This letter was sent to Yellow Scene Magazine. As with all Letters to the Editor, the views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the publication. We value providing space for community voices.

The folks trying to stop the City from shutting down the South Boulder Rec Center have attended the last four or so Council meetings in force. Their petition has almost 3,800 signatures.

It’s rare that so many people are paying attention to a local issue, so I took advantage of the moment to help them understand what is going on at City Hall. This was my Open Comment to Council—but mostly to the audience:

It’s amazing that this Council, famous for planning growth for eventually 50,000 new residents, would be reducing rec centers from three to two and Iris Avenue from four lanes to three, etc. Any 10-year-old knows that more people require more rec centers and more transportation. How did things get so whack?

A big reason was that the city manager, city attorney, city clerk, and city IT director were “replaced” some five years ago after all but the clerk lied to Council and the public to obstruct the online petitioning system for ballot initiatives we have, only in Boulder, at petitions.bouldercolorado.gov. If it worked correctly, an initiative to preserve the Rec Center would be easy to get on the ballot. I was on the city’s Campaign Finance and Elections Working Group that got online petitioning on the 2018 ballot, which passed with 71%.

The system is almost unusable. Top politicians in the state had the details butchered. I documented top staff lying and cheating with video and audio, so they had to be replaced. See and hear it at tinyurl.com/petitionstory.

The incompetence due to the replacements is why public relations staff grew from 12 in 2018 to 30-something now. [According to Jan Burton, former council member.]

Confirm this with other members of the city working group, like long-time council members Steve Pomerance and Allyn Feinberg, Planning Board member Mark McIntyre, and attorney Ed Byrne. People should have the power.

Photo by Nathan Nowack, Nathan Nowack Photography LLC

Several Council members, after Open Comments, tried to tell us we can’t criticize city staff at meetings. This was my email to them in response:

Ryan Schuchard: You made it clear to me in person that you were talking about me, not the multitudes tonight who implicitly criticized current staff who consistently misrepresent what the people want in order to force on us what staff—and apparently you—want. You said, “This is not a place to be criticizing individuals, former or current.” We are addressing you, their employers. We are not going to help you hush up these problems by talking with you privately. This is public business.

City Atty Tate: Please cite any law that stops me! You know that truth is an absolute defense against defamation charges. The documents and recordings of the past staff I called out tonight tell the truth and are an absolute defense against City lawfare. Remember, you have your job because I documented in that file the lying and cheating of your predecessor, Tom Carr, and therefore, he was a liability and was “moved on.”

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

The City is losing its lawfare cases, including against Yellow Scene Magazine [which sued for the bodycam video of the police killing of Jeanette Allatore and got it without having to pay thousands] and Save CU South [the city sued them for legal expenses in their appealed attempt to stop the city from paying at least $66 million to raise the CU South property out of the floodplain to maximize building space, etc.]. Your vengeful suit against council candidate Aaron Stone for $375 is obviously a waste of far more of our money.

All: If you’re thinking of having the police evict me for telling the truth about past or present staff, let me remind you that the only time there has ever been violence in City Hall in my 48 years here was in 2010, when the mayor had police arrest Seth Brigham, who stripped down to his boxers to call attention to then-councilman George Karakehian leaving out of his financial disclosure that he was partners with Steve Tebo. David Lane took his case, and the city settled by giving Seth $10,000.

Here’s the best context article I could find:

Is City Council above the law?

If you’re “thinking” of passing a law to prevent us from criticizing you and/or your staff, think again. I’ve already started talking to the ACLU about all the limits you’ve put on open comments, by far the most restrictive limits of all large Colorado cities. And David Lane has represented me before.

As you can see from the text of my comment above, I never said the current staff was incompetent. Your defensiveness does say it, though! My sentence in question is: “The incompetence due to the replacements is why public relations staff grew from 12 in 2018 to 30-something now.” It’s unclear how much incompetence is from the ~2020 regime change, how much from current staff, how much from Council, and how much from the money and power people you mostly serve.

I suggest you stop your threatening behavior and get your shit together. Start by instructing staff to be honest—and consider representing those of us who pay your salaries. Three people stopped me on my way home this evening to thank me for explaining why so much coming from your organization is whack, one of them talking with me at length. Imitating Trump’s bullying will backfire on you, too, much faster.

You can contact the Council at:

https://bouldercolorado.gov/contact-city-council-and-staff

You can register to speak in person or virtually at:

https://bouldercolorado.gov/services/participate-city-council-meetings

“Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Evan

The post Letter to the Editor: Open Comments Respond to South Boulder Rec Center Shutdown appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

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This letter was sent to Yellow Scene Magazine. As with all Letters to the Editor, the views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the publication. We value providing space for community voices

I posted this in response to Shavonne’s post on Facebook and comments to me via FB messenger.

I’ll also write to the editorial board. I think their process of vetting so many candidates (84 this year) is too ambitious, and it led to mistakes and retractions for at least 2 Broomfield elections. Not true investigative reporting, but rather snap impressions and judgments. Broomfield candidates have to file by Aug. 25 to be included in the election, and then the city posts the candidates after that. In our case, one candidate withdrew shortly before the deadline. If YS continues to endorse our candidates, please investigate more thoroughly after the city posts the final candidates. The reporters’ fact-checking is lacking, and they could do a better job organizing and writing their articles.

The post Letter to the Editor: Candidate Endorsements appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Education and Regulation

On Monday, I dropped my four-year-old off for the first day of school. Now in his second year of Colorado’s state-funded Universal Pre-K (UPK) program, he was greeted enthusiastically by his teacher and paraprofessionals before letting go of my hand and running inside—excited for three hours of learning and play with his friends.

The classroom felt warm and alive, with sensory bins, age-appropriate games and toys, quiet corners for decompression, and handmade decorations curated for her unique classroom. Every detail was carefully selected to create a sense of safety and belonging. As a parent, I could walk away knowing my son would be cared for.

But beneath their dedication and resilience, teachers are drowning. They are underpaid, under-resourced, and expected to give endlessly while receiving less every year. They spend their own money to stock classrooms. Cuts to substitute pay mean they can’t take a sick day without guilt and are often asked to forgo any personal leave. Class sizes grow, resources vanish, and burnout is a high risk.

This is not the fault of individual schools or even the Boulder Valley School District. It’s the direct result of Colorado’s “Negative Factor” loophole, which allows lawmakers to raid education funding to cover other priorities. The result: BVSD has been robbed of more than $1 billion.

And the attacks on education don’t stop at the state level. Nationally, Donald Trump has openly sought to dismantle the Department of Education, threatening federal funding that public schools rely on. If he succeeds, schools will close, teachers will leave the profession, and vulnerable students will be left behind.

He’s already shown his playbook. As president, Trump gutted the Department of Public Broadcasting—an intentional strike against independent journalism and cultural criticism he dismissed as “political bias.” In Colorado, the danger is already here: Nexstar, the parent company of Fox affiliates in Denver and Colorado Springs, has just acquired Tegna, the owner of 9News. Soon, Denver’s most trusted news source could be folded into a conservative media empire with 265 stations across 44 states. 9News, known for its investigative work, uncovering political shortcomings at a state level, is at great risk of losing its power in this takeover. Kyle Clark, an investigative journalist with 9News, gives a great explanation of how this takeover will lead to a monopoly of information regulation.

Education and media are linked. They are the two greatest tools we have to create an informed, empowered public—and the two institutions most under attack. Control what children learn, control what the public hears, and you control the narrative. That’s not democracy; that’s propaganda. On August 19, Trump even ordered an investigation into Smithsonian museums, complaining they placed “too much focus on how bad slavery was.” The goal is crystal clear: erase truth, erase history, and rewrite reality.

This issue of Yellow Scene is about resistance. We highlight the extraordinary educators who continue to show up every day as the system collapses around them. We celebrate our Colorado Press Association awards, proof that independent media still has power. And we name the threats: the billion-dollar theft from our schools, the consolidation of media into conservative empires, the political project of silencing truth.

Yellow Scene will not be silenced. We will not “balance” facts with lies. We will fight for education, for media, and for democracy itself. And we hope you’ll fight with us.

Like journalism like this? Consider becoming a sustaining supporter (and get our printed copy monthly at home.)
Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.

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

The post Editor’s Note | August 2025 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Several years ago, I reached out to Yellow Scene Magazine with a gut feeling that I wanted to try my hand at journalism. I didn’t have a master plan, just a hunger to write, to ask questions, and to feel connected to the world around me in a more meaningful way. They liked my writing sample enough to give me a shot. A few weeks later, I was deep in the neck of research and interviews for my first-ever reported story.

It was a big step, and a somewhat chaotic one. But it felt like coming home.

Now, I write this as Yellow Scene’s new Associate Editor at a time that feels just as chaotic, just as formative. We’re in a transitional moment: the magazine is undergoing a kind of internal reorganization and realignment, the kind that comes after 20+ years of publishing and evolving. Like many small, independent outlets, we’re trying to figure out how to keep doing what we do well in an increasingly hostile and complicated media environment. It’s also just a strange, charged time to be a journalist. Especially a local one. Especially one working in a state like Colorado, in a county like Boulder, where national politics and local life no longer feel separate. Where everything is both connected and overwhelming, and trying to distill that into something people can read, trust, and act on is no small task.

When we talk about threats to the press, we often picture the big players: CBS, The Washington Post, CNN. But crackdowns on media don’t just hit the coasts or the cable newsrooms, they ripple outward. Local publications, independent outlets, alt-weeklies, we feel it just as sharply, if not more. Whether it’s legal pressure, economic strain, or the anxiety of what kind of coverage might provoke backlash, the stakes are high. And for us, there’s no corporate safety net. We have our values, our team, and the faith of our readers.

That’s part of what makes this work both more meaningful and more difficult. We don’t just ask questions. We try to ask the right ones. We don’t just report what’s happening. We try to figure out what matters most, and why. And in a time when national headlines dominate the narrative, we double down on the local, not because it’s easier, but because it matters.

At Yellow Scene, we don’t just report what’s happening, we ask why, who it affects, and what needs to be done. We take positions. We believe journalism is at its best when it’s clear-eyed and unflinching. Our readers deserve that. They deserve to know what’s going on in their neighborhoods, in their schools, in their city halls, and to feel just a little more empowered because of it.

One of the things I hope for most is that Yellow Scene continues to be a voice for the people of Boulder County. That we keep showing up with consistency, grow in our reach and impact, and stay rooted in the communities we serve. After we published my story on dark money in public education, I was contacted by the Advocates for Public Education Policy group. They told me how much it meant to see issues that rarely get the spotlight named and taken seriously. A few days later, I joined one of their weekly meetings to answer questions about the research, connect, and listen. It was one of the clearest reminders I’ve had that this work makes a difference.

In the coming months, we’re experimenting with formats, with voices, with how we show up in print and online. That’s part of what it means to be independent: we’re nimble enough to change when we need to, stubborn enough to keep our core intact. We’ll try new things, and not all of them will be perfect. But we’ll keep showing up. We’ll keep asking better questions. And we’ll keep making space for the kinds of stories that don’t always get told, but should.

