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

DATE: April 14, 2026

CONTACT: Joshua Maynard, DirectColorado@gmail.com, 720-306-1360

The Time is Right for Boulder County Home Rule

Boulder, CO: A citizens’ petition for Boulder County Home Rule” is being circulated by leaders of two local non-profits, Best Democracy and Direct Colorado. For Boulder County, home rule is a big step towards a better Boulder County government.

Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann, speaking at a Best Democracy public meeting held in January at the Longmont Library, noted that the purpose of county home rule is to provide more flexibility over elections and management of county affairs than Colorado counties currently have under State statute” (CRS Section 30-11-101-605). A Boulder County home rule charter will enable Boulder County to meet the challenges of 21st-century democratic governance and provide the framework for systematic changes in democratic governance that enhance functionality, transparency, accountability, citizen access to government, and diversity.

It’s up to our generation to make Boulder County’s government more responsive to and representative of the people of the County. We can do a better job designing a government that includes everyone than they did back in 1861,” stated Jesse Kumin, founder of Best Democracy and one of the two petition sponsors.

The timing of the Boulder County Home Rule grassroots effort is compatible with the Big Tent BoCO” citizens push to increase the number of Boulder County Commissioners from three to five. If the County votes to increase the size of the Commission, a reworking of County management responsibilities and election districts would be required.

A home rule charter includes the election of a special Charter Commission to draft modifications to the County’s statutory charter. The resulting Charter is then placed on the ballot for voters’ approval. The goal of these County charter revisions is to go beyond the State’s minimum requirements: it enables adding flexibility to the county’s authority and election supervision, increasing government transparency and accountability, protecting human and environmental rights, and increasing community engagement and oversight.

Expanded petition rights for citizens are a major benefit of home rule, especially for people living in unincorporated neighborhoods throughout the county. Petitioning is severely restricted at the county level by the state’s boilerplate statutory county charters. Only residents in municipalities have full petition rights – unless their county is home rule.

Going beyond mere representation, petitions add a vehicle for direct democracy, which is important because public sentiment does not always agree with the people in charge. The public can push for changes that are popular and necessary,” stated Josh Maynard, petition co-sponsor and founder of Direct Democracy Colorado and Direct Colorado.

A second major benefit to Boulder County Home Rule is the ability to keep professional talent through direct hire by the County. It creates the option to turn elected positions for Coroner, Treasurer, and Sheriff into professional staff positions. This allows for the retention of good talent and eliminates the need for multiple special elections to extend term limits of qualified and respected staff (as is the case with Boulder’s long-time Sheriff Pelle).

Thirdly, the Boulder County home rule petition sponsors agree, in part, with all three current Commissioners, who publicly disagree over the merits of the Big Tent BoCo’s three to five” petition.

Support for increasing the number of Boulder County Commissioners from three to five is sensible. Since 1861, when the Territorial County charter was established with three elected Commissioners, Boulder’s population and the responsibilities of the County Commission, who oversee a $700+ million budget, have grown.

It is difficult to find times to meet with constituent groups around the County that don’t conflict with the timing of official business meetings of the Board of Commissioners. Voter approval for a five-member Boulder County Commission will mean that more than two Commissioners will be required to make a quorum,” stated Commissioner Stolzmann.

The current quorum requirement for Commissioner meetings pits meeting with constituents against conducting public business, and in recent months led to back-and-forth decision-making. In this case, more elected representatives are one action step towards better representation.

Criticisms of the limitations of going from three to five commissioners, previously voiced by current County Commissioners Levy and Loachamin in a joint statement, have merit.

“Increasing accountability and transparency in government does not come from increasing the size of government; it comes from making systemic changes to elections and governance, which we support,” some former and present Commissioners argued in The Boulder Reporting Lab on February 15, 2026.

True.

Home rule for Boulder County answers that criticism. When placed on the November ballot after garnering 13,000 signatures, Boulder County Home Rule will offer voters a more comprehensive approach to reform than the three-to-five petition drive. It addresses a broader array of issues and can solve additional problems with our county-level government by enabling major reform.

Additionally, problems with the state-mandated county commission election process are real. Achieving diversity of opinion and diverse representation of constituent groups requires a shift to proportional representation for county elections. Current Colorado law leaves county governments stuck with two bad options for county elections.

One bad option is the current voting method, at-large plurality voting. This method has the advantage of unifying county identity; however, it locks out large minority blocks of voters from representation and shifts power away from any minority (racial, political, religious, ideological, and so on). Used extensively in the Jim Crow South, at-large plurality voting has been found to violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (see “Charleston County v. United States” (2004) and “Dillard v. Crenshaw County” (1987).

The other poor option is voting for a single County Commissioner per district. When a single person wins the county district seat, it is a case of “Winner Take All.” While district-based voting enhances the ratio of representatives to voters, it has the disadvantages of promoting provincialism or hyper-localism and fostering “One Party Dominant” counties, in which votes for other than the majority viewpoint are wasted, and third point of view candidates are considered election “spoilers.”

Another major flaw of this single-member district option is the inability to draw district boundaries that represent small but significant pockets of the population, such as rural voters. Political tugs-of-war over boundaries can result in gerrymandered districts or swing districts that are disproportionately attractive to dark money political donors.

There are far better voting methods available to Coloradans that accurately represent voters. Recent statewide election reform, Colorado’s Voter Choice Act (CRS 1-7-1001-1004) fixes the election method biases: it allows cities and towns” to conduct elections by proportional representation using two rank choice voting methods, instant run-off for election of a single candidate to office (i.e. a mayor) and single transferable vote for election of multiple candidates to office (i.e., city council members). Counties were excluded.

The original language of State Reps Bob Marshall and Jennifer Bacon’s bill, HB26-1203, proposed extending the right to elect officials using state-approved voting methods of proportional representation to Colorado’s counties. It has been watered down extensively in the House State, Civic, Military & Veterans Affairs committee to the point where it is hardly worth passage unless fully restored to its original intent.

Meanwhile, a Boulder County home rule charter should include enabling legislation for the election of multiple County Commissioners through rank choice voting – single transferable vote. This would bring a diversity of voices to the County’s Board of Commissioners when the State decides to lift restrictions on voting methods that still apply to counties. Proponents of representative elections are encouraged to lobby their legislators to restore the original language of HB26-1203 to enable accurate representation in Colorado’s county governments.

To learn more about the effort behind Boulder County Home Rule and the possibilities it creates for a better Boulder, members of the public are invited to attend a Best Democracy monthly meeting, held at the Boulder Public Library* at the following dates, times, and locations:

• Saturday, 4/25/26 at 3:00 PM. Main Branch, 1001 Arapahoe Avenue, Arapaho Room
• Thursday, 5/14/26 at 5:30 PM. Meadows Branch, 4800 Baseline Road, Unit C112, Meeting Room.
• Saturday, 5/23/26 at 1:00 PM. Main Branch, Arapaho Room
• Saturday, 6/13/26 at 1:00 PM. Main Branch, Arapaho Room

Members of the public who are registered to vote in Boulder County are urged to sign the ballot petition being circulated by volunteers. Let the people decide by putting the question of whether to form a Boulder County Home Rule Charter Commission on the November ballot.

* Note: This event series is not sponsored or endorsed by Boulder Public Library District.

For more information, please contact Liz@BestDemocracy.org.

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The post Community Corner: The Time Is Right For Boulder County Home Rule appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Community Sends Letter to the Mayor Today from 30 Organizations Calling for End to Terrorization of Houseless People on the Streets

Housekeys Action Network Denver

Towards rights, dignity, housing…

email info@housekeysactionnetwork.com

phone 701-484-2634

Today, Monday, March 2nd, 30 organizations sent the attached letter to the Mayor calling on him to end the terrorization of houseless people on the streets. Also today, the community will be delivering a letter to the Mayor.

Join us outside City Hall (1437 Bannock St) at 3:30 pm or inside until 5:30 pm. We will be delivering the letter to the Mayor and speaking to the City Council.

Since Johnston ended the ‘House 1000’ initiative in Dec 2023, there has been a 150% increase in aggressive police enforcement just in ticketing of anti-houseless laws. This does not include the vast majority of enforcement, which is done through move-on orders and intimidation.

The hostile enforcement includes police approaching unhoused community members in an aggressive and menacing way, often grabbing and taking houseless people’s property right in front of them and maliciously destroying their personal property, calling them names, and using other forms of abuse and terrorization.

Photo credit: Paul Moody via Unsplash

The City has created a constant stress environment, and the aggressive, unprofessional, and often hostile enforcement has caused compounded trauma and direct injury to unhoused community members.

Houseless people are traumatized, tired, afraid, cold, suffering…from this treatment. They feel dehumanized and debased.

This enforcement includes telling people to move when they are simply standing on a public sidewalk, taking property from public spaces with no notice, and other violations of people’s constitutional rights.

We have interviews with 50 houseless people speaking about this street terrorization on our HAND Instagram page. You can hear community members share their stories to understand what is happening and how they are being impacted.

This inhumanity must stop. In the words of many houseless people, ‘treat us like humans.’

Dear Mayor Johnston,

We, the undersigned organizations, are calling on you, Mayor Johnston, to end the Citywide enforcement designed to push houseless people out of sight. This City is for everyone. We cannot be a City that treats houseless people as less than human, unworthy to use our public spaces, like trash to be swept out of sight.

Houseless people are suffering on the streets due to police and other enforcers forcing them to sleep without tents or often even without blankets. Houseless people are losing all their property to the City taking and trashing it in violation of their rights. Houseless people are being kicked out of public spaces just for sitting, standing, being. Police records affirm this experience, showing a significant increase in enforcement of anti-houseless laws since January 2024, when you ended the initial “House 1000” initiative (see latest data here). And this is just tickets. The vast majority of enforcement is done through orders to move along – whether based in law or not.

These methods of forcing houseless people out of visible downtown and surrounding areas are a continuation of racist exclusion enforcement that our nation claims to have ended. The United States has a long history of using mean-spirited and often brutal laws to keep “certain” people out of public spaces and consciousness. Jim Crow, Sundown towns, Anti-Okie laws, “Operation Wetback,” and Ugly laws targeted various populations based on their racial, economic, social, immigration, or disability status. Now, no sleeping, no blankets, no standing, no sitting, no being in “closed areas” are being enforced against houseless people – disproportionately Black and Brown. If you appear houseless, even just being seen standing or sitting on a public sidewalk is cause for police to move you along. In spite of the fact that ‘loitering’ on a public sidewalk is not a law in Denver, police are actively out enforcing this against houseless people. Just as Jim Crow laws of the past were used to segregate black people out of public spaces, this enforcement is there to push houseless people, especially Black and Brown, and disabled, out of the public view.

The enforcement against houseless Denverites right now is causing serious harm and trauma to the community. Houseless people are now suffering without tents or blankets to protect them. In the words of one woman sleeping on the streets, “We are literally sleeping on the railroad tracks. We can’t have nothing, we can’t even have a blanket. Every time we get a tent or a blanket, police take it.” Or as another woman stated, “[A year or two ago] we were allowed tents, we were allowed comfortability, we were allowed privacy, we were allowed stability at least a little bit. Now we are not allowed to have blankets underneath us or over us, even to cover us at night.” The hundreds of houseless people on our streets are being pushed into hiding, where they face significant dangers, including violence and rape. The dangers of being forced into more hidden areas cannot be overstated. With this increased enforcement, houseless people suffer even more from sleep deprivation as they are awoken by enforcers to move or forced into areas where they must sleep with one eye open. This enforcement has even included organizations being told to stop serving food to houseless people, making houseless people suffer in hunger in a time of great food scarcity. In the words of another houseless person, “Every day it gets harder and harder, because we got no shelter to be around us so we could be at peace or just quit. Every day they come around like 6 o’clock, 7 o’clock, and they throw all our stuff away.” Facing this enforcement every day causes lasting trauma for the whole community.

As Mayor, you have the power and responsibility to end this terrorization of houseless people on our streets. You give direction to the Police. You are the one who declared areas where there were encampments “closed” after they were ‘decommissioned.’ You give direction to the Street Enforcement Team (SET) and ambassadors to patrol and move along houseless people. You can choose to stop telling enforcers to keep houseless people out of public spaces, to take down any visible tent, to stop using heavy force and intimidation to push houseless people just trying to survive, out of our City. We, the undersigned organizations, are asking for the sake of humanity that you use your power and authority to direct this inhumane, unlawful enforcement to end.

Sincerely,

American Civil Liberties Union

American Friends Service Committee

Basic Income Project

Bear Valley Mutual Aid

Bread and Roses Legal Center

Buck Foundation

CD7 Watermelon

Colorado Freedom Fund

Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition

Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition

Colorado Poverty Law Project

Community United in Solidarity with Palestine

Denver-Aurora Community Action Committee

Denver Democratic Socialists of America

Denver Communists

Denver Jewish Voice for Peace

Denver Task Force to Reimagine Policing and Public Safety

Elevated Denver

Empowerment Program

General Strike Denver

Harm Reduction Action Center

Housekeys Action Network Denver

Justice for the People

Mutual Aid Monday

National Homelessness Law Center

Romero Theater Troupe

Transforming Our Communities Alliance

Together Denver

Warm Cookies of the Revolution

Western Regional Advocacy Project

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The post Community Sends Letter to Denver Mayor Calling to End Terrorization of Houseless People appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

After the hearing was delayed a week by the Erie Town Council due to an administrative issue with the publication of supporting documentation, the Redtail Ranch settlement agreement has been rescheduled for consideration at the Council’s December 16th, 2025 meeting.

Drums full of contaminated soil from the north end of the Redtail Ranch property await transport and disposal to a Nebraska incineration facility, December 2017. Photo courtesy of Erie Protectors.

How Did We Get Here?

The original 2020 Redtail Ranch sketch plan adhered to an older 350 foot setback for oil & gas. In an attempt to appease a health/safety focused Town Council in 2024, Stratus proposed a modified plat that adhered to the Town’s current 500 foot setbacks. That application was rightfully denied for a failure to “promote the public health, safety, and general welfare” given the existing oil & gas wells onsite, as well as environmental concerns about contamination from IBM chemical waste dumped on the site in the late 1960s.

The Current Proposal

As a part of the proposed settlement agreement, Stratus Redtail Ranch has proposed a modified preliminary plat that includes the plugging and abandonment of 6 oil & gas wells operated by KP Kauffman at the SRC Pratt 34-29D location. This will allow the developer to add 49 additional homes due to the reduced 150 foot setback distance required by Erie’s Unified Development Code (UDC) for plugged wells, as opposed to a 500 ft setback required for active wells.

Sounds great, right? The developer gets to build more homes, and the residents benefit from a reduced oil & gas footprint on the site. What if I told you they’re only addressing 20 percent of the problem?

The Reality of Building Homes In An Oilfield

The reality is there are 23 other active wells (for a total of 29) on the proposed Redtail Ranch site, not to mention three adjacent landfills and an EPA superfund site. No other land use application has ever come before the Erie Town Council with such an active oil & gas footprint; rather, developments like Westerly have understood the political landscape and proactively plugged and abandoned all active wells on their properties before building homes. So why is Redtail Ranch different? Let’s examine each of the 5 oil & gas locations in detail, in decreasing likelihood of action by the developer or the oil & gas operators.

There are 29 wells (of which 17 are low-producing) on property owned by Stratus Redtail Ranch just north of the Vista Ridge neighborhood in Erie, Colorado; the Redtail Ranch preliminary plat boundary is outlined in red.

Active Wells by Operator and Location at Redtail Ranch

Operator	Location	Active Wells	Low-Producing Wells
KP Kauffman	SRC Pratt 34-29D	6	5
KP Kauffman	SRC Pratt 41-29D	6	6
KP Kauffman	SRC Pratt 24-29D(1)	4	4
Crestone Peak Resources	Pratt 29H-P168	6	1
Crestone Peak Resources	Waste Connections 29H-M168(1)	7	1

(1) While the Waste Connections and SRC Pratt #24-29D locations are 200 feet outside of the proposed preliminary plat boundaries, they are located on land owned by the applicant and within the 500 foot setback, and thus included in this analysis.

Looking south to the Vista Ridge neighborhood, an aerial view of the Pratt 29H-P168 pad as it was fracked in October 2017. The six wells and associated infrastructure of the SRC Pratt 34-29D pad that will be plugged and abandoned if the settlement agreement is approved are shown in the foreground. Photo courtesy of Erie Protectors

Pratt 29H-P168 and SRC Pratt 34-29D

Commonly known as the Pratt pad, where residents filed 347 complaints with the ECMC for the fracking operations in 2017, the Pratt 29H-P168 pad sits in the heart of the proposed Redtail Ranch development. One well is already classified as “low-producing” by the ECMC, meaning it produces on average less than 2 barrels of oil per day (this is an over-simplification, as the criteria are quite complicated). Plugging and abandoning all the wells at this site would have the greatest net benefit for residents in Redtail Ranch, but since 5 of the 6 wells are still producing, the operator has no motivation to do so. Bad for residents, bad for the developer.

Stratus Redtail Ranch has negotiated with KP Kauffman to plug and abandon the 6 producing wells at the SRC Pratt 34-29D location, just north of the Pratt pad. 5 of the 6 active wells are classified as low-producing. The reclamation of this site will allow the developer to add almost 50 homes to the development. Good for residents, good for the developer.

SRC Pratt 41-29D

This location sits just north of the “environmentally sensitive area” at the northeast corner of the Redtail Ranch. All 6 of the active wells owned and operated by KP Kauffman are classified as low-producing. The developer isn’t working with the operator to plug and abandon these wells because neither of them stands to benefit. It’ll only cost money for the operator, and the developer won’t be able to add additional homes due to a reduced setback because of the contaminated soils in the Neuhauser landfill (explained further below). Bad for residents.

The SRC Pratt 24-29D location sits just south of the Waste Connections 29H-M168 pad. Photo taken in October 2017 as the Waste Connections wells were being fracked. Photo courtesy of Erie Protectors.

Waste Connections 29H-M168 and SRC Pratt 24-29D

Nearby residents filed 554 complaints for the fracking at the Waste Connections pad operated by Crestone Peak Resources at the west end of the proposed development, the most ever for any oil & gas site in Colorado. As with the Pratt site, 1 well is already classified as low-producing; the remaining 6 wells are not. Neither the developer nor the operator stand to benefit from plugging and abandoning these wells.

The 4 KPK wells at the SRC Pratt 24-29D location just south of the Waste Connections pad are all low-producing, and should be plugged and abandoned. In doing so, the developer could restore 3-5 lots at the end of Ravine Place at the far southwest edge of the development.

Meeting the Letter of the Law vs. Doing What’s Right

I’m reminded of a statement made by the Town’s Environmental Services Director David Frank during the Draco OGDP hearings last spring. “We are a county of laws, not a country of justice.” I fear this Council will approve this settlement agreement because the developer has met the minimum legal requirements, but meeting the letter of the law does not make this development safe or responsible.

Objectively, for the 29 active oil & gas wells, the surrounding landfills, and the environmental concerns around toxic chemical contamination, this is the worst land use proposal that has ever come before the Erie Town Council. Put simply, it would be irresponsible of the Town Council to allow, and for the developer to proceed to build homes on this parcel. The risks to future residents are too significant to dismiss. The question then is whether the Town Council is brave enough to defend its residents’ health and safety, or will they cave to a developer that prioritizes profit over people?

Christiaan van Woudenberg has been an Erie resident for almost 20 years. He is the Principal Data Analyst for EcoCarto, a local environmental consulting company that specializes in data analysis and GIS mapping of Colorado oil & gas infrastructure, activities, and environmental impacts. Visit ecocarto.com for more information.

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 Becoming a sustaining supporter today for $8 a month!

The post The Redtail Ranch Oil & Gas Debacle: When Developers and Oil & Gas Operators Collide, Residents Lose appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

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Palestinians never seem to be able to evade the shackles of Zionism.

The unyielding attacks on Palestinians in America have left many in a vulnerable position. The exposure of an individual’s personal information online can lead to legal consequences, yet countless Zionist organizations have been able to get away with their malicious intentions under the guise of free speech.

The lingering effects of doxing have left thousands of Palestinians and their allies constantly being libeled to the detriment of their physical and public safety. As Palestinians all across the diaspora have dedicated their lives to exposing Israel’s war crimes and fighting for the liberation of their people, Zionist animus has resorted to slander.

Doxing is a well-known, insidious strategy used by many to intimidate the most vulnerable and vocal in the Palestine movement. The organization Canary Mission culminated sometime around 2014. During that summer, Gaza experienced vicious bombardment, where Israel committed a mass slaughter, killing over 2,251 Palestinians, over 500 of them children.

During this horrific period, Palestinians all over the diaspora and allies took to the streets. They used every platform they could to expose Israel’s war crimes and express their outrage at what was happening. To counteract the ugly truth, wealthy Zionist American donors decided to fund an anonymous organization, dedicating itself to creating an anti-Israel blacklist to intimidate Palestinians.

What’s been challenging is understanding who is behind this website. Adam Milstein, an Israeli American and convicted felon, is rumored to be one of the leading donors investing millions. Although he has denied these claims, his history of de-legitimizing boycott, divestment, and sanctions; attacks on free speech; and vilifying Palestinians and people of color mirror everything that the dubious website stands for.

Many pro-Palestine organizations on college campuses have been primary targets of these doxing campaigns. National Students for Justice in Palestine is constantly vilified for its organizing of events and protests connected to the Palestine movement. Columbia University and George Washington University recently suspended Students for Justice in Palestine last November due to claims of anti-Semitism. Brandeis University has become the first private university to ban SJP from its campus, making erroneous assertions perpetuated by Zionists that the organization is a danger to Jewish individuals and supports Hamas.

These claims are intended to eliminate any support for Palestine on college campuses. Universities should be a welcoming and open-minded environment where students can feel safe to share and express their ideas. Holding protests and organizing demonstrations is a substantial part of campus life. It is concerning that students’ freedom of speech on college campuses is at stake here.

Omar, an activist and organizer originally from Gaza, elaborated on Canary Mission’s intentions: “Their goal is to silence Palestinians and allies and really anyone who speaks out against Israel. They will take the most minuscule criticisms of Israel and list them as a reason why you’re a ‘bad person.'”

One example of the villainization constantly uttered by the Zionist movement was the claim these protests on college campuses were shouting genocidal slogans against Jewish people. Zionists began spreading videos wrapped up in lies, claiming that pro-Palestine protests at UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania were calling for Jewish genocide.

The footage contained muffled chants by pro-Palestine protestors where Zionists say they were chanting, “We want Jewish genocide.” When in reality, the slogan that was being chanted at these Palestine protests was, “We charge YOU with genocide.”

This dangerous accusation has put many pro-Palestine organizations and individuals at risk of threats and violence. Omar said, “I think in a lot of ways the Zionist ideology is institutionalized in America. We’re seeing a lot of university governing bodies that are really showing themselves as being very Zionist, even if they have no ties to Israel.”

Individuals associated with pro-Palestine organizations such as SJP or BDS are almost always doxed and listed on Canary Mission as a “terrorist” and a “hateful antisemite.” This rhetoric that Canary Mission and other Zionist organizations such as StopAntisemitism constantly exude is not only dangerous but flat-out cartoonish. Omar explained how doxing has made him feel: “It’s very upsetting to have your whole life be reduced to a set of tweets, not that I don’t stand by everything I said, but it’s upsetting to be reduced to this profile that is slandering you at every possible turn, calling me an anti-Semite and a terrorist sympathizer.”

Meanwhile, many Israeli protests are filled with actual calls for genocide and hate speech. We’ve seen Israeli politicians and American ones, too, calling on Israel to flatten Gaza, claiming every Gazan is not innocent, perpetuating this demonizing image of Palestinians, and encouraging the mass slaughter of Palestinian children.

Many employers who are unaware of the site’s racist intentions may blindly find it concerning to see an employee or interviewee listed on a site like Canary Mission. Omar expressed how it is essential not to let them get to you: “Losing my job is not enough of a threat for me to stop advocating for relatives who are being butchered day in and day out in Palestine.”

Silence and intimidation come with a hidden agenda. These organizations are not genuinely concerned when it comes to anti-Semitism but are more so concerned with attacking those who speak out against Israel and condemning its laundry list of war crimes and genocide against the Palestinian people.

Not only has doxing given rise to endless online harassment, but Palestinians are constantly having to explain themselves amid the chains of hatred imposed by the Zionist movement.

There is nothing complex about this. We have a nuclear colonial state, funded by the U.S., armed to the teeth, oppressing the indigenous population. Palestinians in the diaspora are also faced with the insidiousness of Zionism: “They handpick these very specific tweets that they can use to kinda spin to paint me in a certain way,” Omar said.

This experience causes real-world harm. Doxing is known to leave long-term psychological effects. Being villainized on this site places someone in a state of constant fear for their reputation and physical safety. Nowadays, it is not hard for people to find someone’s address. Canary Mission’s disturbing cyberstalking tactics have put Palestinian lives at risk and have given power to Zionists to harass people with rarely any repercussions.

Omar said, “Every post they make about me, the comments are filled with deranged racist comments. It’s also hilarious that these apparently are not the racist comments that go against the guidelines of websites like X and Instagram, but apparently ‘from the river to the sea’ is a very racist comment and should be deleted, which is absolutely absurd.”

Wanting the destruction of Zionism is not wanting the destruction of the Jewish people, and to even have to say that shows how deeply rooted the demonization of Palestinians is. When there is a call for Palestinian freedom, it is met with the question of Israeli safety. The projection is loud and clear, as Zionists fear that once Palestinians are free, they will do what Israel has done to them.

Despite Zionists trying to make this a “Jews vs. Palestinians” situation, some of the most prominent voices in the Palestinian movement are Jewish voices.

This tired rhetoric that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism is a talking point Palestinians have had to push back on and explain themselves ad nauseum for decades. Omar said, “No one [doxxed on] Canary Mission is actually saying racist things. You know, you look through people’s Canary Mission profiles, and yeah, they’re angry about Israel, but like, what’s a Palestinian supposed to do? Am I supposed to be like, ‘Oh yeah, I love Israel?’ Yeah, I hate them, and the sky is blue.”

Palestinians are being killed, losing their homes, and being forcibly exiled from their land. According to these doxing organizations, it is anti-Semitic to resist or express any outrage towards that. Any human being on this planet would pick up arms and defend their land when faced with the horrors of colonialism. Are Palestinians supposed to greenlight their own genocide? Is it that much of a surprise that Palestinians want to see the downfall of the Zionist regime that has uprooted and occupied them for over 75 years?

No one gets to determine how Palestinians should act amid oppression. Furthermore, no one gets to define what Zionism is but Palestinians themselves because they are the direct victims of it.

Canary Mission masquerades itself as a site that intends to expose anti-Semites across the country, but in the same breath, slanders anti-Zionist Jews who also align themselves with the Palestinian cause. Ironically, the site claims to be exposing Jewish hatred while also doxing and attacking Jews who believe Palestinians should be free. It’s almost like this isn’t about anti-Semitism but more about silencing any criticism of Israel.

We urge professionals and employers to wholly understand the horrid truth behind these doxing campaigns that detriment the lives of thousands. Anti-Palestinian sentiment is profoundly ingrained to the point of acceptance. The genocide of Palestine directly affects Palestinians all over the world, and they have every right to express pain and anger toward the annihilation of their people.

The post Kill the Canary appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Simply existing as a Palestinian is challenging

I receive hate mail every day.
My friend just got fired from her job.
A man in Texas was just stabbed.
The only thing we have in common is we are Palestinian.

Since October 7, the surge of hate crimes against Palestinian Americans and American Muslims has escalated exponentially. Wadea Al-Fayoume, a 6-year-old Palestinian American child, was stabbed to death 26 times on October 14 by a landlord who screamed the words, “You Muslims must die.” His mother was also attacked but survived her stab wounds. On November 23, three young Palestinian men were shot for speaking Arabic and wearing the traditional Palestinian Keffiyeh.

These unsettling events echo the Anti-Arab and Islamophobic sentiments that took place post 9/11.

What is even more nauseating is the constant threats and intimidation of Palestinian livelihood. Palestinians in the diaspora risk their jobs, their positions in school, as well as their physical safety just to speak out against genocide. Anytime Palestinians in America express their support for Palestine or are vocal against Israel’s war crimes, they are met with a series of consequences.

Palestinians are in a position of constantly having to defend themselves amid genocide, settler colonialism, and the utter destruction of their homeland. While bombs are raining on Gaza, I have to take the time to explain to Jennifer why my people deserve to exist. This is due to over seven decades of dehumanization and historical ignorance toward Palestinian existence. Due to Western bigotry, Palestinians are subjected to a culmination of racist notions.

Islamophobia is rampant, the infamous image of the “barbaric Arab” perceived by the West and heavily portrayed throughout media and entertainment, is a common trope.

Then layered on top of that is this twisted belief that Palestinians are “terrorists” and “Jew haters” whose entire existence is based on the detriment of the Jewish people.

Apparently, resisting genocide is Anti-Semitic.

Palestinians are expected to be the perfect victims and accept the theft of their homeland and the denial of their existence.

Israel came to us; we did not come to Israel.

Throughout the past 4 months, we have seen Zionist celebrities and politicians deliberately calling for genocide and using genocidal language. “Turn Gaza into a parking lot,” “We are fighting with human animals,” “This is a war against the children of darkness,” “Flatten them, Flatten Gaza.” These are just a few of the disturbing genocidal statements that are said without any repercussions.

Something that genuinely needs to be examined is why Arab and Muslim hatred is so normalized in American culture. Why is it okay to demonize an entire group of people and call for their death and destruction without any outrage or backlash? Over 30,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered by Israel, and we are still debating semantics and whether or not Palestinians have a right to their land, let alone deserve to exist.

Western ideology has posited the Middle East as this region that only knows chaos, death, and destruction. This is where dehumanization comes into play and it is very prevalent when it comes to Palestine.

We have seen Palestinians being compared to Nazis, to Amalek — an ancient Semitic tribe from biblical times that endured genocide at the hands of the Israelites.

Every Israeli accusation is a confession.

Israel constantly uses this method of labeling any criticism of its belligerent war crimes as “Anti-Semitic” to end all conversations and complicate the prolonged suffering of Palestinians. Zionism has become so institutionalized in America that any criticism of the settler state is falsely labeled as “anti-semitic” and “racist.” It completely distracts from what is happening on the ground and what has been happening to Palestinians for 75 years and counting.

There are literal anti-BDS — Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions — laws throughout the country intended to silence and prevent Palestinians and allies from their unequivocal right to boycott Israeli products. Why is America pushing so hard to attack the freedom of its citizens? It should be concerning that our First Amendment right is being attacked for the sake of a foreign country that has a firm chokehold on our government.

America gives 3.8 billion dollars to Israel with the flick of a wrist to provide free healthcare, education, homes, and weapons to a settler colonial nuclear power that continues to commit genocide with impunity. Meanwhile, in America we are dealing with a homeless crisis, student loan debt, no free healthcare, and our education system is a total mess.

Through my time on this earth I have learned that there is a charge for being Palestinian. There is a very big charge that can result in the loss of your career or even the risk of losing your life.

The Palestinian experience is a lonely one, one that can result in being ousted from society and constantly faced with the denial of your existence. The truth is people are so afraid of being labeled as Anti-Semitic but are not afraid to be Anti-Arab or Islamophobic.   

The post Community Corner: Embraced Hatred appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

There is no historic inevitability to the Israel – Palestine conflict, or between the West and Islam

Editor Commentary

The rhetoric surrounding the October 7th attacks on Israel reverberates with the hateful echoes of sentiments expressed post 9/11.

You can hear the anger filled voices shout: “Islam is inherently violent. Our cultures are incompatible. The West and East have always been at war.”

This is a way to reduce the conflict to good vs evil. It eliminates gray areas and ignores the fact that historically Arabs, Jews, and a whole host of other ethnicities and religions have lived peacefully side by side in Palestine for many hundreds of years. That is until the world maps were redrawn by colonial powers and national interests in the wake of the World Wars.

What may surprise many is that the Israel-Palestine conflict is a modern one, not one with deep historical roots. The Islamic world being at war or Muslims being considered violent is also a recent phenomenon that is much more deeply tied with nationalism and globalism than religion or culture.

These ideas found popular acceptance following the 9/11 terror attacks and were commonly used to justify the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq. Samuel Huntington, the most famous proponent, argued that all of humanity is divided into a discrete amount of “civilizations” that all hold distinct traits, are incompatible with each other, and will eventually clash with one another. The Islamic “world” is inherently and irrevocably different from the Western “world,” as is the Chinese “world,” etc. etc.

Although reductive, it explains both why the United States and Israel were attacked. Without placing any fault on ourselves, our civilizations are just not compatible, and this was a “hail mary” of sorts to engage the West in a culture war. Proponents point to Biblical stories, the Crusades, and modern Islamic terror attacks as if there is a through-line connecting them all.

This ignores the centuries of peace and exchange of ideas that separates these violent episodes from one another. There is not an inherent conflict between the West and the Islamic world. In fact, there is not even a dividing line between them. Ideas, inventions, and people all flow back and forth from West to East over time, influencing and changing each other in both imperceivable and dramatic ways.

