Boulder Weekly 10.29.20

F R E E E v e r y T h u r s d a y F o r 2 6 Ye a r s / w w w. b o u l d e r w e e k l y. c o m / O c t . 2 9 - N o v. 4 , 2 0 2 0

Vote

for People, Planet, Local Power!

— Jigar Shah, Resource Revolution Entrepreneur & Co-Founder of Generate Capital

— Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, Environmental activist, hip hop artist and youth director of Earth Guardians, a worldwide conservation organization

— Junie Joseph, Boulder City Council

— Matt Appelbaum, Former Boulder Mayor

— Boulder Weekly

Vote No on 2C for Cleaner, Cheaper, More Reliable Energy.

Get the facts:

news:

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buzz:

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events:

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Changes to severe weather sheltering program test the County’s homelessness solutions strategy

by Emma Athena

How healing justice reimagines the world

by Angela K. Evans

Virtual and live Halloween events, new art at local galleries, Free Range Dairy’s Story Slam and more to do when there’s ‘nothing’ to do...

by Boulder Weekly Staff

beer:

Dispatches from the Great American Beer Festival

by Michael J. Casey

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feast:

Ku Cha House of Tea owners launch new line of no-additive, flavor-forward canned teas

by Matt Cortina

weed between the lines:

New marijuana disposal rules allow for less waste, easier recycling and greater industry sustainability

by Will Brendza

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departments 5 6 8 9 15 17 21 27 28 29 31 37

Guest Column: Tenants have rights in eviction court. NEWR makes sure they can use them.

Guest Column: Cory Gardner’s economy doesn’t serve Colorado Guest Column: Ma Xcel, things have changed Letters: Signed, sealed, delivered, your views Vote Guide: Our 2020 endorsements New Briefs: Demands for ICE to release detainees; Cal-Wood seeks donations; and more Words: ‘Garden Graves’ by Maggie Saunders Home Viewing: ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ Astrology: by Rob Brezsny Film: Plenty to see at the Denver Film Festival Food/Drink: What to try this week along the Front Range Savage Love: Jealous typologies

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Publisher, Fran Zankowski Editor, Matt Cortina Circulation Manager, Cal Winn EDITORIAL Senior Editor, Angela K. Evans Arts and Culture Editor, Caitlin Rockett Special Editions Editor, Michael J. Casey Adventure Editor, Emma Athena Contributing Writers, Peter Alexander, Dave Anderson, Will Brendza, Rob Brezsny, Sarah Haas, Jim Hightower, Dave Kirby, John Lehndorff, Rico Moore, Amanda Moutinho, Leland Rucker, Dan Savage, Alan Sculley, Ryan Syrek, Christi Turner, Betsy Welch, Tom Winter, Gary Zeidner SALES AND MARKETING Market Development Manager, Kellie Robinson Account Executives, Matthew Fischer, Sami Wainscott Advertising Coordinator, Corey Basciano Mrs. Boulder Weekly, Mari Nevar PRODUCTION Art Director, Susan France Senior Graphic Designer, Mark Goodman Graphic Designer, Daisy Bauer CIRCULATION TEAM Dave Hastie, Dan Hill, George LaRoe, Jeffrey Lohrius, Elizabeth Ouslie, Rick Slama BUSINESS OFFICE Bookkeeper, Regina Campanella Founder/CEO, Stewart Sallo Editor-at-Large, Joel Dyer Cover: Emma Athena October 29, 2020 Volume XXVIII, Number 11 As Boulder County's only independently owned newspaper, Boulder Weekly is dedicated to illuminating truth, advancing justice and protecting the First Amendment through ethical, no-holds-barred journalism and thought-provoking opinion writing. Free every Thursday since 1993, the Weekly also offers the county's most comprehensive arts and entertainment coverage. Read the print version, or visit boulderweekly.com. Boulder Weekly does not accept unsolicited editorial submissions. If you're interested in writing for the paper, please send queries to: editorial@ boulderweekly.com. Any materials sent to Boulder Weekly become the property of the newspaper.

690 South Lashley Lane, Boulder, CO, 80305 p 303.494.5511 f 303.494.2585 editorial@boulderweekly.com www.boulderweekly.com Boulder Weekly is published every Thursday. No portion may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. © 2020 Boulder Weekly, Inc., all rights reserved.

