEAL A WHITE PERSON’S SLOT TO GO BE TAKEN SOMEWHAT SERIOUSLY.”

There’s more, but one must be cautious when dishonoring the recently deceased.

But to those who think this partial list of offenses inappropriate, I offer the “other” side.

Trump will grant this man the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Flags ordered at half staff for a podcaster.

Congressional prayers for Kirk, but not a slight bow of sympathy for the children shot on the same day, nor a mention of sorrow over the murders of Minnesota Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark.

“He was loved and admired by ALL . . .” – Donald Trump

And as to the grand false equivalence . . .

All of the things I and others report about Charlie Kirk are true. Accurately chronicled and meticulously sourced.

The lionizing and celebration of a man who spewed such hatred, albeit in relatively dulcet tones, is offensive.

It is, perhaps, analogous to the possible appointment or election of a person to high position or office. The plaudits and praise that fill the resume or are chanted in the campaign must be countered by less laudatory – even unsavory truth. A man who has been multiply bankrupt and convicted of sexual offenses should not be given awards or positions based on high character and great accomplishment. The campaign rhetoric and the facts are not remotely similar, despite the claims of equivalency. Oh, wait!  We already fell for that.

So back to Charlie Kirk. Sad. Abhorrent political violence. Evidence of the easy access to deadly weaponry – ironic, that – again.

But don’t tell one side to go easy on defining him as a schmuck when he’s being nominated for sainthood by the other.

Y’all raise those flags back up and withdraw the sainthood nomination. Then I’ll be semi-reverently silent . . . for a while.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.

The post Saints and Sinners appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

Gotta love the MAGATs. They have now become fervent supporters of the First Amendment.

I do wonder how many of them have actual read the text. Certainly not the President, for his Constitution is buried somewhere beneath his huge piles of unread Holy Bibles.

Here on the local front, the paragon of civic rectitude, Ben Soelberg, passionately cited the First Amendment in a social media post wherein he defended the Erie Town Council for their protection of our flagpole from the Pride and Juneteenth flags.

Unchallenged by the Mayor and Erie’s straight, privileged white man majority, he pointed out that letting the Pride flag or any flag of Black solidarity fly – gee whiz, we’d have to let “. . . a KKK flag or Satanist Flag or Confederate Flag . . .” fly too. You know, free speech and all.

Council member Brandon Bell expressed similar sentiments during the “debate.” Our token woman, Emily Baer, excused herself from the meeting after Mayor Andrew Moore crudely, arguably illegally, smugly and dismissively cut her off mid-utterance so he might invite his pal Bell to offer a motion instead.

The flag-flying option Baer and her two minority colleagues supported would have allowed the Council to decide what flags the town might display. Apparently, Moore, Bell, Brian O’Connor and John Mortellaro are not comfortable distinguishing between a KKK flag and a Pride flag.

It takes a rather odd mindset to place the KKK flag and Pride flag in the same legal or philosophical category.  If I were Mayor or council member, I’d have no problem telling the KKK folks to place their flag where the sun don’t shine and the fresh breezes of Erie can’t reach it. And space in that sunless cavity should be saved for the Confederate flag request. How or why Soelberg brought up the Satanist Flag is beyond my ken. What the hell is that?

It is a contrived and disingenuous argument. Unfortunately, it seems that the conservative majority in our town just doesn’t want to be “that” kind of town, despite many of our neighbors happily honoring their LGBTQ+ and Black residents. Maybe banners, the Mayor offers?

This opportunistic allusion to the First Amendment is a hypocritical blight on the national landscape.

The MAGAstapo is picking up folks for irreverent social media posts. The Constitutional separation between church and state is filled with publicly-funded Christian schools all over the map. A baker doesn’t have to make a cake for a gay couple, but a Mayor can’t refuse to endorse the KKK?  The right to peacefully assemble is interrupted by illegally deployed members of the National Guard. Ask pro-Palestinian protestors how vigorously the government is protecting their rights.

Looking beyond the local squabble, the dynamics are crystal clear. Most Republicans, presumably our conservative council members among them, have had enough of “identity politics” and the “special” considerations LGBTQ+ and Black folks seek.

This backlash to years of social progress, albeit uneven, asks us to stipulate to the idea that now things are just dandy. No affirmative action needed. All Lives Matter. Back to that holy state of marriage only between a man and a woman. Get the damn men out of women’s sports! This is an important crusade, despite the NCAA President admitting that he knew of only 10 transgender competitors among the NCAA’s 510,000 athletes.

My wife and I moved to Erie to be near our family. We were initially wary of the political and cultural climate. Erie does have a bit of Stepford sheen at first glance.

We were enormously heartened by the June 2020 March in Solidarity Against Racial Injustice and establishment of Being Better Neighbors. I wear the T-shirt as I write. That event, and a joyful Pride celebration, gave us the comfort of kindred spirits. We are not Black or gay. Just human.

If we, a relatively privileged, comfortable, straight white couple, felt relief and support from this visible demonstration of support for those in the minority, I can imagine the powerful impact on the LGBTQ+ community and folks of color. Despite the post-racism nonsense propagated by the right, systemic and persistent racism and anti-gay bigotry are flourishing. Gestures and symbols of kindness and understanding are necessary. Especially for children.

It is deeply disappointing to see that support eroding.

Putting aside arcane posturing over the First Amendment, I ask questions our conservative neighbors are unlikely to answer: What is the cost you bear as a result of strong support for others? Does the Pride flag on our pole diminish either your rights or your well-being? Does it hurt your feelings? Does the assertion that Black Lives Matter make your lives matter less?

Proudly and prominently flying these flags is an expression of a kind community. The kind of community we want to live in.

Kindness costs nothing at all.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.

The post Free (?) Speech in Erie appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

More dead children, shot by a disturbed young adult in Minneapolis. More thoughts and prayers.

Late that evening, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and MSNBC’s Jen Psaki tearfully suggested that we see our own children in the latest shooting victims, an 8 year-old boy and 10 year-old girl.

Imagining that pain, they and others suggest, may motivate meaningful change.

The shooting in Minneapolis was indeed horrible. And yes, I imagined my own beautiful grandchildren. Who wouldn’t?

Albeit painful, it’s easy to imagine and feel pangs of terror if the dead children are white and American.

If the tragic deaths of cute, white, American kids can lead to meaningful reductions in gun violence, I suppose the “imagine your own children” empathy is valuable. But I’m sure the sincere tears will have no impact. By the next morning, conservative mouthpieces were spouting the same vile nonsense about “people kill people, not guns” and vicious demonization of all trans people.

Gun manufacturers, dealers and lobbyists rake in millions with no regard for the mayhem they create. The rhetoric is unbearable. “Guns are just tools.” “It’s not a gun problem, it’s a mental health problem.” That one is particularly galling because our Dear Leader and friends are also decimating mental health services.

It’s been clear for a dozen years that if 20 dead, white, American children in Sandy Hook couldn’t change our approach to gun violence, nothing would.

The scale of death increases geometrically and empathy shrinks when the children do not look like ours.

You may know that gun violence is now the leading cause of death for American youth. You may not know that Black kids are 8 times more likely to be the victims. I invite you to reflect on the relatively meager media attention drawn to the violent deaths of young Black children.

And our empathy seems to shrivel away entirely when the children are at some distance.

On August 15th, Donald Trump welcomed Vladimir Putin to a friendly chat in Alaska. Red carpets were rolled out for both “dignitaries,” a word I enclose in quotes because these two are the antithesis of “dignified.”  Trump exited first and, as Putin approached the red carpet intersection, clapped his hands and grinned like a child about to receive an ice cream sundae.

Less than two weeks later, on August 28th, Putin unleashed a horrendous airstrike on Ukraine, killing 23 innocents, including four children. An estimated 2,500 children have been killed or maimed in Russian attacks since the war began. I guess that Nobel Peace Prize will have to wait.

Israel, fortified by American support and weaponry, kills 28 Palestinian children every day – an estimated 18,000 in all since the genocide commenced. Not a thought, prayer or “imagine your own child!” is heard.

Our complicity in child mortality is not limited to war violence.

The Washington Post reported, “An analysis by a 15-member research team from Spain, Brazil, Mozambique and the US, published Monday in the medical journal The Lancet, estimates more than 14 million people could die by 2030 as a result of USAID cuts, including 4.5 million children younger than 5 years old.”

The Guardian writes, “Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will be ‘personally responsible’ for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children after he refused to renew US funding for a global vaccines body, public health experts said.”

And, closer to home, the Secretary of “Health” and Human Stupidity is blowing up the CDC, making it quite sure that children will die from any number of diseases that could be prevented or cured.

Gun violence in America is a moral failing. But the failure to see “the other” is immoral on a far more massive scale.

A dead child in Gaza or Kyiv is as great a tragedy as a dead child in a Minneapolis pew.

RFK, Jr. is as responsible for the preventable death of a child in an underdeveloped country as a shooter is for a death in the Annunciation Church.

And Donald Trump would have the deaths of “4.5 million children younger than 5 years old” on his conscience, but he has none.

The loss of any child is unbearable.

And not just if they look like ours.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.

The post We Kill Children appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author in their role as Publisher, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud. 8/7/25 Updated to reflect that Ryan Schuchard and Nicole Speers’ op-ed was in response to a meme.

The June 1 firebombing on Pearl Street shocked the city. Mohamed Sabry Soliman hurled a makeshift Molotov cocktail into a crowd rallying for the release of Israeli hostages and POWs in Gaza. One person was killed; several others were hospitalized. In the immediate aftermath, Yellow Scene called it, “an act of horror that will take a long time to heal from.”

But in the weeks since, the tragedy has taken on a life of its own. It has become a political litmus test and a flashpoint for how Boulder speaks (or doesn’t) about Gaza, Zionism, and dissent. 

That tension recalls a moment from not so long ago. In the aftermath of September 11, national grief quickly hardened into dogma. Muslims were scapegoated. Civil liberties were stripped. The Bush administration launched wars in the name of security, killing hundreds of thousands. In Boulder, Boulder Weekly published Pamela White’s now-famous cover story, “Why Are We So Hated?” just two days after the attacks. It asked the question few dared to at the time: what motivates our enemies, and what do their grievances say about us?

In that piece, CU professor Ira Chernus cautioned against moral absolutism: “The general assumption is that if you listen to what they say, that endorses [the attack].” But listening, he argued, was essential to preventing future violence. Other voices have echoed the same sentiment. David Barsamian called terrorism “the poor man’s B-52,” highlighting the power imbalance between nations and those who resort to desperate, brutal tactics. Joel Edelstein added, “Americans would not sit quietly if they were treated like the Palestinians are treated by the Israelis,” pointing to the double standards in how suffering and resistance are framed depending on who experiences them.

The parallels in today’s discourse are hard to miss. After 9/11, anyone seen as “disloyal” or critical of U.S. policy was branded un-American, even treasonous. The Dixie Chicks were blacklisted. Journalists were sidelined. Protesters were smeared. Yellow Scene received hate mail and calls for speaking out against invading Iraq. Similarly, in Boulder today, the space to ask uncomfortable questions—about Gaza, about power, about complicity—is rapidly closing.

And just as post-9/11 narratives erased decades of U.S. interventionism to cast America as a blameless victim, today’s narrative risks painting over 74 years of occupation and apartheid that set the stage for October 7th.

Within hours of the Pearl Street attack, leaders across Colorado denounced it as an act of antisemitism. Governor Jared Polis issued a statement. A pledge was circulated among the members of the Boulder City Council. “It was important to stand with our Jewish community,” one council member said. Six members signed immediately.

One didn’t: Councilwoman Taishya Adams. Instead, she released her own statement mourning the tragedy while also addressing the broader political context, particularly with regards to Gaza.

Her refusal sparked outrage, and social media erupted. A petition to remove her from office began circulating. A few days later, councilmembers Mark Wallach and Matt Benjamin published an op-ed accusing Gaza solidarity activists of “abandoning all standards of decency” and engaging in “juvenile, performative politics.” The piece focused on a “Wanted” poster circulating online that criticized council members for refusing to pass a ceasefire resolution or divest city investments from weapons manufacturers.