The European Renaissance was influenced by Arab and Persian scholars who preserved, debated, and improved on ancient Greek knowledge that had largely been lost to European thinkers, for one dramatic example. For a time, the Islamic world was the center of science. The words for algebra, algorithm, alcohol, and almanac all come from the Arab world. We use modern numbers instead of Xs and I’s because of knowledge spread through the Middle East. Arabic was one of the first “lingua franca’s” of the world, uniting scholars from Spain to Pakistan.

Unfortunately, the recent attack on Israel has re-released much of the same rhetoric and hate we saw two decades ago. If the current Palestine-Israel conflict is not about a clash of cultures or religions, what is it?

It’s a real estate dispute masking itself as a religious one. 

The idea that each group of people who speak a common language and culture should have their own separate nation is relatively new. Before the rise in the idea of nationalism, there was no hard and fast dividing line between entire regions in the middle east. Sure there were Jewish quarters, Arab sections, and whatnot in cities, but Palestine — and the Middle East as a whole — did not have lines drawn through it like it does today. Lines that were imposed from the outside, and that emphasized differences.

Take any part of the world, have outsiders redraw its borders and regroup its people, and there will be conflict. This is exactly what happened to the former Ottoman Empire after World War 1. Competing interests of the European powers plotted on maps what spoils they would acquire. No consideration was given to historical connection, religious affiliation, or political orientation. Following WW2, the United States assumed the role in the Middle East that former colonial powers had, at first mainly to stop the spread of Communism.

The modern conflicts in the middle east, and indeed Islamic terrorism, have risen from these fateful decisions. They are modern reactions to colonialism and globalism, not historical continuations of inevitable clashes.For centuries, the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922 AD) ruled the Middle East and North Africa, plus much of Eastern and Southern Europe. Palestine was at relative peace. There is not an unbroken chain of conflict between Muslims and Jews, Palestinians and Israelis, or West and East. Islam is not inherently violent, it just happened to be the religion in the parts of the world that European powers carved up and that the United States has meddled directly in most recently. The fact that Islam is not Western may be precisely why many have resisted in its name, rather than violence being an inherent part of the religion.

The post Islam Is Not Inherently Violent appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

(Community Corner is provided as a local contribution from experts in their field as well as local residents. This article is contributed by Dr. Reema Wahdan)

In Colorado, there has been an increase in Islamophobia and Anti-Arab bias as a direct result of Israel’s war in Gaza. Both the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee have both reported an unprecedented increase in complaints with over 770 cases from 10/7/23 to 11/4/2023. This is a massive increase over the previous year. Both Islamophobia and Anti-Palestinian rhetoric have been used to justify violence against Palestinians in Gaza and silence supporters of Palestinian human rights here in America. The surge in bigotry has resulted in several incidents being documented against students, physicians, places of work and worship, and more.

As an advocate for human rights for Palestinians, our Palestinian community has been troubled by the loss of both Palestinian and Israelis. In Colorado, the Palestinian community lost 133 Palestinians since October 7, 2023. We have been steadfast in safeguarding the citizens of Palestine and Israel. While we mourn the over 17,000 Palestinian lives lost and the over 1,200 Israeli lives lost. We also demand a return for the Palestinian and Israeli hostages taken after October 7th. Both our communities are stricken by trauma and grief. We stand for peace and an immediate ceasefire in order to restore safety and security for all who live in this region.

Despite the numerous calls for peace and ceasefire in the region, on October 11th my family’s business of 48 years was targeted with numerous of calls and death threats saying “we will kill you Arabs and Palestinians.”

On October 13, our house was also targeted where we found a bullet shot into our living room. The rise of threats against Muslim students has increased in high schools in Aurora and Denver. Over 32 students met with Superintendent Chris Smith of the Cherry Creek School District with reports of directly targeted threats against their lives, denial of pro-Arab activities, or support for Muslim students in general. Derogatory terms such as “terrorist” or “Twin- towers” were used. A recent incident resulted in a pro-Israeli substitute teacher being escorted off the campus due to bullying and harassing language to a group of middle school students for not supporting Israel.

Lastly, many university students have also received threats from Universities to pull funding and support for any Muslim or pro-Palestinian student group on campus. Outside organizations have targeted students and falsely claimed they are “pro-terrorist organizations.”

Other threats nationally include the murder of six-year old Chicago resident Wadea Al-Fayome who was stabbed 26 times by a man who targeted the boy and mother for their Muslim identity. On October 26th three Palestinians college students were shot at in a hate crime in Vermont. There were also another two attempts of murder, numerous violent threats, the use of vehicles as a weapon to target protestors, and incidents involving guns being discharged or brandished to threaten supporters of Palestinian human rights.

The Anti-Defamation League’s increased pressure both nationally and locally has harassed Palestinians, Muslims, and any student organizations that speak up to defend Palestinian human rights. The ADL provided an open letter calling on university leaders to investigate pro-Palestinian student groups, alleging their speech constitutes support for terrorism, despite not being able to provide evidence for such claims.

In Denver, the ADL continues to defame Palestinian students and local house representatives such as Elizabeth Epps who have collectively argued to defend Palestinian human rights. We further applaud efforts by the American Civil Liberties Union who are protecting students who are exercising their constitutional right to free speech by organizing, open debate, and peaceful dissent on campus.

Here in Colorado, our Muslim community will continue to stand united for peace. We will not allow racist organizations to leverage their influence to promote hate. We will continue to work to protect all forms of human rights. Those who oppose this calling will ultimately stand on the wrong side of history. We implore our community in Colorado to end any forms of hate against members of the Muslim or Jewish faith. We appeal to the collective humanity in the world to halt the devastating bombings of innocent civilians. May compassion and urgency guide our collective actions toward a future of peace and healing for all people in this region.

The post Racism, threats, and physical violence surrounding the war in Gaza echo rhetoric following 9/11 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Community Corner is provided by members of our community on relevant local subjects. Typically CC is provided by organizations working to affect positive change but can also be provided by individuals but all rely on their expertise in their fields to address the topic they are contributing on.

What do much of Boulder County and San Francisco, Manhattan and Boston have in common? It is not the number of Starbucks and other coffee boutiques (which per capita may actually be close!), or the way people drive (which we will not discuss further). It is certainly not the amount of space between individual city limits, unless of course, you add up the width of all the freeways and streets. And we have them hands-down on diversity of population that includes Blacktail Prairie Dog towns. So, what on earth could our area have in common with these major metropolitan areas, all in the top ten of the largest cities in the U.S.? Sit down when I tell you, “housing.”

Before you flip the page, or decide you have to go find something to staple, take a moment and recall the last time you had a thought about open space. And when I say that, I mean the vast areas of land in Boulder County’s incredible Open Space program with its roots going all the way back to the late 1950s’s. Perhaps it was a drive through verdant land neighboring cities, or a mind-settling walk on one of the many Open Space trails. Maybe you’ve taken for granted the bucolic nature and feeling of the large swaths of undeveloped land here, rife with nature, some dedicated to farming, or preserved as rare and unique ecological environments.

Search the internet for a map of the Open Space holdings in Boulder County, including the City of Boulder Mountain Parks, and you will likely be astonished at the breadth of the holdings. They are vast. This includes land many cities have joined together to buffer and preserve their unique characters. Very much unlike San Francisco, Manhattan, Boston– or the metro Denver area for that matter– you cannot reach a neighboring city or town in Boulder County by just crossing a street.

Knock the trail dust off your boots and come back to housing. The cities we’re comparing to are geographically and geologically hemmed in. Bays, rivers, mountains, and centuries of earlier development on their outskirts prevent any thought of expanding the number of places for people to live. In contrast, if one day, a whole bunch of people decided that, say, Dubuque, IA, was the one place on the planet they had to live, developers could just mow down a cornfield or two and build a new section of town. In the areas of Boulder County where most people have preferred to live (as generally defined by proximity to Boulder, the foothills and mountains, or the character of a city or town, and other factors), the mountains to the West forms a natural barrier. But with all our wonderful Open Space dramatically constricts the available land on which to build any large-scale housing developments. And that makes this area comparable to the housing markets in San Francisco, Manhattan, and Boston.

Land use here is defined by codes designed to complement the surrounding character of the County. By state statute, if you have 35 acres you can build a home. Those codes, however, define where on the land you can build and how much house you can construct. Whether or not you agree, for over 70 years, the beauty and open feeling here is the result. The homes that currently exist in the most popular areas of the County are what we have to buy and sell now and into the future, just as those in the mega cities we are comparing to.

And that limit on the numbers of homes, in combination with a very robust local economic foundation, and the attraction of this area for all of its attributes, is why the value of your home here will be one of the most valuable investments you have. And the prairie dogs get the same benefit.

Paul Dart is a native, resident of Lafayette, a 30-year Realtor with RE/MAX of Boulder, and a 2022 Forbes Magazine Five Star Legend.

The post Where the Market is Now appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Editor’s Note: Bodega and Marketplace closed at the end of January 2023.

Dear Fresh Thymes Family,

Ending the restaurant chapter of my life and my family’s for the last decade has been the most heartbreaking decision and experience of my life. I was completely overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support, as well as sadness and loss that we collectively experienced. The positive energy of the community has been so sustaining for me and kept this beautiful business alive since its inception, especially since the pandemic. I could never have imagined the loyalty of the community when writing my business plan, which truly grew alongside Fresh Thymes, organically and naturally, with customers being neighbors, friends and family. A true lifetime dream realized for which I will be forever grateful.

It’s hard when you know something amazing is ending and there is no force nor amount of money that can change the tide. When I decided to keep our Bodega and Marketplace open, it felt very possible. I still crave being a part of the community and I love every aspect of what the Bodega and Marketplace is all about. I love quirky healthy food products, freshly made aioli and yogurt. I love pantry helpers in my fridge when I want to throw together a pot of noodles and a salad. I love sourdough. I love teaching, educating and inspiring. But, in the end as with Fresh Thymes, my love and passion is not enough to allow the Bodega and Marketplace to stay open. As such, with gut wrenching sadness, I will officially close all of the businesses at the end of January and move to the next chapter of my personal and professional devotion to education, local ingredients, authentic health, and damn tasty food.

Please read on if you would like an in depth understanding, hard truth, and what’s on the horizon.

There was certainly a confluence of events and circumstances that built up slowly over the last few years that led to this closure. Actually, by opening the Bodega, I was hoping to out-run the trajectory of many food businesses as a result of how restaurants were managed via public health during and after the pandemic and all that has resulted (cost of food, cost of labor, scant qualified applicants). Many of the changes have seemingly become permanent since the pandemic in such a way as to strongly inhibit small businesses everywhere, especially in Boulder. These real obstacles certainly should be understood by the Boulder community at large along with city officials and the Planning Department specifically. These permanent changes have altered the trajectory of many well laid and well funded plans with no consideration of the people and livelihoods behind the business. Frankly, I find this outrageous. Especially in a community that takes pride in “local small business”. I think the Boulder community values small business, but there is a gulf of disconnect between what the community values and what Boulder government values. There is nothing in the Planning Department or local government that incentivizes small businesses. I waited one year from signing my lease to opening the Bodega. I know of large businesses that received their permit before I did, even though I applied before them. I wondered what the incentive was for the Planning Dept. to prioritize large projects over humble small business? I’m sure we can all draw our own conclusions there.

I was being held up in the permitting process for a simple tenant improvement, resorting to hiring a consultant to help jam through the permitting process, 6 months after I submitted my application. I sent email after email over a year ago to the city and planning dept. telling them in no uncertain terms, their delay would cost the city a flourishing business, as well as all the tangential businesses a restaurant supports from local farmers, florists, and food producers among many others. They were literally threatening the livelihood of a multitude of people, in addition to leaving business owners with undue debt. Due to Covid, you can no longer enter the planning building to speak to a planner. Remember when you could do that? And actually, you cannot call either. And actually you cannot find the contact information for anyone at the planning department to reach out to. If you submit a plan, there is no contact during the process unless you dig really hard and drive just about everyone mad in the process of trying to find a human to talk to. Maybe that has changed, but that was the reality in 2021.

As I was waiting, I was also pledged to hire and purchase equipment. I knew of the delays in shipping, I saw the photos of endless cargo ships bobbing in the ocean, waiting for a port. I also knew how difficult hiring was, especially for kitchen help, of which I would need more. And on it goes spending money to hedge against the future while also waiting for the permit that would allow me to increase my revenue. Did I have enough time? Increasingly, it did not look that way. Wood prices doubled. Wait times for everything doubled. I get that this is the real risk that I took on, but I was assured many times by many parties that the wait time for a simple tenant finish would not be a hindrance.

That proved to be wrong, as I told my landlord in December of 2021 that Fresh Thymes was going to struggle to be viable.

Meanwhile, in my personal life, I was experiencing another evolution in my health, awareness and mission. So many chapters in my healing journey and I started to see how much I immersed myself in my business to exert all my energy toward success and growth, excited to continue to surpass my ambition for fresh churned butter and house cultured coconut milk yogurt. I was feeling very pushed to my max overseeing every detail of creating a new brand, while also trying to build culture with what had over the pandemic become an almost entirely new crew of employees, from the highest levels of Management to the Line and Front of House employees, as well as new employees at the Marketplace and Bodega. Phew….. It took me a long time to realize that I was stressed and unhappy when I was busy convincing myself I would be overjoyed as soon as…… as soon as….. as soon as.

I started to feel so distant from all I was trying to create. It was harder to interact with the community as well as my favorite customers. It was more challenging to force creativity.  I spent all my time teaching how to master a profit and loss statement, how to create spreadsheets and what are the 5 things in your toolbelt to affect food cost and labor cost? Increasingly supporting the mental health of everyone and all their struggles, which had increased as well since the pandemic. I started to feel defeated, until some wise business coach told me I needed a vacation. A long vacation. Alone. Somewhere I could be fed and nourished, instead of nourishing others. Where I could find inspiration and REST. I actually confess to not really understanding the meaning of that word. Like, a nap? Rest.. you mean take naps? Like on Saturdays? I literally pondered the meaning of the word in the context of my professional responsibilities and laughed. Everyone knows I don’t nap. That’s silly. Unless I have a margarita in hand on a beach in some sun soaked land. Then I’ll nap. The beginning of my travel plans started to form.

I did take that advice. I did something I had not done since I was a young college graduate.  I spent a month solo traveling to Ikaria, Greece and northern Spain.  In that time, I was able to see food and health and wellness in a new way, a way that was infinitely more exciting, more fulfilling, and hopefully more viable. I began to see how the many layers of complexity needed to run a restaurant were exhausting and possibly not necessary for me personally to connect with others on our shared passions of food and wellness.

The goal for me was that I would feel refreshed and ready to dive back into the minutiae of the business and all the demands that were mounting while I was away. I would have a fresh perspective and be excited about the challenges that awaited. I would continue to build the business to new heights, etc, etc. Then, I returned. And actually, I knew the moment I came back into the restaurant that I yearned for so very much. I experienced such pride in what I had created. I truly had accomplished so much, especially in light of the fact that nearly everyone told me I would fail in 2012 when I was beginning the process of opening Fresh Thymes. I was really able to take that in and realize how truly proud I was, of my humble little restaurant, of the Bodega, of my Marketplace kitchen and how hard generations of employees over a decade had worked to make it a special place.

I was also painfully aware, Fresh Thymes would need more than I could possibly give it to overcome the obstacles that face many independent restaurants in this time, post-pandemic.

I also knew that my current crop of employees and the majority of my management team were sadly not professionally or personally capable of surmounting the odds. The thing that every single restaurant owner dreads had creeped in. That one bad apple. That one manager with a bad attitude that affects all the others and brings the energy and culture down. I was not willing to let the reputation of Fresh Thymes, that I had painstakingly built over the years, to be less than due to the never ending challenges of hiring and training and instilling culture. I was also sadly aware that I personally was not able to overcome all that alone. It was more than I could handle. I was completely empty of reserves to affect deep change and deep changes in my staffing and management team. To say nothing of the affordability of that. The pay structure for restaurant staff that has emerged since the pandemic is entirely unsustainable for restaurants, no matter what you believe about fair wages and the achievability of living in Boulder. Unless you have deep pockets and more cash reserves to throw at it – of which I had neither.

Rene Redzepi, of the world acclaimed restaurant, Noma, summed it up best when announcing the closure of the world’s best restaurant: “If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s how fragile our dreams can be, how incredibly grueling and difficult this industry can be. It’s unsustainable,” he said. “Financially and emotionally, as an employer and as a human being, it just doesn’t work.”

I know it is time to pivot my professional career to the inspiring ways I had experienced food and wellness in my travels.  I now face the difficult realities of ending multiple beautiful businesses, the consequences of that, and beginning a new path.

I will continue to send email updates of what the realities are both professionally within the industry and personally as I embrace a new path forward. I hope you’ll continue to follow the journey and be a part of a new beginning for myself, authentic health, community, education and of course, always, damn tasty food.

Thank you for your continued support.

In good health,
Christine

The post Bodega and Marketplace Closing | Community Corner appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

“Because they need it.” – Whitney Tilson

Tilson is a multimillionaire hedge fund manager who is a major supporter of education “reform,” particularly the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) chain. “Because they need it,” was Tilson’s unguarded response to a question at a seminar about KIPP’s draconian disciplinary practices. “They” referred to the poor Black children in KIPP schools.

I was reminded of Tilson’s offensively revealing comment when reading a New York Times article this week about Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC). The report exposed the increasingly frequent practice of enrolling high school students in JROTC without their assent or their parents’ knowledge.

JROTC is funded by the U.S. military to the tune of $400 million annually, with increases in the works. The Pentagon denies that this is a recruitment program while simultaneously noting that 44% of recent recruits had been in JROTC programs. There are 3,500 JROTC schools nationwide and the vast majority are located in communities of color or poor rural communities.

JROTC programs have more than tripled since the 1970s, a time when backlash to the Vietnam War was hampering military recruitment and the military draft had ended.

The military claims that the program is “. . . designed to teach leadership skills, discipline and civic values — and open students’ eyes to the idea of a military career. “

It must be noted that the program’s name is intentionally misleading. ROTC is a means of direct commission into Officer ranks. JROTC is nothing of the sort. Completion of 3 years of JROTC “earns” the student enlistment at the rank of Private E-2, a status I and others achieved after 8 weeks of Basic Training in 1966. Like the draft in the 1960s and early 70s, JROTC is about indoctrinating young folks to serve as front line ground troop fodder, not military leaders.

That these programs are concentrated in communities of color is ostensibly “because they need it.” It bears noting that Whitney Tilson’s children didn’t “need it,” as graduates of an expensive Manhattan private school where KIPP’s tough love or JROTC’s strict rules would not be tolerated.

Unsurprisingly, critics have pointed out that JROTC curricula are of the Ron DeSantis variety, where leftist notions about race and sexual identity are verboten. It is troublingly ironic that Black youths are forced into a program that offers a whitewashed version of history as they are prepared to serve and protect the nation that perpetuates the systemic racism that forced them into the program in the first place!

Programs like KIPP and JROTC represent a dismal and often racist notion of discipline and civic virtue. The carrots and sticks of KIPP and JROTC fundamentally violate the principles of human learning and development. They are training, not education. They blunt critical capacity, not nourish it. They disallow questions and demand unquestioning compliance. They prohibit unconformity and demand complete conformity.

While JROTC and KIPP schools are especially striking examples, similar misguided ideas of learning and education are increasingly dominant. Charter schools and many traditional public schools are generally “highly structured,” focused on discipline and compliance, often – or usually – requiring uniforms and designed with standard curricula and a “teacher as instructor” model where students are expected to passively absorb information.

The ascendant model of education is one where students pledge unconditional fealty to a republic and its implicit religion without any opportunity to interrogate its meaning, purpose or true history. The republic “for which it stands” is feverishly supported by so-called patriots who have little to no knowledge of the complex system that has somehow survived despite ignorance. The ignorance has spread like slime into elected bodies, including the United States Senate and House of Representatives, perhaps well on its way to becoming the House of Reprehensibles, at least on one side of the listing ship of state.

As an educational and political progressive, I am occasionally accused of not “loving” my country. That’s true I suppose, because loving a country is more dangerous than romantic. I do, however, admire and deeply respect the ideals to which we aspire, despite the halting progress or, in recent years, the disturbing backsliding.

The hope for the future of the United States does not reside within military indoctrination, strict training for Black kids “because they need it” or pledges and patriotic songs mouthed by kids who don’t know what they mean. Those things are the stuff of authoritarianism and fascism, not a democratic republic.

Schools should be places where children are supported while learning about their own identity; racial, sexual and philosophical. They should be free to exhibit these things in their clothing, hair color or style, and creative expression. They should be practicing democracy, not chanting meaningless slogans. They should not be judged and strictly disciplined. They should be recognized and loved for who they really are.

Because they need it. We all need it.

The post Because They Need It appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 5, 2022

Contact:
Cathy Renna, Communications Director, National LGBTQ Task Force, 917-757-6123, crenna@thetaskforce.org

Mardi Moore, Executive Director, Out Boulder County,
720-346-1836, mmoore@outboulder.org

Just two weeks after a shooter killed 5 people, injured 18, and traumatized so many others at Club Q in Colorado Springs, the United States Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in an anti-LGBTQ public accommodations discrimination case from Colorado. In the case of 303 Creative v. Elenis, the National LGBTQ Task Force joins the friend of the court (amicus) brief of GLAD, the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), Lambda Legal, White & Case LLP, and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). The case involves a Colorado wedding website designer who asks the Supreme Court to approve her ugly intentional discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. Lorie Smith, this secular business’s owner, claims she is an artist with a First Amendment free speech and freedom of religion right to publicly claim on her website that she won’t serve LGBTQ+ individuals. Smith’s outward denial of services to people based on sexual orientation or gender identity is a clear violation of the public accommodations non-discrimination law. Smith is represented by what the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as an extremist group through its fighting hate program.”

Rev. Nicole Garcia, Director of Faith Work at the National LGBTQ Task Force, said, “This is the latest example of the weaponization of faith to discriminate against our community. But our community – and the larger culture – knows the truth. Many LGBTQ people are people of faith and numerous denominations welcome and celebrate the inclusion of LGBTQ people in their faith communities, and celebrate our weddings with joy. As a pastor, I stand with my community and our allies against any form of discrimination – to maintain the clear and brightline of separation of church and state.

Mardi Moore, Executive Director of Out Boulder County, states “Colorado is a more welcoming state for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people than this lawsuit would lead one to believe. The owner of 303 Designs is backed by the anti-LGBTQ Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF has a warped idea about freedom in that their relentless crusade to discriminate against people based on who they are or whom they love. Of course, businesses open to the public should not be able to discriminate and deny services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer customers. Discrimination is not only the wrong thing to do, but also bad for our communities and our economy. The people of Colorado suffered through Amendment 2 in the 1990s; we do not need to be put through another controversy that pits neighbor against neighbor nor should other states endure the same.

Said Liz Seaton, Policy Director for the National LGBTQ Task Force: “The amicus brief focuses on LGBTQ+ issues and draws comparison to other marginalized groups discriminated against in public spaces. It drills down on why public accommodation laws exist and challenges the idea that consumers can seek services elsewhere. Allowing open discrimination legalizes segregation in the marketplace. Not only is this constitutionally wrong, but it also is morally reprehensible. The brief’s most important argument lifts up the powerful amicus briefs of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Those two briefs by venerable civil rights organizations provide a detailed history of public accommodations discrimination against Black and Brown people in this country. We are proud to stand with them and with GLAD, NCLR, Lambda Legal, White & Case LLP and HRC to uphold the rule of law.

The National LGBTQ Task Force advances full freedom, justice and equality for LGBTQ people. We are building a future where everyone can be free to be their entire selves in every aspect of their lives. Today, despite all the progress we’ve made to end discrimination, millions of LGBTQ people face barriers in every aspect of their lives: in housing, employment, healthcare, retirement, and basic human rights. For more information go to www.thetaskforce.org.

Out Boulder County works independently and in collaboration to facilitate connection, advocacy, education, research and programs to ensure LGBTQ+ people and communities thrive. For more information go to https://www.outboulder.org.

The post Statement in SCOTUS Case of 303 Creative v. Elenis from National LGBTQ Task Force and Out Boulder County appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

For months, she struggled silently with a sense of worthlessness. She had panic attacks that left her trembling. Nightmares that made her cry.

She’d told only a handful of friends about the sexual assault she endured while she was home the summer after her freshman year. Now, as she finished her sophomore year at Yale University, the trauma finally became unbearable.

On a June day after the 2021 spring semester, the 20-year-old college student swallowed a bottle of pills at her off-campus apartment.

As she slowly woke up at the emergency room in New Haven, Conn., one thought overwhelmed her: “What if Yale finds out?”

This excerpt from a November 11th Washington Post article is just the tip of the iceberg of cold indifference described in the article. That it was published on Veterans Day is unintentionally ironic. This student and so many more suffer from an equivalent to PTSD, having navigated the war of attrition – elite college admissions – only to find themselves in a literal battle for their lives.

The Post article reveals the incomprehensible process of withdrawal and reapplication faced by students in mental health crisis at Yale. Three months earlier, another young woman student killed herself, reportedly unable to bear the thought of the consequences of withdrawing from Yale.

These two students are, in essence, the rule, not the tragic exception. An October article in Monitor on Psychology, a publication of the American Psychological Association, reported that nearly three quarters of college students report moderate or severe psychological stress. Counseling staff have tripled at, as just one example, the University of Virginia. A Dean there noted, “I don’t think we could ever staff our way out of this challenge.”

Much attention is directed toward children who are “at risk”as a result of poverty, food insecurity, homelessness and other societal neglect. While I don’t intend to equate the two, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has now added youths in “high achieving schools” to their list of “at-risk” groups. Our current cultural and social priorities are not configured to mitigate the damage we are doing to children at either of these seemingly opposite ends of the continuum.

Yale is also the rule, not the exception, although Yale’s response to the results of “high achievement” pressure is particularly callous. The most selective colleges and universities are at the epicenter of the national crisis of anxiety, stress and depression. Whether they respond with Yale’s apparent insensitivity or respond with more compassion, there seems to be little recognition of the fact that they are bearing the damaged fruit of the seeds they’ve sown.

The heat in the pressure cooker of elite education starts early. In the crazy world of private schools, and in selective public schools and affluent communities, the process begins at – or before – birth. I used to joke that the private school I led for decades was the first to require APGAR scores (look it up) for preschool admission. Satire, of course, but the truth is only slightly less absurd.

Many parents in this privileged bubble pick a selective preschool which sends the most kids to the selective kindergarten that sends the most kids to the selective elementary school that sends the most kids to the selective middle school that sends the most kids to the selective high school that sends the most kids to Ivy League colleges. Any failure along that chain of parental ambition creates unbearably uncomfortable cocktail parties. At the end it leaves the 90-95% of rejected applicants to reconcile the heartbreak of having to go to Kenyon or, God forbid, a state school.

The chain itself is dropped from above by most selective colleges – I use Ivy as an accurate proxy – who don’t give a tinker’s damn about the collateral damage done to children along the way. While no kids are immune, the anxiety and stress affect girls and young women disproportionately. Several studies show girls suffering double the rate of depression and triple the incidence of attempted suicide. A profoundly important explication of this gender divide can be found in Denise Pope’s superb book, Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic and Miseducated Students. (It is just too funny that her great book was published by Yale University Press!)

In the New Republic William Deresiewicz, author and former Yale professor, wrote “Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it.”

Or as I have described the phenomenon, a cohort of students gradually conditioned to just find the right answers; never to ask the wrong questions. By freshman year at their dream college they sit at the ready, anxiously transcribing the wisdom of the professor, skillfully extracting the elements most likely to be on the next exam.

There are many things to be done about this, but none are likely.

Schools and colleges could jettison the College Board in its damaging and highly profitable entirety. The SATs were created by a Princeton professor, Carl Brigham, who later became an enthusiastic proponent of eugenics, a pseudo-scientific belief that you could engineer an advanced society by weeding out the inferior. To be fair, Brigham didn’t suggest killing anyone and he later changed his views. But the system he kickstarted is doing a pretty good job of crippling young folks in service of a mostly mythological meritocracy based on a very limited idea of human intelligence and worth.

Colleges could refuse to play the ranking game. Colleges could stop inflating applications so they can show a lower acceptance rate. Colleges could stop paying attention to AP courses so that schools could stop providing them. Colleges could accept more students who are too busy with life to earn a 4.5 GPA on a 4 point scale.

And, of course, parents and school administrators could look in the mirror and recognize that their own ambitions are reflected in their children’s unhappiness.

But at the very least, when students have collapsed under the pressure they created, they could respond with some compassion, not another round of self-protection.

Shame on Yale.

The post Poison Ivy appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

I don’t even know how to begin this column. My eyes are filling with tears, and I am having a hard time breathing regularly. I just called to move an appointment so I could compose this story and began crying with a complete stranger.

I just watched the videos from Acme Fine Goods in Louisville this morning. Eric was talking about the passing of our good friend, neighbor, and community member, Moxie Bread owner, Andy Clark.

Andy and I would have long conversations regarding our community. Part of it would go as follows;  I would call to ask him to advertise, and he would tell me how he has too much business, which was hard for me to counter – because I was a regular and knew how busy the stores were. He would laugh and sometimes buy an ad anyway. But when he didn’t buy an ad he was always so gosh darn nice when he told me no. He would tell me; “Shavonne, I want to support you because I believe in the work you do, we need community journalism.” And so he would buy one or two ads a year. He also donated to our crowdsourcing during the Pandemic. He would tell me, “I am just going to donate because I can’t take on any more business.”

That is the kind of person Andy was. But not just for YS – for everyone. During the Pandemic he was vocal about protecting the community and even took some hate for it. But he went above and beyond – just like he did with everything. After the Marshall Fire, Andy and Moxie Bread were some of the first to be out on the frontlines feeding people, making sure they had what they needed. Maybe that is why his bread was so good, it was filled with all that love.

What Andy never knew was that he was a source of light for me during a very dark time in my life.

I had built Yellow Scene up from literally a yellow flyer, to the largest publication in the County. We borrowed no money our first decade and we scrapped and worked hard every step of the way. As comes with success, there is a cultural component to American business that we always think we must get bigger.

For a multitude of reasons, I took a risk and started a second magazine that was distributed from Denver to Fort Collins in 2011. I was blessed with an amazing staff who had drank the kool-aid with me and worked those long hours right alongside me. But as time went on, people got married, had babies and moved on from YS. I was thrust into managing two platforms, with double the staff and frankly, had no clue how to be that big. I started to drown, mistakes started to happen, and stress became a constant. I am not proud of how I acted on that stress during that time, and have worked hard to rectify it, but the damage to my beloved company had been done. By 2017, I had spent so much money I had gone from no debt to 6 figure debt, and I was still sinking. In my mind, I had screwed up my life’s work.

Many do not know this about me, but I sank into a deep depression. Sure, I hid it, but at night I would lay in bed with suicidal ideation running through my mind. I couldn’t stop the thoughts or from crying. Every choice I made seemed to lead to another bad outcome. I couldn’t think straight. I was a hysterical mess.

I was blessed with some very wise people who, for whatever reason, wanted to help. One person trusted me enough to loan me $50,000 and a few others smaller amounts, but several loaned me their time and expertise. Blair Koch, of TAB Denver West, donated an entire year to me for consulting services. I still hear her first words to me; “You have to turn off that noise in your head.” At the time I had no idea how to do that. I was crushing under the weight of my failure, my finances, and my grief.

Most probably think I am crazy for staying committed to printing YS every month, but I absolutely love what I do. I love that we truly do create something that is real, no compromises, and filled with stories that uplift and inform our community. I love working side by side with small businesses (even if during the Pandemic that was a tad scary). I love crafting smart, clever designs for them and giving them our marketing and design services for free, which is something not really found elsewhere. I love the photoshoots and the art and the fact we have never put the Flatirons on the cover. I love serving this community.

I know Andy loved everything about what he did too.

Photo by Jimena Peck, Published in 5280 Magazine

I don’t know exactly why I did not follow through on those thoughts of suicide. Most people recoiled when they learned of my plight. I felt like a leper.

But not everyone. It wasn’t just Blair who supported me, my CPA did too. He just kept believing in me no matter how ugly the numbers looked. I had friends who constantly checked in on me, would go on walks with me while I sobbed hysterically. I finally got a therapist to help me sort through the emotional mess I had become.

There is a deeper component that happened for me. I had to figure out who I was successful or not, and I had to learn to love that person, mistakes and all. I came to a realization that in our culture we value human life on net worth, and I had to understand that my worth wasn’t the same as my income. That has been a very hard journey as it goes against our societal constructs. I hope to god I have come through a richer person than before, even if it’s not in my bank account.

Andy may never have known that he helped lift me up during some of the darkest times of my life. That he believed in me, and I needed that.

Andy Clark, photo by George Lange Studios, georgelange.com

For those of us who love someone that decides to leave this world, we can never really know what haunted them. It’s a hard, god-damn world to live in, and those striving to create value against a system that works to devalue human beings, tend to care more. They hold that pain because they understand it can be better. Sometimes the pressure of trying to make the world a better place can become too much.

Andy always strived to make the world a better place and the world was better for him being in it. I will mourn the loss of this kind, dear soul, as there are no perfect words. I wish I had known of Andy’s struggle so I could have been the light for him. Because of the gifts he gave us all, I can only hope I can carry his work forward in mine.

