Politics & Government

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.

After Donald Trump’s election, Queen Phoenix quickly rose to prominence as a protest organizer. But now she’s disappeared, leaving behind disappointed supporters and a pending trial.

While a legislative fix is underway to Colorado’s undocumented immigrant drivers license program that will open eligibility to more people, the state is sitting on a growing pot of more than $2 million that could be used to cut the significant backlog of requests.

At the exact halfway mark of his six-year term, Gardner is sharpening his voice against Donald Trump as he attempts to appease the independent voters that helped elect him in 2014.

Yesterday, President Donald Trump inadvertently presented a dilemma for U.S. media outlets, whose executives had to decide how they should report about him calling certain African nations “shithole countries” during a January 11 meeting with senators over immigration policy. In the end, many national outlets went into the shithole with Trump, while plenty of local TV stations, including numerous ones in Denver, did not.

At 9 a.m. today, January 10, at the Colorado State Capitol, attendees of a rally are expected to call for the resignation of Representative Steve Lebsock, a Thornton Democrat accused of sexually harassing at least eleven women, including fellow rep Faith Winter and lobbyist Holly Tarry. The group will be led by Erin Hottenstein, a Fort Collins resident whose petition calling for Lebsock to step down has been signed by more than 32,000 people at this writing.

The local chapter of DxE has drawn attention and ire for trespassing on farms and documenting conditions with videos and virtual-reality cameras. The group is known to rescue — or steal, depending on whom you ask — animals that it feels are in danger.

Although politically engaged folks seem to be at odds over just about everything these days, there’s one thing on which they agree: The current system, in which Republicans and Democrats spend a lot more time arguing than getting things done, is a mess. But Unite Colorado aims to change that, at least here, by way of an ambitious plan to back independent legislators who pledge to put the people’s business in front of endless bickering that accomplishes nothing.

New Census estimates released by Election Data Services show that Colorado’s influence in national elections and in the House of Representatives stands to grow after the 2020 Census.

There were 4,647 individual “contacts” in 2017, or interactions that include, at a minimum, law enforcement telling someone violating the ban to pack their belongings and move to another location. That’s down slightly from the 5,055 contacts in 2016, though still significantly higher than the 972 made in 2013, the first full year the law was enforced.

Though he disbanded his voter fraud commission, Trump continues to insist voting systems across the U.S. are rigged. And states continue to push back on his claim.

Representative Jared Polis will both collect petition signatures and go through the caucus and state assembly to try to become the Democratic candidate in the 2018 gubernatorial race.

For the eleventh straight year, attorney Michael Sawaya has a holiday gift for you: He’ll pay for your ride home on New Year’s Eve. He’ll even pay for Uber and Lyft.

While British prudey-pants party poopers continue to push their petition to ban mutton bustin’ at the National Western Stock Show, we’re surprised they don’t have their knickers in a twist over an event that’s a hallmark of gay rodeos around the country: goat dressing.

Drive around Denver and it’d be hard to tell Bernie Sanders lost. His campaign bumper stickers and posters are still on cars and walls around town, nearly two years after the race.