Although Denver’s proposed urban camping ordinance is not scheduled for final consideration until May 7, the sides for and against it are already preparing for battle. Last week, the ACLU of Colorado organized an online petition against the ban, with Occupy Denver taking a stance this weekend. In a letter…
As city council continues to consider Denver’s proposed urban camping ban — and constituents continue to debate it — the Denver Rescue Mission continued a twelve-year tradition yesterday by dispatching a crew of staffers and homeless people to collect trash in and around Coors Field before the Rockies home opener…
Editor’s note: This is the latest profile in Kelsey Whipple’s ongoing series highlighting local political activists. They were wearing black, and they carried coffins. This is Carolyn Bninski’s strongest early memory of political activism, a lifestyle she would later take up and pursue for more than forty years, and it’s…
Colorado is one step closer to (hopefully) dominating the silver screen once again. Today, the House Appropriations Committee approved $3 million to fund a bill to increase the state’s film incentives. As explained in our cover story, “The Reel West,” the number of movie cameras pointed at Colorado has dwindled…
Packed with opposition in orange “Homes Not Handfuffs” buttons, yesterday’s City Council committee meeting initiated the first public discussion of Denver’s proposed, hotly debated urban camping ban. With the proposal come as many accusations as questions, many of them involving concerns it could criminalize the city’s homeless population. Key in…
“Everyone take a deep breath.” So began today’s first public meeting about the proposed urban camping ban, organized by City Council’s Land Use, Transportation & Infrastructure Committee in front of a group so large it breached fire code. While organizers stressed its purpose as an informational meeting — many more…
When it comes to the national Occupy movement, Blair Preston is less concerned with apathy than with access. In his time visiting Occupy Denver, it was the second issue that restricted his involvement, not the first, and he noticed the same problem gripping other protesters. To find a solution, he…
It is a truth universally acknowledged that there are few things more uncomfortable than a high school dance — unless maybe it’s an assembly. But that’s what the Colorado Queer Youth Summit, an annual conference that gathers more than 200 LGBTQ youth ages twelve to 24, occasionally felt like to…
After a year when it was christened the Angriest City in America, Denver continues to be a hub of national (and this weekend, international) activism. Tomorrow through Sunday, Amnesty International USA will bring its 51st Annual General Meeting to the city, with panels and workshops dedicated to some of the…
As witnessed by a Westword item from October, Mayor Michael Hancock and Denver’s business and outreach communities have spent months discussing and debating a push to ban overnight camping on public property. Now that the issue is reportedly scheduled to be addressed in a City Council committee meeting on Tuesday,…
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers is currently in Washington, D.C. for U.S. Supreme Court hearings on the Affordable Care Act. But in his absence, his office registered his objections to Senate Bill 12-163, which would, among other things, make possession of meth a misdemeanor rather than a class-six felony. However,…
Laurie Fitzgerald tried to tell her grandson about Trayvon Martin, about his hoodie, about his family, but it’s hard. So she taught him the basics. When asked why he’s carrrying a poster of the seventeen-year-old Florida student’s face, four-year-old Royce Edwards answers only, “Because Trayvon is dead and his daddy…
Lawmakers have passed a bill that would require the state to review cases of abuse that result in the near-fatality of a child. The bill also requires review of “incidents of egregious abuse or neglect,” a more amorphous category that the state Department of Human Services, which backed the bill,…
On Saturday, at age six months and one day, Occupy Denver rallied downtown to protest police brutality. More than 100 people gathered with signs and chants for one in a handful of protests dedicated to the topic in the past week. Although relationships between Occupy Denver and the Denver Police…
Editor’s note: This is the latest profile in Kelsey Whipple’s ongoing series highlighting local political activists. The worst day of Patty Skolnik’s life lasted 32 months. It started the day her son Michael, a 22-year-old college student, passed out. Doctors found a small dot on his brain, an asymptomatic cyst,…
Today, on Occupy Denver’s six-month anniversary, the organization is separated from its long-time home in Civic Center Park. Regardless of whether you expected the movement to make it this long, the past half a year brought no shortage of eye-opening events and preparation for the future. In order to contextualize…
Tomorrow, Occupy Denver turns six months old — and sometimes it feels as though protest years are like dog years. In the first in two posts marking the date, we look back through our notebooks to track the relationship between police and protesters, which has gone from overwhelmingly supportive (on…
Yesterday, state Republicans killed a bill that sought to make it a felony-level crime to intentionally mislead citizens about voting information during an election. Known as the Fairness in Voting bill, it came under political fire during its tenure in the legislation over accusations that it was an unnecessary effort…
In Denver, sign twirlers live a relatively free life, at least when it comes to the city’s regulations of the profession. As long as they stay off streets and medians and aren’t actually panhandlers, they are obeying the law. But as we explored in our cover story, “Spin City!,” other…
In the nearly six years since Shannon Galpin founded Mountain2Mountain, the Colorado-based nonprofit has created several projects in Afghanistan: Volunteers taught street art, worked with women’s prisons, partnered on a school for the deaf. But in 2012, Combat Apathy, its new educational program, will expand the organization to a a…
Update below: For the first time in months, Civic Center Park is empty. Around 5 a.m., police officers visited the park to close it down, requesting that all protesters who had slept there overnight gather their belongings and vacate the area immediately as they watched. In the hours following, city…
Update: 3:47 p.m.: At this morning’s court date, the bond rates for all five of those arrested near Civic Center Park last night increased, as did the crimes they are associated with. At the moment, all five are currently under investigation for second-degree assault and aggravated robbery. Caryn Sodaro, James…