Wallach and Benjamin claimed the poster implied council members were criminals: “Dead or alive?” they wrote. “This is on the very edge of incitement to violence… This antisemitic characterization of the Council, some members of which are Jewish, is abhorrent, and perhaps the most offensive thing that can be said to a person of the Jewish faith.”

The accusation feels disingenuous. Every council member who opposed a ceasefire resolution, Jewish or not, was included on the poster. The message was clear: refusing to act on Gaza has political consequences. To frame that criticism as antisemitic because some targeted officials are Jewish confuses identity with ideology and erases the fact that many Jews in Boulder are also calling for a ceasefire.

Adams made her position clear. “My decision to withhold my signature from the June 2 city statement did not reflect any lack of empathy or support for Jewish community members – or an attempt to somehow justify the horrific act committed by this individual. Whatever his motivation, violence and terror are NEVER the answer.”

She condemned the attack unequivocally. She met with Jewish constituents to offer support. But she also questioned the framing of the pledge, which she claimed ignored the attacker’s stated motives: both antisemitic and anti-Zionist. 

“If we are to prevent future violence and additional attacks in our community, I believe we need to be real about the possible motivations for this heinous act.” Adams continued, “Denying our community the full truth about the attack denies us the ability to fully protect ourselves and each other.”

That distinction matters. Not because it makes the attack less horrific, but because severing the attack from its political context ensures it will happen again. It is possible to mourn a violent act and still ask what produced it. It is possible to condemn antisemitism and still interrogate Zionism. But in Boulder, attempts to do both are being cast as heresy.

The backlash continued. A second opinion piece—this time from council members Nicole Speer and Ryan Schuchard—accused Adams of posting “antisemitic content” that “minimized and unnecessarily appropriated the Holocaust.” Their response was directed at a meme she shared about the genocide of Native Americans by the United States, which led to the Indigenous population dropping from an estimated 15 million to just 250,000 by 1900.

Yet her official statement made no mention of the Holocaust. Her focus was squarely on Gaza and city investments. The accusation underscores a deeper problem this moment has revealed: the collapse of any distinction between principled criticism of a government and hatred of an entire people. 

That’s the pattern now. Every attempt to analyze this tragedy in its full context, every mention of Gaza, apartheid, or U.S. complicity, is met with accusations of antisemitism. No matter how many disclaimers Adams includes, no matter how clearly she condemns the violence, the label sticks. It is a pervasive black and white way of thinking that justifies erasure.

 CU professor Nathan Schneider, who lost relatives in the Holocaust, called this narrowing of discourse “the unspeakable.” In a widely shared reflection on the Pearl Street attack, he wrote:

“The word antisemitism has shifted from a cry against genocide into a way to excuse it. … Locally, the explanation of antisemitism doesn’t compute. Another group of demonstrators—many of them Jewish, calling for a Gaza ceasefire—rallies downtown regularly. They weren’t attacked. Why one group and not the other?”

For Schneider, Adams’ refusal wasn’t a betrayal; it was, as he put it, “a raid on the unspeakable.” A rare moment of honesty. An acknowledgment that the firebombing on Pearl Street cannot be divorced from the firebombing of Gaza.

Yellow Scene warned of this. In the days after the firebombing, we wrote that grief would be weaponized to silence people. Since October 7th, accusations of antisemitism have become the bluntest tool to shut down criticism of Israeli policy. That national pattern is now playing out in Boulder.

None of this excuses violence. But it demands we ask: If the language of antisemitism becomes a shield for a state committing genocide, what happens to those trying to stop it? And what happens to a city that confuses condemning an attack with condemning a movement?

Adams’ refusal to sign the pledge drew swift backlash, but her posts made her reasoning clear: Boulder can’t claim to stand against hate while continuing to invest in corporations profiting from the siege on Gaza. Her critics are entitled to push back. But reducing her dissent to antisemitism sets a dangerous precedent.

That is the line Boulder is standing on now. Grief on one side. Fear on the other. And in between, a reckoning over whether this city will choose accountability or protection of power. 

It hit hard when, after 31 years, a beloved local publication closed its doors. Independent journalism in Colorado just got a little smaller. And a lot more vulnerable.

In Boulder County, only one locally-owned, independent news platform remains: Yellow Scene Magazine. We don’t answer to a corporate board. We’re not backed by a hedge fund. We answer and report to our readers..

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The post Boulder’s Breaking Point: Grief, Gaza, and the Language of Power appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Nathan Schneider (assistant professor, Media Studies) works at the intersections of technology, religion, and social change. He is the author of several books, most recently Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy. His articles have appeared in publications such as Harper’s, The Nation, The Guardian, Vice and The Catholic Worker. Find more information at nathanschneider.info.

Originally appeared at Flaming Hydra.  Nathan Schneider appears here as a guest contributor for Yellow Scene Magazine.

On September 12, 2001, Ward Churchill, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder (where I now teach) published an essay about the terrorist attack that had taken place in New York the day before. With the subtitle “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” Churchill compared the 9/11 catastrophe to Malcolm X’s remark about the assassination of John F. Kennedy having been a matter of “chickens coming home to roost.” As Malcolm had, Churchill suggested that when calamity comes to the United States, the country may not be so entirely innocent as prevailing narratives suggest. The Nation of Islam removed Malcolm from his leadership role after he made that statement; my university investigated and ultimately fired Churchill.

Churchill’s case is a reminder that academic freedom has limits. Most recently, I’ve been thinking of his story because of the inferno on Pearl Street, the horrific June 1st attack on my neighbors as they demonstrated in support of the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza. I am traveling, an ocean away, and it has been devastating to see scenes of my hometown on the news clips that cycle by on the trains. I have tried to follow what our community leaders are saying, and what they are not saying, and what some of us are saying only in private group chats.

The line that Churchill and Malcolm X crossed, and the line I notice my town shuffling around, is the line that surrounds what the monk Thomas Merton called “the unspeakable.” The unspeakable is the truth that lies beyond what a social order can tolerate hearing.

Merton described it this way: “It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss.”

The Catholic Worker James W. Douglass later extended the idea to the famous assassinations of the 1960s: the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. Each was slain, Douglass argued, as he crossed the line of the unspeakable. The Kennedys had begun to confront the Cold War military establishment, and to call for disarmament. King had expanded his vision from domestic civil rights to criticism of the war in Vietnam; he was murdered a year to the day after first speaking out. Malcolm X had traveled to Africa to internationalize the struggle for Black liberation. Each crossed these lines at the price of their blood. Douglass’s research linked the metaphysics of the unspeakable with the circumstances of each man’s death.

The statements coming from Boulder’s institutions and leaders, from news editors and politicians I have known for years, keep repeating the word “antisemitism” to explain why someone would attack peaceful Jewish demonstrators. But it is a word that draws a line, beyond which lies the unspeakable.

This word has morphed from naming the persecution of a diasporic civilization into justifying the policies of a nation-state backed by the most powerful military in the world; from a cry against genocide into a way to excuse it. The U.S. government, under both major political parties, has used “antisemitism” to carry out assaults on human and constitutional rights—on political protest, on academic freedom, and on immigrants and asylum seekers.

The change that has come over the word is itself unspeakable. One must pretend that the word has not changed or risk accusations of antisemitism. But changed it has. As someone who lost Jewish relatives in the Holocaust, I now fear the exploitation of “antisemitism” to silence and deport political opponents more than I fear actual antisemites.

Locally, the explanation of antisemitism doesn’t compute. When I hear it, I think of a retired Jewish professor in Boulder whom I last saw from a distance, with a sign calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The professor’s ceasefire group was not attacked, although it also demonstrates regularly in downtown Boulder. Both groups include Jews. Why was one group and not the other a target? “Antisemitism” makes this question unspeakable.

It is unspeakable that terrorism might have a cause—that however categorically wrong terrorism is, the chances of it rise when our government enables atrocities elsewhere. It is unspeakable that the eventual attacker may have been stewing in helplessness and rage, watching day after day the scenes of families and homes annihilated in Gaza, while hearing again and again in this country that the real problem is “antisemitism.” Every day the flows of media and the speeches of politicians ignore simple evidence.

George W. Bush told us that the perpetrators of 9/11 attacked us for “our freedoms”—and not, as the perpetrators themselves said, because of U.S. military interventions and bases across the Muslim-majority world. Because of what could not be spoken, this country packed up its innocence and set off into almost two decades of entirely avoidable, disastrous wars.

Only one member of the Boulder city council, Taishya Adams, declined to sign the statement declaring the tragedy on Pearl Street to be the result of antisemitism. Instead, she issued her own statement pointing out that, in addition to antisemitism, “anti-Zionism” also seems to have been involved. She has since become the target of backlash in the national news and beyond, and there is a petition circulating to remove her from office.

Adams’s small amendment was what Merton called a “raid” on the unspeakable. She invites us to remember that there is a difference between being Jewish and supporting the project of an expansionist Jewish state on land that non-Jews also inhabit; she suggests that something other than racist hatred might have been involved. Her statement enables a way of processing the horror that can connect the 32 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers at an aid distribution site in Gaza with the firebombing of demonstrators on that same day in Boulder.

Merton wrote that true hope—for him, “Christian hope”—“begins where every other hope stands frozen stiff before the face of the Unspeakable.”

The post Antisemitism and the Unspeakable appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author in their role as Associate Editor, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

I’m a Superman fan. Let’s start there. I think Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel trilogy had some artistic value, but I never thought it really got to the heart of who Superman is. This new Superman (2025) movie?  It gets it. It understands that Superman isn’t just some overpowered alien or a symbol of might: he’s an ideal. He’s what America wants to be at its absolute best: brave, generous, compassionate, powerful in the service of good, and not afraid to stand up for people when it matters most.

And if we’re being real right now, that ideal feels distant. The systems around us are massive and stuck. We’ve got tech oligarchs hoarding wealth and building weapons, AI accelerating inequality, a political system that feels like it’s fracturing at the seams. The White House feels unaccountable, our congressmen are asleep at the wheel, and the whole structure seems impossible for any one person to meaningfully influence.

That political landscape and the way it makes people feel disempowered is what the movie attempts to tackle. Superman  isn’t naive about politics. It doesn’t handwave away consequences. Its inciting incident begins when Superman intervenes in a foreign war and is met with suddenly a storm of voices: Should he have signed a treaty? Gone to the UN? Respected sovereignty? What are the implications for the world stage ?

Lois Lane’s character arc lives inside that debate. She starts the film cynical, not just about Superman’s choices, but about the possibility of doing good at all. Her background, her loneliness, her cynicism all of it points toward someone who has stopped believing anything truly good can last. She even struggles to believe in her relationship with Clark. However, over the course of the movie, she shifts. Not because Clark lectures her, but because she witnesses good being done. She sees a person choose compassion again and again, even when it’s hard, and she starts to believe that something better is possible.

That’s the first thing Superman teaches us: cynicism is not intelligence. That constant meta-analysis—”Is it it too naïve? What will the UN say? Will this upset the balance of power? “—can become a smokescreen for inaction. There’s a scene where Superman is basically asked, “But what about the consequences of stopping the war?” and his answer is simple: “People were going to die. What should I have done instead?”

There’s a silence. Because that’s it. Sometimes the right thing isn’t safe or neat or bureaucratically sanctioned. Sometimes it’s just… good. And you do it because it needs to be done.

Compare that to the way many establishment voices—media outlets like the New York Times, legacy Democrats, even some younger voices—frame political possibility. You hear a lot of “well, there’s only so much we can do,” or “you have to stay within the lines.” Activists have to “be realistic.” All that cautious hand-wringing is what Superman blows apart. He sees what’s wrong and acts. That’s the second thing Superman shows us: you don’t have to stop being good to be effective. He doesn’t need to “grow up” out of his ideals. He doesn’t need to give up on people, abandon his values, or break himself to win. He doesn’t need a power-up from a special sun or some cosmic boost. His real strength is his humanity. He goes home and talks to his parents. He remembers that there are people who need help, and that’s enough to keep going. He is strong because he cares. 

And that brings me to the third lesson: hope is a chain reaction. Throughout the film, Superman not just do good, but also inspires it. Lois breaks open a global conspiracy. A regular man stands up for Superman and pays the price. Mr. Terrific risks everything to fight for something bigger than himself. They don’t do it because they have to. They do it because they see someone else trying.

