Denver

Pro-Palestine Campaign Challenges Lockheed Martin With All-Day Picket

June 3, 2024 Fight Back! News. Resist! Colorado, Denver, International Solidarity, Israel, Lockheed Martin, Palestine, weapons

Littleton, CO – On Wednesday, May 29, the Denver Anti-War Action (DAWA) continued their pro Palestine actions against weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin with another all-day picket at the corporation’s Colorado headquarters. Around 50 protesters engaged in direct action throughout the day, forcing Lockheed employees to take fact sheets that laid out their location’s specific role in the ongoing genocide in Palestine, attached with explicit imagery of carpet bombing and the brutal effects of white phosphorus. The fliers pointed out the connections between Lockheed Martin and Israel, included graphic imagery of war crimes, and the specifics of the activity that Lockheed Martin is engaged in in Colorado.

‘The People’s Graduation’ Celebrates Dozens In Denver

May 18, 2024 Alex Binder, Unicorn Riot. Resist! Campus Movement, Denver, Direct Action, Palestine, People's Graduation, Student Activism

Denver, CO — On Sunday afternoon, more than 100 people gathered on the Tivoli Quad at the Auraria Campus to witness and celebrate the dozens of graduates and student activists who participated in “The People’s Graduation” organized by the campus’ pro-Palestine solidarity encampment that’s been ongoing since April 25, 2024. The commencement ceremony honored “both the people who have been offered degrees by the institutions here as well as the students who made this camp possible,” according to Z Williams with Bread and Roses Legal Center, who kicked off Sunday’s event.

Denver Police Department Brutalizes Student Encampment For Palestine

April 27, 2024 Fight Back News!. Resist! Campus Movement, Colorado, Denver, Israel, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity, Police, police brutality, Repression, Student Activism

Denver, CO – On Friday, April 26, the Denver Police Department (DPD) attacked an encampment for Palestine set up by Students for a Democratic Society. The encampment was set up on Thursday, April 25 as a part of the growing wave of student encampments across the country. The organizers are demanding their universities completely divest from Israel and corporations that are helping Israel carry out a genocide against the Palestinian people. Around noon, April 26, university officials called DPD, which then descended upon the encampment and started arresting protesters.

Denver City Council Upholds Mayor’s ‘No Freezing Sweeps’ Veto

February 26, 2024 Alex Binder, Unicorn Riot. Educate! Colorado, Denver, Homelessness, Housing

On the afternoon of February 12, the Denver City Council again voted on the “No Freezing Sweeps” bill in their chambers, but this time the vote was to potentially override Mayor Mike Johnston’s veto of the Council’s passage of the bill. When the roll call took place, each council member voted exactly as they did on January 29 — seven ayes, six nays — yet this time, that vote count resulted in the official failure of the bill. At least nine “aye” votes were needed for a successful override. “Each and every one of ya’ll that voted ‘no,’ ya’ll just voted to kill people!” Jerry Burton of Housekeys Action Network Denver (HAND), a local advocacy group for houseless people and their rights, was one of a few people who stood up and yelled at the City Council after the bill was officially voted down.

As Chicago Punts On Apartment Safety, Denver Shows What’s Possible

December 4, 2023 Alex Nitkin, Next City. Create! Chicago, Colorado, Denver, Housing, Illinois, Landlords

The tenant of a two-story house in east Denver had been expecting Kevin Lewis when he knocked on her door this past June. After a brief introduction and a glance around the home, Lewis quickly checked the water pressure, power outlets and the cooling sources in each room. He reached a wiry arm up to a ceiling smoke alarm and pressed a button, prompting a chirp to echo through the house. “Music to my ears,” Lewis said, already halfway to the basement to make sure the boiler had a working gas line connection. Minutes later, Lewis was gone — on to the next house. Lewis wasn’t sent by the city to investigate a complaint, nor by a prospective buyer.

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

December 26, 2022 Alex Binder, Unicorn Riot. Resist! Colorado, Denver, Extreme weather, Homelessness, Housing

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.”

Dispatching Mental Health Teams Instead Of Police Is Successful

April 2, 2022 Good News Network. Create! Alternatives to police, Colorado, Denver, Police

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.

Unhoused Community And Advocates Take Over Recreation Center

March 14, 2022 Alex Binder, Unicorn Riot. Resist! Colorado, Denver, Housing, Occupation

This facility is used during the day up until 9:00 p.m. as a warming shelter when the temperatures are dangerously low. However, with the night low expected to be 10 degrees Thursday into Friday, community members are taking matters into their own hands. “If the City will not open the Recreation Centers for this life or death need, we will just have to do it ourselves. We are here to keep this public Recreation Center open to the public so unhoused neighbors can stay here tonight to survive this weather.” With Denver’s homeless shelters full during the below freezing nights, people who are seeking a warm place indoors have no available options. The organizers of Thursday’s action point out in their press release that “the City has an existing contract with Bayaud Enterprises to run a pop up emergency shelter at Recreation Centers in extreme winter cold,” but that they never used it.