I’m especially excited to be working with our current team of writers, who are as diverse in experience as they are in voice. We’ve got seasoned journalists who’ve been writing for decades and know their way around a complicated lead. We’ve got writers fresh out of grad school, tackling big stories with sharp minds and open hearts. And we’ve got people who didn’t formally study journalism but whose talent and passion for writing, research, and truth-telling are undeniable. One of Yellow Scene’s greatest strengths is that we let writers develop their voices. We encourage well-sourced, deeply researched pieces. And we give space for people who care to show up and do the work.

Working for an independent magazine in 2025 is, if I’m being honest, not the most rational career move. But that’s kind of the point. Rationality doesn’t always lead to the most vital work. Passion does. Curiosity does. A belief that stories matter and that someone should still be willing to say the things no one else is saying. We’re not owned by a hedge fund. We’re not beholden to corporate interests. We answer to our readers, our mission, and our sense of what’s right.

This job is hard. But it’s also fun. Weirdly fun. Getting to work alongside people who are passionate, scrappy, principled, and a little chaotic, in the best way, is one of the great privileges of my life. I hope the stories we publish reflect that spirit. I hope they help you understand your neighbors, your communities, and your world just a little better. I hope they surprise you sometimes. And I hope they make you feel something.

Thanks for reading. We’ll keep going as long as we can.

— Destiny Hale

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

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

The post Editor’s Note | May 2025 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Regardless of the state of the world, our country, or our government, Yellow Scene Magazine is celebrating our Silver Anniversary: 25 years of uncompromised journalism.

I’m excited about this accomplishment because, seven years ago, I wasn’t sure if we’d make it. Things have gotten really rocky for local journalism.

To keep doing what we are doing, we are absolutely dependent on the community (get YS delivered if you don’t already), learning our way around some grants, and business is better than it was (though there’s still a ways to go). While it’s not heavenly, it’s stabilizing — just like my mental health. I meditate a lot now, which has helped me approach life with a healthier mind (very important). Upping the meditation might be necessary this year.

This year’s Best of the West is our Silver Issue, and I’m thrilled about all the celebrations. Many are winning for the tenth year or more, a handful have won all 25 years, and for some, this is their first year winning. Producing Best of the West is no easy feat. Our ballot is write-in only, ensuring it’s a true reflection of what the community thinks. But that also makes tallying votes much more labor-intensive. Then, we hire a slew of freelancers to research and write personalized messages (boring is not acceptable at YS!). Designing those 20 pages takes another 10 hours, and let’s not forget the high cost of printing. But I believe it’s worth every bit of effort. I hope you do, too.

If you’re worried about 2025, not a lot of folks are screaming, “things are great.” Most of us made it through 2024. But to survive 2025, being idle won’t work. Get active. Get out there. Keep connecting. That’s how we survive hardship.

Keep an eye on our pages and socials — we’re committed to sharing ways to get involved.

I’m about community more than ever right now. I love my local community — the business owners, neighbors, friends, and people impacted by volunteering. I firmly believe we need each other now more than ever. My recent article, Ethics Are Alive and Well in America’s Small Business Community: 25 Businesses That Are 25 Years or Older, explores why local business matters so much. For one, if some companies weren’t so big, we wouldn’t be facing the challenges we are now.

I’ve always stood by the idea that unity makes right. Once again, our nation has to face who she will be. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to address the harm caused by those in power. Many apologies have been given throughout this country’s history. But in those moments, there were always people who demanded ethics, asked for humanity, and chose to work toward curing injustice.

None of us know what lies ahead for our treasury or country. I know I don’t want to be stuck predicting. I have grave concerns and worries, but I’m letting go of fear (and hope) dominating my life. I will not be reduced to a puddle on my couch — not today, at least. Instead, I’m focusing on health first, community second, and survival through strength and resilience, which I wish for all of you as well.

Like journalism like this? Consider becoming a sustaining supporter (and get our printed copy monthly at home.)

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

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

The post Publishers Note | February 2025 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The very first one, called The Goldmine, Aug. 2000.

Gulp, there is no way I’m old enough to have run a local news magazine for 25 years. It truly feels like yesterday that I was bartending at night to support the little yellow flyer that would become Yellow Scene Magazine.

Over the past 25 years, we’ve survived 9/11, the Great Recession, three wars, one flood, one fire, COVID-19, countless protests, and the arrival of digital media. Next up? Surviving DJT’s second term.

As much as I genuinely love my work, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to the frustrations that come with producing authentic journalism—especially in a time when AI seems to be taking over.

I’m incredibly proud that YS has never published a single sponsored-content (pay-for-play) article and that we’ve earned over 190 awards for excellence in journalism and design. In fact I have very strong feelings on it.

Your Native Advertising Sucks and Why Content is Still King

But this gig is hard. So hard that universities now nearly require journalism students to pursue a second field of study alongside their journalism degrees.

Media outlets producing authentic journalism are facing significant challenges nationwide. Since 2004, the United States has lost approximately 2,100 newspapers, including 70 dailies and more than 2,000 weeklies or nondailies. The number of journalists working at local newspaper organizations has fallen by roughly 60% since 2005, declining to 31,400.

Death of the Daily News

The fact YS is still publishing while not selling sponsored content is a bit of a miracle in and of itself. However, instead of wallowing in the many difficult changes journalism is facing, YS is taking steps to keep local journalism sustainable through grants, crowdsourcing, events, and, of course, providing agency-quality advertising to our clients.

Youth caught reading in the wild, Lucky’s Market, Boulder

Surprisingly, this younger generation cares deeply about authenticity. They grew up with phones in their hands and crave more than just a digital life. Research shows their social media consumption focuses on platforms like YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok. But are they really online more than their older peers? Studies show older adults spend 5–6 hours on screens daily, while youth spend 6–7 hours.

While reading books has dropped by five percentage points among younger people, book sales revenue is actually higher today than in 2008. Nearly 87% of books sold are still in print—people want to escape the screen. Numerous studies show we retain 7x more information from print than digital. And honestly, people just get more excited seeing themselves in a printed magazine than on a website.

So here we are in 2025 with no plans to sell out the journalism, no plans to go only digital (we’re still printing 32,000 copies monthly, thank you!), and no plans to go away, no matter how hard it is today.

Over 25 years, YS has become a beloved community resource. One of the best compliments we hear is when folks say they only read YS and The Colorado Sun. That commitment to high standards shines through. We could print on a paper bag, and if the content is good, people would read it. (On the flip side, no matter how fancy the paper, a publisher can’t turn an advertorial into a compelling read.)

Today, YS produces far more online stories in addition to our monthly print publication. We’ve earned a reputation for taking on the tough stories others avoid. We’re also exploring what a podcast could look like and working toward more multimedia storytelling. But no matter the format, we’ll stay true to the standards that have guided us for 25 years.

Media literacy is a new term we all need to understand—readers and advertisers alike.

If you’re a business looking to advertise, before dismissing print as “dead” or relying solely on social media, consider how many places are competing for your audience’s attention. Then ask yourself why people seek out the new YS every month. There’s no magic formula for advertising—just consistency across all three stages of the purchase funnel: internal, direct, and mass media. A marketing budget of less than 3%? That’s Spray and Pray Marketing.

The most successful businesses—those owning both mindshare and market share—always include strategies across all stages of the funnel. My biggest advice? Study why you’re buying what you’re buying. Not all print is the same, and not all digital is the same. Advertising isn’t magic; it’s communication. The question is: What are you saying, and to whom? (That’s why we offer Yellow House Agency design and copywriting services—for free.)

For our readers, advertising is no longer the sole way we survive. It used to be, but the world has changed. To continue the serious work we do, we need your support too. We’ve launched our Sustaining Supporter Program, and for just $8/month, we’ll happily mail you YS every month.

We have an exciting lineup planned for our 25th year. We’re kicking off the year with a feature on 25 Businesses That Are 25 Years or Older. For Best of the West, we are doing special highlights of the organizations that have consistently won over the two-and-a-half decades YS has been around. We will be doing fun features like, ‘Where Are They Now?” where we interview people from the past. We are working on a Trivia Night and have a very special plan for the covers.

I’ll close with our original slogan, which remains just as true today: Yellow Scene Magazine: It’s the Good Stuff. And let me add—We ain’t going nowhere.

Just a few of the memories over the last 25 years

Like journalism like this? Consider becoming a sustaining supporter (and get our printed copy monthly at home.)
Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.

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

The post Publishers Note | January 2025 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Letter to the Editor from Evan Ravitz

My mom’s Jewish family fled Nazi Germany in 1932 to London, then a farm during the bombing, then Toronto and then Mexico City before finally allowed into the US in 1940. The US and its mideast buddies Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt etc., have turned “never again” into again and again, now risking nuclear world war.

Please watch the 2012 documentary The Gatekeepers, which interviews all six former directors of the Israeli FBI, called Shin Bet, who spent their careers fighting terrorism. They all say Israel is causing terrorism; one uses the Nazi comparison.

2nd Congressional District Representative Joe Neguse is the son of refugees from colonial Eritrea, yet votes repeatedly to fund Israel’s violent settler colonialism, a black man supporting Israeli apartheid, and a tool of the money and power of AIPAC, his biggest contributor this year, giving him $33,400.

Joe’s Facebook post says, “I’ve often wondered how different my life would have been had my parents been unable to immigrate to the US.” Joe: ask the 2 million dying Palestinians who can’t leave Gaza- because you vote to keep it that way! Or ask my family. We don’t tolerate genocide, of anyone!

Joe’s newsletter this week is mostly about Joe bringing home the bacon for us. Nothing about the wars he funds with our money, causing terrorism, real anti-semitism, attacks on shipping, Iran’s nuclear program, and now genocide.

Joe has had months to find his moral compass but is still lost in a sickening sea of blood money and power. Please tell this lost soul what to do: CongressmanJoeNeguse@mail.house.gov

The post We Don’t Tolerate Genocide appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Louisville is lucky to have a reproductive right’s champion on City Council, Maxine Most. She’s not attempting to make medical decisions or play doctor. Instead, Maxine is applying two bedrock principles—equity and inclusiveness—to medical care. Simply put Maxine believes that equity and inclusiveness demand that pregnant persons have access to all evidence-based medical care.

Recent articles in the Daily Camera and other newspapers share horrifying stories about women who need abortions to save their lives being sent home to become sicker and their lives more endangered. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists unequivocally states that “Induced abortion is an essential component of women’s health care” because “Pregnancy complications, including placental abruption, bleeding from placenta previa, preeclampsia or eclampsia, and cardiac or renal conditions, may be so severe that abortion is the only measure to preserve a woman’s health or save her life.”  https://www.acog.org/advocacy/facts-are-important/abortion-is-healthcare

And, yet not all hospitals, including AdventHealth Avista (Avista) in Louisville, provide abortions when necessary to preserve the health or life of a pregnant person. Avista describes its care as “Rooted in Faith.”  AdventHealth, to which Avista belongs, is a major player in the health care marketplace; It is “one of the largest health care providers in the United States, with thousands of compassionate professionals working to Extend the Healing Ministry of Christ around the country.”  https://www.adventhealth.com/hospital/adventhealth-avista/mission-and-history

Even though Avista is a non-profit hospital—and as such does not contribute any tax revenue to the City— and in spite of its failure to provide evidence-based medicine, Maxine has done nothing to drive Avista from Louisville. Insinuations to the contrary are misleading. She is right to provide our community with accurate information, enabling pregnant persons and their families to choose whether to drive into Boulder.