Hope is hard. It’s not always practical. It can feel embarrassing. But it’s also powerful and contagious.

That’s what Superman reminds us: even when the world feels impossibly broken, even when you’ve been told your whole life that nothing can change, you can still choose to act. You can be soft-hearted, idealistic, kind, and still be strong.

In other words, pessimism and apathy are out—and optimism is punk rock now.

The post What Superman (2025) Teaches Us About Politics and Hope appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

I suppose I’m not alone in my Epstein Files fatigue. The political bantering and media attention are incessant and absurd.

A few observations before moving on . . .

Anyone who thinks any salacious Trump details are forthcoming is a fool. The criminals who command the Injustice Department long ago erased any seriously incriminating material.

Fierce Trump supporters will find a way to claim his association with Epstein as proof of his divinity. If pussy-grabbing, sexual assault convictions and leering at teen pageant contestants didn’t tarnish his godliness, a few long-ago party smirks and bad dances won’t dent the teflon. BTW, his dance skills have not improved over the years. The videos with Epstein showed the same pathetic fist moves. YMCA.

Last night as I barked at MSNBC’s inane, repetitive, faux serious opining, I went from cynicism to despair. A commercial break transitioned from Trump’s disgusting nightclub visage to an ad for one of the many charitable organizations seeking donations to feed children.  The contrast is telling and heartbreaking. Children in America are food insecure, and our progressive talking heads are blathering on about the goddamn Epstein Files.

Donald Trump is a monster, but his monstrosity should not be measured by flights on Epstein’s plane or the number of 14 year-olds he ogled. We all know he’s an entitled sociopath whose entire life has been spent wallowing in adolescent indulgence, exploiting everyone in his orbit for profit or crude gratification.

The victims of Epstein’s perversion deserve empathy and justice, but this entire tawdry business is child’s play – pardon the accidental double entendre – compared to Trump’s full oeuvre.

I don’t understand, and can’t forgive, the oh-so-sincere “journalists” and members of the House and Senate who twitter on and on about this tarnished object against the backdrop of dead, dying, bloodied and starving children left in the wake of Trump’s cruel and immoral campaign of revenge for every slight that ever pierced his pathetically thin skin.

It is insulting to watch the chuckling roundtables of hosts and guests trying to score political or ratings points.

50,000 children in Gaza have been killed or maimed by American weapons, authorized by the pompous fool who would sign any executive order placed before him. He loves his signature more than he has ever loved another human. The carnage continues because of his indifference and vanity.

2,500 Ukrainian children have been blown to bits by Putin’s attacks because, in part, Trump is unwilling to restrain a strongman he so deeply admires.

Because of Donald Trump’s complete capitulation to the cruelest mob of right-wing zealots, millions of low income Americans will lose basic health care. Thousands will die from preventable illnesses, many alone and without comfort.

A Lancet report estimates that 14 million lives will be lost as a result of cuts to USAID funding,  4.5 million children under the age of five among them. Rather than reading this as an abstraction, picture children, tender and vulnerable as your own, crying themselves to death because truckloads of food were destroyed to make a political point.

How many small children will contract measles or other preventable diseases because Trump has empowered a mentally-ill conspiracy theorist who is dismantling an infrastructure of science and good practice that has protected children for generations?

The number of adults killed, maimed, starving and left to die by dint of American action or inaction is many multiples of the small corpses left in Trump’s wake. I don’t mean to sanitize this grotesque reality, but it is the children’s faces that break my heart.

I have three grandchildren and would do anything in my power to save them from pain. I cannot look at pictures of children starving in Gaza or hungry in American cities and towns without my mind’s eye briefly superimposing my own grandchildren on the image.

It is a natural defense response to blink away such images, but it is rational and necessary to take away the understanding that each child – each of 50,000 in Gaza, each of 2,500 in Ukraine, each of 14 million around the world – was loved as much as your own. And to know that we are all indirectly complicit should haunt every human with a conscience.

Every person with political power, every influential person in the media, should rage against this wanton inhumanity, not sit and chitchat about the Epstein Files.

I had the privilege of brief acquaintance of the late poet and storyteller Grace Paley. Her poem, Responsibility, is timeless and urgent. We must all cry out like Cassandra before it’s too late.

It is the responsibility of society to let the poet be a poet
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the poet to stand on street corners
giving out poems and beautifully written leaflets
also leaflets they can hardly bear to look at
because of the screaming rhetoric
It is the responsibility of the poet to be lazy     to hang out and
prophesy
It is the responsibility of the poet not to pay war taxes
It is the responsibility of the poet to go in and out of ivory
towers and two-room apartments on Avenue C
and buckwheat fields and army camps
It is the responsibility of the male poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the female poet to be a woman
It is the poet’s responsibility to speak truth to power as the
Quakers say
It is the poet’s responsibility to learn the truth from the
powerless
It is the responsibility of the poet to say many times: there is no
freedom without justice and this means economic
justice and love justice
It is the responsibility of the poet to sing this in all the original
and traditional tunes of singing and telling poems
It is the responsibility of the poet to listen to gossip and pass it
on in the way storytellers decant the story of life
There is no freedom without fear and bravery     there is no
freedom unless
earth and air and water continue and children
also continue
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman     to keep an eye on
this world and cry out like Cassandra, but be
listened to this time

The post They Are Our Children Too appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author in their role as Associate Editor, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

Earlier this week, Yellow Scene reached out to the Town of Erie to request a copy of the full community survey. In response, the town informed us that. to protect the integrity of the fielding process, they would not be releasing the questions publicly until after the survey closes.

Let’s be clear: while we have serious criticisms of how this survey was constructed and deployed, we have no desire to undermine the people involved (however flawed the execution) or invalidate a process that, for better or worse, cost the town $70,000. We decided we would respect the process and avoid publishing the questions today. However, we are going to share our initial impressions. All images of questions will come from the publicly available survey draft, and may have minor differences from the presentation of the final questions. What follows is a breakdown of the types of questions that make up the survey, based on known phrasing, public discussions, and our reporting. We’re sharing this to shed light on broader patterns in the survey design, not to necessarily dive into the political topics it covers or comprehensively cover the questions.

When the survey was first introduced, residents and council members raised concerns about the questions. There were fears that the survey would ask residents to weigh in on technical issues they weren’t equipped to evaluate, or present false choices in overly simplistic ways. At the root of it all is a deeper concern: that this survey, marketed as a way to reflect the “will of the people,” is being used to manufacture consent for decisions that may not actually serve Erie’s long-term interests and provide cover for city officials seeking to avoid accountability.

Now that we’ve seen the questions, the verdict is mixed. Some of those fears have come to fruition. Others haven’t. Overall, I’d break the survey questions down into four categories: Solid, Serviceable, Ill-Fitting, and Loaded.

Solid Questions

First, some praise.

There are questions in this survey that are thoughtful, well-constructed, and likely to yield valuable insight. One example: a question that asks residents to describe what a “small-town feel” means to them. This question stands out because it doesn’t force a numerical answer or push residents into a false binary. It invites reflection, and in doing so, it taps into a real, emotional tension as Erie grows. What makes Erie feel like home? What elements of that tight-knit identity might be at risk as development accelerates?

That’s the kind of question a survey should ask.

My only critique is that the framing presumes Erie does have a small-town feel, and that this is inherently good. It’s a subtle slant, but worth noting. Still, I’d estimate fewer than a dozen of the survey’s questions strike this kind of thoughtful, balanced tone.

Serviceable Questions

Next up: the middle-of-the-road questions. These aren’t great, but they aren’t harmful either. Some are simply boring. Others are vague or imprecise. But they don’t mislead or cause real damage. Think basic demographic questions (race, income) or broad approval ratings.

Take Question 6, for example:
“Do you approve or disapprove of the job the Town of Erie is doing to provide public services, projects, and programs for Town residents?”

It’s a reasonable pulse check. But it’s incredibly broad. What counts as a “public service” or “town project”? Does that include festivals? Parks? Affordable housing? And what does “approve” mean? Is “mostly fine” enough to click “approve”? The question tries to measure overall satisfaction, but it’s so fuzzy that the results may not tell the town anything useful. And because the answers are multiple choice rather than open-ended, there’s no room to clarify.

Ill-Fitting Questions

Now we enter problematic territory.

These are questions that simply shouldn’t be in a public opinion survey because they require expert analysis or have empirically measurable answers that shouldn’t be swayed by gut feelings or individual bias.

For example:
Should Erie prioritize building a water park or investing in sustainable infrastructure?

This is not a question of public opinion—it’s a policy decision that should be based on data, long-term impacts, and expert input. Pretending otherwise is irresponsible at best—and at worst, a thinly veiled attempt to justify bad decisions with cherry-picked public sentiment.

These types of questions create a false equivalence. Celebratory fireworks and water conservation efforts don’t belong in the same ranking list.

Another example:
“How much of a problem is rental availability?”

That’s something we can measure. Vacancy rates, average time on market, income-to-rent ratios, all of that data exists. Asking residents to weigh in without that context will generate results based on anecdote, bias, and personal circumstance, rather than fact.

And here’s the deeper issue:
Let’s say the majority of residents rank building a “water park” as their top priority. What then? Will the town scrap housing and sustainability initiatives to fund more splash pads?

If yes, that’s a governance failure. If not, why ask the question in the first place?

This is a $70,000 survey. That breaks down to roughly $1,400 per question. And some of these questions simply aren’t worth that price tag. Yes, part of the cost covers distribution and vendor fees, but that’s all the more reason to treat each question like it matters.

Loaded Questions

Finally, the worst offenders: loaded, leading, or misleading questions.

Despite public concerns, the final survey still includes several questions asking residents to weigh in on specific, highly technical complex issues, without enough context to make an informed decision. Two sentences of background isn’t enough for a resident to decide whether Erie should invest in high-density versus low-density housing, or use a particular tax structure to fund infrastructure.

Many of these questions boil complex tradeoffs down to a single, misleading frame:
Raise taxes or don’t?

Predictably, most people will choose “don’t” especially when the question doesn’t provide critical information like project timelines, interest rates, or long-term community benefits. But that’s exactly the problem: surveys aren’t built for this kind of nuance. What we’re left with is a set of questions that pretend to ask for guidance, when really, they’re just looking for permission.

Final Verdict: 5/10

There are worse surveys out there. But given the time, money, and political weight placed behind this one, it leaves a lot to be desired There’s nothing wrong with wanting to involve residents in decisions that affect their lives. In fact, that’s admirable. But there are far better tools than this: Hold real town halls. Share accessible, informative materials. Engage directly with community groups. Host public votes when appropriate.

This survey? It feels more like a cover story than a real conversation.

And for $70,000, Erie deserves more than that.

What the survey postcard looks like (don’t discard it!)

It hit hard when, after 31 years, a beloved local publication closed its doors. Independent journalism in Colorado just got a little smaller. And a lot more vulnerable.

In Boulder County, only one locally-owned, independent news platform remains: Yellow Scene Magazine. We don’t answer to a corporate board. We’re not backed by a hedge fund. We answer and report to our readers..

The future isn’t found in selling out or corporate donors. It’s in community.

Help us keep unbought, unbossed journalism alive and delivered to your mailbox.

Become a sustaining supporter for just $8/month

The post What Erie’s $70K Survey Gets Right—and So, So Wrong appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Updated to include a fundraiser organized by former staff to help cover expenses after being let go without severance. KUNC interview with Shay Castle, 7/11/25. 9News coverage, Boulder Weekly halts publication after 32 years, 7/11/2025, Daily Camera, Boulder Weekly’s future uncertain after reporting staff laid off, 7/10/2025, Interview with Stewart Sallo, Inside the News in Colorado, 7/11/2025

Yesterday, I learned that Boulder Weekly, the county’s once-beloved alt-weekly, has quietly closed its doors. The owner, Stewart Sallo, let the entire staff go, save for a bookkeeper and a special operations manager.  No farewell, no final issue, no tribute to the journalists who made it what it was. Just… gone.

Some might assume I’d feel triumphant. I don’t.