Please help support Andy’s family during this time.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/b6eku6-andys-family

988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline

Hours: Available 24 hours. Languages: English, Spanish

MENTAL HEALTH & SUICIDE RESOURCES

https://rmcrisispartners.org

https://afsp.org

https://www.sprc.org

https://www.riseagainstsuicide.org

https://namibouldercounty.org/in-a-crisis/boulder-crisis-services

https://www.hopecoalitionboulder.org/resources

SLIDING SCALE THERAPY

https://www.naropacommunitycounseling.com

https://www.boulderpsychologicalservices.com

The post Andy was there for me when it was dark appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

With apologies for being quite blunt . . . the debate about affirmative action is almost entirely poppycock.

Last week the Supremes heard arguments in a duo of cases challenging affirmative action (AA) in college admissions. Based on oral arguments, the end is near. Of course the oral arguments were unnecessary for a court with four privileged white men, one white handmaiden and a Black guy who, during these arguments, asked, “What’s diversity?”

Poppycock #1

The “arguments” this week centered primarily on the educational value of racial diversity. This focus was inevitable because all the other justifications for AA had been whittled away in prior decisions. Proponents of AA have been left with only educational value, which is really rich in that it essentially asks Black folks, once again, to teach white folks. If I were a Black man, I’d say, “No thanks. Teach your own damn selves.” Which is, I suppose, why I’m writing this piece.

Fairness requires that I do acknowledge the educational value of diversity, especially in the form of Black activists who specialize in upsetting the white privilege apple cart. But that’s really not what Harvard et al have in mind. They are more inclined toward Carlton Banks (check it out!) than to Malcom X. Each side trotted out their favorite research showing the rich benefits or total irrelevance of diversity.

The real importance of AA is as overdue justice – reparations, if you will. If one needs evidence of the ongoing, pernicious reality of racism, look no further than the 70% of Americans who are against AA, including Clarence Thomas, who is so resentful of AA that he married a White Nationalist.

And AA is not just giving preference to Black applicants. It is – or should be – recognition that the whole system, from birth to application, is built on a foundation of white bricks from social and cultural hegemony to; test bias; stereotype threat; K-12 funding disparity; racial gaps in wealth; early education disadvantages; health issues; and to white dominance in policy, administration and faculty at every level of schooling.

Poppycock #2

The Harvard case is based on the absurd idea that missing out on Harvard is severely traumatic. As is true of all the “top tier” schools, reputation is largely based on rankings from sources like US News and World Report. Top rankings derive from meaningless statistics like the number of hearts they can break. The more applications and rejections, the better.

It is just self-fulfilling nonsense. They take students with the highest SAT scores and grades and then they are “ranked” at the top because their incoming class had high SAT scores and grades. The ridiculous chase for the Ivies is toxic. It creates anxiety, high levels of stress and rampant depression. It depresses curiosity and creativity. The education may or may not be good. Many classes are taught by graduate assistants.

Many faculty members at highly selective colleges report that their high-flying students are not only stressed and depressed, but alarmingly incurious. After all, they’ve been conditioned to answer questions, not ask them. They sit with notebook in hand, diligently recording the professors’ points of view so as to accurately reiterate them on the next exam or writing assignment.

One lovely student, to whom I had expressed this reality in high school, grabbed the brass ring of Princeton admission despite maintaining her mental health and asking plenty of questions. At her first fall break, she stopped by my office.

(I paraphrase) “Steve! You were so right! At the start of the semester, in a small freshman class, the professor asked us to write an essay – no grade – to get an idea of our interests and writing ability. A student asked, ‘What should we write about?’ ‘Whatever you wish to write about,’ he replied. ‘But give us an idea of what you want,’ chirped another student. ‘I don’t care,’ he replied with mild irritation. ‘Write about whatever interests you.’ ‘But, but . . . what are we supposed to be interested in?’”

I headed a school for two decades and hoped for seniors to be accepted at Ivies (for their egos and parents’ cocktail boasts) and then decline the offer and go to, for example, Oberlin.

Poppycock #3

It is not as though a grassroots social justice movement arose and brought all these lawsuits through the system to the Supremes. It’s all the work of neoconservative activist Edward Blum. For decades he has fished for students willing to act as surrogates for his personal campaign. He has been supported by big conservatives bucks from like-minded “think” tanks who think racism is dead and it is white people who are getting the short end of the stick and the long end of the shaft.

There is lots of damage done in America, but it’s not done to the statistically insignificant number of Asian-American or white kids Blum claims are victims of injustice. They invariably go to another “elite” school.

A legal case requires proof that the plaintiff(s) have been harmed, not that their tender feelings were hurt. The only reason these cases rise to the Supreme Court is because the conservative justices are fishing for petitioners and Blum serves them up a few whoppers.

Every recent case that has led to dismantling social justice (voting rights, gun rights, abortion) has been pushed through the system by a similar process.

What a waste of time and resources, just because of one zealot and his wealthy conservative patrons.

The post Affirmative Action Debate is Poppycock appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Contributed by Cal-Wood Education Center

THE TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY

This Monday, October 17, 2022, marks 2 years since the Calwood Fire burned over half of our 1200 acre mountain top. As I look back on the last two years and where we are today as an organization, I feel a pride in our resilience and overwhelming gratitude for the community support.

Although our recovery and mitigation efforts will be forever ongoing, we have continued to see our hard work pay off. With engagement from the Cal-Wood community, volunteers, dedicated partners, and researchers, we are working to restore the Ponderosa forest ecosystem. And as an educational nonprofit, we are finding amazing teaching opportunities about wildfire behavior, fire ecology and fire mitigation throughout the process.

This weekend, we are commemorating the two year anniversary of the start of the Calwood fire with the closing of Art in the Park in partnership with Chautauqua.  Please consider how you can commemorate the second anniversary of the Calwood Fire.  We hope that you bid on a one-of-a-kind birdhouse made from trees from the burn area, donate to Cal-Wood, or simply immerse yourself in nature and feel grateful and connected.

Gracias,

Rafael Salgado, Executive Director

BIRDHOUSE ONLINE AUCTION AND EXHIBIT

This year, Art in the Park features birdhouses made extraordinary by local artists and built by Cal-Wood staff from trees burned in the 2020 Calwood Fire. Bid on a birdhouse through the online auction and make sure to visit the birdhouses in the magical campus of the Colorado Chautauqua now through October 16.

There are 32 bird houses, all as gorgeous and unique as the ones below!

SINCE THE CALWOOD FIRE

Photos from October 2020 and Summer 2022

INTEGRATING FIRE ECOLOGY INTO OUR CURRICULUM

Courtesy of Calwood

In 2022 so far, 1,137 K-8 students and many Latino families have engaged in our fire ecology curriculum at Cal-Wood. One of the activities in our fire ecology lessons has the students and families make mud seed balls that they then dispense in the burned area. We are then monitoring the regrowth success using different techniques.

RESIDENTIAL WILDFIRE RESEARCH FIELD COURSES WITH HIGH SCHOOLERS

Courtesy of Calwood

This summer, we held one 5-day residential field course with 14 teens of color. They camped for 5 days and participated in authentic research in our burn area, in partnership with Colorado University, Colorado State University, Thorne Nature Experience and The Nature Conservancy.

LONG TERM FIRE RESEARCH PROJECTS

Courtesy of Calwood

We currently have ten research projects set up at Cal-Wood in partnership with the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, The Nature Conservancy, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Colorado State Forest Service, Boulder County Parks and Open Space, and the Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Our vision is that with research, restoration, engagement, and education, Cal-Wood can help the west to be better prepared for future massive wildfires that we are experiencing due to climate change.

WORKSHOPS WITH PRIVATE LANDOWNERS

Courtesy of Calwood

This year, we held a small, one-day training for private landowners affected by the Calwood Fire. We talked about wildfire behavior, climate change, and most importantly, fire mitigation actions. We are planning to offer more workshops in 2023.

VOLUNTEERS AND FIRE RESTORATION

Courtesy of Calwood

This summer, we worked with 28 volunteer groups on fire restoration projects.  We also launched a Friends of Cal-Wood series of volunteer days so that individuals could get involved. Volunteer activities included fire restoration, forestry management, trail work, riparian restoration, invasive species pulls, maintenance/beautification projects, wildlife enhancement activities, and more!

COLORADO GIVES DAY IS DECEMBER 6, 2022

Please consider scheduling a donation to Cal-Wood on Colorado Gives Day, December 6, 2022.

Supporting Cal-Wood has a greater impact on Colorado Gives Day. Your support is amplified by the $1 Million Incentive Fund. As we plan for 2023, our biggest financial needs are to rebuild our scholarship fund to match the number of children and family members that we plan to serve in 2023 and to keep up with our fire restoration activities.

[DONATE NOW]

Cal-Wood is an educational non-profit that has connected hundreds of thousands of youth and family members to the Colorado mountains through our environmental education programs.

Please consider a donation to support our mission, our recovery, and our survival.

The post Since the Calwood Fire appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

“Eventually all nations will have nuclear weapons or no one will have them.”

This is a slightly paraphrased quote from my dear friend the late Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr.   Bill, as he was known to all, was a distinguished progressive Christian, former senior pastor at the renowned Riverside Church in New York, organizer of the Freedom Riders and passionate war resister. His social justice bona fides are impeccable.

The quote with which I began comes from his time as President of SANE/FREEZE, now called Peace Action.

Bill’s wisdom came to mind when I read of the intent to locate “long guns” in two Saint Vrain Valley School District (SVVSD) high schools at the request of the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office.  The stated purpose is to have readily available firepower in the event of an armed intruder or other such threat.  The SVVSD Board unanimously approved the request and delegated further action to the Superintendent alone.

This is a sad commentary on the state of American society and on the capitulation of the SVVSD Board and Superintendent to the irrational, albeit somewhat understandable, fears of possible school violence.

Facts are important.  There are 97,568 public schools in the nation. There have been about 130 school shootings with at least one fatality in the last 4 years.  The vast majority of these incidents occurred in parking lots, at or during sporting events, or on playgrounds or other outdoor school spaces. The probability of an event that would justify this weapon storage program approaches zero.

The psychological impact on students in these facilities is not zero. It is unmeasurable. It is a silent statement from their community. “You are not safe and the only protection from bad guys with guns is to have good guys with guns.”  This statement writ large is a prime reason the whole damn country is awash in guns – an estimated 436 million at last count.

As my friend Bill might say, “Eventually everyone will have a gun or no one will have a gun.” We see clearly toward which eventuality we are headed. The NRA and a nonsensical reading of the Second Amendment seem to have determined our destiny.  Guns are used to intimidate voters. Guns are wielded to settle petty disputes. The former president wanted metal detectors disarmed instead of disarming insurrectionists.

I have written frequently about gun control and received taunts to “Try and take mine away, chickenshit!” – or words to that childish effect.  Open carry is fashionable in many communities. Many political observers are genuinely afraid of mass violence if Trump is indicted. Threats of violence flood into Congress every day. There aren’t enough Capitol Police to protect our elected representatives. Armed militiamen stalk voters at drop boxes.

Gun zealots claim that we liberals want to take their guns away. The typical progressive political response is, “Oh no! Not that! We just want a few modest, common sense measures”  This milquetoast, apologetic response is often accompanied by, “I have guns too!  Look at the picture of the deer I shot!”

Well, I don’t have guns, although I am familiar with more than  few weapons from my time training to be an Army officer. That experience didn’t excite me or lead to a lifetime infatuation. To the contrary, I saw the damage a bullet could do and was nauseated at the thought of pointing a gun at another human – enemy or friend. While I understand hunting “culture,” I recoil at the idea of killing anything for sport.

So I am that progressive bogeyman who does indeed want to take guns away. If we were a moral, rational nation, guns would have no place in public.  There are ways to secure and control weapons for those who hunt or shoot for sport.

The idea of a gun at home for personal protection is irrational.  Self-harm and accidents are far more likely than a heroic shot at an intruder in the dark.  And the irony that escapes gun advocates is that the justification for guns is because people have guns.  Through this vicious cycle of justification we are rapidly approaching the “everyone”  – and evermore distant from “no one.”

I despair more than at any time in my adult life.  It is inevitable that gun violence will erupt  with greater and greater frequency.  I’ve always argued, to little effect, that the “right to bear arms” is also a “right to use arms.”  This implicit “right to use arms” is now at the exploding point because of irresponsible political leaders and media personalities who won’t push back at “hang Mike Pence!” “Where’s Nancy???” pistol-packin’ Lauren Boebert and her pal Marjorie Taylor Greene and a growing catalogue of incitement.

It is damned madness.

The storage of weapons at public schools is, I suppose, an inevitable consequence of the madness.  But it shouldn’t make anyone feel safe.  It should make us sad. Very, very sad.

The post Guns, Guns, Everywhere appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

By Sara Lu Loflin, Executive Director for ProgressNow Colorado

Community Corner is provided by members of our community on relevant local subjects. Typically CC  is provided by organizations working to affect positive change but can also be provided by individuals but all rely on their expertise in their fields to address the topic they are contributing on.

Dr. Yadira Caraveo

Dr. Yadira Caraveo, a pediatrician and current state representative, is breaking new ground in Colorado’s new Eighth Congressional District. If elected, Caraveo will be the first Latina to hold federal office from Colorado. Caraveo has spent the last 4 years representing Thornton and Northglenn in the State House. Her opponent is anti-abortion, oil and gas champion, Republican candidate Barbara Kirkmeyer (a Colorado State Senator).

The 2020 Census yielded a new congressional district for Colorado. Colorado’s Eighth Congressional District covers Adams and Weld County – from Commerce City to Greeley, Thornton to Firestone. The new district is 40% Latino. Over the last decade, the district has also become known as the center of new neighborhood fracking operations in Colorado.

The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Yadira and her three siblings grew up and attended public school in Adams County. Caraveo went on to go to college at Regis University and then to medical school at the University of Colorado. Raised by a working family, Yadira has spent her career advocating for Colorado working families. Her biography notes that, during her medical residency, she became a union representative with SEIU to advocate for better working conditions. Caraveo has spent her career working to serve working and low income families as well as organizing fellow doctors to become part of the Union of Concerned Scientists. 

In 2018, Caraveo ran for the Colorado State House, to represent the community where she grew up and where she now practices medicine. Throughout her four years in the Colorado legislature, Yadira has not shied away from taking on hard fights. She has sponsored  legislation to lower the price of health care, keep fracking out of residential neighborhoods and away from schools, limit and reduce air pollution to protect our kids, expand access to preschool and paid family medical leave, and prevent evictions during the COVID 19 pandemic. 

Caraveo’s opponent, Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer of Weld County, is in many respects the polar opposite of Rep. Caraveo’s thoughtful and community-anchored leadership. As Weld County Commissioner, Kirkmeyer fought to ban Plan B and led an extreme campaign for several Colorado counties to secede from the state and form the new state of “North Colorado.” Further, Kirkmeyer’s servile devotion to the oil and gas industry is a long-standing theme of her career in office. Kirkmeyer fiercely opposed Caraveo’s  SB19-181 (which changed the mission of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to “prioritize public health and safety,”). In 2018, Kirkmeyer told the New York Times “if you don’t like it, you shouldn’t move in next to it,” over the new 2018 placement of a 24-well fracking site just 828 feet from a school soccer field at Bella Romero Academy. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kirkmeyer fought public health measures put in place to reduce the spread of the virus in the pandemic’s early phase before vaccines and effective treatments were available. Kirkmeyer has proudly campaigned on being a “no exceptions” opponent of abortion rights and opposed the historic 2022 Reproductive Health Equity Act, codifying abortion rights into state statute. Most recently, Kirkmeyer was caught by local media attempting to scrub her website of all references to the issue.

While Kirkmeyer has spent her time in office working to ease the way for the oil and gas industry, charter and religious schools, and bans on abortion and reproductive health, Yadira Caraveo has not lost sight of the community she serves in seeking to represent the Eighth Congressional District. In fact, constituents in the district had this to say of Caraveo:

“Yadira has been my children’s pediatrician for years, including through my son’s two life threatening hospitalizations. I trust her with the most important thing in my life: my children. She understands the challenges that working families face every day, and she is empathetic, thoughtful. An evidence based approach is exactly what we need in Congress.” – Suzie Brundage, Thornton resident.

“Yadira is a champion for protecting the health and safety of children. She was one of the first among other concerned scientists and doctors to raise concerns about the placement of fracking wells so close to schools and residential areas. She knew that cumulative exposure to dangerous leaks of airborne chemicals like benzene posed a serious risk to small children if they were exposed. She spoke out on their behalf.” – Therese Gilbert, Greeley resident. 

“Caraveo has remained part of this community and is a proven champion for women and working families. We need someone who is unafraid to stand up to big special interests like oil and gas, while staying in touch with the district she represents. We need someone who is pragmatic and unafraid to stand up to big special interests like oil and gas, while staying in touch with the district she represents.” – Stacy Lambright, Thornton resident.

Former State Representative Joe Salazar of Thornton had this to say: “Caraveo has remained part of this community and is a champion for women and working families. In the short period Rep. Caraveo has been an elected official, she has demonstrated her desire to represent and help all communities. In the ungodly long period Barbara Kirkmeyer has been an elected official, her focus has been to demonize people and communities she disagrees with. CD-8 deserves someone who fights for all of us. Yadira is the clear, smart, rational choice for our communities.”

In a district created to be the most politically balanced and competitive in the nation, Caraveo is a perfect candidate where Kirkmeyer is a shockingly inappropriate throwback to a far-right agenda that Colorado voters have repeatedly rejected at the polls. At a time when abortion and reproductive rights, democracy and fundamental freedoms are under attack, and at a time when working families need a champion, Yadira Caraveo is the compassionate, community-centered fighter that Colorado needs.

The post The 8th Congressional District: Can a pediatrician beat an anti-abortion extremist to become the first Latina elected to Congress from Colorado? | Community Corner appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

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

Courtesy of Gary Swing

On October 10, the Colorado League of Women Voters hosted a candidate forum with all six candidates for Secretary of State. Unity Party candidate Gary Swing was one of them. Below are his answers to the questions asked during the forum.

1. Opening Statement

I’m a spokesperson for the group Best Democracy and I’ve been an advocate for proportional representation since 1993.

We live in a nation that was built on a foundation of slavery, genocide, and white supremacy. Seventy-three percent of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were slave holders. The US Constitution was voted on by 38 rich white men. Most of them had slaves. The US Constitution originally excluded ninety-four percent of the population from representation. Eighteen percent of the population was enslaved. We’ve made progress by abolishing slavery and segregation, and by expanding voting rights, but we still live under a political system that was designed to preserve slavery.

Today, 94 nations use proportional representation to secure fair, inclusive multi-party representation in their national legislatures. Each party wins seats in proportion to its share of the vote. While the United States is stuck with a two party system produced by archaic voting methods, post-apartheid South Africa has fourteen political parties in their national parliament. More than 98% of voters in South Africa are able to elect representatives of their choice. Colorado can lead the way forward to a fair and inclusive government by implementing proportional representation voting systems to elect our state legislature and our US Representatives.

2. What are your top priorities for the office and how would you integrate them in your first 100 days? 

The purpose of my candidacy is to promote an open and inclusive political process. I support proportional representation for legislative elections. Countries that use proportional representation have better representation for women, racial minorities, and alternative parties in government. I advocate the repeal of unaffiliated candidate ballot access restrictions that were passed by the state legislature in 2019. The US has some of the world’s worst ballot access laws for independent candidates. Petition signature requirements should be vastly reduced for both citizen initiatives and candidates.

Candidates should have the option of paying a small filing fee rather than petitioning. I support online petitioning as an alternative to paper petitions, the inclusion of candidate statements in publicly funded voter education guides, and extension of the citizen initiative process to the county level for all 64 Colorado counties.

3. What is your opinion of the current integrity of elections?

Colorado elections are secure. However, the voting methods used in the United States are deeply flawed. Hillary Clinton and Al Gore won the popular vote for President. The Electoral College put Trump and Bush in office. The Electoral College and the US Senate are relics of slavery that grossly distort representation. They perpetuate over-representation for less populated conservative states that are predominately white. Nine states with over half of the US population elect just 18% of the US Senate.

Representation is for people, not for the “imaginary beings called states,” as James Wilson argued. US Presidential elections are the longest, most absurd, and most expensive elections in the world. The Electoral College and the US Senate should be abolished. We should represent people, not property. Each person should have equal voting rights.

4. What measures do you support to further secure elections and improve voter accessibility?

Elections are secure. This is a red herring used to distract voters. The real problems with our election system are distortions in representation due to the use of Single Member Districts and the use of restrictive ballot access laws to suppress candidates, parties, and ballot initiatives.

To improve voter accessibility we should increase drop box locations in each county, and consider prepaid ballot return envelopes, at least for areas of the state that are further than five miles from the nearest drop box.

Nineteen states and the District of Columbia use postage paid ballot return envelopes to facilitate voting by mail.

5. In 2020, turnout among BIPOC voters was almost 20 points lower than white voters. How will you increase voter registration and turnout rates among Coloradans of color?

Winner take all elections in single member districts exclude political minorities from representation, unless they’re concentrated into majority-minority districts. Proportional representation in multi-member districts increases representation for women and racial minorities. People who feel excluded would benefit from proportional representation. It makes every vote count, no matter where you live. The American political system has always been dominated by white men. It’s important to recruit more women and people of color as candidates for public office. Strict voter ID laws suppress participation in elections by making it more difficult for people to vote. I support voting by mail and automatic voter registration to make it easy to participate in elections. Countries with proportional representation have much higher voter turnout rates than countries with single member district elections. Would you rather be included, or be excluded from decision making?

6. Do you support or oppose the implementation of alternative voting methods in Colorado? Please explain.

I support the use of better voting methods. Everyone should have fair representation in government, not just the majority or plurality in single member districts.  I support hybrid proportional representation for legislative elections, as proposed by the group Best Democracy. This would combine a ranked single transferable vote in multi-member districts with an open party list to allocate seats proportionally. For single winner executive offices, alternative voting methods like instant runoff voting or approval voting can help ensure that the most popular candidate is elected.

A variety of voting methods use ranked ballots. People often use the term “ranked choice voting” to refer to instant runoff voting, which is a winner take all system. Instant runoff is okay for single winner executive offices, but it should not be used to elect multi-member legislatures or councils.

7. Is the rate of uncured ballots in Colorado a problem? If so, what would you do about it?

I don’t think this is a major problem. About half of one percent of all ballots cast in Colorado in 2016 and 2018 were rejected due to signature verification issues, with no impact on election outcomes. If election judges find that the signatures on mail in ballots don’t match the signatures on file, county clerks are responsible for sending each of those voters a letter to verify that the signature is theirs. Voters need to reply to the letter from the county clerk’s office promptly to verify their signature and have their vote counted. The rate of uncured ballots can be reduced by having a signature verification expert help train election judges and by sending multi-lingual signature verification letters. Voters can also have a witness sign their ballot return envelope to back up their own signature.

8. As Secretary of State, how would you promote proportional representation? 

I support a proposal from the group Best Democracy to use Hybrid Proportional Representation to elect a larger, 185 member unicameral state legislature. Eighty percent of seats would be elected by single transferable vote from 22 seven member districts. Voters would rank candidates in their order of preference. The remaining 20% of representatives would be elected from open party lists. Overall, each party would win seats in proportion to its share of the party list vote. With a 3% threshold to win party list seats, almost all voters would elect representatives of their choice. Colorado would have about eight or nine parties in our legislature, not just two. Adopting proportional representation statewide requires a state constitutional amendment introduced by the state legislature or through a ballot initiative. As Secretary of State, I would help draft legislation for proportional representation and lobby for it.

9. Why do you want to serve now? 

I would like to repeal Duverge’s Law. Duverge’s Law is an observation in political science that winner take all elections in single member districts tend to produce a two party system. In practice, most winner take all elections take place in districts dominated by one party with no real competition. The outcome of most elections is predetermined by the demographics of the district. A Colorado College study found that 82% of Colorado counties have a one party system. A one party state is not a democracy.

As an alternative party candidate, I know I won’t be elected Secretary of State. To create a multi-party system where everyone is included, we need proportional representation in multi-member districts. We can’t repeal Duverge’s Law, but we can implement proportional representation to create legislatures that accurately reflect the political diversity of the population.

10. Closing Statement

The legitimate purpose of elections is for people to elect candidates who represent their values. Never let anyone bully or intimidate you into voting for candidates you don’t support.

Under proportional representation, the right of decision belongs to the majority, but the right of representation belongs to everyone.

Any single winner voting method excludes political minorities. Proportional representation provides fair representation for everyone.

John Adams wrote that a “representative assembly… should be in miniature an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason and act like them.”

In 1994, Bishop Desmond Tutu said: “The system of proportional representation ensures that virtually every constituency in the country will have a hearing in the national and provincial legislatures.”

If you want fair, inclusive elections, tell your legislators you want proportional representation.

www.theswingvote.wixsite.com/unity

The post Gary Swing, Unity Party candidate for Secretary of State | Community Corner appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

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

Denver — Kristen Blessman, President and General Manager of PBS12 (PBS12.org, Channel 12), announced the Station’s partnership with “The Aaron Harber Show ” (HarberTV.com/Info) to produce a series of nonpartisan television programs highlighting key races and statewide ballot issues on the November 8^th Colorado General Election Ballot (“Your Decision 2022”).

Blessman explained, “As a service to the community, given the extraordinary times we are in today, PBS12 is planning to broadcast an exclusive set of 12 nonpartisan election-related programs hosted by Aaron Harber, who is known to our community for his in-depth knowledge of public affairs and is recognized for his skills and impartiality as well as his ability to fairly moderate discussions and debates.”

Blessman continued, “Our goal is to cover some of the most important candidate races and key statewide ballot issues so PBS12 will be a reliable source of firsthand and accurate information for all Colorado citizens.”

The series will include 12 half-hour programs with the first broadcasts beginning on Sunday, October 16^th, and will continue through Sunday, November 6^th, two days before the General Election.

Blessman noted, “Additionally, PBS12 will put all of the programs online so voters can view them at their convenience 24/7.”  To make the programs even more accessible, a podcast version also is planned.

“I’m excited to have this opportunity with PBS12,” Harber exclaimed. “I know people across the political spectrum are looking for an accurate and fair discussion of the major issues facing our State and nation during a time when few media sources are trusted so I greatly appreciate the opportunity to participate in PBS12’s effort to provide voters with the information they want and need.”

He concluded, “Having PBS12 be the singular television station presenting this opportunity to Coloradans is emblematic of the new leadership at PBS12 and exemplifies Kristen’s focus on having the Station make an extra effort to meet the needs of all our communities across the State.”

Harber, who began his broadcast journalism career on radio, started his television career on Channel 12 after defeating a $20 million lawsuit filed against him by Rush Limbaugh.  He went onto to commercial platforms in Colorado and other States (including across America on Mark Cuban’s AXS-TV).

Since 2000, Harber has moderated bipartisan election debates and discussions every two years and previously has provided political analysis for Denver Television Stations 2 (CW), 4 (CBS), 7 (ABC), and 31 (FOX).

He has been recognized nationally for his work and was the winner of the “Broadcaster of the Year” award from the Colorado Broadcasters Association (HarberTV.com/Awards).

The post “Your Decision 2022” Special Statewide Colorado Election Series on PBS12 | Community Corner appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

About a week ago, my publisher asked if I would be interested in interviewing Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Secretary of State, and I leapt at the opportunity. Griswold is a unique figure in Colorado politics in that she is the youngest Secretary of State in the United States, the first woman Secretary of State in Colorado, and the first Democratic Secretary of State in Colorado in 60 years. We spoke about her roots, her dedication to the voters of Colorado, and what it’s like taking on such an important role in our democracy.

Thomas Rutherford: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me! To start off, I’m interested in how you initially became interested in politics.

Jena Griswold: Well, I’m definitely not the typical person to run for a statewide office. I grew up in Estes Park and Drake, Colorado. The last house we were in before I was out of the house was in the canyon leading up to Estes Park. Most of my formative years were in a cabin with an outhouse outside. There were times when my family was on food stamps. I vividly remember going to the Estes Park food bank, and I started working the summer after seventh grade. I didn’t grow up thinking I’d run for office. Working really young inspired me to be the first person in my family to go to a four-year college, to law school. But it really is the value I bring to this office, that everyday people — no matter if you’re from a town like the one I grew up in or a big city, regardless of your zip code, regardless of the color of your skin or the amount of money in your bank account — we all deserve equal access to make our voices heard. Growing up blue-collar and rural is really the formative experience that I carry with me.

TR: Could you speak to what it was like for you when you actually initially entered politics?

JG: Well, I launched in 2017 running for a seat a Democrat hadn’t won in 60 years. I was running pretty young, and I’d never run for office before. It was what many considered a long-shot race. I became Colorado’s first democratic secretary of state since Eisenhower was in the White House, the youngest secretary of state in the country, and I was to be the first Democratic woman secretary of state. I just feel my job is to get done what I promised the Colorado voters. I led the largest democracy reform package in the nation in my first year in office, and I’ve continued to champion voting rights and protect our elections and election workers every single day in this office.

TR: I’m sure you get asked this a lot. Do you find that people focus more on the fact that you are the youngest secretary of state and less on the fact that you’re the first Democrat or the first woman? 

JG:  I think it’s a mixture. I do think it depends on the audience. I think being the youngest secretary of state in the country for the last four years and, when we win again, the next four, can be really meaningful to younger people because the other candidates are older than me. I think growing up like I did can be meaningful for younger people. I think being a woman can be really meaningful for younger people. But the bottom line is: I hope that people, especially high schoolers and college students can see that you can grow up on food stamps and do things that really help democracy. This country and its voters — everybody has this huge potential to make change. It doesn’t have to be running for office. It could be getting engaged on the topics that are important to them. It could be being role models in their communities. Everybody has this huge ability to do amazing things or things that they are told that they can’t do. 

TR: What are some of the issues that are most important to you that you see the general public misunderstanding and how you’ve tried to rectify that misunderstanding? 

JG: Well, the issue I find most important is protecting the right to vote and safeguarding our elections. In 2019, I led the largest democracy reform package in the nation, and we continue to increase access. For example, I’ve increased dropboxes by 65%. We expanded in-person voting, launched a statewide system so every voter could track their ballots. That increases transparency so Coloradans can see their ballot from when it’s sent to when it’s counted. We guaranteed [voting] access on every public university and tribal lands. We passed a measure restoring voting rights to Coloradans on parole. My office implemented automatic voter registration, which makes our voter rolls more up to date, the elections more secure, but it has also led to the registration of 350,000 Coloradans — Republicans, Democrats, and Unaffiliated, since it was launched in 2020. I’ve been secretary of state in some unprecedented times through an international pandemic, during a presidential election, through an unprecedented attack on voting rights, which we continue to see. I think that no matter what the evolving threat is to our elections, I’ll do everything in my power to innovate and address that. 

We did that this year by passing the first law in the nation on insider threats. It’s now a felony to compromise voting equipment in Colorado. We led the passage of a prohibition of open carrying of guns within 100 feet of voting or where you process ballots. We made it a crime to retaliate against election workers. Those are the things that I’ve really tried to champion as secretary of state.

TR: I’ve noticed that you’ve come under quite a bit of media scrutiny for accomplishing what you have. Can you speak to what it’s like having your actions potentially misrepresented in the media? 

JG: I’ll always do everything I can to safeguard the right to vote. There are some who will say that safeguarding the right to vote and speaking up in times like this is partisan. I reject that. There is nothing partisan about protecting the right to vote. That’s American. That’s what this is about. It’s about helping ensure that everyday people can choose their elected officials and that those elected officials are voted in by enough of the population so they actually represent what folks want. I reject the idea that protecting our elections and speaking up against voter suppression, or security breaches, or the attempted stealing of an American presidency is partisan. Speaking up to protect elections and voting rights is American.

TR: I want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I just want to ask if you have any last  messages before I let you go?

JG: When reelected, I’ll continue to protect the rights of all those Republicans and affiliate Independents and Democrats. I think we can expect the attempted destabilization of elections to continue across the country. We need someone in this office who will always be focused on expanding access for Colorado voters and rising to innovate and respond to emerging threats. It’s an honor to serve as secretary of state, and I look forward to winning a second term and continuing this good work.

The post A Conversation with Secretary of State Jena Griswold | Community Corner appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Community Corner is contributions from the local community. These are different than Op-Ed’s as our citizen writers are required to present their information based in fact more than just their opinion.

By Evan Ravitz

(The Denver Post has refused to print the below pro-direct democracy editorial, which includes details on how they also refused in 2020 to print a related one, and instead printed an editorial by a lawyer for oil and gas, which has spent many millions fighting attempts to limit drilling using direct democracy. No fairness or balance here!)

The Denver Post article “Facing deadline, activists push for teacher pay but wonder if volunteers can still shape Colorado’s ballot” (https://www.denverpost.com/2022/08/06/colorado-ballot-iniatitives-petition-deadline-2022/) details the inequity of Colorado’s ballot initiative petition process: “It’s a time-consuming process and potentially very expensive if a group chooses — and can afford — to hire petition gatherers,” sometimes for over $2 million.

Voters solved this problem in Boulder in 2018 by voting 71-29% to amend our City Charter to allow online petitions for direct democracy, the first in the country, though Arizona has used online petitioning to get candidates on the ballot since 2012. I led the effort as a member of a City elections working group. Boulder’s system was used successfully in 2021. Taipei, Taiwan has followed suit. Italy and New Jersey allowed it during the pandemic.