To keep Maxine, vote no on the Ward 2 Recall.

Cathern Smith
Louisville, CO 80027

The post Let’s Not Recall Maxine Most, Louisville’s Reproductive Rights Champion appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Yellow Scene welcomes Letters to the Editor and is happy to publish your thoughts, within limit. Please send all love letters, hate mail, curious thoughts, and open letters to editorial@yellowscene.com.

I appreciate the concerns behind HB 23-1230 to ban assault weapons in Colorado. However, this proposal clearly violates the independent clause of the Second Amendment. The proper first step towards gun control would be repealing the Second Amendment.  

The Second Amendment was a product of a different time, predating modern weapons of mass destruction. It was rooted in armed slave patrols to suppress potential slave uprisings.

The US Constitution is an archaic document with no legitimate authority, yet legislators take an oath to uphold it. If the United States continues to exist as a political entity, a new Constitution should be designed and approved by a new constitutional convention.  

The original constitutional convention was held in secret by a handful of rich white men – predominantly slaveholders – who designed a system to preserve their own wealth and power. The constitution they drafted excluded about 94 percent of the population from the right to representation in government. 

I would support a vote at a new constitutional convention to repeal the Second Amendment as a precursor to debating legislation regulating personal weapon ownership.

Slaveholder Thomas Jefferson wrote that a constitution could not bind future generations. He argued that a constitution should expire after one generation. I agree that future generations should not be bound by the dictates of their barbarous ancestors. Each generation should hold its own constitutional convention to create a new system of government, at least once every twenty years.

Gary Swing
Boulder, Colorado

The post Repeal the Second Amendment appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Yellow Scene welcomes Letters to the Editor and is happy to publish your thoughts, within limit. Please send all love letters, hate mail, curious thoughts, and open letters to editorial@yellowscene.com.

Since moving to Erie two years ago from Morris, Illinois, I have depended on Yellow Scene to acquaint me about everything from the best restaurants to dentists. I just look forward to getting
the latest addition to catch up on whats happening in Boulder area.

I taught history for 35 years and really enjoyed the look back at old Lafayette where my daughter lives and why I moved here to be close to grand kids. I think “tidbits” like the “dead work” of not getting paid to actually build the mines, but only mine the coal itself demonstrates how far we have come in the labor rights and how the former Mayor Mary Miller was instrumental in making Lafayette “dry” after loosing her husband to alcoholism speaks to how history is often shaped by strong personal experiences.

I also appreciate the current events about Ukraine, making the analogy of the Superior fire tragedy trying to give some perspective of imaging flames lasting for a year now with no end in sight. I found the geo-politics of the other former soviet republics near Ukraine, not covered by major media very interesting.

Very much look forward to the next issue, thanks for making me feel comfortable and informed in my new home.

Ken Iverson,
Erie

The post Letter to the Editor | March 2023 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Yellow Scene welcomes Letters to the Editor and is happy to publish your thoughts, within limit. Please send all love letters, hate mail, curious thoughts, and open letters to editorial@yellowscene.com.

Letter to the Editor by Gary Swing

State Senate Bill 23-101 would effectively kill all minor political parties in Colorado. It should be killed in committee. Both establishment parties have demonstrated they will stoop to any level to exclude independent and alternative party candidates from participating in the political process.

Corrupt, dishonest legislators led by Senate Majority Leader Stephen Fenberg (D-Boulder) already destroyed ballot access for independent candidates in Colorado. They  embedded independent candidate suppression provisions in long, broad based packages of election law changes. This includes HB 19-1278 and SB 21-250.

The United States generally has the world’s worst ballot access laws as a first barrier to obstruct candidates from participating in an archaic 19th Century political system that was designed in secret by slaveholders to preserve their own wealth and power.

From 1997 through 2019, Colorado had some of the best independent and minor party ballot access laws of any US state. Democratic Party state legislators cynically destroyed this minor reform under the radar by hiding it in long bills backed by so-called “progressive” organizations.

Section 13 of HB 19-1278 was designed to keep independent candidates off Colorado’s ballot.

Two words were included in Section 83 on the last page of a 63 page bill (SB 21-250) to secretly repeal ballot access for independent presidential candidates without anyone noticing. There was zero media coverage of Stephen Fenberg’s corrupt maneuver to keep independent presidential candidates off Colorado’s ballot.

The current Republican effort to eliminate all alternative political parties looks like a scorched earth tactic by an extremist faction to burn any remaining shred of democratic process to the ground.

Both the Democrats and Republicans are determined to destroy any remaining  legitimacy in Colorado’s Fool’s Gold Standard of a sham election system.

Fundamental election reform is critical. The most essential reform would be to institute a Hybrid Proportional Representation voting system to elect Colorado’s General Assembly, as proposed by the election reform group Best Democracy. This system would combine a single transferable vote in seven member districts for a unicameral legislature with a compensatory party list system, empowering nearly all voters to elect representatives of their choice.

See https://www.bestdemocracy.org/proportional-representation/hybrid.html for details.

Everyone should have fair representation in government.

Under any voting system, reasonable ballot access laws are essential. Colorado’s current petition signature requirements are absurd. They are designed to ensure that only political campaigns backed by big money are able to get off the ground.

Ballot access requirements for candidates of any affiliation should be vastly reduced. I suggest giving candidates the option of either submitting a reasonable number of petition signatures or paying a nominal fee for ballot access. The existing option of nomination by party assembly should also be continued.

I propose the following ballot access options for candidates of any affiliation:

• Presidential tickets: 1,000 petition signatures or $1,000.
• Statewide offices: 500 signatures or $500.
• Congressional Districts: 200 signatures or $200.
• General Assembly, District Attorney: 50 signatures or $50
• County offices: The lesser of 50 signatures or 2% of the last vote cast for the office; or $50.

The post Kill Bill to Kill Minor Parties | Letter to the Editor appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Yellow Scene welcomes Letters to the Editor and is happy to publish your thoughts, within limit. Please send all love letters, hate mail, curious thoughts, and open letters to editorial@yellowscene.com.

Letter to the Editor by Gary Swing

On Groundhog Day, every Republican US Representative (and most Democrats) voted in unison to proclaim: “We Are All Individuals!” They marched in lockstep to publicly denounce the “Horrors of Socialism,” failing to see the shadow that slavery cast over their hypocrisy. While there is an element of truth behind House Concurrent Resolution 9, the resolution itself was absurd for several reasons.

1) False equivalence: By denouncing “socialism in all its forms,” House Concurrent Resolution 9 falsely equates the brutal totalitarian communist regimes of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot with the democratic socialism of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. This nonsensical extreme right wing posturing equates social welfare programs with mass murder. For this reason alone, a sane person could only vote NO on the resolution. Yet the US House of Representatives passed it on a vote of 328 to 86. There is not one sane individual Republican member of Congress today

2) Hypocrisy: Yes, communist regimes in the former Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and North Korea and communist revolutionary movements have been responsible for the deaths of at least tens of millions of people. Estimates of the death toll from the “Red Holocaust” vary from 60 million to 120 million or more. However, the US Congress has no moral standing to condemn the brutality of totalitarian communism while extolling the virtues of American “individualism.” US military imperialism since the end of World War Two has been responsible for the deaths of an estimated 20 to 30 million people in dozens of victim nations. The United States was built on a foundation of genocide, slavery, colonialism, and white supremacy. Republicans are fond of the slogan “America First,” which was popularized by the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. When they denounce crimes against humanity, they should start with the atrocities committed by America first.

3) Slavery: House Concurrent Resolution 9 falsely proclaims that “the United States of America was founded on the belief in the sanctity of the individual.” The resolution quotes slaveholders Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to spout this rubbish. The United States declared its independence as a “Slave Nation” four years after the King’s Court found that there was no legal basis to allow for the existence of slavery in England. Seventy-three percent of the rich white men who signed the Declaration of Independence were slaveholders. Ten of the first twelve US Presidents were slaveholders. When the US Constitution defined a slave as three fifths of a person, eighteen percent of the US population was enslaved. James Madison, the Founding Slaver known as the “Father of the Constitution,” argued that government should “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”

The US Constitution was designed in secret by a handful of rich white men, predominantly slaveholders, to preserve their own wealth and power. A nation founded on slavery and genocide is not a nation founded on a “belief in the sanctity of the individual.”

The post Hypocrisy and the “Horrors of Socialism” | Letter to the Editor appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Community Corner is local contributions from residents and experts in their fields.

See Yellow Scene Magazine’s story released 1/29/2023: Boulder City Council to Vote on Police Oversight Committee Replacement, with Pro-Police Advocacy Groups Playing a Large Role

Police Oversight Panel City Leadership Interference

Jan. 17, 2023

Dear Boulder City Council Members,

Your vote to approve the potential Police Oversight Panel members recommended from the Selection Panel is just a couple days away. As I wrote recently, the Selection Panel’s deliberations, per BRC § 2-11-6(a)(5), are confidential. The law you passed be damned, you instructed the Selection Panel to review all the recommended panelists and to assure that proper code criteria was applied, in order to determine if the recommended panelists met the criterion. And this was to be done with guidance from the City Attorney’s Office. The Selection Panel, you instructed, were to provide you with explanations or certifications explaining the steps that were taken, in writing.

Explanations of the steps that the Selection Panel took, provided to you in writing, was a demand for them to share their confidential deliberations. Full stop.

Further, the Selection Panel was sent a plethora of communications challenging Lisa Sweeney-Miran. The emails came from people that NAACP Boulder County Branch Vice President and Selection Panel Member Jude landsman, quoted in the Daily Camera on Sunday, opined on as follows: “I thought it was very shortsighted to send (the public comments) out to the selection committee when the comments were also against oversight [of the Boulder Police Department] in general.”

Talk about bias—you know, the thing that Council Members were ostensibly, and unlawfully, attempting to ensure was appropriately screened from the applicants put forward by the Selection Panel. There is a bias here, and it is in giving an oversized voice to people so virulently pro-police as to be against any oversight at all. Providing such pro cop propaganda—or copaganda—to the Selection Panel as part of this pugnacious endeavor and calling it, as Council Member Benjamin did, “due diligence,” is anything but.

How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

As this process returns to Council on Thursday, we are warned further delay on a vote will impede the Police Oversight Panel, as shared in Boulder Beat News: “‘We will lose quorum if we do not have those new panelists seated,’ [Police Oversight Panel Co-Chair Daniel] Leonard said.”

While I expect the interference will end in this process because you will likely call a vote this week, the interference by city staff continues. In the same Boulder Beat News article, Chief Herold is quoted, stating, “The panel’s role is not to look at policing in a systemic way, . . . . The panel’s role is to look at specific facts and circumstances and then recommend corrective action or discipline; that is it.”