Denver Refuses To Negotiate, Sweeps Indigenous Encampment

September 18, 2021 Alex Binder, Unicorn Riot. Educate! Denver, Homelessness, Indigenous Activism, State Violence

Denver, CO – Under the hardline stance of Mayor Michael Hancock, Denver continues to sweep unhoused encampments—more than 80 this year alone—ignoring countless requests from unhoused residents and their advocates to stop, and refusing to negotiate any alternatives. Outside the Four Winds American Indian Council building in the Baker neighborhood, that cycle continued when, despite multiple attempts by Four Winds and other advocates to find some common ground and a different solution, the city swept a predominantly Indigenous encampment on August 31. “It’s kind of unfortunate that the Mayor decided that he’s going to say that [the encampment] is unsafe and unclean without even being here, without even visiting and seeing it first-hand and being willing to sit down with our relatives and hear their stories and even break bread with them or anything like that.”

Denver’s Housing First Initiative A ‘Remarkable Success’

August 26, 2021 Robert Davis, Invisible People. Create! Denver, Homelessness, Housing, Housing First

Colorado - A five-year evaluation of Denver’s Social Impact Bond (SIB) program by The Urban Institute found the housing first initiative is a “remarkable success” at reducing chronic homelessness. In all, the study found that 79 percent of people who received treatment under the program were engaged in stable housing. Those referred to SIB spent an average of 560 more days in housing than people who received other community assistance. Overall, the study analyzed the cases of 724 program participants. After one year, 86 percent of people remained in stable housing. After two years, the number stood at 81 percent. And, after three years, over 77 percent of participants remained housed. The program—one of the first in the country—also reduced shelter visits and police contacts for participants.

Police Not Allowed to Participate in Denver PrideFest

May 19, 2021 Blayke Roznowski, The Denver Channel Educate! Denver, LGBTQ, Police, Police abuse

Denver — The Center on Colax confirmed Tuesday police will not be allowed to participate in the 2021 Denver PrideFest parade or as exhibitors. The Center, who hosts PrideFest, released the following statement regarding their decision: “The Center was founded 45 years ago in response to police violence and harassment of the LGBTQ community. The entire history of the LGBTQ civil rights movement is rooted in a history of opposing police harassment and violence aimed at our community. There are numerous examples of police violence going back beyond the famous Stonewall Riots of 1969. For all these decades, The Center has worked to address these issues and improve the relationship between the LGBTQ community and the police and we have made great strides. However we cannot in good conscience, as an organization that speaks up for justice, look the other way when it comes to police violence aimed at the Black community—a history of violence that goes back even further in American history.

Activists Who Forced Elijah McClain Investigation Face Retaliation

February 27, 2021 National Committee for Justice in Denver, Liberation News. Resist! Activism, Denver, Elijah McClain, Legal System, Police violence

People all over the country are learning about the explosive new report just out in Aurora, CO which concluded that the Aurora Police’s entire encounter with Elijah McClain which ended in his death was unjustified. What is not being talked about in most media coverage is that the organizers who led the massive peaceful protests which forced this report to be commissioned are still facing as many as 48 years in prison. The city of Aurora commissioned the independent investigation that produced the report on July 20, 2020 under the pressure of massive peaceful protests demanding accountability for the murder of Elijah McClain. Peaceful protests of unprecedented scale swept Aurora on June 27, July 3, and July 12.

Denver: Anti-Racist Organizers Released After A Week In Jail

September 25, 2020 People's Dispatch. Educate! Arrests, Denver, First Amendment, Rebellion2020

Three organizers from the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) – Lillian House, Eliza Lucero and Joel Northam – who were arrested on trumped up charges in connection with anti-racist protests in the US State of Colorado were released on Thursday, September 24. They were arrested last Thursday in Denver and spent a week in jail in unsafe and inhumane conditions and were denied their right to due process. One of their fellow organizers, Russel Ruch, was released earlier. On Thursday, the judiciary in Colorado set the bonds of the three activists which once paid means that they can no longer be held in preventive detention.

Report From Mobilization Against War On Iran In Denver

January 5, 2020 Robert Prince, RobertJPrince.net. Resist! Denver, Iran, Iraq, Wars and Militarism

Something new is in the air… angry, militant, controlled, politically savvy and anti-war to its very core. Unafraid. I would not be surprised if the tone is any different anywhere else in the country. It probably helps that the maniac/moron/gangster Trump is the President. They knew of what they spoke… bipartisan treachery, the lies being fed by the media like in 2003 before the Iraq invasion… the very rapacious nature of U.S. Middle East policy…and a genuine sympathy towards the Iranian people for the loss of their extraordinarily talented military leader, Qassim Suleimani. Main points were 1. nothing can justify a war against Iran 2. the U.S. should withdraw its troops from Iraq.. 3. How Trump announced a troop pullout from Syria at the same time there is actually a 14,000 troop build up through the Middle East. These were the themes that dominated both the speeches, banners and posters.

Denver Teachers’ Strike Was A Rejection Of Education ‘Reform’

March 15, 2019 Jeff Bryant, Blackagendareport.com Resist! Class Struggle, Colorado, Denver, Education, Education reform, Reform, Strikes, Teachers

Former superintendent of Denver Public Schools Michael Bennet pushed privatization measures as well as changes to the ProComp teacher pay program. “I definitely drank the education reform kool-aid,” recalls Alex Nelson, a Denver teacher who, along with over 5,300 fellow teachers and school support staff, walked off the job earlier this month in a four-day strike that resulted in the teachers having most of their demands met. Now in his sixth year at Denver Public Schools, Nelson is at Bryant-Webster Elementary where he teaches Math, Science, and Spanish to third- and fourth-grade students.

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