Boulder Weekly welcomes your correspondence via email (letters@ boulderweekly.com) or the comments section of our website at www.boulderweekly.com. Preference will be given to short letters (under 300 words) that deal with recent stories or local issues, and letters may be edited for style, length and libel. Letters should include your name, address and telephone number for verification. We do not publish anonymous letters or those signed with pseudonyms. Letters become the property of Boulder Weekly and will be published on our website.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Tenants have rights in eviction court. NEWR makes sure they can use them.

by Lucy Carlson-Krakoff

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oulder may not be an epicenter of COVID-19 infections, but the virus and economic fallout are upending lives all the same. Almost 20,000 Boulder residents have lost their jobs since March, and thousands of towns and cities across the country face similar circumstances. With moratoriums on evictions set to lift soon and no federal emergency rent relief in sight, millions nationwide are at risk of eviction, including thousands in Boulder.

With or without a global pandemic, fair access to housing is a legal right — including for tenants who are summoned to eviction court. Under the current system, however, tenants do not have a right to legal representation to better understand and negotiate proceedings. This I

is a serious imbalance of power between landlords and tenants that prevents many tenants from exercising — and even knowing about — their legal rights.

The odds are stacked heavily against tenants in eviction court. Less than 2% of tenants summoned to court can find or afford legal representation — not surprising considering that many are facing eviction because they cannot afford their rent. Meanwhile, the vast majority of landlords are armed with legal representation and the protection of professional organizations that lobby on their behalf. Many tenants don’t even get to the courthouse because of the severe financial burdens they already bear. Again, this creates an imbalance of power that favors the landlord over the tenant.

In Boulder, the ACLU of Colorado is fighting alongside the No Eviction Without Representation campaign and other housing justice advocates to challenge unjust evictions by supporting Ballot Issue 2B on the November see NEWR Page 6

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Cory Gardner’s economy doesn’t serve Colorado

By Ron Guillot and James Iacino

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uring these unprecedented times, Colorado needs leaders who can faithfully represent the interests of working and middle-class residents who have been ravaged by the economic fallout from the pandemic.

Unfortunately, throughout his fiveyear tenure, Sen. Cory Gardner has repeatedly shown that he only works on behalf of his wealthy donors, not the Coloradans who elected him into office.

Our state is hurting. For thousands of Coloradans, paying rent and keeping food on the table at the end of the week is a constant struggle. Over 200,000 residents are receiving unemployment benefits and the number is expected to rise in the coming months. However, employment doesn’t guarantee stability. Service workers have seen their hours cut and numerous small business owners are on the brink of closing their doors.

Instead of championing meaningful economic aid, like the HEROES package proposed by House Democrats, Sen. Gardner acquiesced to Mitch McConnell, who purposefully let the package die on the Senate floor. Sen. Gardner had the chance to be a powerful dissenting voice and stand up for the residents and businesses of this state who needed a helping hand to get through this crisis, but he decided to stay quiet and avoid upsetting party leadership. He chose party interest over his voters, and it’s not the first time.

Regardless of where you fall on the socio-economic ladder, this pandemic has laid bare the vast divide between the haves and the have-nots within our state and our nation. However, COVID did not create this problem, it has only exacerbated the inevitable flaws of an economic system rigged in favor of the wealthy few.

During his short time in Washington, Sen. Gardner cast a crucial vote for the GOP tax cuts, which 6

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further accelerated the growing wealth gap in this country. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) provided corporations, billionaires and the top 1% of Americans with the largest government handout in decades, all but nullifying the small tax break working families received by increasing their total share of tax burden.

Republicans guaranteed that this piece of legislation would raise wages and increase investment, but like every promise of trickle-down economics, it never happened. Instead, corporations and businesses took their massive tax windfall and either stored it overseas or decided to buy back a collective $1 trillion worth of their own stock. The only thing working Americans received was bearing a larger share of the tax burden, while receiving a smaller share of the pie.

Today, Sen. Gardner continues to double down on enacting tax cuts for the wealthy. Sen. Gardner strongly supports Colorado Proposition 116, which, if passed, would lower the flat income tax during a massive state deficit, leading to cuts for crucial state services and measly pocket-changelevel savings for most working families. Flat taxes disproportionately shift the burden to middle- and lowerincome earners, and when estimates suggest the state would lose nearly $160 million of revenue, the last thing we should be doing is doubling down on an unequal tax that gives wealthy folks a handout at the expense of our schools and roads.