Like Council and city staff who ignored that part in the ordinance that states “[s]election panel deliberations shall be confidential,” Chief Herold seems to have skimmed over or simply ignored the ordinance. In the Powers and Duties section of the code, B.R.C. § 2-11-7(e) states:

The police oversight panel shall have access to the Boulder Police Department’s policies and any data captured or maintained by the department to facilitate the panel’s analysis and understanding of department operations. The panel may direct the monitor to conduct specific analyses of department data, policies, or practices.

Thus, the Police Oversight Panel has access to BPD data and may direct the Police Monitor to analyze it. If that isn’t “look[ing] at policing in a systemic way,” someone please explain to me what is. And if it is (hint, it is), someone needs to inform Chief Herold. Because the ordinance is silent regarding what to do with the analysis once done, should we understand that to mean the analysis should be hidden from the public and not used to improve the policies and practices of the Boulder Police Department?

In keeping with such understanding, I will take your silence in not responding as agreement with Chief Herold, and as an affirmation that such efforts and analysis at the direction of Police Oversight Panel Members should never see the light of day. They should not help us avoid another Officer Smyly type interaction that motivated the creation of the Police Oversight Panel by “look[ing] at policing in a systemic way.” And they certainly should just let Chief Herold and the City Attorney inform them of their powers and duties, rather than refer to the ordinance itself, lest they get too uppity and actually effect some true reforms.

Sincerely,
Darren O’Connor, Esq.
NAACP Boulder County Branch Criminal Justice Committee Chair
He/him/his

Police Oversight Panel Selection Committee Deliberations are Confidential

Jan. 18, 2023

Dear Boulder Council Members, City Manager Rivera-Vandermyde, Police Oversight Panel Members, and members of the press,

Last week, Council, according to the Daily Camera, demanded that the POP Selection Committee provide “written explanations of the steps it took when choosing new members before the item is brought back before the council in January.”

Perhaps Council was unaware of the ordinance’s proscription against such a demand. B.R.C.

• 2-11-6(5) states that “Selection panel deliberations shall be confidential.” The steps taken in choosing the slate of POP members certainly counts as the selection panel’s “deliberations.”

Apparently, while Council members searched for something in the ordinance that could be used against one of the proposed new panel members, they ignored this legal requirement that the selection panel’s work be confidential. This was wrong, and the demand of the selection panel to disclose those confidential deliberations is thus illegal. Though a summary of the selection panel’s reason for selecting each applicant is also part of the ordinance, one assumes, under the leadership of Aimee Kane and the interim police monitor, this much was done. Demands that intrude into the private communications of the selection panel are not fair game to interrogate the selection panel.

I therefore write to demand that Council’s demand be withdrawn, and that the selection panel’s recommended slate be voted on by Council, pursuant to B.R.C. § 2-11-6(15):

A motion to approve the proposed candidates shall be placed on the council’s consent agenda. council members may choose to exercise the call-up option to discuss a proposed candidate’s appointment. Council will approve or reject the appointments by majority vote.

Council should have had only the discretion to discuss any particular candidate’s appointment and then voted. Instead Council chose to make a demand not within its authority due to the prohibition of what it demanded, as discussed above.

Move this to a vote, and let the people do their work of community oversight of policing. It’s the right, and legally required, thing to do.

Sincerely,
Darren O’Connor, Esq.
NAACP Boulder County Branch Criminal Justice Committee Chair
He/him/his

The post Attorney Darren O’Connor addresses the Boulder City Council regarding the Police Oversight Panel Appointments appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

By Evan Ravitz

The #1 slogan of the 60s was, “Power to the people!” People power made great improvements to Colorado recently, and Boulder is now the first place in the US to remove a big obstacle to people power  –but you wouldn’t know it from the media. I’m talking about direct democracy, in which the people can vote directly for laws as well as for representatives. Here are 16 successful citizen ballot initiatives since 2000, including one of the strongest campaign finance laws (Amendment 27), the first voter-approved renewable energy mandate (Initiative 37), the strongest ethics in government law (Amendment 41) and the first legal marijuana (Amendment 64): tinyurl.com/Coloradoinitiatives

Boulder last year pioneered the first ONLINE petitioning for direct democracy in the country, possibly the world. It was only partly successful because the old City administration (see more below) went against unanimous citizen testimony asking them to also allow paper petitions for the same campaign.  So when an unexpected problem arose with legacy “unlisted” phone numbers, people had no “plan B” – as we do by having mail, early and election day voting. The new City administration has just agreed to allow both this year. 

Online petitioning removes the obstacle of hiring petitioners to collect thousands of signatures, which on the state level is so expensive that it took billionaire George Soros and his friends to fund the many marijuana legalization initiatives across the country. Even in Boulder, it used to take you and maybe 30 friends months to collect the 3500-ish required signatures yourselves, or at least $10,000 to pay petitioners.

Switzerland, which has more direct democracy than the rest of the world put together, for centuries, simply allows petitions to be left in stores and offices for people to read and sign at leisure. That solves the same problem as online petitions but it requires trust –which has developed between the people and the government of Switzerland over those centuries of people power.

Without the obstacle, the Swiss now usually vote FOUR times a year on a slew of local, regional and national initiatives and referendums, and a fifth time for candidates. They have the most prosperous citizens on Earth, stay out of wars and the place runs like a… Swiss watch.

The old City administration fought to keep online petitioning off the ballot, didn’t inform us of a hearing at which staff intended to substitute an inferior technology, succeeded in delaying implementation from 2020 to 2021, and rejected a very credible free offer (on false pretenses) from a renowned nonprofit of custom open-source software  and instead spent $490,000 on proprietary software with several big problems. The silver lining of this 4-year fight is that we got rid of a dishonest City Manager, City Attorney, and City IT director, who, the old City Attorney told Council on 12/15/20, all left because of this fight. That video is on the 25th slide of this presentation with video, audio, and City documents: tinyurl.com/petitionstory.  Read and weep.

The post Boulder finally makes government BY the people work right 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.

Yellow Scene welcomes Letters to the Editor and is happy to publish your thoughts, within limit. Please send all love letters, hate mail, curious thoughts, and open letters to De La Vaca at editorial@yellowscene.com

Depositphotos

Letter to the Editor by Lauren Swain (In response to Racism in the Environmental Movement, by Sara Loflin)

How inconvenient, annoying, and uncompromising those trying to prevent more drilling from reducing the length and quality of our lives on the Front Range have been over the past decade! Good thing they have listened to Sara Loflin and her “League of Oil and Gas Impacted Citizens” (LOGIC) and have thereby moved away from “banning fracking” to “health and safety first” and a discussion of “impacted communities”, as Sara so eloquently put it. Yes, it’s far more copacetic to stop trying to prevent local and state governments from issuing permits to the oil and gas industry, and, instead, to hold a years-long conversation about how we might become “healthy and safe” while we let our favorite elected officials continue allowing the industry to jeopardize our health, safety, and climate with more fracking.

Yes, it is too bad human physiology and the climate of humanity’s only planet don’t understand political reality. Too bad that – even as we come to accept the violation of our own right to breathe clean air – our children’s bodies, and all humans yet to be born, are likely to suffer irreparable harm without even one chance to cast a vote on the matter. We just can’t afford to worry about these things because… “other priorities.” So when a child or elderly person is hospitalized with asthma or killed by leukemia because they inhaled one too many breaths of benzene emanating from thousands too many oil and gas wells far too close to their homes, and when thousands too many hurricanes, fires, droughts, and floods kill and make refugees of millions more people each year as global coastlines are eroded by rising, dying seas, we’ll just sigh wistfully and move on. After all, it wasn’t we who had to pay that price, was it? What’s more important is for us to get along with the nice people we know who say they are helpless to relieve themselves from dependence on the oil and gas industry’s paychecks. And I think I heard someone somewhere say the law won’t let us stop the industry anyway. I bet you heard someone somewhere say that, too, didn’t you?

To those who don’t know me, I have devoted my activist career to fighting toxic waste and neighborhood fracking in the 1980s and the 2010s because I felt obligated to actively oppose polluters who profit by endangering, sickening, and killing the vulnerable populations that find themselves in the way.

I have also actively advocated for the right of refugees and immigrants to find a safe home in our country and against the use of violence and physical intimidation to achieve even the noblest goals (like saving the planet), because I believe that protecting human rights is the highest value in politics and life in general. I believe every human has the right to be free from unacceptable danger and harm imposed by those with an economic or political incentive to benefit from that harm, despite arguments about what the law says on the matter.

The politically expedient approach to the climate crisis differs by nature from the activist approach. Activists seek to stop fossil fuel operations where the pollution, spills, explosions, and fires they generate do the most harm, while pursuing an end to all production as soon as possible, in order to protect the climate. The result of success in our efforts would be a reduction in the supply of GHG-generating fossil fuels, which would lower availability, raise the price, and ultimately reduce demand, by incentivizing adoption of the solutions that the expedient side champions – i.e. wide scale adoption of renewable energy technologies and efficiency strategies. We have identified the fossil fuel industry as the enemy of the people and the planet.

The expedient side bypasses this “ugly rhetoric” by focusing its energies on promoting those alternative technologies to the public and through policy, rather than directly confronting the industry and its puppets in government who have caused the problem in the first place.

Has anyone noticed that adding solar panels to a roof or building a “green home” hasn’t yet protected even one person from having another well drilled in their backyard, or from dangerous benzene levels and ozone levels in our air, or from the next wave of fossil-fueled forest fires? Although it’s noble and essential that everyone who can afford to convert to renewable energy do so, it won’t protect the people breathing fracking fumes now or prevent new wells from endangering more people, and it won’t for years at best. Only cutting the production of hydrocarbons will do that. We need to phase out production now, DESPITE demand, because those in the line of fire can’t afford to wait for reduced demand to work. We need to produce AND use less now – period. And we need to cut production where it causes the greatest harm – near neighborhoods, water sources, and vulnerable ecosystems – or they will be harmed unacceptably and unjustifiably.

One of the most frustrating things I’ve experienced is climate compromisers attempting to place the blame for our dilemma on the backs of the general public – willfully including ourselves as the culprits, when the evidence points to the fossil fuel lobbygarchy as the obstructors of change. While the lobbying and PR apparatus of the industry successfully uses their leverage to make it nearly impossible to suppress production or reduce demand for the GHG-emitting fossil fuels, they are also hoodwinking our friends into voluntarily serving as mouthpieces for their messaging.

A more frustrating thing to me is that “mainstream” groups and individuals have chosen to focus the resources provided to them by both well-meaning and intentionally-undermining individuals and entities on making the intrinsically unsafe and unhealthy production of fossil fuels “safer and healthier” for those living in the fracklands or on incremental demand-side strategies that won’t alleviate the harm done by fossil-fuel polluters for decades.

Compromisers accept that communities impacted by oil and gas production are lambs to be sacrificed on the altar of “peace” between the industry and nice politicians who think they can advance their careers by avoiding pissing off their friends or enemies in the industry too much. Even more frustrating is seeing concerned residents in the fracklands listening to the “reasonable” voice of experts hired by mainstream groups who tell them they can’t reasonably hope to keep the industry away from their doorsteps. Good thing we have experts we can trust explaining with confidence why the interests of the weakest among us, i.e. the children who are more subject to asthma, leukemia, and the end of a livable climate, must be ignored in favor of the “political realities” and “positive solutions” that reasonable, peace-loving organizations opt to push and pass through incremental legislative and administrative initiatives.