Direct democracy started in Colorado in 1912, and recently gave us things like Amendment 27, one of the country’s strictest Campaign Finance laws, Initiative 37, the country’s first voter-approved renewable energy mandate for utilities, Amendment 41, the country’s strongest ethics in government law and Amendment 64, the country’s first legal marijuana and hemp. I’ve put a list of 16 important successful initiatives in our last 10 election cycles at: tinyurl.com/ColoradoInitiatives, with links to details on each. The 24 states with ballot initiatives get higher voter turnout, more productive legislatures and even happier citizens: https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-01-25/direct-democracy-may-be-key-to-a-happier-american-democracy

In addition to saving cost and time spent gathering signatures on paper, online petitioning serves shut-ins, distant rural residents, out-of-state travelers, the quarantined, etc., who can’t sign in person. It solves the problem of having to “overshoot” by getting thousands of extra signatures in case of incorrect addresses, etc., which the online system prevents in real-time. It makes things much easier for signers, petitioners and governments. Scroll down to see other advantages at: https://www.change.org/p/boulder-city-council-allow-online-petitioning-for-ballot-initiatives/u/23135902

We can see how online petitioning will affect politics by looking at Switzerland, which has more direct democracy than the rest of the world put together. There, petitions are just left in offices and stores for people to read and sign at leisure, and paid petitioners are rare. The result after centuries are enough local, regional and even national initiatives and referenda that four elections are usually needed for them each year, plus a fifth for candidate elections. A report by Credit Suisse in 2020 found Switzerland had the highest wealth per adult in the world. Switzerland stays out of wars. People are proud of their government because it is truly theirs. Things run like a…Swiss watch.

Back in 2020 I submitted a column promoting online petitioning and the Post instead printed an anti-direct democracy piece by Post columnist David Friednash, a partner in Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber and Shreck, which does public relations for oil and gas, from Colorado to Saudi Arabia. (https://www.denverpost.com/2020/04/10/friednash-collecting-signatures-during-a-pandemic-may-be-impossible-and-that-might-not-be-so-bad/) He listed old problems with direct democracy, but didn’t mention new ones that oil and gas pioneered in 2018 to fight Initiative 97/112, which would have kept drilling 2500 feet from people and waterways: They hired harassers to surround petitioners and try to stop people from signing. They paid professional petitioners to stop collecting. They paid to have petitions hijacked and taken out of state. Online petitions will solve these new problems as well.

The best-known recent success of direct democracy has been legalizing marijuana and hemp in the first 9 states to do so, and in 13 of the 18 that legalized so far, with only 5 state legislatures playing catch-up, eager for tax money. But this effort using paper petitions has taken almost $100 million dollars so far, financed by billionaires led by George Soros, much of that to hire petitioners. Why should democracy wait for them? The US was founded on the idea that people can govern themselves. Let’s clear away this artificial obstacle. If the legislature won’t put online petitions on the ballot, we should petition the old way one last time and do it ourselves.

Evan was voted Best Activist by Boulder Daily Camera readers in 1992, for spearheading four new types of permits on the Pearl Street Mall, where he was a tightrope artist, getting the 13th Street Bike Path built downtown and promoting direct democracy. His petition got City Council to legalize electric bikes on our paths in 2013.

The post Online Petitions make Government BY the People Work for ALL! appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Dear Mr. Trump:

It has come to our attention that you are considering re-applying, despite your expulsion nearly two years ago. While you are, of course, legally permitted to re-apply, we write to inform you of the likely futility of doing so.

It is not necessary to rehash the behaviors that led to your expulsion, but your actions since then indicate no remorse and suggest that you have not grown from the experience.

Shortly after we informed you of your dismissal, we learned that you were spreading rumors that the expulsion was illegitimate; that in fact a majority of the administrative council had voted to allow you to continue. This was not true, of course, but you rallied many of your neighborhood friends, most of whom were high school dropouts, to your cause. We are also concerned that you and your family filed numerous lawsuits seeking reinstatement. These lawsuits were unsuccessful, with one judge writing, “Are you kidding me?” in his summary judgement in our favor.

You also sent your friend Rudy to lobby a number of school board members on your behalf. Several board members reported that Rudy seemed to have been drinking and that he had inky rivulets dripping down his face. On at least one visit he was accompanied by a strange man carrying pillows.

Perhaps our greatest concern arises from the events just prior to the school beginning a new term. A group of your friends, inflamed by your repeated claims of injustice took over the administration building and violently assaulted members of the staff. Not surprisingly you were not among them, but reportedly watched the mayhem unfold on local television. When family members suggested that you send a Snapchat message telling them to go home, you sent a selfie instead with a thumbs up emoji.

This was characteristic of your time in the school, when you were able to convince a great many friends to act on your behalf by promising to pay them. Apparently they were unaware of your history as regards paying people to do things.

A more recent incident remains unresolved.

We learned that you took boxes of confidential school records on the day you cleaned out your locker. These records include your disciplinary file, highly sensitive mental health information, academic transcripts, and the personnel files of all the teachers.

When confronted, you denied having any of these files. Frustrated, we sent the Assistant Superintendent to your house. He was able to retrieve some of the boxes, but our review indicated that the most sensitive records were still in your basement. We are quite disappointed that your representative signed a statement asserting that you had returned everything. She either lied on your behalf or believed you, either of which could be considered a serious lapse of judgment.

Your replies have been contradictory – at best. First you said you took stuff home all the time to do homework. This seems unlikely, as all of your teachers – and your friends – can attest to the fact that you never did homework.

Then you rather oddly claimed that the confidential material was no longer confidential after you took it, even though you didn’t take it. It does seem rather like a child saying the cookies he didn’t steal weren’t good anyway, so what’s the big deal.

When we finally sent school security to retrieve the files that weren’t there, they returned with nearly a dozen boxes of files that weren’t there. We are now in the process of reviewing the files for highly confidential information that is, perhaps, once again confidential now that it is in our possession. As you can see, following your “logic” can be quite daunting.

We find it deeply ironic that you were admitted initially because you promised to make our school “great again.” How you intended to do that was never clear. Shortly after admission you began publicly disparaging the school at every opportunity. It is difficult to acknowledge our mistake, but admitting you did great harm to the school’s reputation.

Now you and your friends are insisting that you be readmitted in order to “save” the school. That seems a bit like reinstating a convicted arsonist to the fire department.

Most Sincerely,

Elizabeth Cheney
Principal (soon to retire)

The post A Letter to the Former Guy appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

“The kids at Uvalde needed JR-15s to defend themselves from the evil maniac that didn’t care about laws. At least they could have defended themselves since no one else did while their parents were held back by police.” – Marjorie Taylor Greene

I’ve always thought that arming kids in schools was the logical destination for Second Amendment zealots. After all, the Constitution places no age restrictions on the right to bear arms. Along with the protection against evil maniacs, it would certainly change the classroom dynamics. “Yeah, I didn’t do my homework. Whatdya gonna do about it?”

On a more realistic note – which is almost anything other than the pistol packin’ Congresswoman from Georgia – a serious movement to arm teachers in schools is underway across our gun-lovin’ land.

I recently listened to a “debate” about the efficacy of such an approach to school security. Proponents argued that a well-trained teacher practicing concealed carry is the best way to keep children safe. Several claimed that the students wouldn’t know who was armed and school life would proceed as usual. It was clear that most of the supporters of the idea had not spent much time in an actual school; certainly not as high-achieving students, and most certainly not as teachers.

By contrast, I have spent many years with young children in schools and can assure you that an enterprising group of kindergarteners would know who was carrying before the lunch bell rang. And they would be both terrified and curious. Aside from the absurdity of the alleged efficacy of the scheme, the learning environment would be horrendous. I was a good spirited smart-ass in school and the presence of an armed teacher in the room might have been a fatal temptation. At the very least, my mind would not have been on quadratic equations, although to be fair, it didn’t take much to distract me from algebra.

In 1966, I attended Basic Training at Fort Benning, Georgia. Among other things, I had early exposure to the odd social soil that could grow a bizarre human like Marjorie Taylor Greene. But more to the point, I learned how to shoot many guns, among them a .45 caliber handgun with a kick like an irritated mule. With instruction and no distraction, it took multiple shots to even graze the stationary silhouette looming in front of me. Had it been a moving evil maniac, I and all in my care would have been toast. Several studies have shown that well-trained, experienced cops miss their target about half the time. I suppose that explains why cops riddle Black men with dozens of shots during traffic stops.

In addition to the difficulty of a good gal with a gun stopping an evil guy with a gun, there are these factors:

The “bad guys” are carrying semi-automatic weapons that can spray dozens of rounds before a trembling teacher can get a finger on the trigger – unless, of course, she spends the day caressing cold steel and stealing furtive glances at the door while reading “board-approved,” Eurocentric, heterosexual, Christian fables to the kids.

The evil doers have lately taken to body armor, which makes the odds of successful intervention exponentially higher. And as I’ve argued for years, having impeccable building security and Annie Oakley in every classroom doesn’t do a damn thing. Kids are exposed at recess, arrival, dismissal, field trips, athletic events and at multiple other times. The endless arguments about how to make classrooms safe are absurd. Make them fortresses and the irrational angry, AR-15 toting maniac will just wait for one of these other opportunities to discharge his weapon and his pent-up rage at – well, life itself. It is ironic to recognize how often an unfeeling and unseeing school environment contributed to the making of America’s mass murderers.

Teachers, particularly in public schools, have had enough: constant scapegoating; large classes; flat or reduced compensation; the debilitating stress of the pandemic; having to buy their own supplies and now expected, perhaps, to carry a gun.

In many communities, teachers are leaving in droves. The response is to lower qualifications to the level of warm body with a holster. If I were a parent today, I would not allow my child to attend a school with armed teachers or armed anyone. I suspect I’m not alone in holding that view. The spiraling down of our education system is accelerating rapidly. All because, as many have observed, we love our guns more than we love our children.

Even considering armed teachers is yet another sign that we are a failing or failed nation. At another stage in life I would be considering replanting roots in a more hopeful environment. Now, in retirement with grandchildren nearby, I am resigned to remain and watch with dwindling hope and deep sadness.

The post Kids Need Guns Too! appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This week the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Carson v. Makin, a case dealing with a Maine statute that prohibited public funding of religious schools.   The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, struck down the Maine law, declaring that it improperly discriminated against religion.

This ruling is an abomination, although entirely predictable given the conservative majority and the steady erosion of the separation between church snd state.  We are drifting steadily toward the very kind of state-supported religion that the United States was formed to avoid.

Previous Supreme Court cases, notably Trinity Lutheran and Espinoza, permitted public funds to flow to religious schools based on the non-religious use of the money; for example playground resurfacing in the Trinity Lutheran case. But this has no such limitation.

Roberts astonishingly argued that there is no real distinction between a school’s religious status and its use of funds for religious purposes.  The fact that the Chief Justice could see no such distinction is evidence of how far we’ve drifted.  I suppose he and his conservative colleagues would be fine with government grants to support Communion and Baptism too.

The worst ramification of this ruling will be taxpayer funds going to institutions that teach Creationism, that homosexuality is abnormal, that sex outside heterosexual marriage is a mortal sin, and other such primitive and harmful bigotry.  Many religious schools, including in the Maine case, also discriminate against LGBTQ+ folks in both enrollment and hiring.  Would the court so readily endorse a scheme where public funds supported private schools that refused enrollment or employment to Black people?  I suspect not, at least for now, but I ask you to consider whether that is really any different.

Although on a small scale – for now – it is hard to see this as anything other than government endorsement of religion and discrimination.

It has been a long time coming.  Cases just waiting for this court majority have been lining up at the door like techies outside an Apple Store salivating over the newest release.

For several decades a significant motivation of charter school and voucher program architects was to do an end-around secular public education and create a patchwork of religious schools supported by tax dollars.  To this end, “foundations” have been formed to provide “scholarships” rather than directly supporting the religious schools.  “We’re just providing tuition support for students,” they claim. “The families choose the school – not us.”  These scams won’t even be necessary after this ruling.

Don’t be deceived.  This is part of a culture war, not an esoteric legal decision.  Millions of Americans despise “government schools” that are, in their addled view, teaching socialism, atheism and other radical leftist ideology.  That this is not true matters not at all.   

These folks want Christian prayer in all schools; they want kids to learn American Exceptionalism, not the truth; they want to push back against diversity and equity; they want to teach creationism and intelligent design alongside or instead of evolution; they despise the notion of a hetero-non-binary approach to gender and sexuality.   And they want you and I to pay for it.

Even actual public schools are at risk.  All of the “Parents’ Rights” nonsense is being pressed by those who want the kind of schools I described above.  All over the country, school boards are being taken over by far right activists who want their public schools to stop teaching the truth and start teaching the educational equivalent of Fox News.

We are understandably distracted by insurrection, pandemic, inflation and mass murder.  But the long game is being played in education.  If we lose the secular, democratizing and civilizing institution of public education, we will never get it back.  It has been a distinctive feature of our republic and has enabled the amalgamation of remarkable diversity into one imperfectly beautiful nation.

This decision, I’m afraid, will accelerate the bitter divisions that may be our downfall.

The post Dollars for Dogma appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The “bipartisan” gun legislation in Congress is an utter sham.  Among other things, it actually does nothing about guns.   It is like offering a drop of water to a starving man.   As is often the case, Democrats have been hoodwinked by an amoral and manipulative GOP.

The bill, which appears headed for passage and a Biden signature, serves several GOP strategic aims:  it creates the false appearance of compassion for dead children; and it allows them to claim that they took action, thus blunting any criticism as midterm elections approach.  Ever-naive Democrats characterize it as an important first step.  It is more like stepping over the edge of a cliff and hoping it might be the beginning of a good hike.

I stumbled on a news report of the Uvalde massacre that included photos of all the victims, along with a sweet comment or two about each child.  It is seldom I tear up reading the news, but this was heartbreaking in its simplicity.

I will spare you the images.  I can’t bear to return to them.  But here are a few descriptions, paired with the sentiments Republicans expressed about the pending legislation.

Layla Salazar, 11. Layla loved to swim and dance. And she could really run. The 11-year-old won six races in a recent field day and took home blue first-place ribbons.

Lauren Boebert said, “You better believe I am going to have a way to protect myself. I  will continue to carry.”

Makenna Lee Elrod, 10.   Allison McCullough will remember Makenna’s smile, which she said could light up a room.

In response to a tweet asking why civilians need AR-15-style rifles, the Florida Republican Matt Gaetz listed “target sport,” “Self defense” and “Hog hunting.”

“Just to name a few…” he added on Twitter.

Xavier Lopez, 10. “He was funny, never serious, and his smile,” his mom, Felicha Martinez, told The Washington Post. “That smile I will never forget. It would always cheer anyone up.”

Louis Gohmert said, ”Look, maybe if we heard more prayers from leaders of this country instead of taking God’s name in vain, we wouldn’t have the mass killings like we didn’t have before prayer was eliminated from school.”

Tess Marie Mata, 10. Tess had a jar full of cash in her purple bedroom, according to The Washington Post. She was saving up money for a family vacation to Disney World.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said,  “We can’t stop bad people from doing bad things. We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers . . .”

Eliahna “Ellie” Amyah Garcia, 9.  “Eliahna was such a sweet girl with a lovely and beautiful soul,” a GoFundMe page in her honor says. “She would light up everyone’s world with big smiles & big hugs.”

One GOP senator, granted anonymity to speak candidly, asked’ “Why the hell are we doing this?”

Eliahna A. Torres, 10  “She was an amazing young girl with so much potential,” a family member told The New York Times. “She was a leader and loved by all her family.”

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) simply wrote: “Shall Not Be Infringed!”

Jayce Carmelo Luevanos, 10. The 10-year-old would make his grandparents a pot of coffee every morning.  He wrote notes like, “I love you, Grandpa.”

A Florida Republican gun dealer created an image of a man brandishing an assault rifle, with the slogan: “BE A MAN AMONG MEN.”

Maite Yuleana Rodriguez, 10. Green was Maite’s favorite color. She was always sporting her pair of lime green Converse tennis shoes. She had hand-drawn a heart on the right shoe.

TheTexas Republican Convention opposed red flag laws, which allow guns to be seized from people deemed to be dangerous. Those laws, according to the resolution, “. . . violate one’s right to due process and are a pre-crime punishment of people not adjudged guilty.”

Jackie Cazares, 9. “Jackie was the one that would go out of her way to help anyone,” Jackie’s father said.

Marjorie Taylor Greene doubled down on her opinion that the only way to protect children from guns is to protect them “with guns.”

Jailah Nicole Silguero, 10.  It was uncharacteristic of her, but Jailah told her parents she did not want to go to school the morning of the shooting.

Rep. Billy Long (R-MO) blames gun violence on abortion: “Something has happened to our society. I go back to abortion, when we decided it was okay to murder kids in their mothers’ wombs.  Life has no value to a lot of these folks.”

True enough, Mr. Long.  Life has no value to a lot of these folks.

The post Thoughts, Prayers and Blood appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

“The Moral Majority is Neither”

This succinct summary of Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority movement was the message on one of the only bumper stickers I’ve ever displayed.

I’d like to paste another message on my bumper if I could find a sticker that read, “The Christian Right is Neither.”

These two slogans and the movements they slyly disparage are a pretty good representation of the last 50-60 years of American social and political history.

My adult lifetime has spanned two very broad and significant periods:

The eruption of social justice as realized in the civil rights movement, the first feminist wave and the gay rights movement.

The persistent, increasingly violent, backlash against civil rights, feminism/women’s  rights and gay rights.

Both the Moral Majority and the Christian Right were and are nothing more than organized bigotry dressed up in its Sunday best, pushing back on social progress. And as the bumper sticker wisdom suggests,  these regressive movements are neither “moral” nor “Christian,” neither “majority” nor “right.”

Political commentary has often expressed befuddlement that so many Americans, predominantly poor, white Republicans, seem to vote against their own interests.  They reject Democrats who offer relief from devastating health care costs.  They vote against Democrats who would raise the minimum wage and protect workers’ rights.  They vote for Republicans who cut taxes for the wealthy and threaten to reduce Social Security and Medicare and shred other elements of the social safety net.  It’s not complicated.  Such voters are fearful or resentful of “the other” and they would rather “own the libs” than own a new car or have universal health care.

There was a time when Republicans were the party of genteel bigotry, more inclined toward white linen tablecloths than white robes.  (It would be disingenuous to omit acknowledgement of a few moderate Republicans who stood tall for civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights.)  But those days are long gone, as leaders in the Republican Party have fully surrendered to the racists and hooligans who were always muttering racial, misogynist and homophobic slurs on the sidelines.  Now the racists and hooligans are in the starting lineup.

Looks can be deceiving.   The recent arrest of homophobic thugs – Patriot Front members – headed to a pride event in Utah was front page news.  The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and other white supremacist groups are prominent in the ongoing coverage of the January 6th insurrection and the current Congressional hearings.  It creates the illusion that this far right idiocy is a new thing.

But it is not.  The bit players swarming the Capitol and running for office in the hinterlands have always been there, bitching on barstools, reading the supermarket tabloids and muttering about “those people.”  I suspect their numbers are not significantly more or less than decades ago.

What’s new is that they have been empowered by greedy, cynical men (and a few women) in fancy suits and bulging bank accounts who lie with bravado and would sell their mothers for a few moments on Fox News.

McCarthy, McConnell, Graham, Brooks, Cruz, Cotton, Thune, Blunt, Scott, Blackburn, Burr .  . . you know the rest of the list.

There are a few really dumb ones – Gosar, Gaetz, Gohmert, Jordan, Greene, Boebert . . . you know the rest of that list too.  But they would have no power if the others had a spine and a conscience.

If Republican “leaders” and power brokers hadn’t sold their souls all the others would be irritants, not explosives that threaten the republic.  A small amount of courage and we would be back to the same sustainable level of disagreement and dysfunction that I’ve observed for a lifetime.

It is not an accident that all these folks, from the Proud Boys down to the Senate Minority Leader, wrap themselves in Christian sanctimony, pledging dual allegiance to the flag and the cross.  Frankly, there is no meaningful distinction between the flags used to flog the Capitol Police on January 6th and the flags and crosses worn as signals of virtue by the Republican leaders who are complicit in the erosion of democracy.

As the late Christopher Hitchens once said about Jerry Falwell, “The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing: that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called ‘reverend’.”

The phrases “Moral Majority” and “Christian Right” are just semantic lipstick on bigoted pigs.

The post The “Christian Right” is Neither appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Photo: Patrick Hendry via Unsplash

Written by Heidi Leathwood, Climate Policy Analyst, 350 Colorado

This April, I and hundreds of other Coloradans asked for clean energy by contacting our city council members, our mayors, our newspapers, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), and Xcel, and holding a rally on Rockies opening day. Xcel had proposed a deal that would have kept the dirtiest, least reliable, most expensive coal-fired power plant—Pueblo 3—open until 2035, five years longer than any other coal plant in our state. It would have led to new gas-fired plants staying open for 40 years. It would have been a bad deal for Colorado.

But we did it. We moved the dial. The PUC and city councils have listened and heard. Even Xcel could see the writing on the wall. They came out with a new, better proposal: to close Pueblo 3 before 2031 and to retire new gas plants after 25 years. We won the battle but not the war. We will need to take another stand to ensure even earlier closure of Pueblo 3 and no new plants that burn methane (i.e. natural gas, which is 86 times more powerful at heating the globe than carbon dioxide.) Why does it matter? Because all the steps we are taking to electrify don’t do any good if the electricity still comes from polluting and carbon-emitting power plants. Pueblo 3 and other fossil fuel-burning power plants are also poisoning surrounding communities with toxic air pollutants. 

We will need to take many more stands. We haven’t even come close to winning the war against climate change. Climate change is not just knocking on the door in Colorado; it’s breaking the door down. We are in the worst drought in 1200 years. Year-long wildfires come and wind stokes fires and fears in communities. This is not a war against nature, it’s a war against our own reluctance to change as a society, and our government’s unwillingness to act.

This campaign to close Pueblo 3 sooner involves many people acting together, over time, with urgency and conviction. Fifteen months ago, Pueblo 3 was slated to close in 2070. Like water trickling over a rock, people showed up, again and again. For many who acted, this recent success gave us hope, renewed vigor, strength, and determination. For onlookers: join us. Let’s make a change together. The recent International Panel on Climate Change reports that we can still turn this around, but we must act immediately—we have no time to lose.

The people of Colorado overwhelmingly want a vibrant, diversified economy that gives us clean air and water and ensures a stable climate. Our leaders need to know that this is what we want, that we support them to take bold action: 100% clean energy by 2030 in a shift to renewables that don’t emit carbon. We can do this together. I invite you to act. Picture the world you want and take steps to make it happen.

The post People and Power | Community Corner appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees.

With yet another mass murder, this time in a Tulsa, OK medical facility, the nation reels. The trees are obvious, although identifying the species is complicated.

The easy availability of weapons is accurately cited as a root cause, although 2nd Amendment zealots, the NRA and most Republicans argue that a gun is only as lethal as the triggerman’s intent. Others claim that it is a mental health problem, an assertion that is, perhaps, self-evident. One in robust mental health is unlikely to commit mass murder.

But step back a few paces. A forest may appear.

The title of this post offers a hint. While the age and ethnic or racial identity of those who settle grievances with guns are not readily predictable, excluding luxury car owners is a safe bet.

The roots of gun violence in the United States grow in the toxic soil of inequality and social indifference.

Results of a fascinating study were published in 2019. The study was conducted by two faculty members at the University of La Verne in California. I came upon the little known study while seeking evidence for a comment I made in response to a New York Times column. I sought supportive evidence for this excerpt:

“Furthermore, legislate a healthy society. Conservatives have created an income gap that leaves millions in desperate poverty. Conservatives have starved school systems so kids are alienated and there are few if any mental health supports. Find me a school shooter who comes from a comfortable Darien neighborhood and wears his loafers and chinos with an assault weapon accessory. The GOP has created a monstrous society and it is no surprise that monsters emerge.”

While there is no database of mass murderers’ tax returns, the La Verne researchers looked for significant correlations between mass murder and income inequality in 3,144 U.S. counties. Their conclusion is critically important.

“Counties with growing levels of income inequality are more likely to experience mass shootings. We assert that one possibility for this finding is that income inequality fosters an environment of anger and resentment that ultimately leads to violence.”

They make an additional distinction, also of great import: The key variable is not poverty per se. It is the growth of inequality that predicts mass murder (defined as three or more deaths).

These paragraphs are quite persuasive:

“Numerous sociologists and criminologists over the years explored the correlates of overall homicide rates at the population-level. This research provides a good starting-point for understanding how income inequality may contribute to mass shootings. These researchers largely draw on a relative deprivation perspective to explain the connection between economic disparities and violence. According to Robert Merton, an early forerunner of this perspective, communities with large differences of household income maintain an environment of anger, frustration, resentment, and hostility. Referred to as goal blockage, the effects of relative deprivation are particularly severe when a population finds it difficult to achieve socioeconomic success and status.

To this end, research in public health and epidemiology provides some concrete evidence that income inequality can produce an unstable and hostile social environment. According to Wilkinson and Pickett, inequality is strongly associated with feelings of status insecurity, which is an important predictor of stress and anxiety. Researchers also show that those exposed to environments with a higher probability of being judged negatively by others, which should be more common in unequal environments, tend to possess greater levels of stress and other negative health outcomes.

Furthermore, research from psychology shows that social inequality is not only associated with stress and anxiety, but also aggression. According to this literature, people exposed to unequal environments are more likely to internalize the social norms of power and domination, as opposed to equality and reciprocity. Specifically, those socialized in unequal environments are skeptical of notions of justice and fairness, which promotes hostility and violence. Similarly, others suggest that the salience of competition as typically found in unequal environments may lead to violence and homicide, while related research points to a potential relationship between inequality and the prevalence of youth bullying.”

Their conclusion is necessary for understanding the unique problem the United States has with gun violence in general and mass murder specifically. The correlation between income inequality and gun violence is inarguable. But their conclusion, while necessary, is not sufficient.

Violence, bullying, stress, anxiety, instability and hostility are both the result of and perpetuated by income and opportunity inequality. The communities experiencing growth in economic and social inequality also have the sparsest resources for mitigating these effects.

Schools in such communities have larger, often unmanageable class sizes. Discipline tends to be punitive – exacerbating, not ameliorating, anti-social behavior. These schools are likely to have overwhelmed or non-existent counseling staff. Socially isolated or desperately unhappy children more easily fly beneath the radar and their emotional challenges can become raging pathology.

Families in these communities have more economic stress and higher rates of domestic violence, fueled by frustration and disappointment. They too have fewer resources to access.

The study finally concludes:

“This study provides evidence that counties with growing levels of income inequality experience more mass shootings. In addition, scholars show that today’s more pressing social problems are highly correlated with inequality. Given the evidence, the major policy implication of our study is that part of the solution to solve the growing mass shootings epidemic, and a litany of other social problems, may involve creating policies that can reduce the growing income inequality between Americans.”

To use a trite but apt phrase, income inequality in the United States is a feature, not a bug. Driven by the myth of meritocracy and the mirage of the American Dream, the fabric of the Great Society has been steadily unraveled.

With particular intentionality beginning in the Reagan era, the notion of a compassionate society has been surrendered to a national ethic of “you deserve what you get and get what you deserve.” Escalating gun violence, including increasing outbursts of mass homicidal rage, are what we get.

And from the perspective of debilitating income inequality, it is also what we deserve.

The post Mass Murderers Don’t Drive Teslas appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

My dear friend, the late Reverend William Sloane Coffin, Jr., spent his last years in Strafford, VT, near my former home.  He was a lifelong, passionate voice for peace and justice, notably as a civil rights pioneer and a leader of anti-nuclear efforts.

I recall his prescient wisdom:  Inevitably, either no country will have nuclear weapons or all countries will have nuclear weapons.  We’re not there yet, but the journey down the  road to mutual destruction is not blocked.   It has just been slowed by periodic spasms of sanity.

In the wake of the unthinkable slaughter in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday, I fear that the United States of America is doomed.  We have traveled too far down a road to self-destruction to turn back.  Inevitably, virtually no one will have a lethal weapon or nearly everyone will have a lethal weapon.  We are approaching the latter.  America has more guns than citizens and every mass murder increases the total.

There will be no meaningful gun control.  Columbine wasn’t enough.  Sandy Hook wasn’t enough.  Parkland wasn’t enough.  And the political and social climate has gotten worse, not better.  The Uvalde murderer apparently bought two assault-type weapons and 375 rounds of ammunition only days after turning 18.   It should be noted that he was just trying to help his Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who tweeted this after a report that Texans purchased a million guns in 2015:

“I’m EMBARRASSED: Texas #2 in nation for new gun purchases, behind CALIFORNIA. Let’s pick up the pace Texans. @NRA” 

Fast enough pace for you yet?

One assault rifle, from a company called Daniel Defense, was found by the murderer’s body along with several hundred unspent rounds.  Check their website. https://danieldefense.com/   They’re proud of what they make and sell.  Their ads show children with weapons.

This community’s social media sites are exploding with grief, fear and anger.  Every dialogue is soiled by neighbors who propose arming teachers and/or stationing police at every school entrance.  One suggested deploying the National Guard.  You know the argument . . . “a good guy with a gun.”

As I write, it’s a beautiful day in Colorado.  This afternoon my wife and I will go to our grandchildren’s elementary school end-of-the-year ice cream social at an adjacent park.  How many “good guys with guns”would it take to make that joyful event completely safe?

The psychological toll of raising children in an armed fortress is incalculable.  Is that what you 2nd Amendment zealots want?

The arguments against gun control are not all wrong: “It won’t work because criminals can always get guns.” “It’s our 2nd Amendment right.” “It’s a mental health problem, not a gun problem.” All of those things are true to some extent – and insane.  But failure to try is a concession to the inevitability of more and more mass murder.  And a signal to every potential murderer that we value gun rights more than children’s lives.

The last argument – it is a mental health problem – bears further examination.

This is indeed a mental health problem, but not the psychosis, depression or irrational hatred found in the individuals who commit these atrocities. It is a widespread epidemic of mental illness in a large segment of America. The disease has many manifestations.

It is American Exceptionalism. Individually and collectively, we Americans aren’t going to take any guff from anyone.  We’ve gradually turned ourselves from beacon of light to international laughingstock. A few years ago  Australia considered placing the United States on a travel watch list.  We are the violent Third World country we were warned about.

It is the “rugged individualism” mentality that is deeply ingrained in our culture. Toughness is valuable social currency. Compassion is weakness. Empathy is political correctness.

It is “stand your ground” machismo.

It is the NRA, stoking irrational fear of non-existent intruders so that more loaded weapons can be in America’s nightstands.

It is the combination of grandiosity and paranoia that leads to men – sometimes women – openly carrying handguns in public places and brandishing assault weapons in big box stores.  Grandiosity and paranoia are mental disorders, not political movements.

It is bars full of (mostly) men cheering at television screens where warriors beat each other bloody in a cage. The human response to physical violence should be nausea, not laughter and excitement. This perversion is a mental disorder too.

It is the “settle it on the playground” mentality.  It is the sales and promotion of increasingly violent video games, that de-sensitize children and present lethal violence as a solution, not a problem.  It is things like Trump’s thugs roughing up people at a political rally.  “Maybe he deserved it,” said our former chickenhawk president.

With these archetypes permeating our society, is it any wonder that someone feeling aggrieved about virtually anything is inspired to take matters into his own violent hands?

The former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once wrote about obscenity and pornography; “I know it when I see it.”  This weekend the NRA is holding its annual convention in Texas, 300 miles from the site of children blown to unrecognizable bits by an assault weapon.  Trump, Abbott (by video) and Ted Cruz were among the speakers.  There is no pornography as vile.

Everyone who produces and sells weapons is complicit.  Every Republican legislator who makes it easier to buy guns is complicit.  Everyone who votes for a Republican who blocks measures to outlaw assault weapons is complicit.  Every person who makes aggressive public statements about gun rights is complicit.  Every bully who struts around with a handgun strapped to his hip or an assault weapon over his shoulder is complicit.  I’m sure this paragraph will draw hostile responses.   I don’t care.

After my military service in the 60’s, the angry response to anti-war protests was, “America – Love it or Leave it!”

I don’t love this country.  I don’t even recognize it   My wife and I would leave but we love our children and grandchildren too much to leave them.

The post America – Love It or Leave It appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

18 year-old Payton Gendron, armed with an assault rifle and rabid with racial hatred, killed 10 innocent souls in a Buffalo, NY grocery store. 

We all know the story.  Local, state and federal officials express outrage, cite their community’s resilience and pledge to see that this never happens again.  But it will.  The Gun Violence Archive lists more than 200 mass shootings (defined as four or more wounded or killed) in this year alone.  It’s only May.   98% of the shooters are male.

The never-ending series of mass shootings in America generates more heat than light.  There are always suggestions that more guns in the hands of good guys will save us.  Nothing like more guys with guns to solve America’s problem with violence! It’s like prescribing bacon to treat heart failure. And we Americans assuredly have heart failure when it comes to gun violence.