Boulder Weekly wasn’t my first job in media. I started in California at Good Times when I was 21, and later spent five years in a corporate role after moving back to Colorado. I wouldn’t reach Boulder Weekly until early 1996, and I’d stay until August 12, 2000. It was barely a year and a half old at the time—scrappy, ambitious, and fighting for survival against steep competition. I left a secure job after the birth of my son to take a leap back into journalism. It was a risk. But that leap, and that newsroom, shaped the publisher I am today.

The team I worked alongside was brilliant, dedicated, and often underpaid. I drank the “journalism matters” Kool-Aid because of them. We produced stories that sparked dialogue and made real change, all while scrambling to make rent. We were the first media outlet in the country to question whether the Oklahoma City bombing was domestic terrorism. We sent a reporter to Bosnia. The staff made Boulder Weekly matter.  Not the ownership, it was always the staff.

Boulder Weekly staff, circa 1998 or 1999 (or so)

Boulder Weekly was also where I cut my teeth on the business side of things. I was a full-commission ad rep, and I worked hard for my clients—pushing for design that went beyond phonebook aesthetics. One designer later told me that, after working with me, they learned to say, “Anything is possible.” That spirit of collaboration and excellence is what defined my career. I brought in about 60% of the Weekly’s revenue. I worked hard, earned strong commissions, and helped build something special. But when ownership decided I was making too much and offered to cut my pay while expanding my responsibilities, I knew it was time to go. That decision—painful as it was—ultimately led to the creation of Yellow Scene, originally serving the East County market before expanding to the entire county.

Now, 25 years later, Yellow Scene is the last locally owned news print publication serving all of Boulder County.

Everything else is owned by a hedge fund, a franchise, or a conglomerate. This is not a badge of honor I wear lightly. It’s a warning. If we don’t support independent media, it disappears.

 I’d love to hire some of the Boulder Weekly staff. However, the reality is that this work is expensive.  We still rely on advertising (and I’m endlessly grateful to the local businesses who understand authentic journalism is the bridge to an authentic community), but ad sales alone no longer sustain the newsroom.  We need both advertisers and readers to make this work.

I still print because it offers a tangible, high-touch value that digital doesn’t. The truth is, these days, our profit margins are slim. I used to fund this work with ad revenue alone. Now, I fundraise because I believe in what we’re doing—because local, independent journalism matters.

I’m grateful to the community that continues to read and enjoy YS, and especially thankful for those who have become sustaining supporters. Those small monthly gifts? They go farther than you might think.

If you’ve ever read a story in Yellow Scene that made you feel seen, informed, or inspired,  I hope you’ll consider becoming a sustaining supporter. Only $8 a month helps us print, pay writers, and hold power to account. It keeps real journalism alive, helps us hire the necessary staff (hopefully some from Boulder Weekly), produce the news, and deliver it to your mailbox.

Boulder Weekly’s closure is a loss for local media and our community. I’m grieving, with deep respect for the journalists and artists who made it great.

Please consider contributing to the staff-led fundraiser, created to help former Boulder Weekly employees cover rent and expenses after being let go without severance.

To those former colleagues: thank you. You shaped the publisher I am today. And to our readers, advertisers, and supporters—you’re the reason we’re still moving forward in this new landscape for local media.

Shavonne Blades
Publisher, Yellow Scene Magazine

Become a sustaining supporter and keep local, independent journalism strong.

The post Publisher’s Note: No Goodbye, No Final Page: What the Loss of Boulder Weekly Means for Us All appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Alligator Alcatraz. Catchy name. Trump, DeSantis et al, think it’s really funny. Lock up brown people in concentration camps surrounded by deadly animals. The strains play out in my head.

“My Country ’Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty . . .”

Many voices decry the horrors perpetrated by this administration. Masked thugs kidnapping brown children. Due process rights violated with impunity. Cruelty is not an isolated byproduct of enforcement. Cruelty is the policy.

Decent people recoil at the extreme measures our increasingly fascist government employs. I suspect that most Americans are slightly more humane, even if MAGA propaganda has persuaded them that we are being overrun by “illegals” who take our jobs and threaten our communities, even though those things are demonstrably false.

But in the constant debate over policy and practice, one element of immigration is never acknowledged: It takes great courage to enter a new country and culture and forge a life. Most Americans are comfortable and complacent and could not muster the strength to do what most immigrants do.

When I lived in Manhattan, I watched the daily influx of service workers from the outer boroughs. They often traveled several hours on buses or trains before most of us awoke and finished our first latte. They were invisible as they took their daily stations, cleaning for us, serving our meals, caring for our children. They probably had children too, left in the care of an older relative or neighbor. They saw our lives. We never saw theirs.

Many of them spoke little English, but were eager and open to learning and trying more. Few of us have ever had the strength to travel to a place where English is not commonly spoken. But if and when we do, our presumption is that they do speak English, or should speak English. If you’ve been a visitor to such a place, you may have heard an American speaking very loudly, enunciating every syllable, as though insisting that the host must understand!  Such Ugly Americans, to reprise an apt but forgotten book, make no effort to learn even rudimentary phrases in the native tongue. They don’t have to. In many places nearly everyone involved in local commerce has learned English, both as a matter of pride and of commercial necessity. Money talks. Money talks English.

The immigrants I encountered in New York, and everywhere else, work harder for lower wages, often because some opportunistic employer takes advantage of their undocumented status. When moving to Colorado, these impressions remained and new ones appeared. In our almost all-white privileged community, the first sounds each morning are lawn care workers or the construction starting up for the day on the new development of $650K homes rising out of the empty field just out of sight.

There is the rat-a-tat of roofing nails, guns wielded by brown men straddling roof peaks in the 100 degree afternoon. Or painting crews huddled beneath the one shade tree in a parched lawn, taking a short break for a drink of water.

We are conditioned by our comfortable biases to believe that we deserve what we have and that they, despite our absolute lack of any knowledge of their lives, also deserve what they have – or don’t have. That their poor English is due to ignorance, but that our inability to utter a word of Spanish, except perhaps “Margarita,” is because, well, why should we? It’s our country, right?

Imagine, if you can sufficiently liberate yourself from what is to consider what if, a reversal of circumstances.

Think of Donald Trump hanging onto a grimy subway strap at 5 a.m. as he heads to his job as a porter in a pre-war apartment building on the Upper Westside. The tenants are all wealthy El Salvadorans and ignore his efforts to say hello in his native (not very good!) English. Or Melania squeezed between two man-spreaders as she commutes to her job cleaning and cooking for a family of Dominican hedge fund titans.

I don’t mean to be preposterous, although these vignettes are surely preposterous. But why? What personal virtues or diligent acts makes Donald Trump entitled to a better life than Gallo, Jorge, or any of the bright, good-spirited porters in the building we called home for 19 years? They also spoke much better English than Trump.

And the sensitive, dignified woman from Eastern Europe who took public transportation to clean apartments in our building – including ours.  She has remained our friend some eight years later and her soul shines brighter than all of Melania’s diamonds.

So to all you pompous Republican bottom dwellers in Congress and the members of the criminal enterprise in the Whitehouse:  I challenge you to walk a mile in immigrant shoes. You couldn’t do it. You’d take a limo or a golf cart.

The post Who Has Real Strength? appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

There are many ways to make other people feel unwelcome. Among the most effective is to leave the room every time they enter. This is what the conservative – reactionary – justices on the Supreme Court encouraged last week.

The Court ruled in favor of a group of Maryland parents who sued for the right to remove their elementary school children whenever any LGBTQ+ or LGBTQ+ adjacent subject matter entered the classroom.

The majority ruling was anchored in the right to religious “expression.” In this and other cases, from hairdressing, wedding planning to cake-making, the religious “expression” seems to be “fuck you!”

Critics of the ruling, including the eloquently dissenting liberal justices, worried, with justification, that the Alito crowd had opened the door to endless opt outs when classroom materials or discussions violate parents’ beliefs.

One can imagine any number of curriculum items, including evolution, that violate the beliefs of someone’s religion.

In this case, Alito opined, LGBTQ+ presence in any form “. . . substantially interferes with the religious development of their children . . .”

The corrupt and chronically bitter Clarence Thomas complained about “. . . the inclusion of the storybooks” and the “exclusion of traditional religious views. . .”

This is not the first time that Thomas constructed a remarkably stupid false equivalence. Storybooks about other humans don’t violate the establishment clause. Teaching traditional religious views in public schools is a blatant violation, although to be fair, blatant violations are a daily affair in the form of “Under God” in the pledge and “In God We Trust” on kids’ lunch money.

The very Christian conservative justices are perplexed why anyone would fail to see the impeccable logic in service of their inerrant beliefs. These Christians and so many others see their beliefs as incontrovertible and see themselves as oh-so-tolerant when begrudgingly acknowledging that non-believers have any rights at all in their country.

The opt-out precedent established is worrying, but trivial compared to the consequences on children and their families.

Imagine the inner experience of a child of same-sex parents when a group of those “religiously developing” children are removed from the classroom when a family that looks like their own is offered in a book or discussion. How disgusting must they be! Their classmates must be shielded from the kind of people they love.

How sad might a child be if already feeling vague stirrings of affection for another child of the same gender? For how long will such a child’s love feelings be clouded by the implicit scorn of their judgmental peers? If this does not strike you as a real issue, you have forgotten what it is to be a child.

Alito thinks Uncle Bobby’s Wedding and Pride Puppy, about a puppy lost during a pride parade, substantially interfere with childrens’ religious development. Some religion that.

And how about the ones whose religious development includes teachings that those books – those people – are so dangerous to their well-being that they can’t go to school? Imagine their future ingrained bigotry. And imagine the deep, perhaps lifelong, conflict they will feel if they are among the estimated 10 percent of humans who eventually find their real selves with a love partner of the same gender.

The other opt-out concerns are real, but relatively trivial. A bunch of kids absent when evolution is taught – or glancingly noted – would only have other kids scratching their heads in bemusement. “What the heck is wrong with them? Who cares if they or their parents don’t believe in evolution? Their loss.”

But this is different. After decades of uneven progress for our LGBTQ+ community, the momentum is in reverse gear and accelerating. In Erie, the town where I live, the Pride Flag became a hot-button issue this year. Most observers think the faithful justices in the majority are just waiting for a well-funded litigant to bring a case that will allow them to whittle down or erase the right to same-sex marriage. Crimes against our LGBTQ+ friends and neighbors have risen for four straight years. LGBTQ+ folks are nine times more likely to be targets of hate crimes.

The “religious development”Alito cherishes is inculcating bigotry not faith, hate not love.

The multicultural community earned through decades of legal and political work is being dismantled at a furious and infuriating rate.

That is precisely what Alito, Thomas and the other conservative justices want.

The post Developing Little Bigots appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author in their role as Associate Editor, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

A few days ago, the Boulder community experienced an act of horror that will take a long time to heal from. Mohamed Sabry Soliman threw a makeshift Molotov cocktail, setting people on fire, as bystanders watched in shock and disbelief. I was stunned when I first heard what had happened. While many in the city are grieving and searching for answers, others are responding in a more cynical manner. As national attention converges on Boulder County, some are wasting no time in using it to their advantage.

I’m not here to make sweeping claims about what should happen next, or how this could have been predicted or prevented. I’m not here to make assumptions about the suspect, his motives, or the victims. But I will say this: we must not let this tragedy, or the opportunists exploiting it, drag us away from our values and into hatred.

Firstly, Yellow Scene Magazine has been consistently clear in our stance: we condemn the genocide in Gaza. Our criticism of Israel does not make it difficult for us also to condemn lighting people on fire or to recognize this for what it is: a tragedy. Many victims remain hospitalized, some may not survive, and many more are traumatized and forever affected. The grief people are feeling is legitimate. What isn’t legitimate is the attempt to paint this act of violence as representative of broader political movements or ideologies.

 This was not the work of a radicalized twenty-something college student. Nor was it the act of a leftist radical fighting in the name of Marx. The alleged attacker is an Egyptian man in his 40s, who had reportedly been planning this act for over a year; his relationship to the war and its trauma likely looks nothing like that of the average American protester. Attempts to use this incident to demonize the left, to vilify those who’ve spoken up for Palestinians, or to tie this act to pro-Gaza advocacy are not just dishonest; They are calculated and opportunistic at best, and dangerously misleading at worst.