Ask yourself, are you better off today than before Sen. Gardner and President Trump took office? As people with wealth, we are, thanks to the tax cuts and financial loopholes for high-income earners provided to us by Republican tax cuts. Even throughout the COVID crisis we’ve been nearly unscathed. We’ve taken some minor financial hits, but all in all, the Federal Reserve and the Trump administration see GARDNER Page 9

OCTOBER 29, 2020

NEWR from Page 5

ballot to ensure legal representation for all tenants facing eviction in the City of Boulder. Ballot Issue 2B will also establish a rental assistance fund and an education process that will notify Boulder renters of their rights.

Other cities that have adopted right to counsel measures in eviction proceedings — including New York and San Francisco — have seen reductions in the number of evictions. In securing a universal right to counsel in eviction proceedings, Ballot Issue 2B will ensure that tenants have the tools and knowledge they need to safeguard their rights and help balance power between landlords and tenants.

Losing your home is always devastating, but losing it during a global pandemic is even more dangerous.

Evicted tenants often lose their ability to social distance or shelter-inplace. Many are forced into situations that make it difficult or even impossible to follow CDCrecommended disease prevention guidelines: crowd into the home of a friend or family member, or move into a homeless shelter, where the virus can spread rapidly due to close quarters and limited access to hygiene.

Due to decades of inequalities in our housing system, communities of color and low-income women feel

the impacts of eviction the most — black women in particular. The numbers say it all: Black women are more than twice as likely to be evicted as white people. Less than half of black and Latinx families own their homes compared to 73% of white families.

Income and wealth inequality also put communities of color at higher risk of eviction.

The harms of eviction run deep: having an eviction on your record can make it difficult to secure future housing, since some landlords will not consider a prospective renter who has been evicted in the past. Eviction marginalizes already-vulnerable groups with limited financial means.

The eviction system was grossly unjust before the pandemic. Now is our chance to reform policies that harm vulnerable communities and ensure that all people — regardless of their circumstances or background — have access to safe and stable housing, through the pandemic and beyond. Boulder residents can take a critical step towards ensuring this by voting Yes on Ballot Issue 2B this November.

Lucy Carlson-Krakoff is an ACLU of Colorado volunteer and student at Wellesley College.

This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.

With or without

a global pandemic, fair access to housing is a legal right.

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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OCTOBER 29, 2020

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Ma Xcel, things have changed

by David Takahashi

Our situation is not comparable to anything in the past. It is impossible, therefore, to apply methods and measures which at an earlier age might have been sufficient. We must revolutionize our thinking.

—Albert Einstein, Message to Intellectuals

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reviously I drew a parallel of our current milieu to the rapid switch of transportation from the horse to the automobile (Re: Guest Column, “Xcel Energy, the writing is on the wall,” Sept. 10). Now I will move forward in time to the deregulation of telecommunications in the 1980s and 1990s. The dissolution of the entrenched incumbent telecommunication monopoly spawned a competitive free-market that led to a Digital Revolution: rates became competitive, customer service became critical, the internet, voice over data, cell phones progressing to smartphones, regional carriers and much, much more for much, much less. We are on the brink of Xcel’s transformation into Ma Xcel, and we know what we have to do: Vote No on a 20-year franchise that delays an inevitable clean energy free-market.

Things have changed. Our investor-owned utility made sense in a world where the ginormous central station required massive investment, not in a world where the barriers to

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entry are exceedingly low. The advent of Distributed Energy Resources and falling storage prices are putting control in our hands. Anyone can enter the clean energy market today. I have solar and storage behind the meter; I store energy during the day for load and to use at night, and sell the surplus. I create more electricity than I use annually: When this happens at scale, Pueblo’s coalfired plant’s need vaporizes. Timeof-use disappears, replaced with “surge” retail rates on an open energy market. The adoption at scale is a given as the upward spiral of rate increases makes it clear that we can no longer afford price regulation.

Unfortunately, because I am a captive producer, I cannot sell the surplus on the open market. The central stations, commonly known as “stranded assets,” have become irrelevant and represent unwise investments.

Reentering franchise means the impossibility of applying measures and methods of an earlier age that Einstein reminded us.

We can make the energy investments on our own (either on the roof or in community solar if required).

As a captured customer base, we are paying for the monopoly’s investments on our behalf even when these investments have been in the last century’s business model. A climate emergency is in effect, and clean energy needs to be the new standard. With the marginal cost of renewwables zero, our regulated monopoly is charging us more for choosing clean energy than conventional dirty energy: Is this an incentive to clean up our act?