The post Good Riddance to the Inconvenient Activist | Letter to the Editor appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Screenshot, Boulder County Planning & Permitting

Jane Meyer is a local home owner and concerned citizen. She wrote in to share her thoughts on the proposed Boulder County Compost Facility at Rainbow Open Spaces. The thoughts and opinions expressed are her own. 

If you travel along Highway 287 north of Lafayette, between Lookout Road and Highway 52, you’ll see the old Rainbow Nursery and Tree Farm. It is 40 acres of agricultural land that includes two wetlands. It’s also recognized as “agricultural land of national significance” by national, state and local governments. In 1994, Boulder County used Open Space tax money to purchase a Conservation Easement and First Right of Refusal from the owners of the nursery for $169,625. The purchase was presented to the taxpayers as a way to protect for perpetuity these 40 acres as open space for us to enjoy. 

In 2018, a third party made an offer to buy the property for $985,000. Boulder County exercised its “First Right of Refusal” and, using Open Space tax money once again, purchased the property subject to the perpetual Conservation Easement. The County proclaimed the land to be the Rainbow Open Space.

What was not made public was that County planners never intended the land to be open space in perpetuity. Instead, Boulder County Public Works was apparently quietly planning to take this supposed open space land for industrial use. Public records now disclose that Public Works has spent over a million taxpayer dollars to commission the design of an experimental industrial composting plant with the ability to accept 125 million pounds a year of animal manure, food waste and “bio-solids”, which is treated human waste. Erie and surrounding neighborhoods are less than three miles downwind from this proposed facility. 

In October of last year, Boulder County notified twelve residents who live in close proximity to the Rainbow Open Space of the project, and invited them to attend a meeting to discuss the project. Supposedly due to the pandemic, the general public and residents living in adjoining neighborhoods – many of which will be significantly impacted by the plant – were not invited. To date, no public hearings have been scheduled. Instead, preparations for this massive project continue behind closed doors.

Note that the official County Composting Facility website states that, “Comments on the project (designs, location, concept, etc.) can be submitted at any time using the channels provided below. All comments will be provided to the project team, the Planning Commission, and the Board of County Commissioners for their review.” You can access that here. This does not substitute for a public hearing, whether in person or virtual. City of Erie is hosting a virtual hearing on Tuesday, February 9. Info below.

The lack of government transparency is now becoming obvious and the “backdoor” method of acquiring the property under the guise of open space is suspect on many different levels. What are the impacts of a facility like this? The odor factor in eastern Boulder and western Weld counties leads the list! Other impacts include water, air and noise pollution, not to mention increased heavy truck traffic on highway 287, surrounding highways and county roads. The waste will not only come from Boulder County but will be trucked-in from up and down the Front Range, adding to greenhouse gas emissions. Impacts in other communities have been widely studied. 

What if Boulder County pushes this through the review process (which they control, hook, line and sinker) and it’s built? Who will be the watchdog for uncontrolled odor and pollution, increased traffic accidents, and waste haulers frustrated with traffic delays who find shortcuts through neighborhoods and less-used county roads? Who will force Boulder County to stop when the inevitable problems arise? For more information, please visit www.ProtectRainbowOpenSpace.org and make your voices heard.

Editor’s note, via the city of Erie: The Town of Erie Board of Trustees, during their regularly scheduled Board meeting, will be hosting a public hearing on topics related to the Boulder County Compost Facility. The Board will not be deciding on matters, but are encouraging the public to participate in the public hearing portion of the virtual meeting on Tuesday, February 9. The general meeting begins at 6:30 p.m., and the agenda will be posted in the agenda center. To comment in advance please see the ‘How to Participate Document’ and send written comment to townclerk@erieco.gov. 

The post Protect Rainbow Open Space and Stop the Compost Facility | Voices appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Lakewood is voting this November on whether or not to organize our trash system like the majority of other American cities.  Lakewood’s current trash system rewards those that do not recycle because recycling services cost extra. Those who produce a lot of trash pay the same amount as those who produce very little of it. This system creates no incentive to recycle or to reduce our waste stream. An even bigger issue our community faces is the number of trash trucks on our streets. In Lakewood, any company can register to collect trash by paying a $50 licensing fee. This leads to streets having many different trucks picking up trash each week and twice as many on recycling days.

The post Lakewood versus Trash | Letter to the Editor by Nate Wightman appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

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This Op-Ed submitted jointly by the Ute Indian Tribe and Yankton Sioux Tribe. 

July 16, 2019 

Although the bald eagle has served as a symbol of American freedom and values for upwards of two centuries, it, along with its close relative the golden eagle, have held sacred religious and cultural significance for members of federally recognized Indian tribes since time immemorial. Unfortunately, the eagle’s decline prompted Congress to act and in 1940 it passed the Eagle Protection Act which established a general ban on the killing and possession of bald eagles and their parts, including its feathers. In 1962, Congress recognized that eagles and eagle feathers play a critical part in many Native American religions and cultures and that many Indian tribes possessed treaty protected hunting and gathering rights to collect and maintain eagle feathers. 

Ute Indian Woman, Durango, Colorado, 1915-20s

As a result, in what the Supreme Court would later call a “specific, narrow exception” Congress, in recognition of these treaty rights, amended the Act to allow the Secretary of Interior to issue permits allowing the possession and use of bald and golden eagles ”for the religious purposes of Indian tribes.” Under this authority, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has promulgated regulations that allow members of federally recognized Indian tribes to apply for permits authorizing the use and possession of eagles and eagle feathers for religious purposes. Consistent with the statutory emphasis on “Indian tribes,” rather than individuals, the current regulations provide that permits may only be issued if the applicant is a member of a federally recognized Indian tribe. 

While this regulatory permitting process has been largely unchanged since its inception over fifty years ago, the Fish and Wildlife Service has recently agreed to consider a petition from a group of individuals that are not members of a federally recognized Indian tribe to possess eagle feathers. On April 30, 2019, the Service published a Request for Public Comments related to a Petition submitted by Pastor Robert Soto and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. The Becket Fund- a conservative law firm best known for representing the evangelical Christian owners of Hobby 

Lobby in their efforts to deny their employees access to health care based on religious freedom – represents Pastor Soto after he was charged with possessing upwards of 50 eagle feathers in violation of the Eagle Protection Act in 2006. 

The petition for rulemaking’s main request is to expand the Indian tribe exception in the Eagle Protection Act to allow any and all “sincere religious believers” the ability to possess and use eagle feathers. The open ended classification of “sincere religious believers” set forth in the Petition invites non-Indians from all walks of life to fabricate Indian heritage, culture, and religion for personal and commercial claim. In doing so it would incentivize the appropriation and commercialization of Native American culture and religious beliefs. 

Additionally, the Petition’s request to allow non-Indians access to eagle feathers is in direct conflict with the express language of the Eagle Protection Act, which limits the exception to “Indian tribes,” as well legal precedent established in US. v. Dion. There, the Supreme Court specifically rejected the “patronizing and strained view” that the Indian tribe exception applies non-Indians and held that Congress intended the Eagle Protection Act to abrogate Indian treaty rights to hunt eagles, and after considering the special cultural and religious interests at stake, included the exception as a specific recognition of the impacts to those treaty rights. 

Any change that would allow ”all sincere believers” to possess eagle feathers would also diminish the rights of members of federally recognized tribes to the benefit non-Indians in violation of the federal government’s trust obligation to federally recognized tribes. For example, under the Petition, tribal members would be placed in the same position as non-Indians as having to prove the sincerity of their religious beliefs in order to possess and use eagle feathers. Tribal members would also be would be made to compete against non-Indians in an already broken permitting system that currently requires tribal members to wait months, if not years, before obtaining eagle feathers, many times in a state of unusable decay. There can hardly be a more clear-cut violation of the federal government’s trust duties then to amend regulations to benefit non-Indians at the expense of Indians. 

Image via 5280, by Jeffrey Decoster, 2014

Most importantly, in seeking to allow non-Indians access to eagle feathers under the politically based Indian tribe exception, the Petition threatens to undermine tribal treaty rights and the fundamental basis of tribal sovereignty. The Petition does not even attempt hide this fact by explicitly claiming that: 

“[t]he politically unique relationship between federally recognized tribes and the U.S. government does not justify granting [federally recognized tribes] a religious accommodation while denying it to others who engage in similar religious practices.” 

With these words the Petition unveils its true purposes. It is not to fix the arbitrary federal recognition process that prevents indigenous groups – such as state recognized tribes and terminated tribes – from being able to access eagle feathers and other federal programs available to federally recognized tribes. And it does not seek to uphold and protect Native American religious practices which are consistently appropriated and degraded. Instead, by arguing that the unique, politically based relationship between the federal government and federally recognized 

Indian tribes does not justify a treaty right based exception to possess eagle feathers, the Petition is explicitly undermining the sovereign and political status thattribes enjoy as separate sovereigns pre-existing the U.S. Constitution. 

At a very commonsense level, the legal categories of “Indian tribe,” “federally recognized tribe,” and “member of a federally recognized tribe” are inherently political based classifications, as evidenced by their treatment in the U.S. Constitution, hundreds of treaties, laws, executive orders, and court decisions dating back to the founding of this country. This founding principle of federal Indian law has been upheld by the Supreme Court and serves to protect the government-to­ government relationship Indian tribes maintain with the United States against misguided challenges, such as the Soto Petition, that do not account for tribal histories or governmental status. 

In the end, the Soto Petition’s request to allow non-Indians access to eagle feathers represents a storythat Indian country is all too familiar with. It is an example of non-Indians – in this case the conservative Becket Fund for Religious Liberty – co-opting the struggle of Native Americans in an effort push their own agenda. Under the guise of supporting Native American’s efforts to preserve their culture and meaningfully practice their religious, this group has introduced a Petition that does neither, but instead seeks to diminish the rights and sovereignty of federally recognized tribes under the banner of religious freedom. For these reasons, we call on all federally recognized Indian Tribes to oppose the Soto petition before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and take all actions necessary to ensure our treaty rights, and more importantly, our sacred eagle feathers are protected and maintained for future generations. The most immediate step in ensuring these interests are protected is to keep the eligibility criteria in the current regulations unchanged. 

Luke Duncan

Chairman, Business Committee Ute Indian Tribe 

Robert Flying Hawk

Chairman, Business and Claims Committee Yankton Sioux Tribe 

The post Op-Ed: “For the Religious Purposes of Indian Tribes” – Petition to U.S. Fish and Wildlife seeks to expand law to allow non-Indians to possess eagle feathers.  appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

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Editor’s note: This article had been updated to reflect Fernandez’s accurate title and to attribute the first letter correctly. 

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Governor Polis signed a bill this week written by state representative Janet Buckner. The bill is based on notes she found from her husband, John Buckner, who had passed away four years before. Janet Buckner was appointed to her seat in 2015 to replace her husband after his death in office; she kept the seat in the 2016 elections. It’s heartwarming to bring to fruition the goals of someone who passed away. It’s even more heartwarming what the goals are about. Buckner’s husband was worried about why kids of color or kids who don’t have means are not being given the opportunity to take advanced courses in their schools. It’s a problem we see across America: lack of resources, lack of high level coursework, lack of high quality teaching…always at schools that are filled with students of color or less wealthy kids.