We know what pro-Palestinian advocacy in Boulder and Colorado looks like. We’ve covered it: art exhibits with kites carrying the last words of dead Palestinians killed; a peaceful protest against military contractors, press conferences in Denver where Palestinian community members elevated South Africa’s case, accusing Israel of genocide; a fast last week in protest of starvation in Gaza. The connection between this man and those actions is tenuous at best, and often manufactured by people with an agenda. I point to the many forms Palestinian advocacy has taken in Boulder and Colorado, not to claim there’s a single legitimate way to protest, but to reject the attempt to conflate principled dissent with indiscriminate violence.

Yes, this attack follows the embassy firebombing in D.C., and now some are calling it the start of a violent “pattern.” But what exactly is starting? This pattern of violence didn’t begin last week or the week before; it’s been there all along. It just wasn’t politically convenient to name it until now.

Just last month, Joseph Czuba, an Illinois man, was sentenced to 53 years for murdering a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy simply because he believed all Muslims should die. A few months ago, two people were shot in Miami because the perpetrator was “hunting Palestinians.” And that’s not even touching the violence faced by protestors, like the UCLA students who were brutalized by a masked mob and then shot with rubber bullets by police, or the relentless, daily violence in Gaza and the West Bank. Since breaking the ceasefire, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians. On March 18, 2025, the death toll hit 600 in a single 24-hour period. Four hundred of those were children.

This is not whataboutism. The other instances of violence I’ve mentioned don’t erase what happened in Boulder. They don’t minimize the pain, the horror, or the real human suffering. What they do call into question is the idea that violence is unique to the “left” or somehow inherent to those who support Palestinian liberation. They also expose a painful double standard: the violence inflicted on Gaza and those who advocate against the genocide treated very differently than violence committed against the Jewish community or, more precisely, supporters of Zionism 

Has antisemitism risen since October 7th and the discourse that followed? Undoubtedly. And we must take that rise seriously. In many ways, we have. Since the Boulder attack, we’ve seen dozens of think pieces, statements from the governor and president, and swift condemnation. There’s also been heightened scrutiny, and in some cases, outright crackdowns, on anyone who dares to say “Free Palestine.”

I find gratitude in the fact that the Jewish community is supported in moments of grief. What troubles me is how quickly that support is weaponized into suspicion, surveillance, and slander, painting the millions of Americans who’ve marched for Palestinian rights as terrorists or enemies of the state. And I think it’s worth asking: where was this urgency, this outrage, this reflex to protect, when it was Palestinians being bombed and brutalized? Where is it now, as Islamophobia quietly surges? This question feels especially sharp in Boulder, where the city council has passed a declaration condemning antisemitism, but not Islamophobia. These disparities make something clear: for many in power, this moment isn’t just about healing. It isn’t even solely about protecting Boulder’s Jewish community. It’s about who gets to be seen as deserving of protection and who doesn’t. It’s about whose grief moves institutions, and whose grief is ignored. In the end, it’s about power. 

Trump used the attack to blame immigrants and justify his authoritarian, hateful immigration policies. Never mind that most mass shootings in this country are carried out by white men, many of whom cite Trump in their manifestos. And now, unsurprisingly, the attacker’s family has been detained by ICE. All of this unfolds against the backdrop of an increasingly aggressive effort to suppress free speech on Palestine. The fact is, Trump and the GOP don’t see this as a tragedy, they see it as an opportunity. A way to seize power by stoking fear. A chance to turn grief into hatred, toward immigrants, toward protesters, toward speech, and toward each other.

Hilary Kalisman, an assistant professor of history and the endowed chair of Israel/Palestine Studies in the Program in Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, wrote in the wake of this moment: 

“I hope my community will never face an attack like this again. And I hope, too, that we will avoid becoming political pawns, for Israel’s government or for the current administration. The Middle East is still experiencing devastating violence; while it does, Jews and Palestinians here in the U.S. will both face unpredictable and complicated threats.

To help combat them, we must stop making assumptions of one another. Doing so means finding a space to listen — to do the nuanced work that moments like this can endanger, in our classrooms, our communities, and our country.” 

Her words say what I’ve tried to throughout this piece: we can hold grief without surrendering to fear. We can demand justice without becoming pawns. We can protect each other without collapsing into hate.

The post Don’t Let Grief Become A Weapon appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Day after day “Harvard” graces the front pages of America’s newspapers. This week it is the Trump administration effort to bar international students. Last week it was termination of various federal grants. The week before it was threats to take away its tax exempt status.

In dramatic worst case scenario scenarios, apoplectic Harvard-related folks fret that the venerable and venerated institution will perish under the Trumpian barrage.

Color me meh.

I suppose a disclaimer is unnecessary, but I applaud not a note of Trump’s poorly orchestrated campaign. Barring students, withdrawing support, weaponizing the IRS and all else is mean-spirited administrative terrorism. And a dollop of appreciation is due Harvard for not immediately surrendering dignity, as so many others have done.

But among the vile acts committed by these vile people, ruffling Harvard’s golden feathers is petty stuff.

To grind an old axe, the Harvard mystique is perpetuated by the same misconception that pervades education. Simply put, colleges and schools are generally celebrated as superb based on their selectivity. They take a thin slice of the already glittering applicant pool and then boast that they are a great school because their students have shiny credentials.

It is like a school auditioning athletes through a series of regional races and then claiming superiority because their students run fast. These analyses have nothing to do with the quality of the school. It is a self-perpetuating cycle of cutthroat striving that does more harm than good.

This, of course, does not diminish the achievements of some students and faculty members. But their capacities and contributions would be no less at other institutions. I have argued, with evidence, that the grinding process leading to “elite” college acceptance often extinguishes the qualities that matter most and erodes mental health in unimaginable numbers of young adults.

My “meh” is not that I wish Harvard dead. Unlike Trump and his second-rate band of resentful psychopaths, I hold no grudges against so-called “elite” colleges, law firms or inadequately subservient entertainers. I didn’t work hard enough in my carefree youth to even get in Harvard’s  rejection pile.

My “meh” is twofold.

First, if Harvard suffers or ceases to exist, there is little to grieve in that there are several hundred other places than can do everything that Harvard can do. Its death would just cause a quick redistribution of applicants, students, scholars, grants and U.S. News rankings.

The second concern is of much more gravity.

New York Times headlines about these pesky attacks on Harvard are a reflection of misplaced journalistic and social priorities.

They are normalizing genocide by relegating Israel’s atrocities to a small mention below the fold. The dismembering of small bodies by American-made munitions is not less horrifying because it happens every day. It is compounding and more horrifying and we are growing numb. Murder of innocent children, women and men cannot be normalized.

Ask the people of Ukraine how much they care about Harvard’s tax exempt status. Every day Russian attacks kill hundreds of innocent civilians. We never know their names or see their faces.

Scores of organizations serving critical human needs are shuttering their doors every week because of what Trump goons are doing. Trans folks are fearing for there lives. Immigrants, undocumented and fully documented, are being terrorized by Homeland Security thugs who operate with impunity. Civil rights are violated without consequence.

It isn’t really about Harvard. My anger is at the hierarchy of concern that elicits public and media attention. Somehow we stipulate to the idea that attacks on Harvard are so much more important than attacks on lesser known places. It is the celebrity death that we collectively mourn.

The attacks on Harvard are displacing no one. Its international pool is comprised of the privileged. They and all other students can go virtually anywhere they choose. Their preeminent faculty members would be welcomed at any of our community colleges. (Just thought I’d throw that in as a suggestion that would actually be helpful.)

But all over the country, homeless youth are finding hostility and shrinking resources. Public health facilities are closing and leaving millions without care. Reproductive health care is vanishing, leaving thousands with unwanted pregnancies and no resources to care for the children they will bear. Millions of children suffer from daily hunger in miserable living conditions.

The magnitude of this diffuse human suffering is incalculable. Most of American misery is invisible, except to the selfless folks who are trying to hold the shredded pieces of our national compassion together.

These violations of humanity should be screaming headlines every day until the complacent majority starts paying attention.

Harvard can take care of itself.

The post Harvard, Meh . . . appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Progressive? Not so much.

Last week Colorado Governor Jared Polis vetoed SB25-005, a so-called “union bill” that sought to eliminate a provision of an 82 year-old law dealing with collective bargaining.

Polis offered up a word salad to defend his veto, but it was mighty hard to swallow. Like other dishes on his faux-progressive menu, this was an example of progressive-lite, which to my tastes is rather like lite beer. Why bother?

His rationale, in a dry distillation, was that he wanted both parties to play nice and come to a bland compromise that he could sign without pleasing or infuriating anyone. In a drawn out era wherein labor strength has shriveled and corporate power is unfettered, a half-assed compromise is not what Colorado or the nation needs.

In the likely event that this issue is unfamiliar, here is the essence:

Forming a union is generally a two-step process. 30% of employees sign a supportive card, leading to a general election wherein 50% plus 1 – simple majority – vote “aye.”

The archaic Colorado law then requires a second election with a higher threshold – 75% –  in order to enable collection of union dues from all employees, whether they are pro-union or not.

This is not a new issue. For decades, pro-business forces have encouraged employees to opt out of paying union dues. “Not fair!” they complain. “I don’t like the union. Why should I have to pay dues?”

It matters not to the pro-business forces or the anti-union employees that all employees benefit from a union’s negotiating prowess. Higher wages, job security, worker safety, overtime protections . . . are afforded all employees. The union asserts that therefore all employees should contribute.

The “I didn’t vote for it so I don’t want to pay” position is emotionally appealing, I suppose. But this issue can only be viewed through the frame of a centuries-old tension between labor and wealth. The first union was formed in 1794, and without this movement small children would still be working 80-hour weeks in coal mines to power the locomotives of oligarchs.

Well, I embellish, but the labor movement has been an essential element in lifting workers out of poverty and danger. This libertarian-ish “I don’t wanna pay” rhetoric is just another card in the deck increasingly rigged in favor of corporate power.

To elucidate the principle at play here, here’s an imperfect but apt parallel.

Think of the United States as a large corporation (too true these days, I know). Our elections, at the national, state and local level, often present comparable tension. For the most part, whether referenda or candidate elections, a simple majority is required. Because of our representative democracy, these issues are often mediated through our elected leaders, who ostensibly express their voters’ will on matters where a simple majority also prevails.

It is thereafter not optional that we all pay our dues. When taxes are levied, one does not have the option to refuse on the basis that “I didn’t vote for this!” When a bond issues passes to improve schools, your childless neighbor antes up whether she likes it or not. There are no “second elections” called with a 75% requirement in order to enforce the majority mandate expressed in the first election.

You might imagine the utter chaos that would ensue. Congress enacts Social Security, every eligible American receives benefits, but a second vote requiring 75% fails, so y’all don’t have to pay into the system if you don’t like it. But go right ahead and cash that check.

Union membership and influence have steadily declined for decades. Much of this is due to conservative propaganda, temporary and contract work, and the greed which prompted corporations to exploit workers in other places – longer hours, lower pay, higher death rates. Those pesky unions just forced them to find places where those gilded age practices of the 19th century are still possible.

Damn it, when your head is being held under six feet of water, you don’t compromise by settling on three feet under. That’s what Polis and so many other so-called progressives are doing.

When you’re six feet under, you fight like mad and, if necessary, kick your oppressor in the nuts.

That’s where we are as a country. Drowning. It’s not time for mealy-mouthed compromise.

The post Word Salad From Jared Polis appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The tension radiates from the head down.

At the top, sits the most profoundly ignorant and grotesque president in American history. Does engaging with him, in any way, normalize the abnormal?

There seem to be two distinct realms; the arguably necessary and the apparently entirely optional.

In the first realm are visits from the likes of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Like it or not, the rotten head of our executive branch can make life miserable for other nations. Carney threaded the needle with great skill and emerged with his dignity intact, a feat no Republicans can manage. Carney was clear during his recent campaign that he had no affection for Trump and his absurd lust to annex Canada. His firm stand may have sealed his victory.

In the Oval Office meeting, Carney pleasantly absorbed Trump’s fawning gestures of friendship, yet directly dismissed the 51st state overtures. He did what he had to do, despite what I’m sure is deep disdain for Trump’s crude, boorish, unethical self.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been equally deft, even when JD Vance, Trump and others in the CCC (clown car cabinet) humiliated him in a White House ambush. Zelenskyy, even more than Carney and others, must walk a tightrope in the interest of his country.

