Somalia

Taxicab ruling: Mile High Cab wins Supreme Court case, gets another shot at licenses

The 2011 feature "Mean Streets" described allegations of discrimination and abuse at Yellow Cab, the city's oldest taxi company, as well as detailing taxi drivers' inability to find alternatives because the state's Public Utilities Commission made it nearly impossible to start new cab companies. But ... More >>

One Million Bones starts with you and your kids, today at RedLine

This one's officially for the kids, but it's really about the whole world, and the suffering of people in other nations. As part of its ongoing Monthly Creative Literacy program in collaboration with the Denver Public Library, RedLine will host the second of two One Million Bones art events in Denv ... More >>

This year's Oscar-nominated short films are scant on dialogue but heavy on eloquence

Your vote matters: Why you should head to the polls on election day

Editor's note: Election day is near, and if you haven't voted early, you have decisions ahead of you, not the least of which is whether to vote at all, as Josiah Hesse postulates in "Your vote doesn't matter: Why there are better things to do on election day." Hesse's colleague, Chris Utterback, tak ... More >>

Denver Zoo: Mimi the elephant, her health failing, enters hospice care

Mimi the elephant is in the twilight of her elephant life. Zookeepers' best guess is that she's 53 years old, which easily makes her the oldest Asian elephant at the Denver Zoo and means she's surpassed the average elephant life span of about 44 years old. As such, Mimi has normal old-elephant probl ... More >>

Reader: Barack Obama is a war president, whether supporters want to admit it or not

Yesterday, while Barack Obama's Denver appearance, Sam Levin asked ten supporters of the presidents explaining why they attended the speech. One person who spoke with him said she feared presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney would lead the nation into war -- which prompted this fie ... More >>

Wild asses at the Denver Zoo -- the four-legged Somali kind!

Where's the best place to find wild asses in Denver? If you guessed Shotgun Willie's, you're probably right. But we would have also accepted the Denver Zoo. Why's that? Because the zoo is now home to two 600-pound Somali wild asses named Kalifa and Kamowa. The two half-brothers recently arrived fro ... More >>

Albus Brooks leads a trip to Nairobi, Denver's sister city

Denver has ten sister cities, each with its own customs and priorities. Among them is Nairobi, Kenya. City Councilman Albus Brooks, so much a fan of Kenya that he named his daughter after the nation, recently led a trip of Manual High School students (and one teacher), plus private sector businessm ... More >>

Weld County campaign to educate immigrants about preventing, reporting crime

Weld County is launching a campaign to educate immigrants about the importance of reporting crimes to the police. "We want everyone to report crime, every time," Ken Buck, the Weld County district attorney, said today at a press conference in Greeley. That includes undocumented immigrants and refu ... More >>

BoldLeaders trip to Kenya postponed, but the explorations continue

After months of planning and fundraising, this year's BoldLeaders trip to Kenya has been grounded, thanks to threats of violence from the Somali militant group, Al-Shabaab. The Denver-based group had flights arranged and was within a week of departure when the U.S. Department of State and its embass ... More >>

Photos: Grand opening of East 13th Avenue and Xenia Street park and gardens

Around a beautiful garden, playground equipment and a turf soccer field -- and under the shade provided by a large cottonwood tree -- members of the diverse East Colfax community joined together in a grand opening celebration for a new city park on East 13th Avenue and Xenia Street this past weekend ... More >>

Refugees in Focus Film Festival to screen six documentaries starting tonight

The only heavy-metal band in Iraq. A charter school in the most diverse square mile in America. A letter written by a Maine mayor asking Somalis to keep out. Those are the subjects of three of the six documentaries to be screened at the three-day 2012 Refugees In Focus Film Festival, which starts at ... More >>

Reader: Try constructive criticism for a change

Photos: Safari Cafe opens in River North

A steady trickle of African immigrants has made the Denver metro area, and Aurora specifically, a haven for quality African cuisine. But closer to downtown, and just down from the white-hot TAXI development in RiNo, is a taste of Somalia at the Safari Cafe.

Yellow Cab takes a hit in arbitrator's decision on racism case

In the summer of 2010, 21 past and present Yellow Cab drivers -- all African immigrants -- filed a lawsuit in federal court, charging that the taxi company had favored American drivers and billed plaintiffs for questionable fees. The lawsuit was dismissed at the request of the filers after Yellow Ca ... More >>

Regis University teaching online courses to refugees in Kenya, Malawi in pilot project

Regis University in Denver is taking the lead on a program to teach online college courses in refugee camps in Malawi and Kenya, and in urban Syria. The four-year pilot project is called "Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins" and it aims to solve a stark problem: the dearth of higher educ ... More >>

Emily Griffith program to teach job skills to refugees to graduate 1,000th student today

www.egos-school.com​ Five years ago, teachers at the Emily Griffith Technical College Language Learning Center, which offers free English classes to refugees, recognized a problem: Even when refugees landed jobs, they had trouble holding onto them. "We noticed that they were lacking in America ... More >>