But in Buffalo, there was a good guy with a gun  He’s dead too, having been unable to penetrate Gendron’s body armor.

I won’t bother arguing for common sense gun control. Each time I’ve written about gun control the only visible result is more action for NRA trolls.  But, to be fair, most gun owners and Second Amendment zealots don’t murder their friends and neighbors. They just make it possible for others to murder our neighbors, friends, and children. It’s called being an accessory to a crime, although the NRA considers gun ownership “patriotism.”  Patriotism is the world’s number one killer.

Opponents of gun control have a counter-argument for every argument. “Bad guys don’t follow the rules.” “Most shooters got their guns legally.” “It’s a mental health problem, not a gun problem.” “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”

So nothing changes.

But here’s one thing we know about shooters that is seldom discussed; they don’t seem to like school. Even the young men who shoot up grocery stores, movie theaters, Army bases, and workplaces don’t seem to like school. Peyton Gendron did not like school.  Even when classes restarted last year, he stayed home and did school online.  So perhaps schools are where we really can do something.

Most mass school shooters — I won’t name them — have been young men. They are nearly invariably described as “loners,” isolated and sad. They live alone or, often, with their mothers, retreating into fantasy, watching the world with festering resentment and confusion. Their sexual energy is consumed by pornography. Their social lives are digital, playing out in violent pockets where the marginalized and alienated find perverse community. 

In recent years these sad boys have been drawn in 4chan and racist sites including those that advance Great Replacement Theory, a long festering malignancy that tells confused boys that Blacks and immigrants are going to take away whatever shred of worth they derive from being – at least – white.

They are frequently described as having gone unnoticed. And that is precisely the case. These sad boys, and the men they become, have been unnoticed.

They weren’t born this way, they were made this way.  From the earliest years, in and out of school, being different is so hard. The currency of success and acceptance for American boys is a peculiar type of faux-masculinity. As the meritocracy of childhood plays out, winners gain confidence and losers drift to the shadows. We all know the traits that work: The ability to pick up on social cues; athletic skill; an odd kind of aloofness; clever aggressive behavior delivered with laser efficiency to gain social capital. Some boys don’t know how to (or don’t want to) do these things and find community in a club, the orchestra, band or theater and survive just fine.

But a few boys slip through the cracks and disappear. Then, when they reappear in armed fury, we are shocked.

This uniquely American disorder is too often blamed on mental illness. These associations are largely inaccurate, but the mythical link to autism is particularly absurd, unsupportable, and cruel. I’ve worked with profoundly psychotic patients who were still able to comprehend and exhibit love despite the twisted synapses of their illness.

School is the place where their pain is felt most acutely. Home, however dysfunctional, is at least private. A boy alone in a room with a computer is able to imagine, often in deadly play, a world where he belongs, where he has power, where he can win — or at least have a fighting chance. But school offers limited shelter. All of the things that such a boy longs for and can’t have are just out of reach.

This experience is deeply, often permanently, wounding.

Of course a loving and supportive family can partially sooth the wounds, but too often the growing despair is nearly invisible. Adolescence is not a time for boys (or girls) to reveal their innermost thoughts and feelings to family members, even in the best of cases. Even we lucky parents, whose children navigated childhood with success, are often unaware of the inevitable stresses and unhappiness of adolescence.

School is the place where the pain grows like a silent cancer that we just don’t notice often or early enough. It seems that each one of these sad young men was once a lonely boy, perhaps eating alone in the cafeteria, perhaps not eating at all because of the humiliation a social environment presents. Many of these boys have been bullied and shamed.

Our schools are too big, too impersonal and too competitive. I know – I’ve watched – that some adults are actively or passively complicit in the wounding of boys: chuckling as they are picked last or not picked at all; favoring the assertive and appealing boys and girls; ignoring, day after painful day, the silent despair of the boy in the back of the class who has no friends and feigns disinterest to cover up constant fear.

The next generation of potential mass shooters is in our schools today. We can notice them, love them, penetrate their isolation, comfort them, and give them at least one point of genuine, unconditional affection.

We should address gun violence with strict gun control and better funding for mental health services. But those measures, even if we could muster the political will, are only going to partially shut the door on mass violence after too many young men have passed through.

Teachers, counselors and school leaders can do something now. Make a commitment to love the boys who are in the shadows. Find the boys who try not to be found. Notice the children sitting alone and make sure they never sit alone again. Do whatever it takes to love the boys who are doing everything they can to make themselves unlovable.

I don’t believe in God, but I believe in love. Perhaps they’re the same thing. I don’t believe that any human who is deeply loved and learns to love deeply will erupt in homicidal rage.

The post America Raises Killers appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

I suppose I would find a few kindred spirits as a card-carrying member of the “radical left wing,” but I cannot for the life of me find where I can get a membership card.

My futile search resulted from countless encounters with so-called conservatives who populate several of the social media sites with which I engage – shamefully – nearly every day.  I suspect that the futility of my search is because no such thing exists except in the fetid imaginations of today’s Republicans.  This publication itself  is occasionally subject to the “radical left” characterization, but a thorough review yields only a slight inclination toward the colorfully rational.  It is decidedly the Yellow Scene, not Red.

Far too many Democrats – office holders, candidates and pundits – fall for the “deeply divided nation” narrative.  A common characterization is that the “right” has moved further right and the “left” has shifted further left, thus leaving an irreconcilable chasm in the middle.  This false equivalence pervades political rhetoric and it is utter nonsense.  There is indeed a deep chasm, but it is solely the creation of a thoroughly corrupt Republican Party and the immoral media celebrities who traffic in distortions and sensationalism.

It is humorous, albeit drifting toward infuriating, to engage with righteous blowhards who insist that my facts come from left wing media, like the New York Times or my own lying eyes.  To the Tea Party windbags steeped in Tucker, everything we libs say or think is part of a vast, sinister conspiracy headed by Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden.  Or so it seems through parsing their invariably convoluted prose and spelling errors.

We are indeed divided in these United States, but spare me the whataboutisms.

The excesses on the political right are self-evident. Republicans continue to bow before the twice-impeached Donald Trump out of cynical self-interest, despite the fact that he is arguably guilty of tax fraud, election fraud, sexual misconduct, obstruction of justice and a record of lying that is an international embarrassment.

Voting rights are being weakened through racist restrictions and gerrymandering, seeking to sustain minority rule.  Climate change denial threatens life on Earth.  Republicans falsely claim that “caravans” of dangerous immigrants are overwhelming our borders.  I could go on.

But what is the “radical” leftist equivalent?  There is none.  The things offered as emblematic of “leftist” are manufactured out of thin air or extrapolated from political rhetoric that has no basis in policy or proposal.

Here are a few things described as “radical” by conservatives:

• The Paris Climate Accord: Joined by 192 parties plus the European Union

• Objections to a ban on travelers from predominantly Muslim nations

• Support for children of immigrants

• Accurate portrayals of racism in American history

• Opening the military to transgender folk

• Universal healthcare

• Subsidized child care

• Family leave

• Alternative energy

• Universal preschool

There are legitimate political or ideological differences to be honestly debated around some of these issues, but to mischaracterize any of these things as “radical” is intentionally hyperbolic and inflammatory.   

Often “radical”is interchanged with “socialist,” a term intended to ring emotional alarm bells.

The National Geographic Society defines socialism as:  “ . . . a political and economic system in which property and the means of production are owned in common, typically controlled by the state or government. Socialism is based on the idea that common or public ownership of resources and means of production leads to a more equal society.”

The United States has no such system nor has anyone, including Bernie Sanders or other progressives, ever proposed such a system.  Even I and my vegan, anti-racist, anti-war, tie-dyed soulmates, who find some aspects of socialism more appealing than our current oligarchy, have never attempted to overthrow the government.  The other side has all the guns anyway.

There are fringe groups, historically and currently, that may merit the “radical”characterization:  extreme activists like the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front; anti-fascists (i.e. Antifa); anarchists;  the Weather Underground; Black Panthers.  But these groups, however one feels about their ideology or methodology, have never enjoyed political power or representation.  The Black Panthers, for example, had 2,000 members at its peak in 1968.

There are also social phenomena that the political right likes to characterize as “radical,” like so-called cancel-culture and  Critical Race Theory.  But these things, however one views them, are not advanced by legislators or the Democratic Party.

The Republican Party, by contrast, has become the Far Right.  Members of Congress have: aided and abetted the attempted insurrection; continued to falsely claim voter fraud; carried weapons into the Capitol; suggested (the former president) shooting protestors.

Republicans around the nation are banning books, subverting democracy and empowering arbitrary reversal of election results.

There is no substantial “radical” leftist movement in the United States.  Republicans advance this false idea in order to justify their own repressive campaign to roll back a century of social progress.

We are indeed a nation divided, but it is only one side that wields the cleaver.  Next time you encounter a right wing troll and are too exhausted to spar, feel free to copy, paste and send along this column.

The post False Equivalence on Steroids! appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

I have just one word for the four conservative male Supreme Court Justices and their Handmaid colleague who think women should give birth and drop infants off at the nearest church: Vasectomy.

It would be quite revealing to discover how many of the sanctimonious male prigs who want to control women’s reproductive lives have taken on the responsibility for their own sperm.  I’m guessing the answer is “few,” if any.

The draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health is terrifying – and not only for its impact on women’s health and women’s rights more generally.   Many legal analysts have pointed out the dismal “reasoning” offered.  The opinion’s author, Justice Samuel Alito, argues that the word “abortion” does not appear in the Constitution.   Such specious reasoning would put at risk other rights, such as gay marriage, that are not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution.  This opinion violently disregards settled law and shreds the notions of privacy (implicit in many rulings) and protections under the 14th Amendment.   This ruling could lead to a cascade of reversals of rights previous affirmed by the court.

But these observations are not original.  I am deeply worried about another, broader, political and legal dynamic that this case represents.

This case and others reveal a shift in power that may be irreversible and more corrosive to democracy than the attempted Republican coup.  The shift I observe renders our tripartite system of government nearly impotent.  The mechanism used in Dobbs and and future cases can erode rights and effectively undo decades of social progress regardless of the composition of the legislative and executive branches.  The founders, for all their prescience, left an unintended loophole sufficient to drive a stake through the heart of the republic.

For instance, the court will hear arguments in another affirmative action case in the next term.  That lawsuit against Harvard and the University of North Carolina is an example of what I term “plaintiff shopping.”  A partisan advocacy group, Students for Fair Admissions, founded by Edward Blum, has initiated a series of similar actions seeking to end affirmative action.  They search for a person or people to represent their cause and then use their significant – bottomless – resources to pursue the case. In two prior cases, Abigail Fisher was the poster child, leading to the SCOTUS cases known as Fisher I and Fisher II.

In Dobbs, along with many other pieces of anti-abortion litigation, the “plaintiffs” for whom the pro-life zealots litigate are state legislatures that pass nonsense laws, blatantly unconstitutional, that can be appealed through the system until they reach the sympathetic SCOTUS majority.  And – abracadabra! – abortion rights vanish.  In ancient text “abracadabra” means, “I will create as I speak, i.e. that the act of speech will magically create new realities.”

All of these efforts are funded by a vast network of conservative advocacy groups, in turn funded by many of the richest people in America.

Whether affirmative action, abortion rights, gay marriage, voting rights, contraceptive rights, or any other issue, conservatives have developed a shadowy network of financial supporters, prepared to support litigation aimed at undoing those things to which they object.  The final piece of the strategy was put in place with court-packing, facilitated by the election of a useful idiot, Donald J. Trump.  With the untimely death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the hasty confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, they sealed the deal.

This partnership between conservative ideologues and a long awaited SCOTUS majority can undo nearly any legal precedent or progressive legislation.   Congress and the president are utterly impotent.   Take abortion rights as an example, beyond Dobbs. Democrats are now pressing more urgently to advance legislation – the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) – that would essentially codify in law the protections of reproductive rights lost when Roe v. Wade is overturned.    

But the ruling in Dobbs will eviscerate the legal arguments that were used in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, clearing the way for the court to also overturn the WHPA!   

Using Alito’s astonishing logic that no right is safe unless explicit in the Constitution, this process can undo virtually anything, including the Affordable Care Act, and, at the far end of possibilities, Social Security and Medicare.  The entire New Deal, including workers’ rights, the FDIC and more, could become the Dead Deal.  If you don’t think that the current conservative power brokers want to reverse these things, I’ve got a bridge to sell.

Even if Democrats muster the gumption and votes to bypass the filibuster, there is no legislative act that would be immune from challenge.  Even if Democrats prevail in the midterm elections, maintain majorities in the Senate and hold the presidency in 2024, they will be powerless in the face of the conservative machine and its hand-picked SCOTUS majority.

The founders of our republic failed to anticipate the possibility of a highly partisan court that would be complicit in a long-game strategy to effectively “legislate” by overturning legislation.   Lifetime appointments and judicial independence were supposed to balance the delicate mechanisms of democracy.  Instead they may shatter them.

The only remedy I can imagine is for Democrats to seize the moment, abolish the filibuster, rapidly expand the number of justices and retake the majority.

I fear that is highly unlikely.   

The post Abracadabra – Goodbye Rights! appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

“I would burn them.”

This was the response given by Tennessee Republican Jerry Sexton when asked what he would do with the many books he and his conservative colleagues propose to remove from Tennessee’s school libraries.   Sexton has also worked tirelessly, although unsuccessfully so far, to have the Holy Bible ordained as Tennessee’s official state book.  I was heretofore unaware that states had official books.

Pressed by a more rational colleague to name at least one school library or book therein that he objected to, he came up empty, muttering that there were many, somewhere, probably, certainly, perhaps that were pretty awful.

It reminds me of a music critic who confused Mozart with Schoenberg when reviewing a concert in Detroit.  When confronted with the fact that the Mozart he so despised was actually not Mozart, he puffed out his chest and said, “Well, whatever.  I didn’t like it.”  For the non-classical reader,  a critic confusing  Mozart with Schoenberg is a bit like a sommelier confusing Chateau Lafite Rothschild with Mad Dog 20 20.

Although the dirty book plague has not yet infected the Colorado legislature, the national trend is alarming.  According to PEN America, 33 states have passed or introduced 133 book banning bills.  The lists of prohibited volumes are comprised of anything mentioning, alluding to, or hinting at race, racism, gender, sexuality, LGTBQ, socialism, Marxism or, in all likelihood, Bernie Sanders, Colonel Sanders, AOC or the word “squad.”

This would be humorous if it weren’t so damn serious.

Much attention has rightfully been given the insurrection attempt on January 6, 2021, both the attack on the Capitol and the political shenanigans aimed at overturning the election.  The insidious attacks on public education may do even more harm to our democratic republic than the Proud Boys and Marjorie Taylor Greene combined.

The campaign to turn education into a white-centric, jingoistic, God-fearing propaganda machine is orchestrated by more than a few slack-jawed yahoos in Tennessee.  In virtually every corner of the country efforts are underway to ban diversity education, disempower teachers, have curricula reviewed by (majority Republican) state legislatures, and divert public funding to private religious academies, for-profit schools and ideologically conservative charter schools.

Hillsdale College, a small but feisty conservative college in Michigan, is looking to expand its already considerable network of charter schools.  The aforementioned Tennessee has offered to support 50 Hillsdale charters with public funding, including $32 million in seed money to support facilities.  Hillsdale is a favorite of anti-liberal icons like Clarence Thomas, who called Hillsdale “a shining city on a hill.”   Hillsdale promises to fight “progressivism” and “leftist academics.”

Hillsdale developed the 1776 Curriculum as rebuttal to the 1619 Curriculum based on the 1619 Project developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones which reframed – unfortunately with a few flaws – American history as stained through the centuries by slavery and its persistent, systemic and systematic residue – an uncomfortable truth.

For several decades, conservatives have sought to undermine public education through starvation by diverting funds, vilifying teachers, attacking unions and now, throwing red herrings in the form of fear mongering and dog whistles.  Glenn Youngkin was elected Governor of Virginia by lying about Critical Race Theory in schools.  As in Tennessee, legislatures and school boards in many states are being populated by ultra-conservatives who scare parents by claiming their children are being brainwashed into socialism, might be molested by trans kids in their bathrooms, are losing 400 meter races to boys competing as girls,  being soiled by pornography in the school library and are often brought to tears by mean teachers who tell them they are personally responsible for slavery.

That none of these things are true is of no consequence to the unprincipled architects of the propaganda, like the reprehensible Christopher Rufo, a particularly nasty pitchman who is like Donald Trump with a brain.  I’ve seen him in multiple television interviews, chortling with glee at the gullibility of his low information fan club.

Public education, like democracy itself, is in great peril.  The guns, God and limited government forces have convinced a rapidly growing segment of the population that public schools are not only performing poorly, but are indoctrinating children into an immoral sense of the world, where gender is fluid, “whiteness” is bad and our great Judeo-Christian traditions and values are undermined.

This has been a long time coming.  The political “right” has feared a loss of control as previously manageable minorities have ascended in number and influence.  The backlash to civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights has simmered for decades and is now boiling over.   

These folks want “their” exceptional country back and will stop at nothing to restore the “shining city on the hill.”  As is true with democracy, if we lose public education we will never get it back.

Beware.

The post Bonfire of the Humanities appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

GPro-Development Nonprofit incorporates with the help of controversial operative Katie Kennedy.

Editor’s Note: Community Corner contributions are provided to Yellow Scene by community members and do not reflect the opinions held by YS media or its staff.

Documents filed with the Colorado Secretary of State have revealed “Yes for Louisville,” a Nonprofit Corporation supporting the proposed Redtail Ridge development, was incorporated with the help of controversial GOP consultant Katie Kennedy. Ms. Kennedy, the principal of Strategic Compliance LLC, has been associated with several dark money campaigns in Erie, Denver, and Wyoming.

On April 19, voters in Louisville will decide the future of Redtail Ridge, a massive commercial and industrial complex to be built along US-36.  The 3-million square foot development is owned by Brue Baukol Capital Partners of Denver. Opponents of Redtail Ridge fear this move to incorporate as a Nonprofit could unfairly sway the April referendum.

Ms. Kennedy, who has deep ties to the oil and gas industry, is a registered agent for over 50 different committees throughout the state. During the 2020 election, Kennedy helped the conservative advocacy group, “Unite for Colorado,” avoid disclosing its donors and expenditures for several Colorado political campaigns by incorporating as a Nonprofit Corporation rather than as a Campaign Issue Committee. Nonprofits are not subject to the same financial disclosure rules as Issue Committees. Issue Committees are required to report every contribution and expenditure over $20. A formal complaint with the Colorado Office of Administrative Courts alleged “Unite for Colorado” concealed millions of dollars through a “shell” organization. This violation resulted in fines and an order for “Unite for Colorado” to register as an Issue Committee.

Some Louisville residents fear that the Kennedy-influenced “Yes for Louisville” Nonprofit may use some of the same dark money methods to keep sizeable donations supporting Redtail Ridge from becoming public.

“That’s really alarming that an industry front group could be creating a path for big money from undisclosed donors to influence our local election,” said Cindy Bedell, a member of Citizens for a Vibrant, Sustainable Louisville, the Issue Committee that opposes Redtail Ridge.

Many residents oppose Redtail Ridge because of its massive scale, traffic, environmental impacts, and economic risk.

“There is an important word to describe the ‘Yes for Louisville’ campaign: ‘astroturfing,’ said Sam Shaw, the Louisville resident who uncovered the connection to Ms. Kennedy. “This word is used by political scientists to describe a sophisticated influence campaign that seeks to create an artificial perception of grass-roots support for a given policy or movement. The coordinated manipulation of small-town politics with these kinds of strategies is beyond disturbing.”

Louisville resident and registered agent for “Citizens for a Vibrant Sustainable Louisville” Sherry Sommer said: “We look forward to sharing our list of donations and expenditures. We are a grassroots organization, and our donations are entirely local. All work on the campaign is done exclusively and entirely by Louisville volunteers. Proponents of this development have formed a second legal entity.  It is critical that there is complete transparency regarding all funds accessed by the “Yes” campaign.”

The Louisville Special Election will be April 19. If built, the 390-acre Redtail Ridge will add 20,000 additional vehicle trips in Louisville. The Redtail Ridge site includes 150+ acres of undeveloped land that is home to native plants and abundant wildlife including redtail hawks, prairie dogs, and coyotes. Developer Brue Baukol wants to construct 5-story buildings, the tallest in Louisville.

The post Redtail Ridge: A Path for Dark Money in Louisville appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

ECHO Colorado – East County Housing Coalition recently conducted a survey with the Erie candidates running for Mayor and Trustee. Surveys were sent out on a Monday via email, and were asked to be received by that Friday of the same week. Follow up requests were made for those not received. Blank answers mean the candidates did not respond. 

Yellow Scene Magazine has agreed to reprint that questionnaire as part of our Community Corner. Community Corner is open to non-profits and other organizations, as well as residents to discuss important legislative and social policies. 

The following candidates did not provide a response:

• Jeff Haverkate
• Ryan Kenward
• Andrew Sawusch
• Kelly Zuniga

Dan Hoback

Explain to us your own values about community and the need for affordable housing.

Diversity goes beyond race, gender, gender identity, age, etc. It embodies all aspects of socio-economic levels and demographics. I want people of all walks to be able to live in Erie, whether they work outside the town, from home, or within the town. I love the phrase “workplace housing.” We need affordable living options for young people starting out, local workers, teachers, police, seniors, and those facing life changes like divorce, that can stretch budgets.

Do you know what the affordable housing goal is for Erie, and do you believe the Town’s efforts will meet those affordable housing needs?

I believe we have a goal of 12%, but I don’t know how codified that is, and I may just be recalling a general benchmark other towns consider. I have a lot to learn, but am willing to grow in this area, as it is currently at crisis stage, in my opinion. We need to aim high, as we have plenty of land to work with. I don’t mean, “hey, all this land, let’s make developers do ABC…. but it affords us more leeway and creativity than infill projects.

What are the impacts on families when housing for young people is unaffordable in our area? Do you think this can be prevented through policy changes and funding? If so, what programs, and what level of funding would this require?

Families that cannot afford to live here must obviously choose other areas. That impacts their lifestyle with commute times, distances to see family, driving costs and pollution. It also hurts local businesses that need reliable staff. People are more reliable when it’s easy to get to work. We need to codify in our ordinances and planning regulations getting diversified AFFORDABLE housing. We just do. This is not my strong suit, but I am quickly learning from Justin Brooks, who has a passion for it.

Would you support a program to create accessory dwelling units that could remain affordable? [YES]  

In all honesty, I’m not sure what that program would look like, but I know other communities have them, so I don’t see why Erie can’t.

Would you support changing single-family zoning to allow for more mid-density housing such as townhomes and duplexes on lots that have room for them? [YES] | As an elected official would you take a leadership role on this?  [YES]

I am on record for saying we rezone too much in the direction developers want. We need to push for what’s best for our residents before they’re priced out on property taxes alone.

What do you think are the impacts to our community and our environment when the vast majority of workers commute from elsewhere? What role can affordable housing play in eliminating those impacts?

Traffic congestion increases; pollution increases; auto insurance rates increase; families are more stressed; businesses suffer from lack of staff as well as lack of local customers. Affordable housing makes it possible for people to live and work locally, without having to live 20+ miles away and commute to Erie, giving them more time to enjoy the community.

The business community struggles to find workers because of the high cost of housing. Would you be willing to meet with business leaders to ask them to support an affordable housing program for the town tied to job growth?

Yes, businesses would be a MAJOR beneficiary of affordable housing. Many entrepreneurs and small business owners want to run and grow their business strategically, not working the cash register or other tasks that don’t fit their dream.

Smart community development such as mixed-use, middle-housing, and transit-oriented development can have a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Would you support a scoring system so that proposed developments can be scored for their contribution to reducing greenhouse gasses?

Conceptually, it sounds good. I’m not really aware of any, so would need to educate myself. Anything we can do to lessen carbon emissions and increase mass transit starts off ahead of the game. Our climate is in a world of hurt, and suburban sprawl is a big part of it. We need mass transit and bicycle/pedestrian-friendly towns.

What do you understand about the history of racism that has led to people of color owning less property, and thus having less wealth than white people?

I know it’s embedded deep. People of color in the US started off at a disadvantage, from Native Americans to Blacks and Latinos. By the time Blacks were freed from slavery, White people already owned much of the property, or at least prime property. Native Americans were literally removed from their land, receiving paltry sums at best in return… or shoved into desert oases.

Would you support procurement policies in housing that create a preference system for minority and disadvantaged businesses? [YES] / Would you take a leadership role on this? [_]

I only have so much bandwidth, so I won’t promise leadership in all areas. Working with businesses is probably what I’m best suited for, but I’m on board with doing whatever is possible to increase equity, diversity, and affordable housing.

What do you think the town can do now to enhance equity as it relates to housing?

We need to have affordable housing goals and have rules that have meat on them, so that we can hold developers accountable toward meeting the goals. I look forward to learning more about what Boulder and other nearby communities have done or learned.

What role do you think neighbors should be able to have when considering affordable housing in their neighborhood?

Not be NIMBYs, and to understand what it is, rather than be fearful that slums will be springing up citywide. Getting people involved so that they feel they have a say in how these ideas develop is important, but also a challenge.

Should Erie create an eviction legal defense program like the one in place in Boulder to help people retain their housing? It’s far less expensive than building new housing. [YES]

Again, I don’t know much about it, but it sounds appropriate. I have been a renter many times, and so much in lease contracts and the entire relationship are one-sided in favor of property owners.

Emily Baer

Explain to us your own values about community and the need for affordable housing.

Housing is a core infrastructure. A safe, warm home is foundational for the well-being of families and individuals, and is therefore foundational for a healthy, welcoming, diverse community. I think communities should include people at every stage of life from young people just starting out, to young families, empty nesters, seniors, kids moving back to be near their hometown, people of every gender, culture, distinction. As well as the workforce who do the important work of building a thriving Erie: teachers, town staff, police and firefighters, restaurant employees, grocery store workers, etc… It is estimated that 3100 people commute to Erie to work every day, coupled with our lack of transit, that has an impact on our environment and Erie’s ability to remain competitive in the job market to recruit and retain these important personnel. It will be hard to convince people to work in Erie if they are commuting past nine other viable jobs on their way here. Ensuring that we have affordable housing will address several issues in front of Erie including building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community; staffing concerns; and sustainability.

Do you know what the affordable housing goal is for Erie, and do you believe the Town’s efforts will meet those affordable housing needs?

In 2000, Erie’s Comprehensive Plan recognized a lack of Affordable Housing options and recommended an Inclusionary Housing Ordinance, but none was adopted in the ensuing two decades. In 2021, The Board of Trustees, in collaboration with the Boulder County Regional Partnership, adopted Resolution 21-140 which expands access to Affordable Housing and set a goal of 12% of housing stock be affordable to low, moderate, and middle income households by 2035. In addition, the Erie Development Department applied for and received a planning grant from the Department of Local Affairs to assess the extent of Erie’s affordable housing needs and to develop strategies to meet those needs. Staff plans to have an Inclusionary Housing Ordinance proposal ready for review by June. It is my intention that the Board of Trustees will be able to take this data and create an effective ordinance that will help us address the housing crisis in Erie.

What are the impacts on families when housing for young people is unaffordable in our area? Do you think this can be prevented through policy changes and funding? If so, what programs, and what level of funding would this require?

A family’s access to an affordable home is critical in all aspects: physically, mentally, economically, and developmentally. When families are cost-burdened, they have to make choices about how to prioritize basic needs like food, healthcare, child care, transportation, and education. These tradeoffs are hard on families and children and have been shown to negatively affect health and behavioral and emotional development. According to Habitat for Humanity, “When home is affordable and there is more money left over for things like transportation and child care, it can open up an array of education and employment opportunities.” I think Erie has the opportunity to address these issues for families through policy changes and funding. By adopting an inclusionary Housing Ordinance with analysis funded by the DOLA grant, and the development of other housing strategies, Erie will be able to apply for a 2^nd DOLA grant in 2022, part of the Affordable Housing Incentives Program, which offers seed capital to an Affordable Housing fund that assists with Affordable Housing Developments. Erie is at the beginning of this process, and we are learning so much, including what options we have in front of us to be able to fund Affordable Housing programs and what that will look like.

Would you support a program to create accessory dwelling units that could remain affordable? [YES]

It will be important for Erie to follow the data and understand what best fits our community’s Affordable Housing needs. There are several tools available for preserving affordability that surrounding municipalities utilize, like deed restrictions, adopting a one to one replacement ordinance, right of first refusals ordinances, among others.

Would you support changing single-family zoning to allow for more mid-density housing such as townhomes and duplexes on lots that have room for them? [YES] | As an elected official would you take a leadership role on this?  [YES]

I come to the Trustee table and to the conversation around Affordable Housing as an eager student, curious about the tools available to us to effectively meet the housing needs of our community.

What do you think are the impacts to our community and our environment when the vast majority of workers commute from elsewhere? What role can affordable housing play in eliminating those impacts?

DOLA estimates that 3100 people commute to Erie for work every day. This has impacts on traffic as well as our road conditions and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Providing affordable housing as well as mixed use, live/work situations within a community cuts down on the number of car trips while also building a sense of community by ensuring people who work here can also afford to live here.

The business community struggles to find workers because of the high cost of housing. Would you be willing to meet with business leaders to ask them to support an affordable housing program for the town tied to job growth?

Yes.

Smart community development such as mixed-use, middle-housing, and transit-oriented development can have a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Would you support a scoring system so that proposed developments can be scored for their contribution to reducing greenhouse gasses?

Mixed use and middle housing options are important tools for addressing affordability and sustainability. In talking with voters, I know it’s a priority for Erie residents to have access to renewable energy and transit. I would like to learn more about how a scoring system would work for proposed developments for reducing greenhouse gasses.

What do you understand about the history of racism that has led to people of color owning less property, and thus having less wealth than white people?

Redlining was a standardized, racist practice by private lenders and the FHA. They refused to insure loans for people of color, in primarily black neighborhoods, deeming those homes and redlined neighborhoods, “unsafe for lending.” This prevented black families from accessing low down payment loans and prevented them from home ownership and building generational wealth. In the 1960’s, after the Fair Housing Act was passed, prohibiting racially restrictive covenants, communities used zoning laws to segregate by income, requiring larger lots which drove home prices up. Those communities also prohibited attached and higher density homes. This practice targeted marginalized communities, people of color, and denied them access to entry level homes in communities with better school districts and job opportunities.

Would you support procurement policies in housing that create a preference system for minority and disadvantaged businesses? [_] / Would you take a leadership role on this? [_]

Erie has recently hired a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Director whose job it is to examine town policies and structures of governance and to steer the town toward DEI goals that include, “Developing new policies around housing and development that will provide the opportunity for families and individuals in different income levels and requiring such to be a part of the Town’s composition.”

It is a priority for me to engage, listen, learn, support, and understand the many intersections of DEI work, business opportunities, leadership roles, community building, housing access, and more. I support this important work and will follow the leadership of our DEI Advisory Board. It’s essential that we’re creating a culture in Erie where people feel safe, seen, heard, and valued; and that diverse businesses are welcomed and supported.

What do you think the town can do now to enhance equity as it relates to housing?

Erie Town staff are reviewing data and revising Erie’s draft Inclusionary Housing Ordinance and are slated to present this to the Board of Trustees in June of this year. Passing an Inclusionary Housing Ordinance is a good first step for addressing housing disparities and moving toward a solid plan. We can also take a look at our UDC and make sure Erie has zoning that includes Mixed Use and diverse housing densities (apartments, condos, townhouses, duplexes, etc) as options.

What role do you think neighbors should be able to have when considering affordable housing in their neighborhood?

I think there should be community outreach and engagement around affordable housing to dispel rumors and myths about increased crime and decreased property value. When the community is engaged and invested, we will all benefit.

Should Erie create an eviction legal defense program like the one in place in Boulder to help people retain their housing? It’s far less expensive than building new housing. [_]

Erie is a statutory town and as such is unable to collect excise tax, which is what Boulder uses to fund their Eviction Legal Defense Program. It will be educational to follow the data and understand how this program benefits the community as it enters its 2^nd year. The 2021 ERPAS report shows 63% of evictions were avoided in eviction court, and the program provides resources for landlords and tenants. Legal representation in court proceedings is important and levels the playing field between renters and landlords. This could be a beneficial program for Erie residents moving forward. It will be interesting to watch and keep on Erie’s radar as we move toward becoming a Home Rule municipality.

Christiaan van Woudenberg

Explain to us your own values about community and the need for affordable housing.

I believe that everyone deserves to live in the community where they work; not segregated to an undesirable corner of a municipality but rather integrated into its fabric and identity.

Do you know what the affordable housing goal is for Erie, and do you believe the Town’s efforts will meet those affordable housing needs?

Erie has set a 12% goal for inclusionary housing. Given we have an existing inventory of over 8,000 rooftops of which only a handful of affordable/attainable units, I do not believe the Town’s efforts will be sufficient to meet those needs. With the cooperation of the home building industry, we must do something dramatically different to address this crisis.

What are the impacts on families when housing for young people is unaffordable in our area? Do you think this can be prevented through policy changes and funding? If so, what programs, and what level of funding would this require?