We are currently free of the franchise and remaining so will hasten our control of rates, investments, community broadband and competitive innovation, thus freeing ourselves to conceive an “Enernet” every bit as revolutionary as the internet. We are entering an era when we might co-create future generation possibilities without historical constraint. At today’s accelerated rate of

THE FUTURE in a

competitive free-market Enernet looks even better than the

landscape we find in

telecommunications.

OCTOBER 29, 2020

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change, entering into 20 more years of servitude is foolish.

The future in a competitive freemarket Enernet looks even better than the landscape we find in telecommunications. You will be able to place as much solar on your property as you wish and be able to sell your surplus to whoever is willing to pay the most for it. Your energy usage will be behind the meter, meaning your home’s energy needs, including that EV, are coming from sunlight hitting your property. Right now, the IBMs, Apples, Microsofts, Googles, Ikeas and Walmarts of the world are ready to become retail producers as well. They wish to ensure system reliability and compete in the retail market to supply energy to subscribers. Competitive pricing on commodity energy we all can participate in is here; it is not equally distributed.

When you own your energy, you own your future. When we consider the harvest from deregulating Ma Bell, we see the potential of freeing ourselves from Ma Xcel. It is our opportunity to own our future. We wish choice. Voting No on 2C is a vote for keeping our options open and our clean, affordable, resilient, equitable and thereby promising future uncluttered by an ill-fitting business model.

This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.

BOULDER WEEKLY

Empower the vision

Voting no on 2C is not just about the Xcel franchise. It is a reaffirmation of a commitment to our energy future.

It is a stand that we will go forward, not backward. Forward to an exciting future that will draw on the innovations that are now entering into the marketplace and those yet to come. A future in which Boulder has 100% renewable electricity by 2030. A future that welcomes electric vehicles with supporting infrastructure within the city. A future in which electric vehicles not only transport us, but also provide storage of renewable electricity.

Storage that can be used to power our homes. A future where a city-wide fiber network communicates with microgrids within the city to move electric power efficiently through its distribution grid and can re-route power when failures occur. And where rates are communicated in real time to smart appliances and charging stations to encourage consumption in times of power abundance and discourage when supplies are diminished. All operating under a local authority whose priorities are those of the community. Where there is no profit on the sale of electricity, where revenues in excess of costs are used to enhance the electrical infrastructure, subsidize energy efficiency improvements, increase renewable energy production and ensure the equitable sharing of the benefits of this enterprise among all of Boulder’s residents. All this while we, as a community, reduce our greenhouse gas production by steadily moving to electrify our transportation, our heating and our cooling systems.

That is my vision of Boulder’s energy future. That is the legacy I want us to leave to future generations of Boulder.

That is why I am voting No on 2C. Steve Whitaker/Boulder

After the smokiest day in two months of smoky days, I feel compelled to introduce the reader to a new trend in public propaganda called “astro-turfing.” Astro-turfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants.

Supporters of Ballot Issue 2C, our community decision on whether or not to tie ourselves to Xcel for another generation, have presented our community with a classic case of astro-turfing.

There is no doubt that Xcel is the primary contributor to our climate emergency by virtue of the way it produces and sources electricity. At the same time, it is the primary benefactor of what 2C supporters’ PR agency has cleverly deemed “The Great Green Deal.” Supporters ridiculously assert that Xcel will get us to our climate goals faster. In fact, whether we’re in or out of franchise, Xcel will continue to embrace advances in renewable energy at the same plodding pace. In fact, its commitment in this franchise agreement to provide 80% GHG emission reductions by 2030 is no better than is already required by state law.

In astro-turfing, as with other propaganda techniques, one need only follow the money. In this case, it’s easy to understand that Xcel would not want to lose the over $20 million in profits it gets from Boulder annually.

The climate imperative for continuing to pursue a 100% renewable electricity future is huge and very real, and the current financial case for local power is compelling. To get the real scoop, please visit empowerourfuture. org/local-power-financial-analysis/ Roll back the astro-turf and get back to grassroots. Vote No on 2C. Susan Peterson/Boulder

The CalWood and the Lefthand Canyon Fires have impacted our community. I want to extend my thoughts and prayers to those who have lost their homes and have been evacuated.

