Politics & Government

Today, September 13, the State of Colorado announced that it will join a lawsuit originally filed by New York challenging President Trump’s plan to pull the plug on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, shorthanded as DACA. In a statement about his reasons for taking this action, Governor John Hickenlooper said, “President Trump’s decision to end the DACA program is outrageous and risks the futures of more than 17,000 Coloradans.”

When the ACLU of Colorado heard that Iraqi detainees being held inside Aurora’s immigrant detention center – a 1,500-bed facility run by the private prison company GEO Group – were being singled out and harassed by the facility’s guards, ACLU attorneys and staff members went to investigate.

An Erie animal sanctuary got a jolt on Thursday, August 31, when agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigations arrived to allegedly inquire about the status of two pigs — Lucy and Ethel — who were “rescued” by animal rights activists from a Utah factory farm in early July.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would consider whether Denver’s Masterpiece Cakeshop discriminated against a gay couple, Charlie Craig and David Mullins, by refusing to make them a wedding cake just over a year after the case was rejected by the Colorado Supreme Court. Now, the administration of President Donald Trump, as represented by the Department of Justice, has weighed in, filing an amicus brief that sides with baker Jack Phillips, who says the denial was based on his religious beliefs.

On Wednesday, September 6, Fair Districts Colorado filed three ballot initiatives with the Secretary of State’s office that will attack what they believe is widespread gerrymandering of election districts.

President Donald Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, better known as DACA, prompted the walkout of more than a thousand Denver students on September 5. Among the demonstrators making their feelings heard was Marco Dorado, whose story we shared in a March post headlined “Meet Marco Dorado, Exhibit A in What’s Wrong With Trump’s Immigration Policies.” But yesterday, someone else told Dorado’s tale: Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, who used him as an example of why eliminating DACA is cruel and counterproductive during a speech delivered on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

The students came from schools all across Denver. Many marched miles from their respective campuses in long lines that stretched along streets and boulevards. Some chanted. Some held signs. But they were all headed to one location on Tuesday morning: the Tivoli Student Union on the Auraria Campus, to protest President Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

As President Trump reportedly considers ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Mayor Michael Hancock had a message for the White House on Thursday, August 31: “Mr. President, leave our DACA children alone.”

Standing behind a podium at a welcoming ceremony on August 23, Araceli Velasquez, a young mother of three U.S.-born children, holds back tears as she surveys a crowd gathered on her behalf in a large worship hall. The building, and many of the faces, are still unfamiliar to her, but they won’t remain so for long.

Victor Mitchell, a successful entrepreneur and onetime state legislator, is seeking the Republican nomination for governor of Colorado in 2018. In the following in-depth interview, Mitchell details his unexpected personal story, his rise to business success and proposals that he sees as differentiating him from other candidates.

With the support of Mayor Hancock and a majority of Denver City Council already secured, the bill, called the  “Public Safety Enforcement Priorities Act,” went to a vote before Denver City Council on Monday night, August 28.

Erica Chenoweth can tell you that the average nonviolent protest movement achieves its goal in just three years, three to four times shorter than violent campaigns. The University of Denver professor is also quick to cite her finding that nonviolent campaigns have double the rate of success of their bloody counterparts.

“Why do we do this?” asked Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute and host of the annual Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Party, at the August 26 event. “Only one reason. To piss off people on the left.”

Organizers of Denver Go Topless Day 2017, which took place August 26 in downtown Denver, call the event a rousing success. The number of participants was estimated at more than 1,000, and no reports of negative interactions from folks on the 16th Street Mall and Civic Center Park have surfaced at this writing. Moreover, the Denver event is making its mark internationally, as it was highlighted by GoTopless.org alongside similar gatherings that took place across the globe.

Activism needs to be more inclusive. That’s a criticism leveled at this year’s plethora of national protests, starting with the Women’s March on Washington. With the inaugural Inclusive Global Leadership Institute, two University of Denver professors are working towards that goal.

Terese Howard, perhaps Denver’s most outspoken advocate for individuals experiencing homelessness and a principal organizer of the group Denver Homeless Out Loud, believed that she was facing jail time when she reported to a probation violation hearing at the Lindsey Flanigan Courthouse on Thursday, August 24.

This week, attorney David Lane expects to file a motion to dismiss charges against members of the Colorado Springs Socialists, a student protest group, over a March demonstration in Colorado Springs on the grounds of “outrageous conduct” by local law enforcement. The reason? Lane argues that undercover officers were improperly embedded among the non-violent protesters, whose largest offense at the rally appears to have been jaywalking.

On July 11, when Ed Perlmutter announced that he was dropping out of the 2018 Colorado governor’s race, he also said he wouldn’t run again for U.S. representative in the state’s 7th Congressional District in part because “there are a lot of good people in my race…. Sometimes you need to move on and somebody else needs to come in.” But yesterday, Perlmutter revealed that he’d changed his mind and will now seek reelection to Congress. This decision has caused three of those good people to step aside, including state senator Andy Kerr, who abandoned ship this morning, August 22. That leaves outsider candidate Dan Baer as the only 7th CD Democratic hopeful other than Perlmutter left standing, and his campaign’s comments about the latest developments are far from unequivocal.

At an event last week, Denver City Councilman Albus Brooks revealed that he had battled through an addiction to opioids. But he declined an interview request from Westword to talk in more detail about this ordeal, which came about as a result of treatment for cancer, even though opioid deaths are on the rise in Denver and across the state.

Just over a month after Ed Perlmutter dropped out of the 2018 race for Colorado governor and announced that he wouldn’t seek reelection to Congress in the state’s 7th Congressional District, he has changed his mind. Perlmutter has now declared that he will indeed make a bid to stay in Congress, contradicting earlier statements about making room for new blood.

Crow is shaping up for his first-ever political fight as he prepares to take on Levi Tillemann and David Aarestad in the primaries next summer before potentially challenging Mike Coffman next fall.

In late 2015, Denver Activist Theo Wilson went undercover online as a black man amongst the alt-right. By creating a fake white supremacist Facebook profile as well as a YouTube account under the moniker “Lucius25,” Wilson set out to trick the social media platforms’ algorithms into feeding him the same…