A 2020 Pew study reported that a majority of young adults were living with their parents, at the highest rates ever measured. The dramatic increases in home prices, compounded by limited inventory and predatory investors make it increasingly difficult for young families to own a home and build a positive net worth. Aggressive policies and programs to increase inventory, limit investor market manipulation, and stabilize rents will be required. I’m troubled by the prospect of rental assistance programs that only benefits landlords and not their tenants; I’d much rather fund affordable home ownership programs that generally incentivize individual home ownership.

Would you support a program to create accessory dwelling units that could remain affordable?

Yes! We have zoning in parts of Erie that allow for ADUs, and I would like to work with home builders to increase their presence in Erie.

Would you support changing single-family zoning to allow for more mid-density housing such as townhomes and duplexes on lots that have room for them? [YES] | As an elected official would you take a leadership role on this?  [YES]

no further answer

What do you think are the impacts to our community and our environment when the vast majority of workers commute from elsewhere? What role can affordable housing play in eliminating those impacts?

This excessive commuting puts a strain on our infrastructure, our wallets, our quality of life, and the climate. My goal with affordable housing is to afford everyone that works in Erie the privilege of living in our Town. When our police officers, teachers, and grocery store cashiers can enjoy a short commute (or none at all!) to work in Erie, they’ll be able to save money on transportation and spend more time and money with their families, enjoying all that Erie has to offer.

The business community struggles to find workers because of the high cost of housing. Would you be willing to meet with business leaders to ask them to support an affordable housing program for the town tied to job growth?

Absolutely.

Smart community development such as mixed-use, middle-housing, and transit-oriented development can have a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Would you support a scoring system so that proposed developments can be scored for their contribution to reducing greenhouse gasses?

Yes, I would.

What do you understand about the history of racism that has led to people of color owning less property, and thus having less wealth than white people?

Structural racism and redlining have disadvantaged generations of BIPOC Americans from home ownership and a positive net worth. It is tragic that the COVID-19 pandemic has only increased this disparity, where white households now hold 84% of the country’s wealth while only representing 60% of the population (Source).

Would you support procurement policies in housing that create a preference system for minority and disadvantaged businesses? [YES] / Would you take a leadership role on this? [YES]

no further answer

What do you think the town can do now to enhance equity as it relates to housing?

We recently hired Alberto De Los Rios as our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Manager, and we have established a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Advisory Board. I look forward to working with Alberto and the DE&I board, in conjunction with the home building industry, other elected officials, and the community to establish equitable programs. I don’t have a simple answer and expect this will be one of the most challenging aspects to my second term as Trustee.

What role do you think neighbors should be able to have when considering affordable housing in their neighborhood?

They should welcome affordable housing along with the police officers, school teachers, grocery store clerks, and other workers and families that rely upon them. We must learn from the mistakes made in Denver; I have no tolerance for exclusionary zoning policies.

Should Erie create an eviction legal defense program like the one in place in Boulder to help people retain their housing? It’s far less expensive than building new housing. [YES]

no further answer

Recently after the fires, there has been evidence of price gouging by landlords taking advantage of a disaster. Do you think local governments should have a regulatory role in keeping those practices from the community?

Yes. I would support a robust set of policies to limit rental rate increases that would also curtail rising costs to landlords by limiting property tax increases and other costs tied to unrealized property values.

What role do you see for our town government in limiting vacation rentals and investor-owned property as a way of keeping housing costs down?

I know of several families that have supplemented their income by offering vacation rental rooms in their home. While this anecdote is not evidence, I would like the Town to spend some time and effort to understand how vacation rentals affect the housing market and act accordingly. The problems with investor-owned properties are clear; the challenge will be in crafting legislation and policies that adequately protect the vulnerable whilst being legally defensible.

Would you support lifting the state statute banning local governments from addressing high rents through rent stabilization measures of some kind? Are there incentives the town could provide to landlords who keep rents from skyrocketing?

Yes, this 40-year-old statute is very much contrary to the home-rule authority that most municipalities in Colorado enjoy (we hope to join them in the next few years). The housing crisis will not be solved by a uniform approach for all municipalities in Colorado; what works in Pueblo will most likely not be the right solution for Erie. As I mentioned above, policies to limit property tax increases and other costs tied to unrealized property values may be used to incent landlords to keep rental rates in check.

Justin Brooks

Explain to us your own values about community and the need for affordable housing.

When my family and I first relocated to Erie from the Houston Area 13yrs ago, we experienced severe sticker shock in attempting to find a place to live despite our both being fairly well-compensated engineers. Now that we have watched the cost of living continue to increase and the cost of housing outpace wages, I am increasingly concerned at how sustainable this latest trend can be. A large portion of our residents are either small business owners or employees who now fall within what HUD identifies as housing-distressed owners or renters. Given the challenge of running small businesses, it would not be a stretch that an Erie resident could easily be both. This spells a crisis that could lead not only to continued pricing out of our local market, but it could lead to a wave of foreclosures similar to what was seen just over a decade ago. Small businesses require a workforce to operate at their full capacity and due to many factors, that workforce has an abundance of employment options while also having an increasingly limited supply of attainable housing. Limited workers means limited operating hours, which means lower revenue and when combined with rising costs of commercial real estate leads to failed businesses and potentially bankrupt business owners. Even further, as a manager who seeks to attract and retain a number of engineers to the front range, I notice that the cost of housing has served as a deterrent to some when combined with the current market compensation. This spells the need for housing affordability at nearly all levels.

Do you know what the affordable housing goal is for Erie, and do you believe the Town’s efforts will meet those affordable housing needs?

The affordability goal for Erie is currently 12% per a resolution issued by the Board of Trustees. However, there is not mechanism currently in place that would cause the suppliers of this inventory to be motivated to provide it. Without some intentional action, along with collaboration with suppliers, we will not be able to reach 12% of our total inventory as attainable or affordable housing. I would like to see progress in this area made now, as we are starting to add inventory that is reaching 2-300% increase of price per square foot from 10 years ago.

What are the impacts on families when housing for young people is unaffordable in our area? Do you think this can be prevented through policy changes and funding? If so, what programs, and what level of funding would this require?

Housing affordability has the potential of impacting a variety of public health issues, such as food security, homelessness, physical and mental health, as well as child welfare. For parents working multiple jobs who have difficulty affording childcare, there is potentially less supervision of children who require it. Should housing continue to be out of reach, it could leave to families moving away or being unable to attain stable housing. In terms of policy changes, I do believe that a local ordinance that requires a percentage of new supply to be affordable or attainable housing is necessary. A local/expert housing affordability study is currently in process and should provide the required assessment of local needs for the Town of Erie and guide the level of minimum required affordable housing to be implemented. One program that once leveraged in Erie was the Victor Smith Senior Apartments on High St. This project was originally planned for many more units than have been built, so I look forward to working with our new Planning Director, Town Administrator and Board of Trustees to see what can be done to increase the supply of available and affordable Senior Housing in Erie, as well as generally affordable housing for non-Seniors.

Would you support a program to create accessory dwelling units that could remain affordable? [YES]

This exists today in some parts of Erie, with Erie Village and Old Town. There has been a trend of Multi-generational homes being added, though I am not sure if they are somehow restricted to either not allow rental use or if they are unaffordable. With construction costs being cited as a major obstacle to providing housing that is affordable, I would be willing to explore a variety of options that provide safe/affordable housing that serves our residents.

Would you support changing single-family zoning to allow for more mid-density housing such as townhomes and duplexes on lots that have room for them? [YES, within reason and with cooperation from land owners] | As an elected official would you take a leadership role on this?  [YES]

no further answer

What do you think are the impacts to our community and our environment when the vast majority of workers commute from elsewhere? What role can affordable housing play in eliminating those impacts?

There is a shortage of workers in local small businesses and most business owners that I have spoken to indicate that their workforce commutes from outside of town, sometime from great distances. This is unsustainable for multiple reasons, not the least of which is the cost of transportation and fuel, as well as the plentiful supply of employers across the state who are short-staffed. Affordable housing increases the level of access that workers have to their workplace, which lowers not only their living expenses, but it enables them to be more invested in the community in which they work.

The business community struggles to find workers because of the high cost of housing. Would you be willing to meet with business leaders to ask them to support an affordable housing program for the town tied to job growth?

Yes, I have already started these conversations with a few local business owners who also see this as an economic issue for our Town.

Smart community development such as mixed-use, middle-housing, and transit-oriented development can have a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Would you support a scoring system so that proposed developments can be scored for their contribution to reducing greenhouse gasses?

The concept of scoring for greenhouse gas emissions is not one that I am familiar with, but I would like to learn more and how it can serve our local assessment of not only housing needs but the array of solutions that may be offered.

What do you understand about the history of racism that has led to people of color owning less property, and thus having less wealth than white people?

I understand this concept quite well. The disparity in wealth accumulation in our country has been traced to a large degree to unfair housing policies in deed restrictions/covenants as well as disparities in mortgage lending (e.g. redlining). While these practices are no longer legal, the likelihood of generational wealth having been created among white landowners is greater than for people of color. Just recently, the USDA was found to have discriminated against African American farmers, leading to many to have lost their farmland due to limited access to capital, as is typically required to run a farm (Source).

Would you support procurement policies in housing that create a preference system for minority and disadvantaged businesses? [YES, as is common practice is federally regulated industries] / Would you take a leadership role on this? [YES]

no further answer

What do you think the town can do now to enhance equity as it relates to housing?

Due to proven disparities in wages an inventory of attainable housing may lead to opportunity for more representation in homebuyers. The Town cannot control wages in the private sector, though by ensuring that there is a variety of inventory that include affordable and attainable housing, it will be more likely that progress in equity can be made. This is the concept that by providing opportunities to all and fostering inclusive culture, equity will come along with it.

What role do you think neighbors should be able to have when considering affordable housing in their neighborhood?

Neighbors do have the potential to be impacted by developments that overly impact the shared infrastructure, such as roads and schools, so development should certainly be mindful of their concerns. A challenge seen in Erie is that there are far more people who are willing to acknowledge that affordable housing is an issue than those who are willing to suggest that the solution be brought to their neighborhood. This is something that could benefit from some guided dialogue to explore the potential options, as a concentration of affordable units in a sector away from existing neighborhoods is less effective and may create new equity issues that were less prevalent. Cooperative and collaborative solution making can prove much more effective.

Should Erie create an eviction legal defense program like the one in place in Boulder to help people retain their housing? It’s far less expensive than building new housing. [It depends]

no further answer

Recently after the fires, there has been evidence of price gouging by landlords taking advantage of a disaster. Do you think local governments should have a regulatory role in keeping those practices from the community?

Yes, to some degree, market prices for rent are easy to benchmark and track. Price gouging attempts should be easily ascertained and should be noted for the State Attorney General to address. There will need to still be a free market system for landlords who are subject to the free market for ownership of their property, though preying on people who are already experiencing a crisis driven by natural disaster is something that should not be allowed to occur.

What role do you see for our town government in limiting vacation rentals and investor-owned property as a way of keeping housing costs down?

I believe that vacation rentals and investor-owned property in Town should be registered. I also believe that vacation rentals have proven to be more impactful on their neighborhoods than traditional rental properties, with reports of VRBO party houses being of greater impact on surrounding properties. We learned from Denver that multiple VRBOs owned by the same person contributed to their housing shortage and caused prices to rise unnaturally. In Home Rule municipalities, it is not uncommon for vacation rentals to be subject to lodging taxes, though as a Statutory Town Erie is not able to make such an assessment.

Would you support lifting the state statute banning local governments from addressing high rents through rent stabilization measures of some kind? Are there incentives the town could provide to landlords who keep rents from skyrocketing?

I would need to learn more about this concept before making any sort of commitment. Incentives to maintain a healthy inventory mix on its face sounds like a good idea.

However, having local governments put into a position to have to stabilize a delicate housing market could prove problematic if not implemented well.

The post ECHO Affordable Housing Questionnaire: Candidates’ Responses appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Table Mesa King Soopers during the Grand Reopening. Photo: Elisabeth Mallen

It has been a year since the mass shooting at the Table Mesa King Soopers, where 10 people lost their lives for simply going about their day in the wrong place at the wrong time. The shooter was charged with these killings in March 2021 and was ultimately found incompetent for trial. These mass shootings are something that have become far too common in our country. In the weeks immediately following the shooting, the community banded together at vigils and funerals to mourn those lost, but the loss didn’t go away just because we mourned. 

While we see these shootings in the headlines everyday, it’s easy to become indifferent to them in the long term because they are so commonplace. As someone who was working at a different King Soopers that day, I saw firsthand how the scars run deeper than most realize. The community as a whole was affected, and the evidence was obvious in several large and small incidents I witnessed in the aftermath.

Photo: Ashley Kay Mauer

The morning after the shooting, I awoke to a text from one of my coworkers asking me if I planned to go into the store. She had just seen the news and was scared to go to work. She was even more scared because she rides her bike to work and the commute suddenly felt more treacherous than it had previously. She was born in the US and moved to Slovakia when she was nine and said multiple times how something like this, “never would have happened back home.”

When I got to work myself that day, the store was pretty slow and quiet, which was good because it left us employees with time to visit with each other, hug, and cry without stressing. Since our store was Rikki Olds’ original store before she transferred to Boulder, about half of us knew her and were in shock. Rikki was one of the people killed at King Soopers that day. She worked alongside us in the deli, bakery, and frontend in Louisville before she transferred. She was a personable bubble of sunshine who spoke with everyone.

Those of us who worked with her daily, and those who loved her, felt her loss deeply.

A regular customer, Anne, has been coming in almost every morning for longer than I have worked there. She knows everyone by name and is always eager to say hello even though she had just seen us the day before. Since she had known Rikki, she cried along with us and handed out little heart chocolates as a form of comfort.

The following week, I came back to my department and was told there was pizza in the break room courtesy of a caring customer. We’ve had pizza provided by management before as a reward for reaching safety goals and other accomplishments, but never before had a customer purchased something for the whole store.

With the Boulder Table Mesa store closed, many of its regular customers started coming to Louisville. They were pretty easily identified because they’d often preface their questions with a phrase like, “I’ve never been in this store before,” or even more directly, “I used to shop at Table Mesa.” Most were kind, but we could see some were expressing their grief through their comments, such as “The Table Mesa store always had what we wanted.” I helped a former Table Mesa shopper who had tears in her eyes and kept thanking me for being there. I wanted to hug her because she was so obviously barely holding together. 

There were police officers in shifts hanging out in our lobby for a while after the incident in an effort to make people, employees and customers alike, feel safer. I think the public ought to know that this is something the police department went out of their way to do and not something King Soopers requested. One officer even shared words of encouragement and a hug with one of my coworkers when she stopped at the memorial inside the front door and started to cry. After the police left, King Soopers hired security guards, and they are still present to keep an eye on things now, a year later.

[BELOW: notes from the memorial tree]

I was touched when I left work one day and saw that someone had left a bouquet of flowers on the police car parked in front of the store. The next morning when I arrived, more bouquets had been added, nearly covering the windshield. I imagine it was both a thank you to them for being there and an acknowledgement of the officer they had lost.

Two weeks after the shooting, I was helping a customer, and he asked me about exits and whether we had one at the back of the store. When I told him we do, he nodded to himself and said that was good to know in case he ever needed it. I didn’t need to ask why he might need to know; the scenario he was imagining weighs heavily on all of our minds everyday we come to work.

Down our soda aisle, the plastic piece that holds the soda on the top shelf broke. When it gave way, around ten, two-liter bottles of Pepsi fell to the ground and exploded with loud pops. One of the ladies in my department screamed, and when I saw her a moment later, she was shaking.

She had thought the pop explosions were gunfire.

Through King Soopers online customer surveys, people started leaving comments about how their hearts are with us in the wake of tragedy and other supportive sentiments. This was a nice change of pace from the complaints about the location of items in the store or items that have been discontinued. 

Not all interactions were positive, however, and some people’s behavior was especially shocking and disheartening. One of our pharmacists shared a story just a few days after the shooting. A customer called and asked if we do COVID testing, which we don’t at our location. “That guy shot up the wrong store,” came the horrific reply before hanging up.

Near the time clock we had a log where employees were supposed to sign in when they arrived and answer questions about how they were feeling that day as part of the store’s COVID protocol. I was very upset to see that some jokester in poor taste had written “Eric Talley” on the log, just days after he had been murdered. It’s worse knowing that whoever wrote that is a coworker of mine. 

In the face of such tragedy, it is hard to be empathetic to these types of responses to grief, but maybe laughing about it was the only way they knew how to cope. 

I dealt with a lady who was complaining to me that she had come by the day before and had been unable to find anyone in my department to help her. I just apologized and held my tongue.

How was I supposed to explain, without crying, that the department was almost empty because most of us had been at Rikki’s funeral the previous day?

As a team, listening to customer complaints took a toll on us. One coworker finally snapped and told a woman who had been complaining that things were not to her standards that it was because we had been going to funerals and vigils all week. She immediately apologized and even apologized again when she returned the next day. Perhaps in our day-to-day lives we forget what others are going through, and while my coworker thought she could get in trouble for saying what she did, it served as a good reminder about what is truly important. 

Time has helped us forget, and in some ways it seems life has returned to normal. On Feb. 9, 2022 the Table Mesa store had their grand reopening after being closed for the better part of a year going through a massive remodel. There is no other King Soopers that is like the new Table Mesa one.

The store’s entrance was completely redone and now features lots of windows, an unusual design for a box store, but the building is more welcoming and bright thanks to the natural lighting.

In addition to the windows, the interior is more welcoming with the implementation of murals. The overall atmosphere is more relaxing.

Mural in the Table Mesa King Soopers. Photo: Elisabeth Mallen

Many of the employees who worked there prior to the shooting, including some who were there when it happened, have made a return to the Table Mesa store. Since they were displaced by the store’s closure, they have been helping out in neighboring stores. The Table Mesa employees that I worked with in the interim were greatly excited to get back to their home store and see all of the people they worked with. They expressed that they hope to feel closer to those they lost by going back. Customers have come into my store since the reopening and voiced their pleasure in being able to shop there again. Despite its dark history, the Table Mesa location joins us all together. We feel stronger when we are united. 

There is a plan in place to plant 10 trees near the store grounds; one tree for each fallen friend. These gestures not only help us remember the people who died, but it helps the community remember what it endured and that the connections we forged are not part of the past. 

Each time something this horrific happens and we allow ourselves to accept it as inevitable, we are normalizing it. If it’s normal, we don’t think twice about it and nothing changes. In addition to being strong afterward, we need to take action to prevent there being a next time. 

In 2021, there were 693 mass shootings in the U.S. according to Gun Violence Archive. How many did you hear about? They are so commonplace that they don’t even make international news most of the time. 

For years, people have advocated for stricter gun control, but those debates haven’t gotten anywhere. How many bodies have to pile up before we admit that having the right to bear arms does not mean that anyone and everyone should be able to pick up a machine gun? 

Gun control is not the only avenue for change. If there were enough support for people with mental issues, then it could no longer be used as an excuse for why people do terrible things. If we no longer accept mental illness as an excuse for poor behavior then we are forced to examine the true root of the violence. 

Persistence is key here even though it would be easier to turn a blind eye, say there is nothing we can do, and then mourn the next round. Until something changes, another round of people will be murdered and injured at the wrong end of a war tool that everyone has a right to own. 

We are Boulder Strong because we’ve had to be, but we shouldn’t have to be. We need to be strong enough to create change and prevent future communities from experiencing what we have.

The post Anniversary of the King Soopers Shooting: The community has moved on, but has it healed? | Community Corner appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Wira Babiak, a past resident of Boulder and Erie, now lives in Longmont, Colorado. She visited Kyiv, Lviv, Ternopil, and the Carpathian Mountains 25 years ago shortly after Ukraine’s independence from Soviet rule. She says the landscape, architecture, and public art in Ukraine are breathtaking. Striking European architectural styles and long-standing medieval buildings are situated along original cobblestone roads. The people are hospitable, caring, and gentle. Putin’s invasion is destroying the history and beauty of Ukraine.

Even though her older relatives have since passed on, Babiak has cousins who live in the Ternopil area in the small village of Mala Plavycha. This little village, not far from Lviv, was trampled on by the Nazis and Russians during World War II.

Recently, Babiak is unable to reach her cousins. Phone calls are not going through, and her emails remain unanswered. She does not know if her cousins are safe or even alive. Being in Western Ukraine, they are very close to the Polish border and may have sought refuge there. The male cousins may have been turned away to serve in the Ukrainian army.

Although Babiak feels helpless watching the news here in the west, she firmly believes that men and women are standing strong and will fight for democracy and freedom.

Ulana Bihun lives in Louisville, Colorado. She herself has seen what devastation looks like from the Marshall Fire that destroyed many homes close to hers, the images reminding her what a war zone looks like. The news that has been unfolding about Ukraine over the past week has been heartbreaking and unfathomable.

Bihun’s parents were born in Ukraine. They were toddlers when their mothers fled Russian aggression and left their homeland as refugees while their fathers were fighting WWII.

“As a parent, you never know how or what our kids will internalize,” Bihun says, “from this unbelievable happening especially in the 21st century.” Her children, Maya and Andrew, are keenly worried for Ukraine and want to do something about it. In addition to attending pro-Ukrainian rallies in Denver and her son Andrew’s change of heart about learning Ukrainian, Bihun’s family is selling homemade pierogies (varenyky) to raise money to help Ukraine. All proceeds will go to RAZOM, a 501(c)(3) organization run by Bihun’s friend in New York.

One dozen pierogies with a side of fried onions and sour cream is $15. Text Bihun at 303.547.5690 to order.

Interested in supporting Ukraine in other ways? Visit RAZOM’s website to learn how you can contribute monetarily. Contact your elected officials and attend rallies to make sure your voice is heard.

The post American Ukrainians in Colorado and the War in Ukraine appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

by Savanna Adel

Over the past couple of years, far too many fires have been too close for comfort. The Good Life Refuge has met many obstacles and challenges associated with having to plan for 65 rescued farm animals to be relocated in an instant. Although the Marshall Fire that swept through Louisville and Superior were close, the Good Life Refuge was far enough away from the fire to offer help to those who were affected and needed a safe place for their animals. After news of the fire had spread, the Refuge informed followers via newsletter, Instagram, and specific Facebook groups that had been created for the fire and/or lost and found animals, that there were kennels and pasture space available for animals that needed a safe place.

The challenges with emergency situations like this is having available quarantine space for incoming animals to prevent spread or onset of disease. There is setting up of temporary fencing to ensure everyone’s safety plus coordinating to provide adequate housing and indoor space to keep the most vulnerable animals comfortable, especially in the cold Colorado winters. In November 2020, when the Boulder County Calwood fire threatened neighboring farms and sanctuaries, the Good Life Refuge also offered aid and space for animals in need and were able to host four animals for Doolittle Farm Sanctuary and helped with their mandatory evacuation. Luckily, during this fire their sanctuary was safe, and the animals were able to return home the next day.

Photo: Carol McKinley, Denver Gazette

Since the Calwood fire, Good Life Refuge has developed an evacuation plan with a list of volunteers, vehicles, and trailers who are able to help with future transportation of sanctuary animals. However, another challenge is finding alternate safe places where animals can go. Most residential homes are not built and equipped to house larger animals like cows, goats, alpacas, pigs, mules, donkeys, and sheep. Some volunteers on their list have indicated the number of ducks and chickens they would be able to house safely in garages or sheds, but it’s much more difficult to find safe places for the larger residents.

The Good Life Refuge is seeking and welcoming folks who have space to temporarily house larger farm animals. They also have a need for those with trailers and trucks to join their emergency evacuation list to help when called upon during a future natural disaster or crisis. If you or someone you know is interested in being added to the Emergency Evacuation Volunteer List and can offer assistance with transport, temporary housing or other, please email info@goodliferefuge.com requesting an Emergency Evacuation Volunteer Form.

Good Life Refuge provides a safe haven for neglected and at-risk farm animals. It was founded in 2018 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and is located in Longmont, Colorado. The Refuge believes in the ethical treatment of all animals. It practices careful and responsible stewardship of our organization and for the animals in our care. Moreover, they believe in the benefits of a plant-centric lifestyle and in strengthening and nurturing the bonds between humans and animals.

The post Good Life Refuge Farm Animal Sanctuary – Longmont, CO | Community Corner appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

After much deliberation and a ton of back and forth, I’ve decided not to seek re-election. Instead, I will spend more of my time with my family and in self-reflection.

These last four years serving Erie as a Trustee has been incredibly fulfilling. I have learned more than I ever thought possible about how a town operates; how people operate, and what is expected of elected representatives. Serving the residents of Erie is not a simple task. Every situation is much more complex than the public knows. Every interaction has the potential for very positive outcomes or explosive division. When I felt it was necessary and would be received, I tried to provide as much context as I could about these complex situations from the dais or on social media.

During my time on the board, I have seen us accomplish many things. Here are just a few:

• We built a championship disc golf course that has seen more activity than any other outdoor amenity during its first year of existence in Erie.
• We finished the negotiations to get Nine Mile moving which will give Erie a thriving retail corner on a busy intersection.
• We approved TIF plans for businesses in Old Town that resulted in two fantastic new restaurants; The Birdhouse and Piripi.
• With the help of Senate Bill 181 we re-wrote our UDC chapter 12 applying hard limitations on oil and gas operations in town; effectively removing one of the biggest nuisances that was here when I was elected.
• Together with architects, staff, and residents, we designed Erie’s Town Center, which will be the biggest leap we’ve ever seen in commerce, dining, events, and community lifestyle for the citizens of Erie.

We had our share of difficulties too.

• The town was defrauded of $1M for the Erie Parkway bridge. Multiple staff members exited after that and our lawsuit with the insurance company is still ongoing.
• We were blocked from beginning the comprehensive plan update process because we were forced to respond to ridiculous accusations by planning commissioners Kelly Zuniga and Andrew Sawusch who also refused to meet with our attorney and solve the matter in-house. That project is still yet to get underway.
• COVID-19 caused us to shutter our town facilities for a few months and forced a lot of people to change their work, exercise, and dining habits over the last two years. Our town made it through practically unscathed. We had some hiccups but there were no furloughs or loss of significant budget because of how well our staff handled the changes. That said, we are still dealing with the remainder of the covid situation and we are still divided on how to handle mask mandates and working with two counties that don’t see eye to eye.

Nonetheless, Erie has a very bright future. Before I leave this board I plan to do as much as I can to lock us on target for maturing into our next evolution.

• We must turn Erie into a city! Changing the government structure of our town to be home rule is absolutely mandatory in order to emerge from the chrysalis of statutory rule and launch into flight.
• I am incredibly encouraged by the current makeup of our town staff. They have made some fantastic new hires in the last couple of years and are now firmly ready to take Erie forward.
• We have a wonderful resource in the coal creek that flows through town and it is time to take advantage of it. I hope to get confirmation of progress on a community art and creek restoration project that I have proposed to Malcolm and the staff before I leave.
• And finally, tonight we authorized the purchase of land for Town Center from the last holdout owner in order to begin the full buildout in earnest. I sincerely hope we have plans approved and are moving dirt before as soon as possible.

So in April, I will give up my seat as a Trustee. I will return to being a member of the public. I hope to take a few months and decompress from this experience… but I am not going anywhere. I will be here, with you, enjoying the many wonderful aspects of our community. I may seek to serve the town again in some other capacity but as of April, I will have done my civic duty, and I feel very accomplished because of it. Thank you all for this wonderful experience and for riding along on this roller coaster with me. After this election, I will certainly miss it and all of you.”

Board of Trustees on 2022-01-25 6:30 PM

The situation Mr Haid is referring to was accusations of bid-rigging by Planning Commissioners, Andrew Sawusch and Kelly Zuniga, was covered by Yellow Scene Magazine in a July 28th, 2021 article titled, Did the Erie Mayor Tip the Scales.

While the investigations found no illegal activity, how the situation was approached gives rise to concerns.

In a follow-up conversation, Adam Haid elaborates; “The accusations of bid rigging were over the top ridiculous. They made those accusations publicly in a PC meeting. Then they refused multiple attempts by our attorney to meet in person or virtually to hear why the process was not a competitive bid and why bid rigging was an impossibility. They have a duty to meet with the town attorney because she and they are representatives of the town. After that, we were forced to hire an independent investigator who interviewed everyone and presented his findings that were exactly in line with what our attorney was trying to tell them. I have emails proving all this but they are attorney/client privileged.”

Andrew Sawusch Interview with Town Trustees for Appointment to Board

The post Adam Haid, Erie Mayor Pro Tem statement on not seeking reelection in April appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

In Denver, there are people you see on the street pushing carts and carrying backpacks; there are tents on curbs. The people residing in these locations are in their very own community, with a world that contains different names, customs, and economies of its own. A complicated community landscape scattered with some members helping one another survive and other people opting to rob their fellow man.

There are good and evil in each of us, and the unhoused community is no different; the idea of the difference between them and us is a rich person’s luxury.

They have a culture of their own, creating families from circumstances, some built out of trust and protection, and others built out of anxiety and fear. These are their stories and what we can do better to help the unhoused. 

ERIN

On October 18th, I met a young girl named Erin, alias Skitz. She lived at 16th and Downing on the grassy corner of Homeless Out Loud.

Her red hair tucked in a hat, a teardrop tattoo under her eye, she was 21 and asked whether she could use while I was there, with OxyCodone being her drug of choice. I said yes and sat on the broken chair, leaning against the tent behind me.

Erin covered herself in a blanket on the ground next to me. Later, she would say it was her current bedding –a white and pink leopard print fabric barely covering her hunched body. I looked away. I felt certain decency was required to not look, to give her that respect. I saw the blood-splattered needles in her purse which startled me but did not surprise me. At 5 am the day after I met her, I promised I would come back to help, to give the items she could use. At 6:30 am, I gave her a small bag filled with feminine products over a fence,  then proceeded to walk across to join the cluster standing around the table with an odd assortment of potato salad, coffee, and donuts. At 7 am, she rushed out of the gates to wash her face and freshen up in the building, eventually finding her way back to gather her things. By 7:35 am, tired and cold, she grabbed a donut, I said hello, and she hugged me. I walked home past the collection of fencing and spotted those who had made it out early searching for a new place to go and a way to carry their lives with them as DOTI moved in with large garbage bins hauling away the remnants of their dwelling. This is an everyday reality for those unhoused, the constant movement and incessant migration every seven days.

I would meet Erin’s “street mother” Sarah weeks later in the park, as the group on Bannock listed those that had passed, I asked if anyone had seen Erin or “Skitz.” A woman stopped the conversation she was having to ask me why I wanted to know because, as she explained, Erin was her street daughter. “We met 4 years ago out here when my boyfriend died,” she said. “That little 17-year-old kid saved me, she saved my life, she has been through a lot but she is so loved, and so sweet.” 

JIMMY

“I don’t want to sit with these people; I want to work. The only thing that’s keeping me from working is I don’t have a social security card. But I just put in a request at St. Francis today. So hopefully, I’ll have mine by Friday, and I’ve got a couple of places that said they’ll hire me as soon as I get it. So I swear I’m trying to get off the illicit drugs, get my life together, and get on the medication.”

I met the 40-year-old Jimmy on the corner of Park and Stout. He was trying to trade his suboxone for a single cigarette. Jimmy is a recovering addict who uses the opioid substitute to wean himself off of his drug of choice, heroin, which has become a lot riskier as the rise of fentanyl cut drugs is on the rise. Jimmy tells me he was first given heroin at the age of 12 and that his father forcibly injected it into him against his will. Addiction, though for him, truly began at the age of 18 after a severe car accident caused him to get prescribed oxycontin for pain. 

Though Jimmy has been using opioids for over a decade, the recent increase of fentanyl-laced heroin has made him seek recovery. When I asked him what the drugs felt like, he told me, “It’s like this at the end of the day. Imagine being out in the freezing cold. It’s like wearing nothing but shorts and a T-shirt, and then suddenly somebody offers you a warm blanket fresh out of the dryer. That is heroin for me. But fentanyl isn’t like that at all. It’s very different, and I don’t like it. You’re too hot, you’re too high, and it’s not fun because you’re just slumped over and it’s really dangerous.”

The treatment clinic Jimmy is attending is outside of the city, but not having a car or any other form of transportation means enduring long waiting times at bus stops to go back and forth between services. Most nonprofit and city services are located within the Metro Districts, forcing many of them to spend most of their days commuting. 

To be homeless is a full-time job. 

AMY, MIKE & THEIR TWO SMALL DOGS

In a parking lot filled with garbage and a seemingly unmaintained pay-to-park nestled in the corner, there stood a man, woman, and two small dogs, with the dogs more well-maintained than the individuals themselves. They stood in a cluster, folding blankets and clothing while looking for gaps in their already filled fabric and metal wagon where one more item might be placed. Amy and Mike had only 30 minutes left to gather their belongings for the night and move before DPD returned and asked them to vacate. Looking for his important documents, Mike turned out his pockets to only show blank fabric: He had been robbed. “I swear people dug through my pockets when I was asleep and took them,” he said. “I guess I’ve found out that I don’t really need quite as much stuff anyways. We just organized what we have and that’s all we can do.” 

When I asked where they were headed next, Mike said, “I’m not setting up a tent because we’ve already been noticed, so even if we do move to that public lot right there, we will stay just for one night, and we won’t be setting up a tent period.” The threat of being asked to move again and again is always on the horizon with most in-house being moved an average of every seven days.