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Buckner turned her late husband’s notes into a bill that requires students to be “automatically placed in advanced classes based on performance, not prejudice” according to CBS Denver. That bill is among eight education-related bills the governor signed into law on Friday including “the School Finance Act — which increases school funding by hundreds of millions of dollars — and bills overhauling the Read Act, encouraging apprenticeships and internships in high schools, putting social workers in elementary schools and expanding the reduced school lunch program to kids in high school.”

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Sanchez demographics, 2014

Our focus is the advanced courses bill. At the same time that this law has just been signed at the state level, coupled with additional funding laws to support implementation, Boulder Valley School District has decided to cut the International Baccalaureate, IB, Program at Alicia Sanchez International Elementary School. Their communications and marketing team once described BVSD as a destination district; can we assume that this designation depends on which BVSD school one gets to attend? Alicia Sanchez has nearly 70 percent Hispanic students, nearly 70 percent on free lunch programs. 

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The popular IB program was unceremoniously targeted for discontinuation at the end of the current school year, according to a letter from Boulder Valley School District’s Assistant Superintendent of School Leadership, Robbyn Fernandez. The letter to parents read in part, “throughout the school year, we have worked closely with staff at Alicia Sanchez International Elementary School to develop a plan to address the schools turnaround status and improve student achievement. We are excited to begin to implement the plan in conjunction with the amazingly passionate and dedicated staff and with Joel Rivera, the school’s new principal. [There have been replacement principals yearly over at least the last four years] … as a result, we have informed the staff at Alicia Sanchez International Elementary School that the International Baccalaureate primary years program will discontinue at the end of this school year. While we truly value the lens that IB brings to the school, the significant, transformational work necessary to support the school in improving outcomes for students requires complete attention. We have concluded that the time, energy and focus required of Sanchez staff to maintain the IB program would preclude the school from having the ability to fully dedicate themselves to the changes necessary to achieve sustainable, systematic improvement for students.”

Parents that contacted Yellow Scene were necessarily outraged.

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One parent, Kimberly Yadon, wrote a response to Fernandez upon learning of the discontinuation of the IB program at Sanchez. We share it in its entirety:

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“Through my involvement at the school, I had heard rumors that Sanchez may lose the IB program for the past few months. I had hoped the school as well as the district would put the needs of the students and staff above test scores, but I suppose it was hoping against hope that anyone in a position of power would suddenly know anything about the needs at Sanchez. I’m sure you know as well as I do that this school is the poster child for how we fail our underserved communities across the nation and in our own Boulder County. It’s a disgrace that this school has seen four principals in my daughter’s four years there. It’s a disgrace that the students miss out on the opportunities that other children in this county have because of their race and socioeconomic status. And it’s a disgrace that we have failed them so profoundly as educators that we have to remove a program that brought hope and vitality to the school so everyone can dedicate their attention to boosting test scores.

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My daughter is open-enrolled at Sanchez. I know about their history with low test scores and I know about their reputation in this community. But I drive her there every day so she has the opportunity to learn in a holistic way, among peers who are not blithely afforded every privilege this world has to offer. I drive her there every day because the community at Sanchez represents a world where race and privilege are not determining factors of a child’s worth. These kids are tough. They’re resilient. They understand the world so much better than their peers. And while I’m proud of them for who they are, I’m saddened that we, in this county of immense privilege, have forced them to fight for every small thing they have. Shame on us.

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The principal of our school, yet another in growing line of those who couldn’t rise to the challenge of this school, said that he was happy for his year at Sanchez because now that he really understands what it’s like here, he can be a better advocate. His heart was and will undoubtedly remain in the right place. His concern and care for the community is genuine. But Ms. Fernanadez. This district hired a man who had no experience with Title I schools, who by his own admission had no idea what Sanchez was like, to fill the role of principal at a school where significantly over half the student population is on free and reduced lunch. This is as unfair to him as it was to our student body, who is saying goodbye to yet another authority figure who told him he cared about them but won’t be around to prove it. My understanding is that Mr. Kruger played a significant role in the decision to abandon the IB program. This may be a misunderstanding on my part, and if it is please forgive me. But as a mother who cares so deeply about this school, I have to ask under what authority? Under what expertise? How does he or a brand new superintendent feel qualified to decide that tearing down the years of work that have gone into building this program is the way to turn the school around? The fact that this is the solution the school has prescribed speaks to a profound misunderstanding of what this community is up against—of who they are and what they need to succeed.

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I understand deeply that this is not a problem you created, Ms. Fernandez. You’re literally the messenger and here I am shooting away. But I couldn’t not respond to this message. And I would like to say more to the right people, if given the chance. I have no doubt that there were so many hearts and minds in the right place as the school moved forward with this decision. I know about the efforts with the University of Virginia team, and have heard nothing but positive feedback about Mr. Anderson’s genuine care for Sanchez. Please know I don’t wish to sling additional arrows at the choice to tank the IB program. Rather, I wish to use this as a stepping stone for building a real foundation for a school that has been failed by this district. A school that just happens to have the biggest minority population and the lowest socioeconomic population in the district. The fact that we even got to the point that this decision needed to be made speaks to how woefully in line we are with the nation on tearing down our undeserved communities. Boulder County fancies itself better than that. As such, I think we would be fools to waste this opportunity to inspire real, meaningful change for these kids. Our kids.

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I appreciate your time, and would covet a response with any recommendations on continuing this conversation with the right people.

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-Kimberly Yadon“

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In a letter to administrators at Sanchez directly, Lindsey Rosso McKoy said that “the lack of consistent leadership is the problem is Sanchez. It is not the IB program. It is not the students need to “perform” and “achieve” and “improve test scores” and do better so we can “turnaround”. No. It is due to a complete lack of consistent leadership. It is due to interim leaders and leaders to come to the school with virtually no understanding of the complexities of race, class, and white privilege that are at the root of why we are where we are with the students and families of Sanchez. It is due to these kinds of emails I come down from who knows where.”

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In an emailed editorial submission to Yellow Scene, McKoy also writes that, “the IB program was originally implemented by Dr. Doris Candelarie as an avenue for turning the school around back in 2012. And it worked. By 2014, the school had reached “performance” status instead of “improvement” status. … With 70% of students on free and reduced lunch, these are the most vulnerable kids in the Boulder Valley School District. These kids come to the table with a stacked deck. By removing the IB Program solely to improve achievement and standardized test scores, we are further stacking it. It’s insulting and a disservice to these kids. … to all this I say No. In one of the most “progressive” counties in the country, is it the best we can do? Absolutely not.”

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After receiving a “boilerplate” response from Fernandez, Yadon emailed the district with concernss: “I appreciate that you took the time to respond to my email, although I wouldn’t say that you clarify the district’s decision or address my concerns about it. … but I hope you can understand that I really would like more information. I would like to know if there’s someone who is able to explain to me how this doesn’t boil down to race and class. How this isn’t about years of failing this small underserved Community within a larger one of great privilege. You’re boilerplate response doesn’t address that topic at all. And I think it’s something that needs to be spoken to. This state has an atrocious racial achievement gap, and it is persistent because we have yet to truly address the bias that upholds it. We have an opportunity to start that conversation in our own district. We have an opportunity to examine how this impacts our children in our neighborhoods.“

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Yadon is correct in her assessment. In fact, a 2017 report (the last year for which data was available) found that “Most disturbing, Colorado has some of the largest achievement gaps by race and income in the US according to [the] National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), a United States governmental agency that assesses what America’s students know and can do in various subject areas. The differences within school districts like Denver and Boulder are also massive. “

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For Boulder Valley School District, only 17 percent of “Hispanic” students meet or exceed the state’s expectations on annual tests compared to 59 percent of white students, says ChalkBeat. According to a report from CPR, “Half of the student body is white in Colorado, but those students are overrepresented if you look at AP class enrollment. In terms of proportion, two-thirds of AP students are Caucasian.” Advanced courses in elementary school are a gateway to advanced courses in High School, an indicator of college acceptance and success. BVSD’s efforts, it would seem, serve to limit the amount of Hispanic students in the district succeed in high school and move on to college. Responding to that same 2017 report, CPR quotes Samantha Messier, Boulder Valley School District’s interim assistant superintendent of instructional services and equity, as saying “the gaps in Boulder are consistent with patterns nationally”. Color me surprised, but that sounds like an excuse.

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We’re not talking about national patterns. We’re talking about the kids in our neighborhoods, the kids playing at the park, walking down the street, hoping to succeed and grow a life here in our community. We’re talking about one of the wealthiest, highest educated communities in America. Playing the average is an unfortunate red herring and an ugly look.

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Messier continued, “As a school district, we have to accept responsibility for part of this pattern, but we also have to acknowledge that our gaps reflect structural inequity at the societal level. In some ways, the gaps in student achievement that we see in Boulder Valley mirror the high income inequality we see in Boulder County.”

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That is a nod to the grotesque formula employed in most school districts nationally that ties education funding to property values. Higher income areas have higher taxes, thus higher funding pools for schools. It’s an unfair model suited only to creating isolated pockets of educational affluence and incredibly segregated schools for everyone else. We would do well to remember where this can lead in a year that saw the commemoration of the Chicano walkouts – Su Teatro put on a play about this just a few months ago.

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Let’s be clear: these numbers and this move by BVSD should terrify us all. At the 2018 Boulder Economic Forecast, State Demographer Elizabeth Gardner told the assembled crowd of business owners, investors, and bankers that Boulder County’s Hispanic population is the future of our employee pool. Failure to serve these students specifically is a detriment to the future economic vitality of the region.

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CPR reports that, “An analysis by A+ based on achievement results by student group showed that much of the data, 95 percent, about English language learners was not included. Seventy percent of the test numbers for poor students were suppressed too. Advocates for transparency are now worried that the rule could be broadened to affect things like reporting of graduation rates and SAT scores.”

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We don’t even have the full picture and the outlook is already bleak. BVSD should let the kids learn, should do everything they can to support the most marginal students. The district has the money. It would seem that being poor and brown merits less investment.

We’ve emailed BVSD for comment and will update with any response.

[direct-stripe value=”ds1585187109306″]

The post Increasing the Racial Achievement Gap in BVSD: District Cancels IB Program at Majority Hispanic Alicia Sanchez International Elementary School appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

In today’s marketplace, we have had recommendations to make changes to our format for bigger profits, cuz you know, “print is dead”. With the way some print vehicles are acting, they might just deserve to die— and this is coming from someone who loves print.

Anyway, here’s the latest round of advice being given to this Independent print media:

• Do what the “competitors” are doing, sell “advertorial” aka Native Advertising (cuz that’s a lot easier to sell than real journalism).
• Focus solely on digital to “keep up”
• Cut your circulation: stop mailing to homes because it costs too much and just throw a huge ole stack in racks and claim four readers per copy, like everyone else.
• Create a formula for the ads so it doesn’t cost so much to produce.
• Be Cheap.

This is actual advice we have gotten, but we think these pointers are from people concerned with the bottom line more than developing and engaging an actual audience.

