Since Xiuhtezcatl Martinez was six years old, he has fought against the tide of climate change. Now as a teenager, Martinez is on the forefront of two major environmental cases that could have wide-ranging repercussions on the oil and gas industry in Colorado and across the U.S.
In 2017, according to a Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment report accessible below, 69 terminally ill Coloradans received a prescription for medication under the End of Life Options Act, a measure originally known as Proposition 106 that was approved by voters in November 2016 and went into effect the following month. Fifty of those patients obtained their prescriptions from Colorado pharmacies, and while the CDPHE doesn’t know how many used them, the department received death certificates for 56 of them.
Denver District Attorney Beth McCann has signed on to an amicus brief regarding The City of Los Angeles v. Jeff Sessions, a lawsuit in which L.A. is taking on the Department of Justice under President Donald Trump over a policy to base grants from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) in part on whether or not municipalities aid with federal immigration enforcement. McCann says she added her name to a list of 33 prominent prosecutors and law enforcement officials nationwide despite the possibility that Sessions and company could target Denver for retaliation as a result.
After this last round of legislators gone wild in Colorado — four politicians have been accused of sexual harassment in two months — lawyers have descended on the Capitol to teach handsy politicians how to maneuver the murky waters of a mixed-gender professional workplace.
Since the Equifax data breach, where more than 143 million Americans had their personal data hacked, consumers have been urged to freeze their credit to ensure that their identities were protected. Now, the deadline for free credit freezes are up. Here’s what you need to know.
On Tuesday, January 30, the Colorado Democratic Latino Caucus sent a letter to the Chief Justice of Colorado’s Supreme Court, Nancy Rice, demanding that all state-run probation offices cease voluntary assistance with federal immigration enforcement.
On January 30, Tom Tancredo announced that he was dropping out of the 2018 Colorado governor’s race, and in talking about his reasons for doing so, he speaks in the sort of unfiltered manner that is incredibly rare for any politician, no matter his ideological beliefs. Take these comments about the angry mood among some members of the electorate as epitomized by Internet trolls.
The 2018 race for governor of Colorado just got a lot less interesting. Tom Tancredo has reportedly dropped out of the contest, citing an inability to raise enough money for him to be competitive.
It turns out that, yes, Denver does have a busing program for its homeless, but it’s not robust or conspiratorial.
On January 24, Attorney General Jeff Sessions threatened to subpoena 23 jurisdictions to produce documents showing whether those jurisdictions are cooperating lawfully with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
On the eve of the giant Outdoor Retailer Show, which gets underway at 9 a.m. today, January 25, and runs through January 28 at the Colorado Convention Center, the retail powerhouse Patagonia joined with several advocacy groups to turn the McNichols Civic Center Building and the Bureau of Land Management headquarters in Lakewood into canvases of environmental protest by way of light projections that attacked the shrinking of two national monuments, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, by the administration of President Donald Trump.
A judge in North Dakota has accepted a plea deal bargain for Red Fawn Fallis, a member of Denver’s indigenous community who was arrested on October 27, 2016, during the Standing Rock demonstrations.
From implementing the first U.S. supervised injection sites for heroin users in Denver to widening local authority over oil and gas facilities, here are the most significant bills proposed so far.
Months have gone by since the story broke about Representative Steve Lebsock’s, a Democrat from Thornton, alleged sexual harassment of a fellow House democrat and ten other women. Instead of quietly resigning, Lebsock has taken the fight with his accusers public. And it’s messy.
The second annual Denver Women’s March attracted thousands upon thousands of women (and men) to downtown Denver on Saturday, January 20, but mainstream news coverage of the event had to be cautious about what images of the enormous throng to show. That’s because many of the most memorable signs we saw over the course of the morning weren’t exactly family friendly, as evidenced by the reference to First Lady Melania Trump’s clitoris above. But the best of them were both passionate and hilarious.
The second Women’s March of the Trump era motivated thousands of people to take to the streets in downtown Denver on Saturday, January 20, and speak their minds, express their anxiety, proclaim their power, and generally make the statement that they will not go quietly into that political good night.
If there was one Denver activist who was propelled into the spotlight to an almost surreal degree in 2017, it was Jeanette Vizguerra.
DACA — the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — is still under attack by the Trump Administration after it appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to kill the program. Colorado representatives are urging Congress to codify the program once and for all and is standing in opposition to any federal actions that would threaten deportation against or the work status of DACA recipients.
We’re now only months away from the midterm elections, so we’d thought we’d give you an early heads up for which races you’ll really want to keep an eye on.
Colorado’s immigrant rights advocates are still calling for a “clean” DREAM act — one that’s not tied to a complicated spending bill and focuses just on DACA recipients and a pathway to citizenship.
And don’t miss the library’s Pink Progression art exhibit, which will highlight the stories of participants in last year’s Women’s March in Denver.
Prominent among a new guard of activists who captured Denver’s attention in 2017 was Tay Anderson, the eighteen-year-old who ran for the Denver board of Education. He has big plans for 2018, too.