Though signs surrounding public sweep zones state that city officials will arrive at permanent sweep zones beginning at 8 am, unhoused residents claim to see individuals from DPD and DOTI arriving as early as 7:40 am.

The dogs, Buddy and Austin, bounced along the pavement with no knowledge that they would soon be making a long journey to a new home, one that, after seven days, they would be asked to vacate–yet again. 

HENRY

In a circle of chairs in front of the courthouse, I sat and listened as the many people around me talked about their daily struggles, such as the reality of not knowing when events such as Mutual Meals and Mutual Aid Training’s are because they don’t have a phone or address, forcing them to instead give street corners and storefronts as locations for service providers such as Mutual Aid to look for them. Each individual introduced themselves, using their given or chosen name.  They spoke of those lost in the recent week, individuals with names like Spyder Head and Skinny Tim in the list of the dead. Henry mentioned his friend Roger who he lived within the camps located on Santa Fe and Bayard. Roger was killed on impact by a light-rail train in October. (Man killed by light rail train | FOX31 Denver) On the day that Roger was laid to rest, Officers scheduled a sweep. Officers were heard making comments regarding the deceased while conducting the sweep, which prevented Roger’s only friends from attending his funeral. As Henry spoke, he began to cry, tears sliding down his worn cheeks. “They already know exactly what happened,” he said. “There are cameras on the outsides and the insides of these trains showing that he either jumped or somebody pushed him.” 

Henry has been on the street since he was 45 and is one of the few individuals I have met in my investigation who told me he “chose” this life. “I gave everything away because of the last couple years of my father’s life,” Henry explained.“He would like to disappear during the holidays. So I came out early one day without telling him I was in Connecticut tattooing at the time.  I watched where he went, and he was disappearing on the holidays to go and hang out with the homeless people downtown. That was what he liked to do. So when I made it to 45, which is when he died, I thought that I would walk a mile in his footsteps.” 

But that choice was not one without regret, 

“Of course, once you get out of here, you find out how horrible it is. There’s a lot of addiction, and so using becomes easy.”

Like many who “choose” or who are given no choice at all, Henry was quickly flung into the world of drugs as he started to take methamphetamine to stay awake through the harsh nights so he didn’t get robbed.  He told me he switched over to opioids when a “friend’s” mother forcibly injected him with heroin in the middle of their suburban kitchen. When I asked what his current substance of choice was, he said heroin, because it helped with the pain.  

AUDREY & PAUL

As I made my way down the street once flooded with cars, that December 1st Wednesday morning, the area was now surrounded by fencing, and people were caged like animals trying to find their lives in the darkness. Audrey and Paul called out from the tent in the distance, looking for someone who could help. They had just acquired space at a shelter and had come that morning to collect the remnants of their belongings, only to run into the crossed wires. This time, luckily, there was an entrance. At 6:30 AM, the police started knocking on tents and waking up residents of the sleepy lane. Those that had been awake made their way to the table of treats donated by local businesses and community members.  They were greeted there by Veria, a prominent worker and activist with Mutual Aid Monday.  Veria had a collection of donations, this time consisting of burritos, cereal, and cups of coffee being passed from volunteer to chilled hands.

FRANCIS

Francis woke up at 7 am as he did every day to clean where he had been permitted to sleep, wiping the railing and collecting his things. That afternoon turned into a less peaceful situation than the days previously. A Police vehicle was parked in the alley while Francis sobbed and grabbed his belongings. He had lost this safe place to stay. Francis with his kindness and generosity was helping another individual within the unhoused community when unfortunately things went awry. The actions of the other man ultimately led to the dismantling of the relationship between Francis and the Post Office. James, the man he was attempting to bring under his wing, struggles with mental health. The Post Office pressed charges against James. According to the officer I spoke with on the scene, James was charged with vandalism and public urination. This charge, though not against Francis, means the deal between him and the Post Office is over. Though Francis’s personal belongings only consisted of his pack and sleeping bag, he helped move another individual’s belongings who also called this alley “home” while they were at work. Francis left the alley in tears, starkly different from his morning waves of hello, for now, he did not know where he would sleep that night.

HOMELESS OUTLOUD

Lilly Redford works at Denver Homeless Outloud. I met them at my very first sweep on October 18th, 2021. We later met on November 3rd to speak further on the issue of the new permanent sweep zones within the City.  “The permit sweeps area is a legal conundrum because people,  under the Lyall settlement, still get seven days notice to be removed from an area,” expounded Redford. “So if these people come into the permanent sweeps area, they will need to be posted for seven days. Technically, if somebody wanted to stay somewhere for a week while waiting to get permanent housing, they could stay in that area. get posted the day they move in and move a week later.” 

As we know from the stories of the unhoused and from what many see daily, drugs run rampant throughout the unhoused community, with many pointing to that as the root cause of being unhoused. Though drugs are often pointed to as the main reasons encampments are reported, that is not exactly the case. As Redford stated, “If you call for one, it gives you the options of what you are calling for. One of them specifically is to report an encampment. It means nothing more than that. That doesn’t mean there is an overdose, domestic violence, or some crime happening. It’s just you call 311. Is there a tent outside your house? That’s enough, a single tent.”

Some believe the unhoused people aren’t trying in life or would rather stay on the street. We have all heard this said many times. When Redford gives their explanation of this tossed-around phrase, the true meaning becomes clear. “It’s an intentional misinterpretation of what people are saying to you. They’re saying, I’m over it. I’ve been trying to get housed for X amount of years; I’ve gone through this many service providers, I’ve had 17 case managers. And still, I’m in a tent on the street. So when you tell them that you have an offer of housing for them that consists of a shelter or a motel for a week, these people don’t believe that because that’s not trustworthy at this point.” Just like anyone else, these people have their limits and breaking points.

When Yellow Scene Magazine requested an interview on the topic of the “sweeps,” the Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) gave this formal response in email. 

“Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) is charged with overseeing DRMC Sec. 49-246, which says that public spaces must remain free of unauthorized encumbrances. If we see an area that is deteriorating in condition, with increasing amounts of trash and other items encumbering and blocking access to the public right of way, we will post 7-day notice of our intent to do a large-scale encampment cleanup and, on the cleanup day, ask people to move so we can thoroughly clean the area with the encumbrances removed. The City also offers people experiencing homelessness free storage of personal items that do not pose a public health or safety risk for up to 60 days. The City will also store unattended personal property that does not pose a public health or safety risk, free of charge for up to 60 days.” 

In contrast, I have found the opposite to be true, with mattresses, dressers, clothes, chairs, and various other items posing no threat to public safety, all being crushed and then piled into large garbage trucks.

DOTI Communications Director Nancy Kuhn followed up with subsequent statements. “DOTI supports the city’s position that no one should be living in an area that was not meant for human habitation especially when there are city services available to help people experiencing homelessness,” stated Kuhn. 

Though most services are offered within the City Park and Capitol Hill Neighborhoods, there are only three 24 hour shelter locations.

Only one out of three are accessible by phone, meaning that those lucky enough to have communication still must also make the long trek all the way to the facilities just to see if they have any availability. Additionally, the areas that are claimed to be uninhabitable are often similar locations to common campgrounds, with small grassy patches by large towering trees. 

About the disposal of personal property regarding unhoused residents, Kuhn went on to say, “During our cleanups, the people we interact with that are living unsheltered decide what personal items they dispose of.” However, most sweeps take place between 5:00 am and 8:00 am, leaving roughly 3 hours to collect one’s personal belongings and then vacate the area.

When asked about the hostile architecture and landscaping that has been put in place in areas such as Stout and Park Ave, Redford tells me, “It’s also destroying trees, even old-growth trees. My mom is a master gardener and so she understands how water levels work. So when you place boulders on that growth, it prevents water from getting down into the roots for the trees. These Denver trees are already trying to survive in a semi-desert,  so when you prevent water from getting to those trees, they’re not going to exist. And we’ve already had business owners come out and complain about how the rocks are going to cause all of my trees to die. Also, placing stones along this whole area creates ideal habitats for dangerous rodents.”

The rocks and other hostile architectural features are not only a breeding ground for rodentia, they are also, in many cases, not ADA accessible, which in itself violates numbers 3, 6, and 8 of the sidewalk and DOTI requirements for public property. Neither a wheelchair nor a walker would be able to access the sidewalk via the curb or street with the stones obstructing the path and with the landscaping designed to keep the unhoused from living in the streets.

Boulder’s Recycle Row is a free drop-off location within the city limits that provides disposal of not only basic trash, but also hazardous materials [see map]. Boulder’s Recycle Row allows community members to dispose of trash and other hazardous materials such as biowaste with no additional cost for disposal of waste of any kind, making the drop-off location financially accessible. 

Keep Denver Beautiful is a city-wide organization that focuses on “maintaining an attractive safe urban environment,” attractive being the keyword in terms of the city’s priorities. Though the city supports programs such as this and provides a guide on littering, they offer few trash cans or places to dispose of garbage throughout the city. The Denver Department of Transportation and Intruracture offers 5 disposal locations: D&R Transfer Station, North Transfer Station, Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site, South Metro Transfer Station, and Jordan Rd. Transfer station, all costing a fee. 

MUTUAL AID MONDAY

Monday evenings on Banncock you can find a collection of pop up tents and tables covered in food at the end of the lane sit boxes of sanitary products and clothing. Mutual Aid Monday meets here almost every week. Mutual Aid Monday is a collective of community members and activists who work together to provide services and meals to the unhoused. This one day a week is often the only hot meal many will receive, and the connection to services as well as the ability to have one’s voice heard through workshops and open conversations run by Mutual Aid members, and members of the unhoused community.

Service providers as well providing basic first aid, and even acupuncture, done by trained professionals from the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association, are offered at this weekly event. People from all walks of life are seen with children: toddlers and teenagers among those seen in the crowd. 

Up north of Denver, the problem of criminalized homelessness in Boulder is no different, with a tent ban as well as a specialty task force that was introduced into the city. From the website, Boulder’s Homeless Outreach Team expresses their purpose as, 

“[Being] present and visible in areas where homeless gather in order to normalize police presence, increase visibility and build trust.” But that building of trust has not been the case for many of the city’s unhoused residents, with the Homeless OutReach team driving them further out of the city and causing an increase in ticketing.

FEETFORWARD

I spoke with Jennifer Livovich from Feetforward, a nonprofit she formed in Boulder. The goal of the work is to meet people where they are at and provide services that they need Jennifer experienced being unhoused for four years, but she was able to reintegrate with the help of Court Navigator Elizabeth Robinson, who helped connect Livovich with beneficial services such as Fort Lyon’s sober-supported transitional housing program. Livovich then attended Colorado State University to receive her undergraduate degree, and after graduating she returned to Boulder to help others like herself escape homelessness. “I’ve been here for almost a decade, said Livovich. “The unhoused community has been completely marginalized, they’ve had zero representation, and their only leadership is the City Council that dictates policies that directly impact their daily lives. There it can develop, and in many ways has developed into a situation of these individuals being undervalued. “We care so little about these people, we’re not even going to see them as community members, we’re not even going to see them as human beings, and instead what we’re going to do is to just have a meeting. We’re going to decide what their life’s going to look like daily, without a single representative from that group in the room.“

The choices being made are often not in the best interest of those they are affecting. For instance, the city has spent millions on police task forces to combat the unhoused crises. “We’ve seen a $2.7 million police increase,” said Livovich.“They created a reclamation officer position, a supporting squad with the  sole purpose of targeting encampments, and then the city passed a tent ban that automatically enables police to seize people’s tents.”

Through my investigation, I have learned much regarding the culture of the unhoused, with one part of that culture being how individuals identify themselves through alias names and how this can sometimes be a challenge to service providers who are not well-connected enough in the unhoused community to know these aliases. Through her time on the street, Jennifer Livovich has a unique perspective towards the issues that the unhoused face and the culture that they come from. She explains individuals living on the street often have a different name than their given name for various reasons such as anonymity or safety. “A street name can be a real challenge for providers because they don’t know what that street name is,” explained Livovich. “They get a government name that they will typically gain from criminal justice records or possibly coordinated entry for the VI-SPDAT, which is a vulnerability assessment tool for adults that can assist in housing. I know that what we are doing is working because I  see people traveling and I know where people are at.”  

Though the efforts of Livovich and Feetforward have been astounding with their weekly meals by the bandshell, the numbers she is seeing are nothing to brag about, “I am always taking out food for 125 people, but we could see as many as 135 people or more,” said Livovich. “We are heading into December, and we are seeing double the number we saw at this time last year, and so we are in a crisis. Our reputation of being out there reliably has spread through the community, and this word of mouth reputation has been the best way to spread information. Since January of this year, what I’ve seen is that people are traveling to us, and they’re traveling from pockets outside to Boulder, as far as 65th and Arapahoe.”

Darren O’Conner, a board member of the nonprofit Feetforward and long-time activist against the unfair treatment of the unhoused, has some serious concerns regarding how the City of Boulder treats the unhoused. “Instead of doing sweeps, they are using that law to say if you don’t immediately remove your tent, that they will just give you a citation and take your stuff,” said O’Conner.

During the pandemic, O’Conner says the conditions were not better regarding sanitation and even worse than usual with people not having access to basic needs and essential facilities.

“We had to fight the city to get any public bathrooms where people could piss, shit, and wash their hands. And with a disease that’s communicable here, washing your hands is part of the basic safety protocol. We didn’t; we had almost no bathrooms. The city put out a map of seven or eight bathrooms spread out all over the city. And some of them that they said were there. I went there myself and they were locked, closed down, day in and day out, like in Mapleton ball fields. We had to write to the city and say, Hey, this is on your map of bathrooms, and it’s locked. And the next day they had a porta potty. Bathrooms are ground zero if you’re not going to provide people with places to sleep. How about a place to shit, so they don’t have to shit in the creek.”

Mollie McCoy is an intern at Yellow Scene Magazine and is a student of Journalism and Media Production at Metro State University. She was born in Longmont and has been a Colorado resident her whole life.

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The post Denver’s Homeless Sweeps and the People Being Swept appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

One of the most frustrating contradictions of our time is that we have it within our collective power to end the COVID epidemic, and yet we have chosen, collectively, not to do so. The COVID vaccine stands as one of the great medical achievements of our lifetime. The vaccine has been shown to be safe and effective; there is a clear inverse correlation between an area’s vaccination rates and COVID infection rates, and yet a third of Coloradans have chosen not to avail themselves of this extraordinary vaccine.

I personally favor a vaccine mandate to end this pandemic. I think many people privately favor a mandate, but fear the backlash to such a proposal. Even the idea of requiring masks in schools has been met with school board recall elections and threats of violence, and so people stay silent.

Silence is wrong. The conspiracy theorists have not been silent. That is the whole problem to begin with. Those with the least understanding of the pandemic, or immunology, have had the loudest voice in the conversation, and are currently controlling the course of the pandemic. They fear a tyranny of doctors and government, but the truth is we live with a different tyranny today: a Tyranny of the Ignorant.

In their arguments against a mask mandate, a number of free-market thinkers have asked why vaccinated people should be so keen to impose their will on the unvaccinated. After all, if you’ve already had your shots, what’s it to you if someone chose differently? I see two main reasons.

First, it’s incorrect that the unvaccinated person is only deciding for themselves. In Colorado, over 90% of COVID cases are the unvaccinated. Our hospitals are overwhelmed, to the point that Governor Polis has ordered a halt to cosmetic and elective procedures. ICUs have had to triage those with life-threatening health issues, because beds are already occupied with COVID patients. Furthermore, those who die of COVID, or are scarred for life from complications, affect the lives of spouses, children, siblings, friends, and coworkers, a ripple effect far beyond one individual.

Second, the only way to end this pandemic is the near-absolute eradication of the virus through near-universal vaccination. A large population of unvaccinated people gives the virus time and space to continue infecting people, and to mutate into more contagious forms. Half-measures will not stop the Coronavirus.

If you’re hesitant about a mandate, you may want to learn about the story of Grafton, New Hampshire. In 2004, a large group of libertarians moved to rural New Hampshire to set up a 100% free society: no laws, no taxes, no regulations. Things went well for a few weeks, until the bears came. There were no rules about trash collection in Grafton, so most residents just dumped their trash into the woods. Soon Grafton was the site of New Hampshire’s first bear attacks in a hundred years.

A free society, where people can disagree, can only stand on a large foundation of consensus.

Nicholas Bernhard of Lafayette is the author of the historical novel “November in America,” based on the Colorado coal miners’ strike of 1927. He also directed the Colorado true-crime documentary “Blackstone’s Equation: The Tim Masters Story.”

The post The Vaccine Mandate vs. Tyranny of the Ignorant | Community Corner appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

American Indian Academy of Denver, PC: M. Cedillo

The location is not one that most people would expect to find a school. Yet, sitting on the corner of Mississippi and S. Raritan Street in Denver, just a few feet away from a Cricket Wireless and a Family Dollar Tree, is the American Indian Academy of Denver (AIAD).

Like the students who walk through the doors, there is a resilience felt while entering the building. There is energy, laughter, and connection. Large bean bags line the halls, providing a safe space for students to take a moment as needed. As youth transition from one class to another, a teacher is usually heard calling the students by their names, encouraging them to get to class. There seems to be an air of acceptance, and for some students it almost looks like relief.

“We hold hands because we are brothers.” PC: M. Cedillo

“You are my sisters.” PC: M. Cedillo

Kaya Duran, a ninth-grader at AIAD shares,“I’m very comfortable in this school. I feel like I can be myself and not be really stereotyped in this school. I think I feel love, like as a community. I see everybody; teachers, principal, students, I feel like we’re relatives. We’re like family.” When asked if she experienced the same emotions at her previous school, Kaya shook her head no, “I only felt it with certain people. The teachers though, because like I said, I got stereotyped, I was known as the savage. I thought, really? Being racist towards me? I found not many teachers gave me the opportunity to turn in late work because of the emotions I was feeling or anything like that. Mental health is a big thing about students or teenagers. Here, we have a professional counselor, for people to talk to. They offered that, and it was a big help. That was a huge difference.” 

The idea for the school came after a visit to the National American Community Academy (NACA) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. NACA first opened its doors in 2006 as a public charter school with free tuition. They serve grades K-12 and work with students from over 60 tribes. Dr. Terri Bissonette, founder of AIAD, recalls being impressed with the longevity of the program. “They are actually getting close to their 20th year of operation. I was just blown away by the community based nature of their organization. And the fact that they had closed every achievement gap there is between Native students and white students, and they had an outstanding, not only graduation rate, but also retention rate. That’s really what drove the idea of bringing that type of model here to Denver.”

AIAD School, Home page, www.aiadschool.org, 11/21/2021

And she did. After years of planning, listening sessions and community meetings, AIAD opened its doors in 2020. The Academy is one of the first schools in the entire nation to offer a curriculum of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics) with a Native American perspective. Recently, the school was approved to expand from 6th to 9th grade, to now include 6th to 12th grade. The new grades will be added in yearly increments starting next year with 10th grade. The school offers students before and after school programs, an on-site professional counselor, English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, a student leadership program and STEM courses.

When asked why the school focuses on a STEAM curriculum, Dr. Bissonette replied, “We have 200 tribes represented here in the Denver area. We were looking at what are some of the universal threads that flow through all of those types, so that we can be as inclusive as possible. We’ve always been scientists, we’ve always been builders, innovators, we’ve always been artists, we’ve always been mathematicians. And so STEAM really made a lot of sense. The focus is really around reclamation of the genius of our ancestors.” 

“The Sweetwater Family teaches students the meaning of the Hoop Dance.” PC: M. Cedillo

AIAD focuses on both academics and connecting youth to traditional ways of living. Daily, students are introduced to values such as, “respect, generosity, compassion, honesty, humility, and wisdom.” Helping to ensure these values are not forgotten, the Academy holds a diverse group of adults on their board. Members include Kelley Mitchell (Secretary), Dineh, from the American Indian College Fund; and Lori Ventimiglia, (Founding Director), from Tipi Raisers, an organization serving youth.

Sena Harjo, (Founding Director), is Seminole/Choctaw/Creek and Denver community member. With a concentration in early childhood education, she is doctoral student at the University of CO in Denver. Sena also visited the NACA campus and recalls, “I was one of the lucky ones to graduate, to have a really good support system, and to get support when my school system wasn’t there to help me. So I knew what it was like, for young kids going through that system. I focus on how the system is set up, or success or lack of success for communities of color. I had gone and visited that school myself. And I kept thinking, wow, Denver really needs this, to have a strong Indian community. It has had a long lasting human community. We’ve been here for a really long time. My family has been here for 45 years, and other families have been in this community for 45 or 50 years or even longer. There has been a need for a tribal education system that is going to help students be successful, since I was born.”

“Students hold hands to express their understanding of being a good relative.” PC: M. Cedillo

The longing to connect with each other is experienced by many Native Americans, stemming back to 1830. President Andrew Jackson introduced the Indian Removal Act, which gave the US a legal right to remove Native Americans from their tribal lands. As a result there was, “a loss of cultural identity, as tribes relied on their homelands as the place of ancestral burial locations and sacred sites where religious ceremonies were performed. Without their lands, nations lost their identities, and their purpose.”  

A loss of identity is a large contribution as to why Native American students’ struggle in the public education system. Dr. Bissonette explains, “It has to do with historical trauma. The fact that traditional schools were not built for us, they were literally built to destroy us. That was the intent of boarding schools. And that legacy continues to haunt us. We talked to high school students, indigenous circles. We asked them, what kind of school do you go to? What do you feel like you’re not getting? Resoundingly, it didn’t matter whether kids were doing well in school or not, what we heard was that students, our students, just don’t feel like they belong in these schools. They have to put their identity down at the door in order to successfully navigate these systems. That lost sense of belonging, that lost sense of identity, is a huge part of why our numbers don’t succeed.” 

The loss of identity by Indigenous people was intentional. In a tactic used by the US government to marginalize Native Americans, the infamous “Code of Indian Offenses” was published in 1883. These codes condemned Indigenous traditions including ceremonies, dances, and gathering for feasts. This attempt to disempower Native Americans continues to this day and is proof as to why schools such as AIAD are needed. Dr. Bissonette confirms, “I talked about the mascot issue. I often talk about how it isn’t by accident. These things, rendering us invisible, the marginalization, the subjugation, all of that. It was designed to make us disappear. It started back in the 1900s, when we were at our lowest numbers, our population, there was an assumption among the dominant society that we weren’t going to be. That we were going to cease to exist, we were extinct, or becoming that way. The conflict of the mascots, and all of the logos for companies, the argument that they were honoring this group of people that they had basically rendered extinct. It’s a way of rendering people invisible. Using stereotypes and marginalizing folks, it’s a way of control. It’s a tool of the oppressor.”

Sena agrees, “The school systems, when they were initially set up in this country, were not necessarily set up to create great outcomes and opportunities for people of color. It was more like the systems of management of people. The systems were set up to integrate opportunities for people to work for white people to have the American Dream. The systems were set up the way they were, all of those things are set up, to keep people of color with a lack of access to great opportunities.”

The breakdown of Indigenous people included the separation of Native children from their family units. After having been raised in a multi-generational environment, these children were separated from their siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and parents. Native children were abducted and moved into facilities known as residential or boarding schools. In the article “What Do American Indian Boarding Schools a Century Ago Have to Do With Dysregulated Children Today?” by Drs. George “Bud” Vana and Dakota Lane, it was here the most heinous and brutal damage was done. “From the mid-1800s until the 1990s, as many as 100 American Indian residential schools operated in the United States. In practice, these schools did all that they could to prevent American Indian children from using their tribal language and observing cultural practices, instead using Christian Euro-American practices, ideas, and corporal punishment. In addition, there were reports of rampant physical and sexual abuse.”

The impact from decades of punishment and abuse done to Native Americans has carried down through multiple generations. Known as intergenerational trauma (IHT), Native youth often express their trauma through depression, substance abuse, violence or other self harming behaviors. As a result, it is of utmost importance in working with Indigenous youth, to honor their mental health. The staff at AIAD is trauma informed. Dr. Bissonette specializes in serving students experiencing historical trauma. “One of the first steps is to create a sense of belonging with kids. That means to celebrate and honor who they are and how they identify. We want them to feel good about who they are. We have kids that take two hour long bus rides just to get to our school every day, two hours both ways. We want them to learn the indigenous perspective, to have an opportunity to understand their history and history of this country.”

“Sunshine Sweetwater explains the meaning of the Fancy Shawl Dance” PC: M. Cedillo

For AIAD students, this history includes the realization that their ancestors were forbidden to openly practice tradition, speak their language or participate in ceremonies until August 11, 1978. On this day, President Jimmy Carter, passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act allowing Native Americans to publicly gather and practice their ceremonies. The need to rediscover and preserve Indigenious traditions is another confirmation why schools such as NACA and AIAD are needed. Johanna Flood, a ninth grader at AIAD, shared, “I’m very grateful for the school, our staff, and Dr. B, for bringing our school together. If we don’t have this school, our roots are going to die. And we can’t carry on our ways and our traditions. I think it’s important that we learn our language and heritage at a young age.” Kaya agrees, “If I didn’t come here, I would have been probably lost and still trying to figure out who I am as a person. Here, I am coming back and learning one of my big personalities is being Indigenous. 24/7. Showing respect and being humble. Walking the earth and beauty, respecting Mother Earth. A teacher is trying to push the idea of starting a sweat lodge, teaching kids how to maintain it, and basically the rules of it. He prepares us, for when it comes time for us, to have the knowledge to run it. To teach our younger generations, he tells us that WE have to learn this now because our future generations are here.”

“The Sweetwater Family exhibits a sign dance.” PC: M. Cedillo

Johanna shared how discovering her identity and finding a sense of belonging has had a positive impact in all areas of her life, “I feel like in other schools, I felt very unconnected and was insecure. Like I didn’t belong there. I didn’t belong at the school that I was in, or the class that I was, it was uncomfortable. Here, you walk into class and it’s comfortable. Just like whose set, what clothes or shoes, nothing. None of that matters. Not even with learning and asking questions like I was at other schools. I wouldn’t be able to speak up or say anything to my teachers if I needed help, because it was so uncomfortable. I didn’t know how to talk to people or how to be comfortable. Especially just like with grades and my mental health. It definitely shows.”

Kaya shares, “It makes a huge difference. You don’t know when anything’s gonna happen, everything, life is totally unplanned. Not just our counselor, but all of our teachers. We all like, at least every single person in this building, has someone to go to. Whether or not that’s a teacher, it feels that safe, 

that we can talk to anybody.” When asked how having an adult that cares about her mental health affects her education, Kaya replied, “I think that paying attention to my mental health helped me with life, both inside school and outside of school. Getting along with my family, learning from my teachers and what they have been through. Especially with the way our native language is being taught here. I did not know that places were named after native words. Understanding the area around indigenous land, the area surrounding you, like where the root came from, helped me better connect with all of my surroundings.”

The connection of identity and belonging is imperative for any student to do well in school. Sena confirms, “The way we take in energy and information and learn about the world, is by first learning about ourselves. We’re building the relationship between us and the knowledge that’s out there in the world. Being able to identify words, objects, use math and science concepts, that’s all interrelation to who we are. Students from very young, like in early childhood, we teach about who we are as people. Identity is part of the process all the way through. Education is about learning the mastering of skills. That makes you a person who is well rounded, knows of trades and technology. Identity is a big piece. You have to know who you are to be able to know where you fit into that puzzle.”

“Learning the Friendship Dance” PC: M. Cedillo

Sena continues, “All those pieces are built into identity, pieces like resilience and persistence. It’s really important for people in our community, who have been pushed down for years and told that they were less than or not equal, or not worthy of education and opportunity…it’s really important to change that story. To start telling our youth that they are important, that they are worthy, and that their identity does matter. They don’t have to assimilate to be somebody else to become worthy, or to matter. They matter because they are American Indian students. They are special, they are worthy.”

The post “American Indian Academy of Denver” – Native American Heritage Series appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Content Warning: This article includes topics of physical, emotional, psychological and financial abuse. Other topics include harassment, neglect, predatory behavior, and exploitation. We encourage self care. If needed, please speak with an advocate from any of the following organizations: National Domestic Violence Hotline 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), Stronghearts Native Hotline1-844-7NATIVE (762-8483) or Violence Free Colorado 720-728-8368.

PC: John Staughton, Denver, April 23, 2021

“She can’t get help anywhere. To receive assistance, she is required to provide a picture. She cannot take one though because her face has been broken in so many places from living on the street. She can’t go to the doctor, her belongings have been swept numerous times.”

Ana Sofia Cornelius, with Denver Homeless Out Loud (DHOL), continues, “And now, one of the DOTI supervisors keeps asking her out. While she’s getting swept, he’s asking her out.” Domestic violence (DV) advocates identify this type of predatory behavior as grooming, a tactic used by perpetrators to build trust and give the impression of a false intimate relationship.

Domestic violence and homelessness go hand in hand. The risk of losing housing or access to money for basic needs is one of the main reasons a victim will stay in an abusive relationship. Known as economic abuse, it is one of the eight abusive behaviors found on the Power and Control Wheel created by the Domestic Abuse Intervention Projects (DAIP).

Lindsay Christopher, Housing Program Manager with Violence Free Colorado, confirms, “The issues of DV and homelessness are inextricably linked. There is a strong relationship in many aspects; rather inadequate housing, shelter options, evictions, discrimination, or poverty. All of those factors contribute to the survivors’ housing instability. A lot of times it has to do with the police being called. Sometimes it’s lack of finances, because the abuser was the main breadwinner.”

When asked if eviction was linked with economic abuse, Christopher replied, “Absolutely. Financial abuse is all about power and control, who has access to finances or money when they need it. It can also have long term impacts on survivors; it can impair their credit to where they may not be able to access safe housing in the future.”

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM) and advocates use the month to honor victims who have died, celebrate survivors plus educate others on abuse. DV can happen to any person; there is no social status, economic level or culture that is immune. Ruth M. Glenn, President and CEO of National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), is a survivor herself. With a Masters’ in Public Administration from U.C. Denver, she uses her experience as a victim to speak nationally, provide consultations and perform training. She is committed to using her personal experience as a survivor and regularly testifies before the U.S. Congress and CO. legislation hearings.

”Oftentimes, women become homeless because of DV. And they certainly can feel and get into a mindset, because they’re unhoused. In other words, they become prey to an abusive person. They connect with that abusive person because of being unhealthy and certainly can experience more violence as a result of that.”

Victims often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which is another factor to homelessness. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) explains, “Research has shown that traumatic experiences are associated with both behavioral health and chronic physical health conditions, especially those traumatic events that occur during childhood. Substance use (e.g., smoking, excessive alcohol use, and taking drugs), mental health conditions (e.g., depression, anxiety, or PTSD), and other risky behaviors (e.g., self-injury and risky sexual encounters) have been linked with traumatic experiences.”  

Lack of finances, loss of medical insurance or a strict working schedule can prevent a victim from receiving the medical treatment needed to recover. Without help, the victim can get stuck in a vicious cycle of getting triggered, acting out, loss of employment, no income and losing their housing. Recovery time varies from person to person and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) informs us that expecting recovery from trauma in a short time is unrealistic. 

DV does not just occur to women, and trauma is not only experienced by the victim. Men can also be abused and the National Domestic Violence Hotline (NDVH) affirms, “One in 10 men has experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking.”

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports teenagers experience dating violence, which includes cyberbullying and revenge porn.

OJJDP Statistical Briefing Book. Available: https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/victims/qa02406.asp?qaDate=2019. Released 2/12/21

Vicarious trauma, also known as Secondary Traumatic Stress, is described by the Office of Victims of Crime (OVC) as, “…the natural consequent behaviors and emotions resulting from knowing about a traumatizing event experienced by another…the stress resulting from helping or wanting to help a traumatized or suffering person.”

As for children who grow up in a home with domestic violence, the Office on Women’s Health reports, “Children exposed to violence in the home are also victims of physical abuse. Children who witness DV or are victims of abuse themselves are at serious risk for long-term physical and mental health problems. Children who witness violence between parents may also be at greater risk of being violent in their future relationships. It is not uncommon for an adult to experience trauma or have mental health issues from abuse they experienced or witnessed as a child.” 

Aside from trauma, Glenn is aware of how more at risk victims become once they lose their housing. “My biggest concern when it comes to those who are experiencing DV and homelessness is, those who are being perpetrated against because they are unhoused.”

Glenn’s concern is real. In 2020, Denver Police Department (DPD) and Environmental Health Services (EHS) began an aggressive campaign with “sweeps”of homeless encampments in Denver. As DPD supervised, EHS began seizing, destroying and disposing of personal items, including tents and sleeping bags. Anything deemed abandoned on public property. Unhoused advocates claim this is a violation of the Fourth Amendment and therefore unconstitutional. 

In the 2021 report “Homelessness in Denver”, by Department of Housing Stability (HOST), Denver Parks and Recreation, Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) and Denver Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), “sweeps” are done due to concern with public health. Page 32 of the report claims, “we support Citywide efforts by removing trash, cleaning sidewalks, streets and other rights-of ways, including sanitization, when necessary and facilitating no-cost storage of personal belongings, including unattended personal belongings that do not pose a public health or safety risk.” 