The number one reason people buy is trust. Audiences aren’t stupid. Audiences are your wife, husband, neighbor, the teacher, the fireman, YOU.  

Right now “Native Advertising” is the hottest trend. Everyone is doing “it”. Sales are going bonkers. Jump on the gravy train right?

From my perspective, after 30 years in print media, I will quit the business before I sell one advertorial.

I simply do not want to be in publishing if that is the kind of publisher I am. I am an artist and I drank the Media Role & Responsibility Kool-aid. I know what my job is and it is to deliver an audience. Anything else I am just selling you space and not really delivering anything for it.

If it doesn’t have substance, it’s for show.  

Dangerous blend: how lines between editorial and advertising are blurring

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2018/03/01/is-native-advertising-sustainable-for-the-long-haul/#6e1f259c3733

When readers start in on one of these “articles”, they realize it’s selling them something, so they lose trust of the outlet. They turn the page (or scroll on by) because they feel tricked, leaving a negative impression of your brand instead of a positive one. At least print ads aren’t offensive and if done well they are newsworthy. Additionally, most content writers have little journalism experience. When was the last time you saw someone post “Wow! That cliffhanger on that infomercial I watched last night just kept me spellbound!”?

There is a reason NPR and HBO believe high production values matter.

In 1999 HBO launched The Sopranos. The premise was High-Production Values. Great screenwriting, great acting and great production that changed television forever. We are now in the Golden Era of TV.

At the same time, greedy Hollywood Executives decided remakes were the cheapest way to make movies, therefore big profits. All this was fine and dandy, at first. It was cool to see Spiderman in CGI. But after awhile we got Zoolander 2 and Bachelor 4. Audiences got bored and stopped going to the movies. In 2017 Hollywood hit an all time low in sales. Executives ignorantly blamed TV because we all got big screens and spend time streaming instead of going to their crappy movies.

Their problem is, it wasn’t the size of the screen. I am not going to watch crappy TV on a big screen anymore than a crappy movie. It is that TV is producing quality programs.

Along comes digital and print is now said to be dead. Mostly because the newspaper is dying on the vine. Why is the newspaper dying? It is because the 24 hour news cycle changed how we get information and personally I don’t think the newspaper should die. In fact I want to save it. BECAUSE THE WORLD NEEDS REAL JOURNALISM. However, if they go to Content Writing and refuse to adapt, they deserve to die too.

(My secret plan to save them: Stop printing daily-it is much too frequent, deliver for free, hire back real journalists and be Slow News. I want a million dollars for helping them.)

Since the onslaught of digital marketing (which is actually on a downward trend right now), media has become this crazy mix of jumping on the latest new thing, resulting in advertisers further exacerbating the Pray and Spray model that is so common among businesses desperately trying to make their advertising work. Ridiculously, digital and direct marketers are the ones promoting pray and spray by pushing the latest trends, all while pulling a Trump on us and stating brand marketing is the problem.

It’s not the platform that is your marketing strategy. The platform is how you execute that strategy. And too many businesses don’t have a real strategy for how they are going to grow or why the consumer will shop them, at least not in their messaging.

Bad advertising is one of the top reasons businesses fail.

And here is a little shocker. The HOT “new” trend of 2019 is Digital companies are investing in making print magazines and direct mailing them to homes. I just got my AirBnB Magazine in the mail the other day. Even more ironic, the online companies making these magazines are being rated on the quality of their content.

So let me get this straight. Digital companies are producing print magazines, direct mailing them, and are valuing real content presence, while traditional media is resorting to advertorials to sell advertising?

There is nothing more constant than the mailbox. We all know what we read from our mailbox is dependent on how interested we are in what is being delivered. In ALL communications, everything pivots around Interest.

Book sales are dramatically up. Millennials are reading twice as many books as boomers and digital companies are even turning to print. The Future of Digital is Print.

New apps like Augmented Reality are being developed for PRINT. Of all the trends out there, this is one we think has incredible promise. The marrying of digital and print!

The fact remains, 20 years after Google people are not reading books ormagazines or newspapers online. They read an article of interest or worst a headline and scream “Fake News”. We surf the web, we swim in print.

There are many reasons print is seeing this “comeback” (it never went away – it just changed). It is trusted more. You remember more. Scientific American has reported on studies that shows that reading in print creates 7x the recall of digital. It is high-touch vs high-tech. We linger on it. We like reading it. However, to engage an audience just like TV, movies or digital, print needs to be interesting. We don’t need 10 fashion magazines, we don’t need a newspaper everyday, it’s just too much saturation. We need it to be special.

YS has no shortage of readers. In fact, the nicest things we hear from readers are “It’s the only thing I look forward to in my mailbox.” and “You are like a national magazine on a local level.” (Shhhhhh…it’s because of journalism standards.) Our drivers tell us people will chase them down the street to get a copy because we run out so fast in stands. We don’t have a problem engaging readers. The hardest part about what we do is getting advertisers to realize we have this readership and why it matters to them.

YS could resort to the “tricks of the trade” and it would get us more advertisers. We don’t think it gets more readers though. People tune into NPR, not the infomercial.

We invest in our journalists, mail to homes directly, and equally important  the design of your messaging. A good ad has 7x the impact of a bad one. You know what makes an ad good?

The copywriting. It’s all about those writers.  If your story is boring, dry, and cookie cutter than you will lose the interest of the audience. Are you Charlie Brown’s teacher or Ted Talks?

Advertising is not magic. It is merely a form of communicating a sales message to your potential future customers. Most media outlets put the responsibility on the advertiser to produce the ad. Most media outlets have what we call production ads. Not crafted. They slap your logo on there with some bullet points. You might buy it because you think the advertising is cheap – but really it is the most expensive and wasteful advertising you can do. This is why along with being the only local publication that mails to homeowners, we are the only publication able to offer agency-quality, strategic branding and marketing.

Which of these spreads grabs you more? No, not all advertising is the same and not all print is the same.

What got YS to 19 years in business as a self-financed Independent media outlet, was not compromising journalism, design or distribution standards, but instead pushing ourselves more. To produce even higher quality, relevant content people enjoy reading. We actually help our customers with High Production Design and spend more to land it in the mailbox.

We would rather be smaller and make a little less profit than sell out the pages. This is how we will make it to 20 years in 2020.

You can learn more about the services Yellow House, our in house agency offers here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17IEyzw2jMjYvBnS9WqicatJQ9lHwei9hKRLTJHNBYtk/edit

Download our Media Kit and Marketing Guidebook: https://yellowscene.com/advertise

Watch our Marketing Seminar: http://www.youtube.com/c/YellowSceneMagazine

The post Your Native Advertising Sucks and Why Content is Still King appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

It’s been said that small laws breed great crimes.  The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Act is such a law.  The crimes committed against the people in its name are legion.

But it got even more criminal last week when the Colorado Supreme Court decided the protection of public health and the environment was not the purpose of the law and that, instead, the public must share their lives and fortunes with the economic interests of the oil and gas industry. Indeed, the public’s interests might have to be sacrificed if protecting them proves too costly for the industry.  

The implication, it could be argued, is that the state constitution got it wrong, and that a court dominated by corporate lawyers is setting it right. The first provision in the Colorado Constitution’s Bill of Rights says quite clearly:

“All political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government, of right, originates from the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole.” Colo. Const. Art. II, Section 1.

Colorado Constitution, screenshot, via colorado.gov/pacific/archives/constitution

In reaching out to smack down the rights of the people — the constitution’s “good of the whole” over the rights of money — the High Court also took a meat axe to Section 3, which says:

“All persons have certain natural, essential and inalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; of acquiring, possessing and protecting property; and of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.” Art. II, Section 3

 

It’s also a fact that the constitution can only be changed by a vote of the people, but perhaps I’m becoming tedious. Still, when the lawless are the men and women festooned in black preaching from a high bench in a marbled palace that Albert Speer would envy, a word of bemusement may be warranted.

The man writing the unanimous decision for the Court was Richard Gabriel. A former corporate lawyer appointed to the court by the recently departed and little lamented Governor Hickenlooper, Gabriel has cut a wide swath for the oil industry since his appointment. It was he who wrote the opinion a couple of years back denying the citizens of the small city of Longmont the right to ban industrial fracking within their city. As intended, that decision has been regarded as a towering wall barring other citizens from seeking relief from neighborhood fracking.

In the view of Mr. Gabriel and the majority in the Court, the people have the right to ban pot shops, chemical plants, spitting-cobra festivals, cars with triangular wheels, and flying laundromats, but they have not the right to ban 40 fracked wells belching tons of poisons onto a nearby neighborhood.

In the Longmont opinion, he wrote that the legislature had, with the passage of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Act, COGCA, made it unlawful for the city to ban fracking. What he didn’t address, but surely knew, was that the ban was not an act of city government, but a law drafted by citizens using the right of initiative. Once again the right of citizens to legislate is a constitutional right. It cannot be revoked by the legislature or the courts; only the people can deny themselves that right. Sometimes called direct democracy, the initiative has long been seen as a necessary tool in the face of corrupt or unresponsive government. It is why it was added to the Colorado Constitution in 1910, with almost 80 percent of the people voting for its adoption.

In writing last week’s freshly minted opinion, Gabriel reversed the Appeals Court’s Martinez decision, named after one of the youth challenging the state’s oil and gas rules. These youth asserted quite accurately that the industry was befouling the air we breathe, and that the state’s oil and gas regulations were inadequate to the task of protecting the state’s air quality. As a result, their rights to a healthy and prosperous future were being denied. They submitted a mountain of corroborative evidence and expert opinion to the court.

The Appeals court, in reversing an earlier lower court decision, had sided with the youth. They didn’t have to invoke the constitutional provisions Gabriel so cavalierly defied. They just said the clear language in the Oil and Gas Act established, undeniably, that public health, wildlife, and the environment must be protected as a condition for granting a drilling permit.

Without even a hint of irony, the state, in defense of its rules governing drilling, had argued, from the first days of this case dating back five years, that it only had to protect public health some of the time. The rest of the time it had to foster oil and gas development. Irremediable conflict be damned. Gabriel did them one better: he said damages from oil and gas only had to be mitigated if it was shown to be economically feasible for the industry to do so. He also invoked a loopy legal theory that great deference must be given to the agency administering a law, for within those agencies are the experts. In the Martinez case, the experts are the Colorado Oil and Conservation Commission. By statute the commission is loaded down with oil and gas groupies. The deference argument makes the challenge by the youth nearly impossible to win, to say nothing of the rights of the people to successfully challenge corrupt or damaging government actions. As one wag remarked, Gabriel should have been Pol Pot’s defense attorney, for he, too, was an expert — on genocide.

For the most part, Gabriel seemed to be channeling the arguments of Judge Laurie Booras who wrote the minority Martinez opinion for the Appeals Court. She apparently is full of minority opinions. She described her fellow judge, Terry Fox, the author of the Appeals Court’s majority opinion on Martinez, which Gabriel overturned, as the “little Mexican.” She described her ex-husband’s wife, who is Native American, as “the squaw.” She is also accused of stalking her married lover of 10 years and sending their love emails to his wife. She has been suspended with pay for almost a year, but the creaky wheels of the justice system for people in high places were closing in. Somewhat symbolically, she resigned the day before the Supreme Court issued its decision channeling her minority opinion.