I also want to thank our first responders who have stepped up to keep us safe. The immediate and long-term impacts of these fires are significant.

Both fires are burning close to the creeks that provide us with safe drinking water. As soon as the fires are out, we need to begin post-fire recovery work to ensure our water supplies continue to be clean and reliable.

Protecting our communities and water supplies from wildfire impacts and mitigating future fires requires funding. Today, we lack the resources at a local level to undertake many of these activities. Many disaster recovery resources are managed at a state or federal level and are meant for emergency

response, not long-term resilience.

However, we have an opportunity to increase local funding for the St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District that would go directly toward activities like post-wildfire recovery and pre-wildfire mitigation to protect us from future wildfires.

Ballot question 7A will fund the District’s 5-Point Water Action Plan to protect forests that are critical to water supplies, restore and maintain our creeks and safeguard our drinking water. This new funding can be used to leverage outside grants to protect our watershed. The District has and continues to protect our clean water and healthy creeks. Wildfires will never go away, but we can do more together as a community to prepare for their impacts and protect ourselves and our water supplies.

Christopher Smith, General Manager, Left Hand Water District

GARDNER from Page 6

have bent over backward to ensure that the stock market remains afloat and our investments stay safe.

President Trump and Sen. Gardner’s only priorities are keeping wealthy people like us happy and our wallets fat. But we’re not that easily swayed. This kind of thinking isn’t sustainable and it leaves millions of Americans in the lurch. Working Americans are the engine of our consumer economy and their spending drives growth and pushes us out of economic downturns. Without a robust middle and working class that can afford to spend, our economic recovery will take much longer.

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RE R A B

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Sen. Gardner’s lack of foresight and empathy in 2017 was a clear indicator to why we do not have another stimulus package. His preference for those at the top will not stop, until he and others like him are voted out of office this November.

It’s time to remind Sen. Gardner that his real boss isn’t Trump or McConnell — it’s the great people of Colorado.

Guillot and Iacino are members of the Patriotic Millionaires, concerned about the destabilizing concentration of wealth and power in America.

This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.

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OCTOBER 29, 2020

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Managing scarcity

MARK WAKES UP from beneath underpasses and tree a night spent under a canopies, stuffing sleeping bags bridge in downtown with newspaper, curling into the Boulder. People experiencing homelessness in fetal position, trying to stay Boulder County must naviwarm. Don, who sleeps under the gate a newly consolidated 28th Street bridge, uses so many severe weather sheltering program this winter, offered blankets he’s lost count. Carlos at the Boulder Shelter for has duct-taped cardboard to his the Homeless, pictured old minivan windows and is parked right. east of 55th Street.

This is happening around the rest of the state to varying degrees, too. In Denver, Fort Collins, Aurora, Pueblo — not to mention every other major metro area in the country. The problem of homelessness is not unique to Boulder, but how Boulder is approaching homelessness solutions is somewhat atypical, particularly when it comes to the City’s new plan for severe weather sheltering.

Traditionally, during winter months, additional shelter beds are made available to account for the added dangers that snow and freezing temperatures bring to people experiencing homelessness. This winter, however, there are fewer shelter beds in the system than there have been for years.

For the past three winters, the nonprofit Bridge House ran Boulder’s severe weather sheltering program plus a year-round short-term sheltering program, known as Navigation Services, at a leased location off 30th Street. During this time, Boulder Shelter for the Homeless primarily focused on serving those with disabilities and/or committed to finding stable, permanent housing, though it’s also always sheltered short-term clients, too. When Bridge House’s severe weather shelter beds filled up during the winter, Boulder Shelter would routinely take in the overflow.

Changes to severe weather sheltering program test the County’s homelessness solutions strategy

Story and photos by Emma Athena

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ust after 9 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 25, Mark pokes his head out from his sleeping bag, double-wrapped in a crinkled emergency blanket for extra warmth. He’s lying underneath one of the bridges near Boulder’s main library downtown.

His eyes are squinty, his nose bright red. It’s about 10 degrees out and his breath fogs as he speaks. “My main thing is trying to stay safe and warm,” he says, his voice gravelly: “This is how we live.”

Mark chose this spot to sleep, figuring the bridge would keep him dry. “We can’t be getting wet,” he warns — exposure to moisture exacerbates frostbite and hypothermia, and hastens death.

It’s not that he wants to sleep out here, but after witnessing violence and thefts at shelters, he’s soured on going there for help.