PC: Ean Tafoya, Headwaters Protectors, Denver, April 23, 2021

Homeless advocates have witnessed the opposite. Ean Tafoya, Founder of Headwaters Protectors (HP), a non-profit organization providing compassionate water and trash services to the unhoused, has been present during several “sweeps”. His observation on treatment of personal belongings is concerning. “I certainly think the homeless sweeps is a violation of human rights and abuse. I really tried to work diligently to rebrand this abuse as traumatic displacement because they aren’t just people who lose their belongings, they lose their community. Sometimes they lose very important documents that they need. So many of the aftermaths of these displacements, Headwaters Protectors have found IDs, medications, things that people desperately need probably to move forward with their lives.” 

PC: Ean Tafoya, Denver, February 28, 2021

Loss of identification and documentation create a huge barrier for a DV victim to obtain safe housing or needed services. Glenn states, “I would say that it is further harmful, particularly when you’re talking about documents that can get them safer, right? For instance, a protection order, their birth certificate and court documents. They may have gone to court for a protection order and had an adequate path in life. You can set up visitation with your kids, whether a system needs to see the work or not, the victim NEEDS to have that paperwork. But when they do these sweeps, it can certainly be unsettling. Add on to the trauma, and you put them at further risk, because they don’t have what they need to find their safety.”

PC: John Staughton, Denver, October 8, 2021

PC: John Staughton, Denver, April 2, 2021

Independent journalist, John Staughton, attends and documents most “sweeps”. His research has been found in articles of the Denverite and he often uses social media to post his documentations. He shares, “The contractor looks at the pile of junk on the ground, calling it garbage. But they (unhoused) might still want to go back and find that one last backpack that has all their documents in it, or they want to find that coffee cup or that special box of their father’s ashes. People look at all their stuff like trash, but THEY know what is trash. It can be a dirty, grimy life on the street. It’s a filthy place because you’re next to a road and stuff gets dirty. They know what they want, and often in the chaos and the tumult of the sweep, they lose those things. And they aren’t necessarily allowed to go find them or look through their piles of perceived garbage, for what might actually be quite valuable.”

PC: John Staughton, Denver, December 1, 2020

PC: John Staughton, Denver, June 4, 2021

Another barrier a “sweep” creates for unhoused DV victims is restricting accessibility to needed resources. Cornelius states, “I was told by three different officers that if anybody goes into the new permanent sweeps area, they will get one warning. And then they’re not going to ticket, they’re going to go right to arrest. And one of my concerns is that Urban Peak has been in that area.”

Urban Peak is a non-profit known to provide services for youth experiencing homelessness.

Ana continues, “We’re talking about homeless youth. People who are physically disabled, who have medical conditions and have to stay close to the South Street Health Center. Folks who have mental health and substance abuse issues, people who are trying to stay connected to case management, doing what we asked them to, and we’re punishing them.”

A big concern regarding “sweeps” of unhoused DV victims is that the city’s main resource for safe housing is a 10-14 day voucher at a local hotel.

Christopher states, “Vulnerable populations, or folks that are part of a marginalized community, are probably going to have higher needs and unique barriers versus folks that do not have those marginalized identities. Hotel vouchers are a short term solution to what needs to be a longer term strategy. So if the strategy was, we’re going to do a sweep, and then when the sweep takes place, we’re going to put you in a hotel for 14 nights, and then what? Unless there’s housing support, services and navigation for folks that want that, then a 14 day hotel stay or 14 night motel stay is a band-aid. It is not a bridge to a longer term solution.”

Katy Miller, Regional Coordinator for the US Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), agrees, “In Denver, that two week hotel stay requires them to give up their tents and their safety and survival gear. That can be very dangerous for people. And so, if they go into a hotel for two weeks, and they’re exiting onto the streets again, that can be concerning because they have lost their sleeping bag, their tent or anything that is sort of keeping them warm and safe. So, those are things to really consider. If they’re going into a hotel, and they’re receiving intensive services to help them connect either to more permanent shelter or to more permanent housing, then that’s different, but if they’re going into a hotel and then going right back to the streets, then it can really set people back.“

Another concern regarding DV victims being “swept” is the act itself can re-traumatize victims. Every time a victim is physically approached, verbally confronted, has their belongings taken and/or is displaced, it affects their mental well being. The aggressive behavior displayed by DPD or EHS can be a huge trigger, leading a victim into feeling they are with their abuser once again.

Glenn states, “The first thing that comes to mind is PTSD. It’s very much like when you have chaos around you and a loud noise disarray that throws you right back into trauma. It’s very harmful because it’s reliving the situation and they’re being reminded. It really triggers you and sends you into another reliving of the experience. You would see anyone with PTSD as becoming erratic. Trying to keep hold of their stuff. If somebody is messing with that, that can be very, very unsettling. It is ‘fight or flight’. If you feel like you’re in danger, you’re going to respond as though you’re in danger. It really is that simple.”

PC: John Staughton, Denver, August 6, 2020

DV victims can also be triggered if they feel they are being stalked, harassed or targeted during a “sweep”. Cornelius shared a situation that included intimidation. “Another trend that I have seen that I think is problematic, is when people leave from a sweep, we have seen on occasion where DPD has followed the people. They follow them to the next one, then tell them to leave. Some stating that it is illegal to exist anywhere in the city and county of Denver. So where are people supposed to go? If you’re saying that you don’t want people to be, would you have the option to make them not exist? Because that’s really at the crux of what we’re saying here. These policies are rooted in genocide.”

Advocates also have concerns regarding the cost for “sweeps”. Money that could be used towards housing for DV victims who are single parents or individuals with pets is considered.

Lack of transparency from the city led Staughton to conduct his own six-month investigation, which he plans to repeat for 2021. “I started attending every sweep and I would show up at 5am with my notebook and with my spreadsheet. I would take notes of every different worker there was, and there were different people that were there. The amount of protesters, the amount of counter-protests, advocates and mutual aid workers, whether the driver was there, like I just made a note of everything. And I did that every half hour throughout the sweep, to get an actual accurate measurement of how many man-hours and how much salary time was being spent on this operation.”

His research estimates a regular cost of each “sweep” at $21,000. The disregard of the request for financial accountability from constituents may be perceived as economic abuse by some.

Ana agrees there is a form of exploitation, as the city seems to focus more on paying individuals to perform “sweeps” rather than pay for a long term solution. “These people are trafficking, because somebody is making money, right? The movement of people for profit, is human trafficking and slavery.”

In the 2020 “Annual Homeless Assessment Report” (AHAR), produced by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), homelessness increased nationwide for the fourth consecutive year in a row. The increase came from the amount of unsheltered homeless. “Between 2019 and 2020, the number of people counted in unsheltered locations rose by seven percent or 14,787 people.”

Despite the reports of “Housing First” as the best approach to ending homelessness, city officials continue to enforce “sweeps”. As a result, CO. is at 37% of chronically homeless individuals, which is higher than the national average. Currently, CO. is the top third state with the largest increase of chronically unhoused.

PC: John Staughton, Denver, April 10, 2021

PC: John Staughton, Denver, March 18, 2021

USICH claims four communities have successfully ended chronic homelessness, all using the “Housing First” approach.

Erik Amundson, Deputy Regional Director with HUD, confirms, “I think one of the underlying factors is housing affordability. That’s a pretty common one of the underlying factors, access to affordable housing. And so as an agency, that’s one of our priorities.” Regarding “sweeps”, Amundson replied, “It is definitely a real challenge. I just want to emphasize that the federal government doesn’t have any involvement in local sweeps. It is a real challenge, because just as we all know, people do need documentation when applying for resources when applying for assistance. And so without that, it makes it even more challenging or more of a lengthy process. So, it is a real concern. HUD was not involved in any of the sweeps and our funding was not used for that either. It is a real concern. That’s something being addressed, and it has to be addressed.”

Miller concludes, “It’s really important to educate everyone, especially those people who have investments and are involved in policy. Housing has to be the number one priority, and homelessness will not be solved unless the issue of affordable housing is addressed. Homelessness will continue to go up unless we address this and we’re very urgently bringing the services and the housing together to help people stabilize. That is something that the community needs to get involved in. So often we see in communities where people say, I don’t want to see poverty and I don’t want to see homelessness, but then they protest having affordable housing or shelters or services in their neighborhood. You can’t have both. And that’s the same with elected leaders. You cannot have both; you have to fully embrace the need to provide safe and effective solutions for people who are experiencing homelessness.”

The post Domestic Violence and Homelessness appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

“Welcome home to Carbon Valley” was likely a phrase a realtor has said to you, a resident of the Tri-Town area, at some point in the past 15-20 years. Some of us did not move here as purchasers of one of the many new homes built in this exurban corridor, but based on statistics and mapping: most of us did. Regardless of the reason for living here, we have to accept growth and change now and in the future. Colorado has a lengthy history of boomtown growth. Residents should be able to ease into this sort of explosive expansion here without issue. However, there seems to be an awful lot of confusion around a plan to include a water park and senior center into the community infrastructure. Questions such as what fees will be incurred by what residents, how traffic will be mitigated, how sustainability will be managed, and ultimately: is it worth the tax increase are all flying around.

For many, tax increases are virtually taboo. In the middle of the Tri-Town area sits Evanston, a tiny bit of Unincorporated Weld County.

A couple of years ago after a fatal residential fire in this small area, I asked the neighbor of that home if they would consider incorporation to be able to have access to our Police and Fire services without first needing to go through the County. Their answer was an instant and unequivocal no, because “taxes are high enough and I will never increase taxes voluntarily for any reason, even though I know a life was lost because of it.” This is an extreme example of the “no increased taxes” stance in our community, but it’s not uncommon for many residents in Weld County to choose residence here because of lax tax laws, and our county commissioners bank heavily on this (pun intended). It is increasingly common, however, for residents that identify as politically independent to demand a level of due diligence from themselves and their community before they make a decision whether to vote for a tax increase. In many progressive circles, it has been traditional to vote for a tax increase simply on the promised result of a community benefit without examining all of the impacts or long-term implications. Working to address the concerns of all residents in a balanced manner it is the goal to come to a knowledgeable and thoughtful decision on this choice before us.

I’ve asked several elected officials and experts across our state about this matter, with an eye towards the concern of Colorado’s lifeblood: water. With the looming death of the Colorado River and lawmakers choosing some very drastic measures to preserve this most precious of resources, it’s imperative that our first question be: Can we sustain a water park for the thirty years we are being asked to pay for it?

Ballot measure 6A proposes a mill levy tax increase of $2.5 million to be paid by property tax increases spread out over the next 30 years by property owners within the Carbon Valley Parks and Recreation District. This breaks down just under $7,000 a year. Split between the Tri-Town households and shared out as we grow based on the rubric of property value, it’s a very small sum. But the true wealth we are spending here is not our cash: it is our water.

It is a challenge to use or critical thinking to balance this proposal’s financial price tag with its resource one, not only immediately, but for the next thirty years and beyond. Congressman Ed Perlmutter gave what I think is the best response. He said that while we do indeed want to have this option for people to gather, have fun, and provide a source of jobs for many (and stimulus to the area), we have to carefully weigh what it will cost us, and use our resources wisely.

I am thankful that Dean, Executive Director of Carbon Valley Parks and Recreation, has taken the time to inform me about this proposal. His prompt response to my many questions has shown the extensive planning that has gone into this project.

There are some issues that perhaps have not been considered, and Mr. Rummel has stated that a “Yes” or passing vote on this proposal will ensure these questions will receive their due attention.

Among the questions I posed was the carbon footprint impact the water park will have on our community. Several residents have brought up the issue of the increased traffic this will instantly and inevitably bring; because the outdoor water park feature will be in operational use only during the temperate summer months (typically Memorial Day through Labor Day, weather permitting). While Longmont desperately needs some pressure relief on their outdoor water park at Sunset and the lengthy drive to Northglenn (and price tag) for Water World already puts a hefty price on our surrounding communities, it seems the cost of dumping more atmospheric pollutants into a corridor already seeing a horrific rise in ozone warnings (which pertain to the main age groups using the facility) has not been done prior to asking constituents to foot a thirty-year tax bill.

The town of Firestone has worked diligently in partnership with Carbon Valley Parks and Recreation to dissect the traffic issues for the areas encompassing the location of the water park and senior center to come up with a plan to address the current and future needs of the entire section of town which they own. This includes their plans to turn the current disc golf fields into soccer fields turfed with environmentally sustainable artificial turf. The entire plan for this area of the Carbon Valley Parks and Recreation District can be found at http://www.cvprd.com/2508/Proposed-Expansion-Plans and I encourage all voters to examine this site thoroughly. I anticipate that should voters approve this proposal, traffic plans and studies on carbon impact will appear on this page. The town of Firestone has consulted the DRCOG (Denver Regional Council of Governments) on the changes to the traffic flow necessary to the corridor and used their Transportation Master Plan in their plans. Mr. Rummel’s contact information is available on this site, and it also has a portal to the County tax page that will tell you if you are in the Carbon Valley Parks District and all your tax information.

The boards of Firestone and Frederick, as well as the board of the Carbon Valley Parks and Recreation District, are very mindful of sustainability in the Tri-Town area. The board of Dacono is more profit-motivated, yet all three towns support the building of this park because of the benefit it brings our citizens. Currently, the only amenity of the present senior center is a large hangar-type room with a bunch of tables. The population of this area has the demographic of the aging increasing almost as fast as the demographic of youths. We are in a big boom, and the sustainability issue of our water is a big question many have.

Some rumors have been flying that the town of Firestone will be adding a surcharge to the water bills of residents to support this facility: that is patently false. The District will purchase an estimated 3.5 acre/feet of water for this project, and work with the town of Firestone on conservation measures. With the conservation measures built into the plans and estimated use, the water park is projected to use approximately 6 (local) households of water annually. In Colorado, a typical household uses approximately 62,000 gallons/year. Annually, 6 households would use approximately 372,000 gallons. It’s up to each individual to determine if these statistics are worth their yes vote. It’s also effective in helping each household determine whether they feel they are doing enough in regards to necessary conservation measures themselves to ensure we have enough of this precious resource to continue to enjoy the park for the full thirty years of funding (and beyond). Will the children we raise today that stay to raise their own children here be able to go to this same facility while we watch reruns of today’s release of Dune at the senior center?

And most importantly: can we do it with a clear conscience knowing we are a unique Colorado exurban community bridging the sophisticated fast pace of our urban centers with our hardy and more relaxed rural ranchers and farmers?

This proposal can bring many people to our area to spend their time, talents, and treasures here among us: this supports our Fire and Police Districts with the measure we passed in 2018 that has already increased our Fire and Police Departments in supportive ways. It will encourage more visits to the High Plains Library District branch right next door. And perhaps ultimately give us something wonderful to do. Coming out of a two-year period where we all have to relearn how to socialize and engage our community again, having an outdoor place where we can gather and safely socialize will perhaps be the best gift we can give ourselves. It’s up to us to decide.

Sources:

• https://grist.org/equity/colorado-river-drought-indigenous-water-rights/

• https://coag.gov/blog-post/prepared-remarks-attorney-general-phil-weiser-at-the-colorado-water-congress-2021-annual-convention-feb-16-2021/

• https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/firestone-co-population

• https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/frederick-co-population

• https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/dacono-co-population

• https://extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/family-home-consumer/water-conservation-in-and-around-the-home-9-952/

The post So You Want To Build A Water Park? De-Mystifying the Tri-Town Ballot Measure 6A appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

by Save Our Skies Alliance

Photo: depositphotos

It has been a difficult summer for those who enjoy Colorado’s beautiful outdoors. Front Range air quality deteriorated to “unhealthy” levels at least 18 times this year. That means that the EPA may move parts of the Front Range from the “serious” to “severe” category under their classification of non-attainment areas. All this has been made worse by the lung-damaging haze of wildfire smoke that obscures our blue skies.

Unfortunately, there is another toxin present in our air that few of us know about – LEAD!

Lead was prohibited in paint in 1978, and removed from the gas in our cars in 1996. But there remains a significant source of lead in the skies above us… it is in the aviation gas that smaller, piston engine (propeller) planes use. And, if you live anywhere near a Front Range airport, there is a huge source of this lead dust raining down on your home, schools, playgrounds and open space every day. A just-released study of the impact of lead-based fuels on children living near the Reid-Hillview airport in Santa Clara, CA clearly defines this hidden health risk. 

New Science on Lead in the Air

Results of this comprehensive and controlled 10-year analysis showed blood lead level increases in children living near the airport were similar to those seen in kids affected by the Flint, Michigan water crisis. While those who lived within a half mile of the airport were most affected, the peer-reviewed study showed that children living downwind from the airport had lead blood levels of .40 micrograms per deciliter higher than children living upwind from the airport. For context, lead levels detected during the peak of the Flint water crisis were between .35 and .45 micrograms per deciliter over baseline.

The study also examined levels during times of maximum exposure to air traffic for children within a half-mile of the airport and estimated an increase of .83 micrograms per deciliter at peak times – significantly higher than the levels seen in Flint.

Dr. Sammy Zahran, a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology in the Colorado School of Public Health, and the Mountain Data Group conducted this study. Zahran had previously investigated lead contamination of drinking water supplies in Flint. The Reid-Hillview study is available online at news.sccgov.org.

It turns out that the small size of lead exhaust from piston engine airplanes (13 nm average) has the potential of rapidly penetrating the lung defenses and gaining direct access to the brain through nasal passages (Griffith 2020). By contrast, most lead dibromide particles inhaled in the past from motor vehicle exhaust would have been flushed from the lungs by the mucosal system.

Save Our Skies Alliance (SOS) is a grassroots organization formed to represent citizens who are impacted by the noise, air, and lead pollution from Front Range airports. For more information on lead in the skies and how it may affect you, visit the Save Our Skies Alliance (SOS) website at: saveourskiesalliance.org.

The post Lead In The Sky: A Hidden Health Crisis | Community Corner appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Editor’s Note: Yellow Scene’s Managing Editor, De La Vaca, is a member of the Boulder County Cultural Council and did not participate in this Community Corner.

Aleta Sherman with Howie’s Dragons. Image courtesy of Aleta Sherman.

Boulder County is so lucky to be part of the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD) seven-county tax district that helps fund over 70 organizations in Boulder County. The Boulder County Cultural Council oversees the distribution of Tier III SCFD funding, which goes to the smaller, usually Boulder-based, organizations. The Tier I and II SCFD funding goes to organizations that serve a larger geographical area, like the Denver Art Museum or the Colorado Music Festival.

What is the source of SCFD funds?

The SCFD, created within Colorado law and approved by Colorado’s General Assembly, has been renewed by voters multiple times over more than 30 years. Each county receives a share of the SCFD sales tax collected according to the amount of tax collected in each county.

What do the SCFD tax revenues fund?

In Boulder County, there are usually 70 to 80 organizations that apply for SCFD Tier III funding. These organizations offer visual, musical and performance arts, as well as science and nature, programming. Boulder has a particularly large and varied community of organizations that apply compared to some of the other counties in the SCFD. The Tier III organizations in Boulder County include the Dairy Arts Center, Frequent Flyers, Thorne Nature Experience, CenterStage, Growing Gardens and WOW! Children’s Museum.

How are the funds distributed?

In the spring of each year, the Boulder County Cultural Council reviews applications for funding from eligible organizations and makes recommendations on Boulder County’s funding priorities. Our county’s priorities, as reflected in the rubric that the council members use, are focused on providing diverse offerings to our citizens, and that the organizations and programs be accessible and appealing to all facets of the Boulder County population. The recommendations of the council are then reviewed and approved by the board of county commissioners and the SCFD Board of Directors. The funding in the last few years has had a range of $1,500 to $27,000, based on size of the organization.

What about our Boulder County Cultural Council?

The Boulder County Cultural Council (BCCC) is made up of nine volunteers who live in different parts of Boulder County. Council members adhere to the concepts of stewardship of public funds and seek to create a fair, ethical, respectful, open, and objective evaluation process for all organizations. All county cultural council meetings are open to the public.

We are one of the most diverse councils, with a near-even distribution of men and women, a wide variety of backgrounds (two professors, an engineer, a magazine editor, a potter, and so on), and ages ranging from 30 to 70. The council members are appointed by the Boulder County Commissioners and serve three-year terms, renewable twice. The current group is very thoughtful and committed and has persevered through the pandemic with all virtual meetings. As performances and venues start to loosen from COVID restrictions, council members love nothing more than attending scientific and cultural offerings around the county.

Aleta Sherman has been Chair of the BCCC for three years and on the council for six. In her career, she is an engineer focused on helping companies with process improvement and creative solutions. She grew up in Texas, has lived in Boulder County for over 20 years, now in Niwot, with her husband, daughter and pup Oliver.

The post Boulder County Cultural Council and SCFD: Your Taxes Fund Local Arts | Community Corner appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The Israeli occupation of Palestine has been a taboo topic in American political discourse for decades. Despite a documented history of Israel’s neglect to follow international law (examples online are plenty), only a handful of individuals have dared to publicly condemn Israel for any of its illegal actions. Historically, most American leaders maintained a precedent of “standing by and supporting” the occupying state.

In recent months though, the world bore witness to an explosion of events coming out of historic Palestine and the truth has become more clear. For the first time since the establishment of Israel, the brutal reality boiled over. From forced displacements of indigenous Palestinians in neighborhoods within East Jerusalem, military attacks on Palestinian civilians, an Israeli-led airstrike campaign on Gazan civilians, and arrests of innocent civilians and journalists, the world has witnessed the plight of Palestinians unravel on live broadcasts.

The reality of the occupation has become undeniable and many are beginning to put together that the plight of Palestinians is in fact an American issue.

Palestinians have been stripped of their fundamental human rights for decades, undergoing occupation without international accountability for their occupiers. How has such brutality been sustained without consequential criticism? U.S. unequivocal support and fealty to the settler-colonial state.

Unequivocal support is not personable to the federal government, however. Although state governments claim no interference with “international issues,” many have aided and abetted the occupation, too. Here in Colorado, HB16-1284 was passed in 2016, pushing for the Public Employees’ Retirement Association (PERA) to divest from companies that have economic prohibitions against Israel. This bill targets the BDS movement despite it being a peaceful form of resistance and legal under the constitution. It was co-sponsored by both parties, blocking the free speech of those fighting for Palestinian rights.

Beyond legislation, Israel remains the largest recipient of U.S. aid and missile defense support, given over $142.3 billion since WWII. American taxpayers – you and I – have contributed over $100 billion to Israel. This aid has been established by 10-Government MOU’s, which promises $38 billion in military aid to Israel over the fiscal years of 2019-2028, the highest amount in U.S. history.

As a Palestinian-American who is Democratic-leaning and in the political field, I’ve always felt conflicted. Legislation like HB16-1284 leaves me feeling overlooked and disrespected as an American, a Coloradan, a Palestinian, and a Muslim. It leaves me asking: “How could the same body of people who claim to dedicate their work to fight for people’s human and civil rights be so negligent when it comes to one of the biggest human rights abuses of our time?” over and over again. It has left me, and Palestinians all over the nation, battling with a mistrust of government as our right to basic human rights is dismissed.

Many Americans have begun to demand a shift in support. Materializing such a shift requires that American citizens and elected officials understand that this is a human rights issue directly tied to U.S. power. It requires state and federal elected officials to join the movement of leaders such as Rashida Tlaib and Betty McCollum as they lead in the fight of holding Israel accountable and ending the unconditionality of support which perpetuates the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Ayah Ziyadeh is a Palestinian-American Muslim human rights activist, advocate, and writer who maintains a track record in organizing awareness of Palestine and other crucial human rights issues and recently became the National Advocacy Director for American Muslims for Palestine in Washington, D.C.

The post The Plight of Palestinians IS an American Issue | Community Corner appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Updated 8/1/2021 to include the Planning Commission meeting on June 16th, 2021, where they discussed the anomalies in depth. Updated 8/2/2021 to reflect details of the development voted on that was 350 ft from homes. 

Appearance of Bid Manipulation Deserves Scrutiny

Does Erie Mayor Jennifer Carroll have a history of prioritizing optics over substance and principle? Many in Erie think so, and today they are accusing her of tilting the scales in a contract bid process. 

Recently she voted in favor of approving an affordable housing development, which sounds positive, but the same development is reported to be approximately 350 feet from an oil and gas facility. While this development did not pass, Carroll was one of three that voted in support. The development is expected to return to the Trustees for a second vote. 

Last year YS reported on the Crestone Operator Agreement which, it appears from the research, Mayor Carroll took actions to influence the decision of a massive oil & gas site in Erie.

A similar issue arose with the Town of Erie Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) advisory board, which was set up after the historic #BlackLivesMatter march in Erie last year. Mayor Carroll was proud to report her part in setting up the DEI board to help bring the voices of diversity to the town government. However, the board itself has been beset with issues, and all of the black women on or involved with the board have resigned.

Recently residents reached out with concerns regarding the town’s request for proposal (RFP) to update the town’s comprehensive plan.

The Town of Erie solicited bids via an RFP dated March 12th, 2021, to update the comprehensive plan that sets the direction and guidelines for future development in Erie. During this process, five bids were received, and three were selected for oral presentations with town staff. Each bid was scored by members of the Board of Trustees, the Planning Commission, and a Technical Advisory Committee set up explicitly for this purpose. 

The winning bid would, ostensibly, then be granted the contract with the town and begin working towards updating the comprehensive plan. 

The oral presentations with the top 3 bids were held on May 18th, 2021, and the town staff imposed deadline for the scoring was set for May 21st, but the deadline was extended to May 23rd due to technical issues. Even with this extended deadline, multiple score sheets were received on May 24th, town records show. 

Mayor Carroll did not fill out a complete score sheet, and instead turned into town staff a “1-2-3” ranking of the 3 bids that were presented to the Board. It appears from the listing of the scores as if town staff ignored Mayor Carroll’s ranking in tallying the final votes since the scoring sheets were complex and could not really be boiled down to first, second, third choice selections that Mayor Carroll provided.

According to documents received via a CORA request, Mayor Carroll and Town Administrator Malcolm Fleming were informed of the final ranking at 9:10 a.m. on Tuesday, May 25th, 2021, after the scores were received and tabulated.

At 9:22 a.m. on May 25th, Mayor Carroll responded to the email informing her of the results and stated that it “looks like if I did the first part of the spreadsheet it would have an impact on the numbers”, adding that “I would like to do that this morning and have the rest of my inputs included if that’s not too much of a pain”. The legality of this action is in question due to the already flexible timeline, but the fact that there’s even a question of legality is cause for concern for the process on the part of Mayor Carroll.

Following this request, at 9:30 a.m. on May 25th, Mayor Carroll reached out to Trustee Bill Gippe via text, informing him of the overall ranking and the BoT-only ranking of the top 3 bids, and also telling him that she would prefer to go with the BoT’s top pick for the consultant. She sent the same text to Trustee Adam Haid, Trustee Brandon Bell, and Trustee Christiaan Van Woudenberg. Notably, Trustee Gippe had not sent in his scores when Mayor Carroll reached out to him via text. The selection of Board members texted also raises the question as to why Trustees Ari Harrison and Sara Loflin were not contacted.

The individually-addressed nature of the texts seems to be clearly intended to skirt Colorado’s Sunshine laws (Colorado Revised Statutes 24-6-401 and 24-6-402), which requires 

“All meetings of a quorum or three or more members of any local public body,

whichever is fewer, at which any public business is discussed or at which any formal

action may be taken are declared to be public meetings open to the public at all

Times.” 

This definition includes communication via text, and with the Mayor texting multiple members of the Board on a common subject, and relaying information from one Board member to another, this could arguably be construed as a violation of those statutes.

Mayor Carroll continued texting with all 4 Trustees, with Trustee Haid suggesting that they drop the staff votes and only include the BoT and Planning Commission votes. He then asked, “What if we drop all staff votes? Did the PC and BOT align?”. Mayor Carroll stated “Let me do the math”, and then followed up with a text saying “Almost. I need to send Deb my full rankings and Bill his, and then it will be.” The mayor also said she didn’t know that the town staff or the planning commission would be voting as well, and stated “Just trying to see if we have enough others that agree before pushing it.”

Residents noted that the mayor appears to assume how the results would change once she and Trustee Gippe’s votes were counted, despite Trustee Gippe never informing Mayor Carroll of his preference. The closest he got was telling her “Deb likes Houseal. I never sent mine.” in response to her original text.

After some back and forth between the town staff, Trustee Gippe, and Mayor Carroll, the mayor’s scores and Trustee Gippe’s scores were sent to town staff and the new totals tabulated and sent out to Mayor Carroll and Administrator Fleming.

X

After this latest update, the consultant with the highest score changed, from Logan Simpson to Design Workshop.

Mayor Carroll continued to express concern that the BoT was not the final and only say in choosing the consultant to update the town’s comprehensive plan, which showed her continued resistance to the publicly-stated process, even after submitting her and Trustee Gippe’s scores after the official deadline.

On June 4th, after the tabulation spreadsheet was accidentally sent to Houseal Lavigne (one of the consultants bidding on the comprehensive plan update) in response to a request to review the scoring results, it was discovered by Houseal Lavigne that the spreadsheet was not adding 5 of the 8 Technical Advisory Committee members’ scores into the Houseal Lavigne total.

Once this error was corrected, Houseal Lavigne received the highest total score.

The above is a bare summary of the situation. There were multiple emails from Mayor Carroll that expressed dissatisfaction with the process, and an email from Trustee Sara Loflin that summed up what many Erie residents might also be thinking: the process for selecting a consultant seemed unclear and undefined, with some deadlines apparently at the discretion of town staff, the extremely-basic spreadsheet error, and the willingness to disregard the publicly-stated process to select a desired winner seems problematic.

X

Why is this an issue?

The late scoring by Mayor Carroll and Trustee Gippe that heavily favored the mayor’s preferred choice has the appearance of impropriety, though the lack of a hard deadline in the process may give a pass to any legal consequences here. The deadline had already been pushed twice, so giving another few hours for the Mayor and Trustee Gippe to provide scores would not be unusual or prevented by the process.

If there was any coordination between Mayor Carroll and Trustee Gippe specifically to elevate Houseal Lavigne to win the bid process, then that could be considered “bid rigging”, but without hard evidence, it’s a difficult case to make.

The lack of a hard process for selecting the winner, the lack of any definition (that YS could find) for the “selection committee” that would make the final decision, and the fact that numerous Trustees seemed unaware of the scoring process at all seems to imply the process was not thought out very well, and issues like this seem inevitable in hindsight.

As Trustee Loflin put it, the “willingness to dump the process” just because the end result was not liked by Mayor Carroll is concerning.

While no direct connections could be found for Mayor Carroll’s zeal to select Houseal Lavigne, it does seem like this consultant was her preferred choice for the optics of providing the most sustainable and socially conscious bid.

While this situation alone does not appear to openly violate legal guides, it does give the impression that Mayor Carrol is using her platform to achieve the results she wants, a complaint that has been expressed previously by residents. 

UPDATE: Erie Planning Commission Meeting June 16th, 2021

The post Did the Erie Mayor tip the scales? appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

By Vinnie Cervantes, DASHR

In 2020, the country experienced a reckoning with policing and criminal justice reform following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. I started organizing for criminal justice reforms in 2014, first with a national organization and later with a local group in Denver. Efforts mostly focused on three main areas: independent oversight, the discipline matrix, and District Attorney accountability. These are all worthy areas of change and organizing. For me, though, I’m no longer interested in dedicating labor to reform, but to transformation, which is why I helped found in 2018 and currently run DASHR: Denver Alliance for Street Health Response.

DASHR works to create and support community-based responses to conflict and crisis as alternatives to policing and jail. We use a spectrum of transforming safety called our Safety Wheel, which houses our efforts in four main areas: Community Empowerment, Basic Human Needs, Crisis Response, and Healing. DASHR’s creation was inspired by the CAHOOTS program in Eugene, Oregon which replaces police with community responders.

DASHR helped to launch Restorative Denver in 2019, which sends cases through a restorative instead of a punitive process. In 2020, our organization helped to launch STAR: Support Team Assisted Response, which sends a paramedic and mental health clinician to 911 calls instead of law enforcement. In the first six months, STAR responded to 700+ calls and had no arrests or need for law enforcement. DASHR, in addition to being one of the main drivers of STAR, became the community facilitator last summer.

Other work we’ve done includes helping to successfully pass a proposal in Aurora to create and fund a non-police alternative, which should launch soon. We are currently working with about a dozen communities in Colorado on implementing non-police models and have advised dozens more across the country. We also have our own rapid response efforts that include distributions to unhoused folks, using street medics in the community, and helping to foster a medic network in Denver that supported last year’s protests.

Our work was confirmed as especially important given recent protests and demands to re-imagine public safety. Additionally, the pandemic has amplified existing systemic violence and increased experiences of homelessness, substance use, and mental health crises; all issues that are navigated primarily through the criminal justice system. Our community is suffering and dying and this work is more urgent than ever. More importantly, the systems we’ve tried to work with for decades simply aren’t listening.

We were made aware that Boulder has issued a request for proposals to fund a non-police alternative. To that end, given our experience, we would insist on community leadership of such efforts. Although we have had conversations with community members and Council members in Boulder about implementing a non-police model, we did not know about this development. Our role has been as a vehicle for community voice and ownership of these programs, a vehicle that we offer to any who’ve reached out to use so far in Boulder as well as those who haven’t.

The post Reckoning: DASHR and Community Response to Crisis | Community Corner appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.