There are other obvious examples of the arguably necessary.  But what about optional interactions?

I omit a class of optional ass-kissing, consisting of rich people who want to be richer. That class has too many members to count. One can only surmise that a majority of corporate or financial wizards is several levels of magnitude smarter than Trump and think him a pompous fool. But members of that same majority have likely splattered chunks of their integrity along the road to their conspicuous success. What’s a little more compromise when the payoff is so enticing?

A controversial case in point was comedian/arrogant pundit Bill Maher’s White House dinner. Maher characterized it as necessary in order to bridge the trench and stench of partisan divide in the country.

In response, comedian/writer and equally arrogant pundit Larry David penned a sharp New York Times essay titled “My Dinner With Adolf.” In David’s characteristically sardonic voice, the parody body-slammed Maher’s choice to sit with the oaf, hoping to either understand the monstrosity or set an example of getting to know your MAGA neighbor.

Another needless example was the April 28th White House event for the Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles. Some players declined, but made inoffensive excuses. No one, to my knowledge, said they refused to meet with a racist tyrant. Did management set some rules?

And finally, the optional-choices-once-removed.

Members of the Leonard Bernstein family co-authored a NYT piece justifying their decision to sanction performances of Bernstein’s works at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Other performers have opted out, not wanting to be associated with the Center following Trump’s self-appointment as Chairman and filling Board seats with an assemblage of sycophants.

Part of the family’s justification, rather presumptuously in my estimation, was that Lenny would have wanted his music played. As with some of his lesser compositions, that record is not clear. (Apologies for the mess of a double meaning.) Their other argument was that great musical works can be uplifting and/or carry meaning of value – even subversive – at a time of existential crisis. Shostakovich and Stalin come to mind. The difference, and a great distinction indeed, is that Shostakovich composed at the time of and in direct defiance of Stalin. Bernstein did no such thing.

Staying at a Trump hotel or playing at a Trump golf course would be among many other optional-once-removed examples.

And finally closer to home – literally. Should we visit with MAGA neighbors over the back fence or at neighborhood gatherings? Will that mend fences or change minds?

A reader may be grateful or confused by my failure to offer my own opinion, although a semi-astute glance might reveal it by way of my word choices.

FWIW, my words and actions would lean – run away – from any gesture that holds any risk of normalizing. I can say “hello” in response to a cheerful greeting from a MAGA neighbor, but no dinner date or neighborhood gathering. I would not play at the Kennedy Center or go to the White House.

Any person, with or without power or position, who supports this descent into undemocratic indecency, is complicit.

I seldom receive comments, but I would really like to hear from you. There are legitimate arguments on both sides.

The post What Would You Do? appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

WWJD?

This acronymic question adorns bumpers and bracelets across the nation. In the unlikely event that you are unaware, it stands for “What Would Jesus Do?”

I suppose one response is, “God only knows.”

I certainly don’t. If there was indeed a Jesus, in the biblical sense, what Jesus did or did not do is highly speculative. The notion of a historical Jesus is widely supported and a field of serious scholarship. I have neither the interest nor the patience to traverse even the modest Wikipedia entry, but be my guest.

The scholarship may or may not be accurate. Its veracity is questionable at least in so far as that various sources are contradictory. It reminds of one of my favorite quotes, from where long forgotten: “There are 7 (or choose a number) major religions and they can’t all be right.”

When judging the reliability of any historical record, one need only jump ahead several millennia and consider scholars excavating 2025 videos from Fox News or yellowed copies of the New York Post to understand that declaring any version of history accurate is a fool’s errand.

But allow me the grace to stipulate to the basic idea of the historical and the mystical Jesus: A modest man, living in relative poverty, filled with love and compassion, champion of the downtrodden and willing to risk all to speak truth to power.

So, I surely don’t know “What Jesus Would Do,” but I might hazard a guess at what Jesus would not do. Which takes us to the front page of the New York Times.

Two events reported with straight reportorial faces might qualify under the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s succinct definition of hard-core pornography: “I know it when I see it.”

A rather unfortunate word choice for a SCOTUS Justice, but we knew what he meant.

The events to which I refer both featured outlandish costumes, outsized egos, unseemly preening, extravagant surroundings, one with red carpets the other with blue, and accompanied by an absurd level of breathless excitement. Short of pornography, but bordering on the obscene.

One was the Met Gala.

The other? The conclave to choose a new pope.

To be fair to Catholicism, the conclave may only be runner-up in the race to commit more sins or violate more Commandments, but it’s a close call. Pride, greed, envy, lust, coveting, gluttony, idolatry . . . just to name a handful. Each event was chock full of ‘em.

The Catholic Church is the planet’s second largest real estate holder, bested only by Britain’s Royal Family. I don’t know which entity wins the precious gem contest, but they’re both in the bejeweled stratosphere. And perhaps on this one night, the Met Gala is in the running.

I dare say that Jesus, to my limited understanding, would assiduously avoid both events. The Met Gala would not let him through their velvet ropes even if he wished to visit for a moment. He would have been more likely among the Palestinian activists who were blithely ignored by the glittering entourage of social climbers.

The doings at the Vatican would either confuse or enrage the Prince of Peace, who would not be able to reconcile his gentle and modest teachings with the garish display of pride, gaudy red robes, contrived solemnity and political machinations.

Though Jesus probably couldn’t imagine Catholicism at all, he might have had a beer with the late Pope Francis. And lest my Catholic friends and family disown me, the social justice bona fides of Catholicism are admirable and practiced by many millions worldwide.

And how might we reconcile the front page coverage of both exorbitant indulgences in America’s so-called newspaper of record? Shuttled to the margins were the usual and normalized tragedies du jour. Children starving, natural disasters, the despoiling of Earth, our descent into fascism, unrelenting genocide in Gaza – I, and you, could go on.

According to the U.N., nearly 750 million people in the world go hungry every day. Half of children’s deaths are due to severe malnutrition. 9 million people die from hunger-related causes every year.

It just seems a lousy time for the Cardinals in Rome and the peacocks at the Met to preen and posture.

But, but, you say, “The Met Gala was for charity!” They raised $31 million!!

For costumes.

But at least women were allowed to attend that event.

The post What Jesus Wouldn’t Do appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Kennedy Schmennedy. Who needs the Kennedy Center when we have Erie’s Red Hawk Elementary School?

Donald Trump has kidnapped Washington’s Kennedy Center entirely, naming himself Chairman and installing such artistic luminaries as Lee Greenwood and Laura Ingraham as Trustees. Performances from Kid Rock and Ted Nugent can’t be far behind.

He may even traipse his birthday military parade through the center with a drill team of Proud Boys twirling AR-15s and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt leading a pom-pom troop wearing crucifix sweaters. Trump will head the parade in the popemobile, driven by Pete Hegseth, fueled by a few mimosas. Such patriotic fun!

But don’t despair! The arts are alive and well, including subversive theater.

This weekend, May 2nd and 3rd, the 4th and 5th graders from Red Hawk mounted a stirring performance of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.  Chitty, for short, is based on a book by Ian Flemng – yes, the James Bond guy – later adapted for stage and screen.

The performances were superb, although full disclosure that my grandson played Jeremy on Friday night may indicate a teeny-tiny bias. Herding several score of elementary school kids is no mean feat, and the lioness’s share of credit goes to music teacher Amy Abbott, who manages this feat every year, aided by a great crew of assistants and volunteers.

What these kids may lack in polish, they more than compensate for in enthusiasm and charm. Kennedy Center aside, I’d rather attend a children’s performance than a Broadway show any day of the week.

These kids worked all semester, rising before dawn for 7:30 rehearsals at least three days a week. It paid off. There were no botched lines or choreographic bobbles. The singing was brilliant, although not intonational perfection. The melody was always nearby and usually rediscovered. Delightfully costumed, mic’d-up and made-up, the roles were not indicated, they were inhabited – to use a bit of theater vernacular.

It is at some peril that I highlight any specific performers, as the lead roles were all played with great aplomb and confidence, especially since both nights played to a full house of 600 or so. How many of us could perform flawlessly for 600?

Peril be damned, the Baron and Baroness were hilarious and just over the top enough on both nights. (Different casts for different nights, with a few double-ups.) The pas de deux of evil spies mostly skulked on the stage perimeter, but hammed it up to a “T.” They could have been a skit to themselves.

The production was chock full of complex ensemble pieces, imaginative props and clever gags. Not a beat was missed, although, like the melodies, a few were dropped and picked up with a flourish.

Among my favorite moments were the frequent times an ensemble member would search the audience for family or friends in the midst of a song or dance number. You won’t see that on Broadway!

Why subversive theater?

Well, the evil empire in Chitty is Vulgaria. What name could better capture the spirit of the current administration, with its Vulgarian-in-Chief?

Vulgaria’s Baron is a fool. The Baroness hates children, so the regime will not tolerate children, especially those who arrive from distant places. Sound familiar? Taken in this light, the character called Child Catcher hauling off children in a cage was eerie.

Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang itself was vaguely reminiscent of a Cybertruck, what with its metal panels falling off.

I can imagine someone younger than I writing and staging a parody of the Trump administration based on Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. The Kennedy Center Board and its boundlessly ignorant Chairman would probably attend and completely miss the point. Trump would think he was Truly Scrumptious and his buddy Elon would see it as a glamorous Tesla ad.

But in the end, it was the children saving the day, overwhelming the bumbling fools of Vulgaria and flying home in Chitty-Chitty. Here, of course, the Cybertruck comparison fades, as no self-respecting never-Vulgarian would entrust children to a Cybertruck.

And isn’t that our great hope? That children will save the day?

On these two nights such hope seemed possible, thanks to Amy Abbott and the Red Hawk School community.

The post Chitty and the Children to the Rescue! appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The most dangerous dimension of the right wing takeover of America is hiding in plain sight.

While illegal deportations, tariff idiocy, Hegseth incompetence, egg prices, ad infinitum . . .  dominate the headlines, the makeover of our education system is the most consequential threat we face.

I don’t mean the absurd attacks on higher education, although they are troubling. When (if) these storm clouds clear, Harvard and others will be just fine. In saner times, colleges and universities can quickly regain control of their own missions and destiny.

Primary and secondary education, not so much.

The impetus for this post is the case argued last week at the Supreme Court. Oklahoma has started an online Catholic school, directly funded by the state. You can visit the specifics of the case here.

Its essence is simple: Does a state-funded religious school violate the 1st Amendment’s prohibition on the government establishment of religion? During arguments, as might be expected, the liberal justices seemed to see it as a violation. Conservative justices, also true to form, found every possible kernel of nonsense to support the school. One specious argument, offered by Brett Kavanaugh, was that forbidding this direct support would be precedent to also forbid state funding of things like Catholic foster agencies. As if that is remotely similar.

The lawyers for the school cheerily noted that the school would be open to all faiths. I can just imagine the atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim families queuing up for early admission. And it is important to note that LGBTQ+ students and faculty are not welcome at this or other “Christian” schools, although they will surely be prayed for.

Heretofore, the slippery slope toward Christian nationalism in education has been lubricated only indirectly by the contrivance of passing money for religious schools through parents’ hands, using the appealing mantras of school choice and parental rights. The Oklahoma case will open the floodgates, permitting states to directly fund explicitly religious schools. The slippery slope will become a torrent.

This is the long game: Grassroots indoctrination.

My atheism is a tolerant sort. I, as true for most reasonable constitutional scholars, recognize the 1st Amendment’s elegant balance. It provides for both the freedom of religion and the freedom from religion. I honor any person’s faith experience, however befuddling it seems to me. I’m sure I befuddle aplenty too. But my tolerance ends when any faith intrudes on the public sphere, demanding that our laws and our citizens abide by religious dogma.

The real threat is not the dogma. It’s the abiding.

While many faith communities express and act on salutary progressive values, that is not what the architects of this strategy intend. It is not fear-mongering to suggest that the current Trump retribution tour is a hint of what comes next. Diversity, equity and inclusion – gone. Any hint of gender and sexual identity – gone. Accurate teaching of American history will be replaced by a Christian-centered fairy tale of American Exceptionalism. Reproductive rights, birth control and gay rights will be further assaulted.