Author Benjamin Runkle on his new book, Wanted Dead or Alive

​Author Benjamin Runkle will be at the Tattered Cover in Highlands Ranch tonight to talk about his new book, Wanted Dead or Alive: Manhunts from Geronimo to Bin Laden. In preparation for his appearance, we caught up with Runkle to talk about his book, the importance of manhunts and the effect ... More >>

Stranahan's Rob Dietrich talks about what it's like to take over as head distiller

​Last month, after Jake Norris left Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey, the homegrown company that was sold late last year to Proximo Spirits, Rob Dietrich was named head distiller. After I chatted with Jake Norris about why he left, I decided it was important to talk with Dietrich. And in an inter ... More >>

What do you call half-Mexicans?

New park, community garden to grow -- with neighbors' input -- in vacant lot in East Colfax

​ It started with a vacant lot. But where others saw a scrubby, rectangular piece of land strewn with rocks and broken glass, the refugees living in the adjacent apartments saw a soccer field and a gathering place and spot to grow vegetables. On Monday, the city Parks and Recreation Department ... More >>

Sarah Palin: Colorado Christian Univ. troops salute in wake of Osama bin Laden's death

Sarah Palin.​Wouldn't you know it -- the day after Osama bin Laden was killed by an elite Navy Seal team in Pakistan, former vice presidential candidate and political star Sarah Palin will offer a salute to the troops at Colorado Christian University. And surprisingly enough, she may not be t ... More >>

Pirates vs. Robots: A first look at the epic battle

Watch your back, Blackbeard.​When Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Wydah at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and Machines Like Us at the Theatre Company of Lafayette come to town simultaneously tomorrow, it will set the stage for one of the most epic battles ever conceived by nerds ... More >>

One chapter book reviews: Missing in Action: A Family Saga, chapter six

​As far as fictional characters go, there is maybe no archetype so boring as the Hero, that figure of unwavering nobility and poise. Whether that hero is deftly vanquishing foes like Superman or valiantly overcoming adversity a la Odysseus, the construct is the same: The Hero represents the Da ... More >>

Letters: More readers weigh in on the immigration debate

Mean Streets

Some Denver taxi drivers say they've been taken for a ride by their employers

Now Playing

The Container reminds us that immigrants are people, too

JBS Swift lawsuit: Greeley meatpacking plant accused of descrimination against Somali staff

​"There's No Place Like Home for Somali Refugees in Greeley," a November 2008 feature by ex-Westword staffer Lisa Rab, told the tale of the Somali community in Northern Colorado, and those members who'd lost jobs in what Rab described in a followup post as "a clash over prayer breaks at the JB ... More >>

Columbine shootings an example of Christian killings, says Tavis Smiley

Tavis Smiley has a new take on Columbine.​More than a decade after the attack on Columbine, the high school's name remains a buzz word -- and an infinitely flexible one. Example: Public Broadcast Service talk-show host Tavis Smiley used the massacre as an example of violence done by Christian ... More >>

Don't let the drug cartels eradicate Mexican pride

"Desperate" Pirates: Crewmember describes the scene after pirate attack

Not-so-breaking news: Container-ship crewmen are some tough bastards. The Village Voice, our New York sister paper, has obtained an email from a crewmember who was aboard the M/V Maersk Alabama when it was attacked by Somali pirates. Any story that includes icepick-shanking is worth a link to us. ... More >>

K'naan

Saturday, February 14, Owsley's Golden Road, 303-296-2844.

There's no place like home for Somali refugees in Greeley

African Delight

Culture abounds at the fifth annual African Extravaganza.

Young and Growing

Community Pitch

For African refugees, soccer is more than just a game.

Last Comic Blogging, Part 2

Mass Media

Stranger in a Strange Land

I'd never understood Ethiopian food -- and then Haime Asfaw showed me the way.

A Bounteous Bunch

Talking Shop

Diversity unfolds at the African Market

A Christmas Carol Glows

The Denver Center's supple staging is designed to delight.

Hell on Earth

In this early battle of the Vietnam War, they were Soldiers -- and then some.

Devil's Advocate

Audiences love Jerry Bruckheimer. Critics don't. Like he cares.

Zoom Through Doom

Black Hawk Down pays grim, gritty homage to real American warriors.

Press for Success

At fifty, William Dean Singleton has dozens of newspapers and all the money he needs. But what about respect?

A Plague on All Your Houses

Denver readies itself for a bio-bomb — but is the federal program behind this exercise a dud?

The National Billionaires Association

THEY'RE NUMBER 1

THEY'VE SURRENDERED THEIR OLD HOME, BUT MEMBERS OF VFW POST #1 STILL HAVE PLENTY OF FIGHT LEFT IN THEM.