“It’s all due to COVID-19,” he says. After struggling to collect unemployment in Albuquerque this summer, he high-tailed it to Denver, walking part of the way, hitchhiking the rest. And now, here he is, sleeping under a bridge next to Boulder Creek. He says he’ll stay in Boulder until he can figure out his unemployment situation, and he’ll stay under this bridge until the snowstorm stops.

“I don’t want to lose my dry spot,” he says.

People like Mark are scattered all over the city, people wrapped in tarps and blankets and tents, escaping precipitation 10

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

This summer, when the lease on 30th Street expired, the City moved the Navigation Services program into Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, eliminating 50 shelter beds from the system and closing one of the final locations that provided day services in Boulder. Though day services have been historically inconsistent, at present, there’s no place to seek shelter, study, use the bathroom or charge electronics during the day. Hence, people congregate outside.

To prepare for this winter, City staff announced in September the severe weather sheltering program would also be moving to Boulder Shelter for the Homeless.

From December to mid-March, access to severe weather shelter beds will be open every night. (Between October and December, and again mid-March through May, severe weather beds will be open only if overnight temperatures drop below 32 degrees, or 38 degrees with precipitation.) With COVID-19 social distancing protocols in place, Boulder Shelter has rearranged its layout and is currently offering 140 of its 160 total beds — or about half of the 282 beds that were available before the consolidation.

Along with the new location, the policies for severe weather sheltering have also changed this year, limiting each person to 30 nights total, implementing a 7 p.m. curfew and, if there’s more demand than available beds, running a lottery. If someone doesn’t win a night in a bed, “We give them a blanket and a meal to go,” Greg Harms, executive director of Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, explains.

By Harm’s account, the new programming is designed to make the most of available resources and will help keep the system from being overwhelmed. The City plans to educate people about Boulder’s service limitations in hopes that will encourage people to seek shelter elsewhere.

(Those in Longmont can contact the nonprofit Homeless Outreach Providing Encouragement [HOPE] for information on its Emergency Weather Sheltering offerings.)

The consolidation of shelter services in Boulder is part of Homeless Solutions Boulder County (HSBC)’s long-term plan to hyperfocus the region’s resources on affordable and stable housing, and away from more temporary solutions, like shelters.

Since 2017, HSBC has managed the County’s response to homelessness, housing 472 people with this approach, according to the City’s Single Adult Homelessness Services Dashboard. The consolidation of service has reduced operational costs by about $100,000; the severe weather sheltering savings have been allocated to housing services and there are plans to turn the 30th Street location into affordable housing units.

“The truth is a shelter system is a compromise BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

itself from just getting people housed,” says Matthew Meyer, executive director of the MetroDenver Homeless Initiative (MDHI), the regional leader in homelessness reduction work; MDHI works closely with HSBC (and six other metro-area counties) to coordinate services and request federal funding.

“The best thing we can do for folks who are unhoused is provide them with housing,” Meyer says. “If we just get people housed, then we don’t have to be allocating as many resources to these kinds of temporary solutions.”

This thinking encapsulates the national Housing First strategy — use housing to solve homelessness — that both MDHI and HSBC subscribe to (See News, “An incomplete picture,” Aug. 27). With more people housed “you don’t have as much of an issue with the winter time,” Meyer says.

Still, he’s aware of the realities faced in Boulder and the greater Denver-metro region: There are more people who need affordable housing than affordable housing units. “People don’t like seeing people out in the winter, of course, it’s terrible,” Meyer says. “If you don’t want people to be out in the middle of winter, you may want to support that affordable housing project in your neighborhood, because those two are related.”

Historically, Boulder hasn’t welcomed affordable housing projects, Meyer says — despite local success, like the Housing First community located at 1175 Lee Hill. “The minute someone talks about doing an affordable housing project within a given neighborhood, the neighbors are in an uproar about how that’s going to affect their property values,” he says. “I think people need to really think about that, because it is doable. We could sit down in Boulder and many communities and purchase the properties and change the zoning ... and get people housed. You know, it’s not an undoable solution. It’s just that people put up obstacles to it.”

As it stands, “We don’t have enough housing I

OCTOBER 29, 2020

resources for the number of people who are unhoused,” Meyer says. “So in those circumstances, the best thing to do would be to get people into congregate shelters where they can be warm and dry.”

