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Colorado

Healthcare Workers Picket At 50 Facilities In Fight For New Contracts

August 6, 2023 Michael Sainato, The Guardian. , , , , , , , ,
Unions representing more than 85,000 healthcare workers have held pickets at 50 facilities across California, Washington, Oregon and Colorado amid new contract negotiations as their current union contracts are set to expire on 30 September. The negotiations at Kaiser Permanente are the third largest set of contract negotiations in the US in 2023, behind the 340,000 workers at UPS who will be voting on a tentative agreement this month that was reached days before planned strike action, and 150,000 autoworkers at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis whose contracts are set to expire on 14 September.

Colorado-Based Water Protector Faces Trial, Shares Wisdom

July 27, 2023 Carolyn Elerding, The Real News Network. , , , , ,
When Mylene Vialard followed her 21-year-old daughter across the US to join the thousands of the resistance by Water Protectors led by Indigenous women at Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, her aim was clear: to help make change, not just for the Indigenous people whose treaty rights, lifeways, and bodies have been violated, but for everyone. What she didn’t know was how much the experience would change her. That was two years ago. Today, up to 760,000 barrels of tar sands oil (bitumen), a particularly resource-intensive and harmful form of crude petroleum, gush from Alberta to Wisconsin through the completed pipeline, and the Boulder-based activist is one of several activists around the US who face felony charges in northern Minnesota’s Aitkin County. Vialard’s trial is the week of August 28.

Teamsters Rank And File Hold Speakout Against UPS Contract Proposals

June 26, 2023 Fight Back News!. , , , ,
Commerce City, Colorado - On June 24, rank-and-file Teamsters stood out in front of the gate of the Commerce City UPS hub outside Denver to speak out against the economic proposals UPS submitted during negotiations. These proposals include wildly unpopular ideas, such as the creation of a two-tier wage system for preloaders and a $17 per hour starting wage. As people were walking out of the gate, many workers flocked to the table, insulted by these proposals and ready for further action. “They think we're worth $17 an hour; this is what UPS thinks of their preloaders,” Kat Draken, a Teamster shop steward, furiously stated, “they must think we're joking about striking.”

Colorado Passes First Tractor Right To Repair Law

April 21, 2023 Claire Kelloway, Food & Power. , , ,
Colorado will be the first state to require farm equipment makers to share or sell all the tools, manuals, and software that farmers need to fix their tractors and combines. So far this legislative session, 16 other states have introduced similar agriculture right-to-repair bills as farmers criticize the ways manufacturers monopolize their product repair, increasing maintenance costs and risking debilitating delays. Repair advocates hope that success in Colorado will prompt more state-level laws or a national resolution, whether that’s a federal law, antitrust enforcement action, or an improved memorandum of understanding with manufacturers.

The Vail-ification Of The West

April 3, 2023 Joseph Bullington, In These Times. , , ,
"Welcome to Colorful Colorado,” reads the sign beside the highway as the road climbs from the alkaline flats of New Mexico into the foothills of the San Juan Mountains. But the landscape holds no color when Ana and her family cross the state line in the predawn dark. When the family arrives in Durango at 6:30 a.m., Ana’s husband goes to his construction job installing heating and A/C ducts. Ana waits at her sister’s house until the bus comes to take their son to school. Then, Ana goes to work, too, cleaning houses. This whole tiresome routine is new. Originally from Chihuahua, Mexico, the family lived for seven years in Durango, where they found work and a supportive immigrant community.

The FBI Used An Undercover Cop With Pink Hair To Spy On Activists

March 29, 2023 Trevor Aaronson, Black Agenda Report. , , , , ,
The young woman with long pink hair claimed to be from Washington state. One day during the summer of 2020, she walked into the Chinook Center, a community space for left-wing activists in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and offered to volunteer. “She dressed in a way that was sort of noticeable,” said Samantha Christiansen, a co-founder of the Chinook Center. But no one among the activists found that unusual or alarming; everyone has their own style. They accepted her into the community. The pink-haired woman said her name was Chelsie. She also dropped regular hints about her chosen profession.

With Nearly 60 Frostbite Injuries In Unhoused Community, Advocates Encourage Denver To Do Better

December 26, 2022 Alex Binder, Unicorn Riot. , , , ,
Denver, Colorado – Thursday’s weather is expected to be one of the coldest on record in the city of Denver due to an arctic cold front, bringing temperatures to well below zero degrees with the wind chill. In the weeks leading up to this potentially record breaking cold, medical health professionals with Denver Health and Hospital Authority and the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) wrote a joint letter to two city directors recommending the city “take immediate steps to address current deficiencies in 1) criteria used to determine when warming centers are open, and 2) policies and procedures related to forced displacements of unhoused individuals during cold-weather months.” The letter sent on Dec. 12 stated that when unhoused individuals “spend a prolonged amount of time in damp clothing and/or shoes as often occurs following forced displacement from tents,” their “risks for weather-related illness and injury increase exponentially.”

Colorado: Universal Free Meals To Students Is Close To Reality

November 9, 2022 Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, The Denver Post. , , , ,
Colorado - Colorado voters are largely in favor of Proposition FF, which would provide the state’s students with free school meals — no matter their families’ incomes. With tax deduction limits in place, the price tag would fall on wealthy Coloradans. About 55% of voters backed the measure, with 1,011,114 votes, as of 9:07 a.m. on Wednesday, according to unofficial results on the Colorado Secretary of State Office’s website. That number includes all 64 counties, although post-election reporting is still in progress. The initiative would establish and fund the Healthy School Meals for All Program. It would boost taxes for households with incomes higher than $300,000 by curbing state income tax deductions. The move would impact about 114,000 joint and single-filer tax returns, or about 5% of those filed in Colorado.