Even the lawyers for the Catholic school in question acknowledged that all parts of the curriculum will be filtered through a Catholic lens. That Catholic filtering is nearly benign when compared to the fundamentalist, anti-science, hate-mongering schools that will line up at the public trough when the floodgates open in every state.

It is not that every child in America will be saturated in fundamentalist prayer water. But as seen in the current era, the fate of a liberal democratic republic hangs in the margins. Trump’s victory was the result of several hundred thousand votes in a nation of 340 million. The Christo-fascists don’t need everyone. They just need enough to never lose again.

Like Trump himself, many of this strategy’s engineers don’t give a tinker’s damn about religious freedom – or religion. They know full well that red states, like Oklahoma, are champing at the bit to establish conservative religious schools on the public dime. For years, the charter and choice movements have yearned for the wholesale demolition of a secular public system. This decision may pave the way for the wrecking balls to roll in.

Even if many states dodge the wrecking ball, generations of earnest little anti-science, Bible-soaked, low information, white nationalist voters will be escorted through the education pipeline.

They will ensure the perpetuity of the kinds of legislatures that fund the kinds of schools that produce the little voters that ensure their perpetuity. It is a devoutly vicious circle.

This is what I fear most. And if SCOTUS rules as I predict, I don’t know that it can be stopped.

The post Our Schools May Destroy Our Country appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

We at Yellow Scene Magazine (YS) recently posted a press release from anti-trans hate group Gays Against Groomers stating their opposition to the Kelly Loving Act, which gives more protections to trans people. Sometimes, in the flurry of reporting on news daily, things slip through the cracks that we do not intend. We want to make it absolutely clear that we do not support this group or what they stand for. As a company that employs multiple trans people, myself included, we reject Gays Against Groomers’ anti-trans stance. YS has always supported the entire LGBTQ+ community throughout our entire 25-year history.

Gays Against Groomers are part of the very vocal minority in the LGBTQ+ community that wishes to see LGB people form their own coalition separate from the trans community and other important members of the overall LGBTQ+ community. But ever since the days of the Stonewall Riots, transgender people have been a driving force in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. Trans women like Marsha P. Johnson and Silvia Rivera were essential to the early movement for queer rights, and trans people today are still on the front lines to protect all the members of this community.

The entire LGBTQ+ community is united by the fact that we experience gender and sexuality in a different way than what is traditional in society. This includes gays, lesbians, bisexuals, asexual people, transgender people, agender people, two-spirit individuals, and intersex people. There can be no movement for gay rights without trans and gay people standing arm in arm together.

The Kelly Loving Act passed yesterday in the Colorado Senate, despite Gays Against Groomers giving inflammatory testimony full of misleading and outright false information. We applaud the passage of this bill, although we are disappointed to see how many sections were struck from the bill to appease a radical, anti-trans lobby. We hope that the State of Colorado continues to be a safe and welcoming place for transgender individuals.

The post To Be Clear: Yellow Scene Does Not Support Anti-Trans Hate Groups appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

In April of 2024, I left Broomfield for a job in Summit County. I had spent 33 years living on the Front Range, and I was ready to try life in the mountains. For close to a year, I did my nine-to-five at 9,100 feet, in one of the defining regions of the Colorado Gold Rush. I met some wonderful people, and a few people who would have made the most hardened prospector or card shark curl into a ball.

For those who have wondered what mountain life is like, sit down and let me tell you all about it.

A photo from when I visited the “Gay Basin” event at A-Basin in May. Quite a friendly crowd.

The most enjoyable part of life in Summit was how walkable it was. From my apartment in Silverthorne, I could walk to groceries, the post office, the library, and restaurants. This was a far cry from my life in Broomfield, where nothing was within walking distance. Where I lived on the Front Range was a food desert; the closest food was a gas station out by the interstate. A few towns in Summit have these dense, walkable town centers, and I was happy to leave the urban sprawl behind me. 

Summit has an active and healthy press. There is a quality newspaper, the Summit Daily, which can be found on every street corner. I liked living somewhere with a newspaper big enough to cover local issues, and small enough to print wildlife photos from readers. Unlike Boulder’s Daily Camera, most of the articles are not AP wire stories. When private equity is draining the blood from local newspapers and picking over the bones, the Summit Daily reminded me how things ought to be.

It was hard to beat the views. I didn’t have to pray for rain to be free of the brown haze that hangs over Denver; every day, the peaks appeared clear and close. I loved staring up at the shadowed walls of Tenmile Canyon. The drive past Green Mountain Reservoir, where the hills open up to flatland, has a peaceful, subtle beauty to it. There was an unusually good leaf season last fall, and the hills outside Frisco were bathed in gold. It didn’t compare with the rugged San Juan Mountains near Durango, or the Sand Dunes of Alamosa, but it was pretty darn good.

I saw bighorn sheep and mountain goats almost every week. I saw golden-haired porcupines waddling fearlessly along the road shoulders. At the turnoff for Peru Creek, where the road gets really hairy, I could always count on seeing a family of deer. I saw hawks riding thermals, and a herd of three dozen elk in the moonlight at Beaver Creek Golf Course.

A porcupine spotted along Montezuma Road.

I would tell friends that I lived in a dangerous neighborhood. I wouldn’t want to walk around there at night–because of the moose. After sunset, Summit belongs to the moose. Moose would run ahead of my car on Montezuma Road, go out for family meals in Keystone, or haul themselves dripping wet from a pond after a late-night swim. A moose and its calves once blocked traffic in Breckenridge because even a juvenile moose is over three feet tall and can outrun a human. 

Whatever you do, don’t call the moose “local”; they were imported from Utah and Wyoming in the late 1970s. In Summit, there is a relentless focus on the word “local”, such that even the moose might not qualify. There are Locals in Summit, and “non-locals” who are, at best, tolerated. In the summer of 2024, the Summit Daily ran a front-page story about the sale of a coffee shop in Silverthorne.

The article, in breathless verbiage, related that this was a local coffee shop being purchased by another Local. It was not the new owner’s success in the coffee biz that qualified them, but their localness. I thought this particular shop’s drip coffee was quite good, but I will note that a) I have enjoyed refreshment and a good book in many-a Starbucks, b) Their baristas could be just as aloof as the non-local variety, and c) The locals still treated the shop as an economy workspace, camping with their $3,000 MacBooks for the price of a scone.

I remember the day I started to realize how deep this Local supremacy went. A coworker had asked me for help with log cabin restoration. I immediately suggested Jeremiah Log Homes in Dumont. If anyone knew about log cabin logistics in the Colorado mountains, it’d be them, right? I watched my coworker stare off into space, as if Dumont, west of Idaho Springs, was as far away as Nome or Jakarta. Finally, they replied, “Let’s try to find a place in Summit County.”

The definition of Local is also incredibly narrow. Before moving to Summit, I thought of “mountain people” as a category, whether you lived in Estes Park or Telluride. Boy, was I wrong. In Summit, the “Front Range” means anything east of the Eisenhower Tunnel. If you lived in Georgetown or Idaho Springs, you lived on the Front Range. People from Fairplay were honorary locals because the winters in Park County were harder. Folks from Kremmling in Grand County were also honorary locals, but less so than Fairplayers. I observed that the people who felt strongest about being local were not necessarily people who were born in Summit. Local supremacy was strongest among wealthy people from Texas or Arkansas who had vacationed in Summit for many years before retiring there.

Summit County must account for half of all Cybertruck sales. They were everywhere.

In June of last year, I mentioned to my coworkers that it had been twenty years since the Marvin Heemeyer rampage. In 2004, Heemeyer drove an armored bulldozer through Granby, destroying much of the town. It made the national news, and I can still remember where I was when I heard about it. Granby is one county over, but my boss, a fierce, hardcore Local, had never heard of it. The entire event was news to them. 

On a different day, my boss was talking to me about the Snake River, which runs from A-Basin down into Lake Dillon. I casually mentioned that it wasn’t *the* Snake River, of course.

“What’s that?” asked my boss.

“You know,” I said, “the Snake River in Wyoming and Idaho? It goes through the Teton Range and into the Columbia?” My boss stared back at me. “The river from that Ansel Adams photo?” I continued, “The photo of the Snake River with the Tetons in the background? It’s one of the most famous photographs of all time?” Finally, I brought up the photo on my office computer, the photo that embodies everything remote and wild about the American West. My boss looked at the photo for a moment before giving their assessment: “Huh.”

If Vail was ever mentioned, it was with a sneer of contempt. Vail people were pretenders, stealing attention away from Summit’s superior ski resorts. Beaver Creek was beneath all consideration, and Monarch or Wolf Creek may as well have been on other planets.

In addition to wildlife, Summit is a great place to see income inequality. The inequality is by no means the worst in the world, but I’ve never seen it so pronounced firsthand. There is a very clear distinction between the wealthy who call the shots in Summit and the large underclass who keep things running. In Summit’s public schools, roughly 40% of students identify as Hispanic, and 25% speak Spanish as their first language, but this is not reflected in Summit’s tourism branding. The locals’ sense of identity, divorced from any real demographics, is focused on gold miners, resort builders, and winter sports athletes. 

I remember walking back from a hike in Keystone and finding a makeshift wooden shelter just off the path. These shelters are called “wook nooks”, built up branch-by-branch over the years against the bitter cold. Just across the road from the wook-nook was a string of million-dollar homes, each with its own antler chandelier. 

A “wook nook” shelter spotted near Keystone.

Lastly, Summit can be a lonely place. I had more than one coworker tell me how difficult it was to find friends there. One reason is the high cost of living. It’s so expensive to live in Summit that you spend most of your time working to make rent. In my experience, $1,800 gets you just over 400 square feet of living space. As of this week, gas was $3.33 in Silverthorne, compared to $2.75 in east Boulder County. 

The high cost of living and gas prices are compounded by long commutes. I was fortunate to live close to work, but long drives are taken for granted up there. Here are a few real commutes from people I met in Summit: Acorn Creek to Frisco (19 miles), Georgetown to Dillon (25 miles), Leadville to Dillon (35 miles), Silverthorne to Kremmling (37 miles), Black Hawk to Silverthorne (48 miles). These drives come with whiteout blizzards, black ice, traffic jams, road work, and runaway trucks. Weather, road repairs, and unprepared drivers regularly close the Eisenhower Tunnel, turning I-70 into a parking lot for hours at a time. A 40-hour work week, plus hours of driving every day, leaves very little time for socializing. I found society with a book club in Silver Plume, and late nights playing pool at the Snake River Saloon or the CO Bar in Frisco.

I also lucked out with a co-worker who invited me to join a tabletop roleplaying game. I pretended I was a talking mushroom aboard an insectoid airship, alongside a reincarnated captain, an iron golem, a sentient spider nest, and a demented goblin. I felt blessed for our adventures together. It reaffirmed for me that when relationships are scarce, you value the friendships you do make even more. 

By the end of March, I had moved back to the Front Range, the real Front Range, where you can look west and see fourteeners. You would be amazed how much can fit in a Subaru hatchback. 

The Front Range is my home, and if not for my time in the mountains, I don’t know if I would have learned that. My time as a “local” also taught me: how to clean a shower drain, how to repair a bicycle, how to typeset a book on an IBM Executive, how to take apart and reassemble a bed frame, how to get a box-spring up a narrow staircase, how to apply for a TWIC card, how to play pool, how to think on my feet, how to fill out a DND character sheet, and a smattering of dirty jokes, courtesy of Dee at the Mint Bar & Grill. Most importantly, I learned what Eleanor Roosevelt meant when she said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Another story for another time.

And no, I didn’t learn how to ski, or snowboard, or snowshoe that year. Why do you ask?

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The post My Year in Summit County: Reflections on Life as a Local appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

By Jacob Stevens

As a resident of Thornton, I have grown increasingly concerned with the decisions made by my Congressman, Gabe Evans, which seem misaligned with the needs of his constituents. My concern deepened when, despite protests and public opposition, it appeared Evans would vote to approve a House budget that would eliminate Medicaid benefits for millions of Americans—including 125,900 in his district—many of whom are disabled, elderly, or children.