Many people opposed the building of the new state judicial center which houses the Appeals Court, the Supreme Court, and the Attorney General’s office, The old building was a more than adequate home in a state where there are more than a few without homes. It was full of high benches and dark wood symbolizing the sober issues being deliberated and decided there, Judge Booras’ emails not withstanding. Moreover, lavish public spending for government buildings is the hallmark of authoritarian and fascist governments, and you don’t have to go all the way back to Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy for verification.

Still, the state found a way to build the glittering new monument to judicial toil at a cost of about $250 million, without going to the people for a vote or their money. Termed “certificates of participation” by the legislature in the authorizing act, the people get the bill via higher fees or “certificates of participation” for every document or activity conducted by the various courts throughout the state. One should not be surprised therefore to learn that the furnishings in Justice Gabriel’s office cost $24,000. The desk alone, upon which he may have composed the Martinez reversal, cost $5,000. But fear not, these were not paid for with taxpayer dollars, but with “certificates of participation.” Who knew? And when the center opened in 2013 the Denver Post offered a front page story and picture with the caption, “Make Room for Justice.” Maybe not.

The issues of protecting public health and the environment now go back to the legislature where they properly belong. All we’ve learned so far is that a quarter of a billion dollars doesn’t buy fealty — and that a tax is not a tax if you call it a “certificate of participation.”

In truth, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Act is the legislature’s mess. They made it. They need to clean it up. Representative Kerry Donovan said last year, in voting against a bill to give local control of drilling back to cities, that she thought the court should tell them what they, the legislature, meant by the law. A puzzling remark indeed, but she apparently no longer holds that view. In fact, the new democratic majority has promised to reform the act. The Gabriel decision demands it. Jared Polis, the new governor, has also chimed in.

There are other hopeful signs. Indeed, the tea leaves read better than they have for over a decade. Hickenlooper, of course, is gone. He is exploring a presidential bid and has dubbed the pursuit, Giddy Up. Many people in the Fracking Fields of Colorado have wished him a strong wind at his back, and giddy up, please!

Gone, too, is Dr. Larry Wolk, the head of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Like Hickenlooper, he is a denier of fracking’s many injuries. Quite fittingly, he has taken a position in California as house doctor for the Wonderful Company, the makers of POM Wonderful pomegranate juice and other magic elixirs. He is also reportedly advocating for the use of liquid fracking waste to irrigate Wonderful products. That is definitely not wonderful.

On the other hand, troubling signs exist to the post-election, feel-good atmosphere. The Democratic leadership has warned, a little too fervently and way too often, that the people shouldn’t expect too much. This is the flip side of the incessant corporate and Republican warning to the Dems that they shouldn’t overreach. Somehow we are asked to believe that protecting people’s health and safety is a form of overreach.

Some of Polis’ early appointments are dreadful to arched eyebrow raising. His appointment of former state legislator and Summit County Commissioner Dan Gibbs to head up the Department of Natural Resources is a disaster. As head of the DNR he will also sit on the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission and its professional staff is under his jurisdiction. Great doubt as to his suitability and trustworthiness in the job is raised because Gibbs was also the oil industry’s paid Democratic mouthpiece in its $25 million successful attempt to limit the public’s right to legislate, and especially the people’s right to legislate against the oil industry’s dictatorial reign over their lives and liberties. Their $25 million victory is being challenged in court on constitutional and voter fairness grounds.

Some think Gibbs’ appointment is a bone to former Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar’s aging, neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party and that Gibbs is being groomed to run against Republican Congressman Scott Tipton in the next general election. No one should be pleased.

In the arched eyebrow category, Cary Kennedy has been made Polis’ Advisor for Fiscal Policy. According to the announcement she will be responsible for “long-term creative fiscal policy solutions.” This may be another political payoff. She was Ken Salazar’s pick to run against Polis in the primary. Let us hope that she’s learned a tax by any other name is still a tax. It was she, as Secretary of the Treasury, who praised the creative financing for the justice center as “not-debt” but bonds to rebuild America. Apparently, to her thinking, government bonds are not debt.

Polis’ selection of Jill Ryan to head the Department of Public Health and Environment, an extremely important post, may prove a worthy counterweight to the airy Gibbs. She, like Gibbs, is a county commissioner [Eagle County], but earlier she had been a public health administrator. More importantly, she is the president of Colorado Communities for Climate Action. Neither Polis nor the Democratic leadership seems willing to admit the inseparable link between fracking and climate change. She apparently gets it. The hope is she has the freedom and moxie to clean house in a department that for over a decade has toed the line under Wolk and Hickenlooper that fracking is safe.

One thing is for sure, as many have said, the Golden Dome is owned by the oil and gas industry. It will take tremendous pressure and presence for the people to beat them back. The masses of people who have suffered sickness and pain in the Fracking Fields will show up, as will those who understand their obligation to protect the “good of the whole.” But the oil industry already has a leg up. It gave over $100K to a PAC that included Conservation Colorado and EDF to support the campaigns of Senate Democrats. This is according to records at the Secretary of State’s office. It appears from early reports out of the senate, where the margin for real reform is thin, that oil money may still work wonders.

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote that the unpardonable sin was to break the magnetic chain of humanity. That language may be too foreign to our modern sensibility, but many people feel a bond with the earth and future generations, and that that bond must be protected and strengthened. It is imperative that they convince the legislature of the soundness of their convictions. If that doesn’t work, they can always bring up the Colorado Constitution’s Bill of Rights again. It says:

“The people of this state have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves, as a free, sovereign and independent state; and to alter and abolish their constitution and form of government whenever they may deem it necessary to their safety and happiness,” Art. II, Section 2.

 

The Bill of Rights is the only great law of this state.  The British writer G.K. Chesterton warned that if “you break the great laws, you don’t get liberty, you don’t even get anarchy.  You get the small laws.”  It is time the small law and its great crimes was destroyed, and the people’s right of “enjoying and defending their lives and liberties” was restored.  Everything depends on it.

The post Small Laws, Great Crimes: The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Act, by Phillip Doe [Opinion] appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

[Editor’s note: Katherine Merlin, Esq. is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in Martinez v COGCC, alongside Dan Leftwich with lead attorney; Julia Olson. This is a guest column on the recent and profound Martinez v COGCC ruling.]

Camp, County Rd. 19, Photo by Brooke Dryden

In 2013, eight Colorado children filed a petition for rulemaking with the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC), the state agency with sole and exclusive jurisdiction over regulating non-federal oil and gas activities in Colorado. The 50+ pages of the petition were crammed with evidence from peer-reviewed, published scientific papers about the health and safety dangers posed by oil and gas development – hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in particular. This evidence included global warming from methane leakage and venting, but also water pollution, toxic air emissions, links to developmental effects on the unborn. The children (the eldest of whom were only 13) asked the COGCC to stop issuing new permits for oil and gas development in Colorado until more certainty could be obtained that the industry was not causing these types of catastrophic health and safety impacts on Colorado residents.

The COGCC denied the children’s request for rulemaking, saying among other things that the agency lacked the authority to stop issuing permits. It said that its authority required it to foster and promote the industry, and that it was merely allowed to “balance” health and safety against the needs of industry. The children’s appeal was based on the statutory mandate of the COGCC, the plain English of which said that the COGCC had to foster and promote industry “in a manner consistent with” protecting public health, safety, and welfare, and the environment. The argument was that the words “in a manner consistent with” do not set up a balancing test, but create a mandatory condition, which the agency could not simply overlook as it had been doing.

It should be noted that in its decision the COGCC never disputed the scientific evidence put forward, including evidence regarding the catastrophic projected impacts of climate change. The COGCC does not deny that climate change exists, it merely ignores the fact that Colorado’s oil and gas industry is responsible for a large percentage of Colorado’s overall climate emissions.

After a “rubber stamp” ruling from the District Court, a three-judge panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the children’s petition. “[T]he clear language of the Act,” said Judge Fox, for the court, “supported by the Act’s legislative evolution and the Commission’s own enforcement criteria — mandates that the development of oil and gas in Colorado be regulated subject to the protection of public health, safety, and welfare, including protection of the environment and wildlife resources.” Judge Laurie Booras, who wrote the dissenting opinion, is resigning from the bench January 31, after a panel of judges found multiple judicial improprieties, including an email in which she referred Judge Fox as “the little Mexican.” The named plaintiff in the Martinez case also identifies as Latinx/indigenous.

This decision, had it been allowed to stand, would have ensured that the COGCC evaluate scientific evidence about the risks and benefits of the activities which it regulates, and would have required them to deny permits where there were unacceptable health and safety impacts. It was an open question about what degree of health and safety impact would be permissible, and it is likely to have invited further legal challenges. However, a standard which permits some degree of carefully analyzed risk seems obviously vastly superior to a standard which requires no analysis, has no limit on acceptable risks, and only requires industry to take “cost-effective” and “feasible” steps to limit harm.

The case was appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court by Attorney General Cynthia Coffman and the two intervenors in the case, the Colorado Oil and Gas Association and the American Petroleum Institute. Dozens of environmental organizations, parent and teacher associations, local governments, and others wrote amicus briefs urging the court to uphold the Court of Appeals decision, and to protect Colorado’s people from a greedy and rapacious industry that has already caused numerous civilian and worker fatalities.

Yesterday, the Colorado Supreme Court placed the profit of industry above the lives of Colorado residents. The Colorado Supreme Court not only reversed the Court of Appeals, it actually found that the COGCC had been providing too much consideration of health and safety in its “balancing” test. Instead, the Court reasoned, the COGCC must actually foster the development of oil and gas, preventing adverse environmental impacts to the extent necessary to protect public health, safety, and welfare only after taking into consideration cost-effectiveness and feasibility.

This standard is beyond the wildest dreams of industry. Any potential rule or requirement to protect the public from catastrophic fires or explosions, or from climate change, must now be evaluated as to whether or not the industry can afford it.

Gas well flaring, Colorado, Image by Brooke Dryden

To show just how murderous and evil this a rule this will be, consider this hypothetical: A company wants to frack at Rocky Flats (this just happened). The COGCC now lacks statutory authority to say no, because it must foster the development of oil and gas, and there is no cost-effective or feasible way to prevent the disturbance of the radioactive material at Rocky Flats other than by saying no to the project.

It is easy to see the warnings of oil and gas activists as hyperbole if you are unfamiliar with the oil and gas industry in Colorado. However, they are anything but hyperbole. Anadarko’s former employees filed a whistleblower suit against the company, claiming health and safety violations. The complaint likens Anadarko’s Colorado operations to “a ticking time bomb.” Multiple deaths have occurred, and numerous other accidents have been “near misses.” Industry employees have been made to pay their own hospital bills after being injured on the job.

Colorado is now at the mercy of industry; our health and safety now depend on what the industry claims it can afford to spend to protect us.

The post Martinez v. COGCC: Unmasking Colorado’s Explicit Prioritization of Profit Over Health and Safety in Oil and Gas Regulations, by Katherine Merlin, Esq. appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The post Letter to the Editor – August 2018 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.