Domestic workers will now have some of the same labor protections as other employees in Colorado

September 20, 2022 Andrew Kenney, Colorado Public Radio. ,
Domestic workers — including people who care for children, tend gardens and clean other people’s homes — have new rights under a state law that went into effect this summer. HB22-1367 officially says domestic workers are “employees,” just the same as those who work for a boss at an office or a factory. It went into effect Aug. 10. That means nannies, gardeners and others are now protected by the state’s civil rights laws, according to employment attorney Rachel Ellis of Livelihood Law.

Dozens In Boulder Protest Christian Nationalist Group

June 25, 2022 Alex Binder, Unicorn Riot. , , ,
Boulder, Colorado – On June 4, 2022, an evangelical event series called Let Us Worship kicked off their summer tour in the plains of Northern Colorado along the Rocky Mountains’ Front Range. As their worshiping began outside of Vinelife Church, dozens of protesters marched along the west side of a barbed wire fence separating the church’s property from public land. They got as close to the stage as possible where Sean Feucht, the organization’s founder, was performing music and stirring up his audience, to disrupt the event and the organization’s agenda of spreading Christian Nationalist ideologies. For two hours, the queer, antifascist, and pro-abortion activists used silly string, pots and pans, bucket drums, whistles, megaphones, chants, banners and signs, and a sound system.

Colorado Law Hailed As Important Victory For Public Sector Workers

June 15, 2022 Michael Sainato, The Guardian. , , ,
Labor unions have been fighting to secure the right to unionize and collectively bargain for more than 250,000 public sector workers at cities, schools, colleges and counties in Colorado. Today, 24 US states, including Colorado, prohibit or limit collective bargaining rights for public sector workers, resulting in significant discrepancies in union density and wages among public sector workers in these states compared with states that mandate public employers to bargain with workers. Unions have also been pushing for Congress to pass a bill to expand collective bargaining rights to all public sector workers across the US through the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act.

Trailer Park Residents Take On Venture Capitalists—And Win

June 8, 2022 Joseph Bullington , In These Times. , , ,
Durango, Colorado - On a cold January day at the height of ski season, as tourists check into Durango’s resort hotels and wealthy vacationers roll suitcases into their second homes, Alejandra Chavez pulls away from her single wide trailer on the outskirts of town and drives the two-lane road south to look for a new place to live in New Mexico. Chavez dreads the prospect of making this same 1.5‑hour-drive, back and forth, every day, but she sees few options. Her work is in Durango, but Durango, it seems, may no longer have a home for her. Chavez, 30, moved to the area 18 years ago to join her parents, who fled economic desolation in Mexico and found work in Durango. In 2008, the family bought their trailer in Westside Mobile Home Park for $12,000.

Enviro Groups Ask State To Widen Scope When Evaluating Harmful Impacts Of Oil And Gas Industry

May 29, 2022 Sean Price, Colorado Times Recorder. , , ,
Last week a coalition of 33 environmental groups in Colorado wrote a letter asking the state to include analyses of already existing ozone, air pollution, and climate change impacts when evaluating the effects of pollution from oil and gas operations. The letter, which can be read in full here, is in response to a report by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC), the state’s oil and gas regulatory agency. The “Report on the Evaluation of Cumulative Impacts,” is the first annual edition. That report can be read in full here. The environmental groups addressed the letter to the COGCC and gives a series of recommendations as to how the commission can widen the scope of its report by including a comprehensive view of pollution in a given area and how the various sources of pollution — like pollution from oil and gas activities and pollution from automobiles — compound their respective harmful environmental impacts.

Dispatching Mental Health Teams Instead Of Police Is Successful

April 2, 2022 Good News Network. , , ,
After dispatching mental health teams, instead of police officers, to certain 911 emergency calls, the city of Denver is proclaiming their pilot program a huge success—and expanding it significantly. Since June 2020, the Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) has deployed medical and behavioral health clinicians to respond to over 2,200 low risk calls reporting trespassing, intoxication, or mental health crises involving poverty, homelessness or addiction. In all that time, STAR teams have never called for police back-up due to a safety issue, according to their January report. In January, the City Council unanimously allocated a $1.4 million contract for the STAR program’s expansion, paying for five additional white vans and hiring 7 clinicians, 4 paramedics, and two emergency medical technicians.

Colorado Community Stops Profit-Driven School Closure

March 29, 2022 Dakota Dexter, Liberation News. , , ,
Aurora, CO - On March 22, residents of the Sable Altura Chambers community in Aurora, Colo., won a four-month-long struggle to keep Sable Elementary School from being shut down by the Aurora Public Schools Board of Education. This grassroots struggle, its members made up primarily of parents and teachers, has called into question the true motives behind the BOE’s “Blueprint APS initiative” and the decision to close Sable Elementary. Blueprint APS is a plan created by Aurora Public Schools Superintendent Rico Munn that aims to consolidate and repurpose multiple public schools in Aurora due to what Munn refers to as “changing enrollment trends.” Blueprint APS divides Aurora into seven geographical regions.
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