This vote marked a turning point for me. Until then, I had been a passive participant, only voting during elections. I now find myself deeply concerned for the future of our community. I called Evans’ office to express my concerns, but my call was never returned. He then voted to approve the budget. In response, I joined the ongoing protests outside his office.

At my first protest, another resident invited me to join a District 8 chat, where we discussed the possibility of organizing a town hall for Mr. Evans—an event he had failed to hold. In conjunction with the town hall, we also organized a mutual aid resource fair and food drive to support those most affected by the policies Evans supports, such as cuts to health care and food assistance programs.

It was only after our first in-person meeting that we realized we should reach out to established organizations like Progress Now Colorado and Indivisible to see if they were already planning an event during the recess, as we could volunteer with them rather than have our inexperienced group plan the event. To our surprise, they offered their support in making our town hall vision a reality.

Let there be no question, Mr. Evans: though we received material support from other dedicated and concerned groups, this town hall began just three weeks ago when a business analyst, a public service worker, a non-profit event organizer, a human resources officer, and an art teacher—who had never met before—agreed that you were not representing them.

On March 12th, we personally delivered an invitation to Evans’ office for a town hall at the church next door on March 22nd. The day before the town hall, a representative from Evans’ office claimed no one had informed them of the event and that he could not attend with less than 24 hours notice. However, we received a handwritten receipt acknowledging the invitation from his staff at the time of delivery on March 12th at 2:50 PM.

Despite less notice than Mr. Evans, 350 community members attended the town hall. Our representative was not one of them. He may never fully understand the opportunity he missed. He could have heard the powerful stories of the people he is supposed to serve—stories filled with fear, frustration, and hope for a better future. These are the voices of the people you represent in Congress, Mr. Evans. You cannot represent them if you refuse to listen to them. They deserve to be heard.

We will not accept anything less than a genuine, in-person town hall open to the public, with no restrictions on who can speak. A virtual town hall (which has been promised but not delivered) with pre-screened participants does not meet the needs of the people.

Jacob Stevens
Community Advocate and Resident of Thornton, Colorado

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The post Where Was Gabe? A Town Hall Without a Congressman: Op-Ed appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

“Put a Little Love in Your Heart!”

This tune by Jackie DeShannon was a hit in 1969, later reprised by Annie Lennox and Al Green.

It was among the social anthems of a tumultuous era when the civic and cultural temperature was high. Anger over the war in Vietnam and racial resentment had the nation at a constant simmer, occasionally boiling over.

Assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. dampened hope, and optimism that had briefly surged in the mid-sixties was deeply submersed by the election of Tricky Dick Nixon.

It is paralleled by our time now, when the hope inspired by Barack Obama’s tenure was drowned in the surge of racial and cultural resentment that produced the most profane, incompetent and mean-spirited president in American history.

History is usually described by political eras and in policy or economic terms. I’ve never believed that this is accurate. History is actually written in broad social and cultural strokes. The economic or policy issues are almost incidental. This is why, for example, that a certain segment of the electorate will vote against their own interests. It’s not that they are too ignorant or stupid to understand the ramifications of their political actions. It’s that they don’t care.

That’s why Trump has succeeded. He knew, or the puppets pulling his strings knew, that all of politics is a culture war, not a battle of ideas and analysis. “Owning the libs” is the only objective of Republican politics. Egg prices, tariffs, Panama, Greenland and most of DOGE activities are a sideshow. A dangerous and damaging sideshow to be sure, but not in the center ring for most conservatives. They are just happy that the libs are finally getting screwed and getting it good and hard.

It’s the libs at Columbia, the libs at Harvard, the libs at the Kennedy Center, the libs at the Smithsonian, the libs in the media, the smug eggheads in NIH, the lib know-it-alls in major law firms . . .

Trump’s cabinet members are all – every single one of them – second rate posers. It is laughable to watch a faux tough guy like Pistol Pete Hegseth preening around in his fashionable mod suits, heading up chats that are insecure in every meaning of the word.

Watching the incompetence was surpassed only by the disgust I felt at the Signal chat glee expressed when their bombs blew innocent civilians to bits. The emojis were like a celebration of a middle school football victory. I have no affection for Houthis and have no insight into whether the strikes were useful or necessary. But killing any humans, much less innocent bystanders, should be a somber and sobering experience, not cause for whooping it up.

Watching Mike Waltz, insecure Director of National Security, explaining how a journalist got into a classified chat about the execution of a war plan was like listening to a dog-less child explain how the dog ate his homework.

It is only in an environment like this that a nasty little prick like Stephen Miller could weasel his way into a position of influence. Or a clearly lightweight blonde princess out of a parody of 90210 could stand at the podium in the White House briefing room.

It is amateur hour in Washington all around.

Imagine if a group of giddy high school kids took to the Broadway stage as the cast of Hamilton. Or if the tipsy winners of a corner bar’s karaoke contest mounted a production of Madame Butterfly at the Metropolitan Opera.

In addition to the DEI purges, the trans hatred, the bumbling chat sessions, the Elon Chain Saw Massacre, the masked men capturing legal residents on street corners and the full disassembly of public schools . . . these lib-owning doofuses seem committed to removing every competent human from government service. Ya see, real competence embarrasses them.

So, having gotten that off my chest, what to do? There is an encouraging upswing in activism to join or support. But many folks I know are choosing to back away a little from the endless torrent of psychological sewage.

I think when all else seems grim or hopeless, take Jackie DeShannon’s advice. Put a little love in your heart.

Several times a week my wife and I go to the elementary school to pick up our grandson. Watching small children swinging through a playground can even make a troubled heart smile.

We may not be able to stop these nasty dilettantes from changing the country. But we can’t let them change us.

It is time to hold our loved ones, especially children, close.

The post Put a Little Love in Your Heart appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Back in the day – way back – I was tangentially involved in civic affairs in Cleveland, Ohio. The city had been unfairly tarred with slogans like “The Mistake on the Lake.” It didn’t help that the Mayor had caught his hair on fire, the Cuyahoga River had caught fire, and none of Cleveland’s sports teams had caught fire.

The Greater Cleveland Growth Association (aka Chamber of Commerce) initiated a new branding (gawd, how I despise “branding”) campaign to reinvigorate tourism and convention booking. Among other silliness, they called Cleveland the “North Coast.” Ya know, the surfing and sunny brilliance of Lake Erie, which had not caught fire, but was trying very hard.

(Disclosure: I lived in Cleveland or thereabouts for 24 years and adore the underrated city.)

The centerpiece of rebranding was a short promotional film, funded by the Cleveland Foundation. The Growth Association and Foundation held a gala luncheon to preview the film for the press, all of Cleveland’s luminaries and a few not-so-luminary folks like me.

It was introduced with great fanfare. The high-gloss presentation made Cleveland look like Paris, Lake Erie like the Mediterranean, and the Cleveland Indians like the Yankees.

As the lights came back on, the Growth Association Chair, Cam Elliott, invited questions from the press. A reporter from the Call and Post, one of the nation’s last remaining Black newspapers, rose to his feet. As well as I can recall:

“The film is lovely. But why, when the city of Cleveland is 80% Black, was there not one Black person in the film?” You could have heard a flea fart.

To his credit, Cam Elliott did not stammer, stumble or deny. He immediately apologized and said the film would be remade to better reflect the whole city.

I recall this to contrast the brouhaha with the Colorado Board of Regents and its sole Black member Wanda James.

James recently reacted to a state-funded marijuana education campaign called “The Tea on THC,” produced by the Colorado School of Public Health at CU’s Anschutz Medical Campus. The images embedded in Tea on THC were all Black faces. She was rightfully and righteously indignant that the dangers of high potency weed were associated so obviously with race. For background, consider that marijuana use is higher among us white folks, so the caricature was as wrong as it was offensive.

She complained to Governor Polis and the University. The images were pulled but a debate about the program’s funding yielded no significant change.

The germane point is that the Board of Regents is investigating her (!) with potential censure at stake. The claim is that she has a conflict of interest in that she is the pioneering Black founder of Simply Pure marijuana dispensary and that The Tea on THC would harm her business and thus clouded her objections and alleged efforts to stop or redirect the funding.

James is no shrinking violet. She has described the investigation as a “public lynching” aimed at her because, as the Denver Post reported,  “I called those images out and they’re upset. The Board of Regents at CU has decided to be judge, jury and executioner for the sole Black woman on the board for speaking out on racist tropes.”  As to “public lynching,” I can assure you that James is no fan of Clarence Thomas. The similarity stops there.

I know James only from news reports and one long conversation when I interviewed her for Yellow Scene Magazine during the Regents campaign. On both scores, I believe her to be highly principled, gracious, and uncompromising. The notion that she took this stance to make a buck is ludicrous and offensive.

CU Board of Regents Chair Callie Rennison and Vice Chair Ken Montera, who called for the investigation, are white. Oddly, Rennison is the Director of Equity, and Title IX Coordinator at the University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus. You might think she would know better.

So, James is investigated and the chain of decision-makers who produced the vile images fade into the background. That should be the story.

Almost 50 years later and here we are. In one case, no Black faces where there should have been many. In the other, only Black faces where there should have been few.

In 1976 Cleveland, Cam Elliott had it right. “I’m sorry. We should have known better.”

In 2025 Denver, it’s a Black woman getting the heat.

The post A Public Lynching appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

You know that feeling when you’ve been in a relationship with a dreamy, charismatic billionaire, only to realize they’re actually an empty shell of a human being—and extremely toxic?

Maybe that’s how Americans felt today. But let’s be real—many saw the toxicity long before the breakup. The relationship with America is over, Elon. You blew it. She doesn’t want you back.

Tesla Takedown, Superior CO, March 1, 2025, photo credit: BlueSky: Jose-Luis Jimenez

Hundreds gathered in Superior, Colorado, at the Tesla dealership today for the national #TeslaTakedown protest, and the message was loud and clear. Instead of backlash, protesters were met with cheers and supportive honks from passersby, proving just how many people are ready to say goodbye.

The protest remained peaceful, even joyful, as demonstrators sent a message to the world’s most infamous narcissist: It’s over.

BlueSky Post

The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, has initiated mass layoffs, over 200,000 federal employees across various federal agencies. Notably, the Department of the Interior saw 2,300 employees dismissed, including 1,000 from the National Park Service, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, has cut 405 employees, with the majority coming from FEMA, while the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lost 388 staff members. These abrupt firings have sparked widespread concern about their legality and impact.

Trump orders more layoffs, Musk touts cuts at cabinet meeting – Reuters

We all suffer from federal workforce cuts – Southern Environmental Law Center

As The Hill puts it, Congress needs to put DOGE in a time-out. Marshall Ramsey’s editorial cartoon, “Sorry, Sir,” nails it—Air Force One soars as figures parachute out, with a speech bubble reading, “Sorry, sir, DOGE accidentally fired all the pilots.” It’s a sharp jab at Musk’s reckless mass firings, but the reality isn’t so funny. It’s not just federal workers being tossed out—it’s a gut punch to the entire economy. With key agencies gutted, industries disrupted, and consumer confidence shaken, we’re all in freefall. The question is: Who’s left to land the plane?

Tesla Dealership, March 1, 2025, photo credit: Jose-Luis Jimenez_Blue-Sky

When it feels like there’s nothing left to do, remember—your economic power is great. Get involved.

Tesla Takedown Movement motto:
• Sell Your Tesla
• Dump Your Stock
• Stop Musk Now!

Learn more: www.teslatakedown.com, or on BlueSky, or Facebook. We pretty much quit X, so if you are on X, you know how to find it.

We strongly encourage shopping locally at times like this.

Find additional resources at yellowscene.com:

How to Decorporatize Your Groceries

Ethics Are Alive and Well in America’s Small Business Community: 25 Businesses that are 25 Years or Older

Best of the West 2025

Get more Tesla Takedown News here on Blue Sky. You can also find Tesla Takedown coverage by local documentary photographer Chris Goodwin of desrowVISUALS.

photo credit:
ChrisGoodwin/desrowVISUALS

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Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 25 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four more.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.

The post Tesla Takedown Hits Superior, CO as Nationwide Movement Kicks Off – March 1, 2025 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.