The pandemic has made congregate sheltering difficult, but other communities are trying to respond to this challenge by expanding shelter spaces, not consolidating them. Steve Berg, vice president of programs and policy at the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH), says with the additional coronavirus complexities, many communities are still hammering out operational logistics for this winter sheltering season.

Shelter providers in Nashville are building upon their use of a fairground site, chosen earlier this year to help distance unhoused clients and provide COVID-19 medical attention, by adding a severe weather shelter area to the property as well. In Surrey, a city southeast of Vancouver, Canada, churches are being used to spread-out severe weather sheltering to five smaller locations — and, according to local papers, this’ll be the first winter that service providers plan on keeping shelter spaces open every night instead of only sub-freezing nights. Providers in King County, Washington (which includes Seattle), determined churches, which are typically used for severe weather sheltering, weren’t an option this year, due to a lack of modern ventilation and concerns about virus spread. Instead, the County plans to offer $4 million to nonprofits to make existing shelters safer “by doing things like adding interior partitions in congregate sleeping areas,” according to the Seattle Times. Planning ahead, King County leaders have proposed a new countywide 0.1% sales tax that would be used to buy hotels and other facilities to house chronically homeless people.

Many of these solutions require a hearty combination of funding, staffing, public support, political will and geographic space that can be difficult to wrangle. Meanwhile, rates of homelessness continue to rise, reflected in the continued demand for shelter space in many areas. Last year, Meyer says the Denver-metro region recorded a 300% increase in people seeking shelter during severe weather events.

“We’re concerned that there will be a lot more homelessness because of the economy and because of the coronavirus,” says Berg of NAEH. An analysis by Columbia University based on data correlating unemployment rate and homelessness shows that by the end of 2020 homelessness could increase by as much as 45%. The end of 2020 is also when federal and state eviction moratoriums will expire. And no one wants a repeat of last year’s record-breaking number of unhoused community deaths: Bridge see SHELTERING Page 12

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SHELTERING from Page 11

House reported 48 people died in 2019. One death has already been recorded for this season, after a cold snap in September drove temperatures below freezing overnight.

While homeless advocates in Boulder are concerned about this year’s overall reduction of shelter beds, Vicki Ebner, homeless policy manager for the City, highlights how the new severe weather sheltering plan can expand upon the number of shelter beds available last year.

The very coldest nights, when temperatures drop below 10 degrees or more than six inches of snow accumulates, will trigger the City’s ability to rent around 20 additional hotel rooms for people deemed at-risk of the coronavirus — a practice the Shelter began this spring, giving elderly and vulnerable people their own isolated space, thereby freeing up shelter space for others to use. In addition to hotel rooms already reserved for those at-risk of COVID-19, these additional rooms would combine with the Shelter beds that aren’t pre-reserved by those enrolled in HSBC’s Navigation or Housing-Focused Services — and could total as many as 90 beds.

Ebner says it’s “very uncommon” for all of the program beds to be used, but in the event that they are, there would be no severe weather shelter beds available or set aside.

“Using the hotel as a safety valve, we’re hopeful and fairly confident that we’ll be able to serve most everybody who needs help,” Harms says.

At the Shelter, people will get one no-questions-asked night if they’ve never stayed there before; if they have, then they’ll be required to register in HSBC’s Coordinated Entry program. Most HSBC programs, like the Navigation and Housing-Focused programs, mandate residents meet a six-month residency requirement, but access to severe weather shelter beds will not require it. Anyone can enter the lottery for a bed on a severe weather night.

Ebner says the Housing First approach has made an impact at the Shelter, relieving some of the population pressures and drawing the Housing-Focused Shelter program’s average nightly census down from 104 people in September 2019 to 89 people in September 2020.

Many are hesitatant to celebrate Boulder’s housing-focused work, however, as they argue it helps the few over the many — introducing the need for selectivity into the system, and with it the potential for discrimination and additional psychological traumas.

“The data we do have ... tells us that something like 4,000 people, since 2017, have gone through Coordinated Entry, and a few hundred people have 12

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been housed,” says Darren O’Connor, the criminal justice committee chair for the NAACP Boulder County branch and regional vice president of the National Lawyers Guild. “And while it’s great they have ... placed people at a higher rate than they used to, the majority are still homeless. The majority of people who have come through that system still need a stopgap.”

On Monday, Oct. 26, Boulder Shelter asked everyone to leave by 11:30 a.m., when temperatures hovered between 10 and 15 degrees. Typically residents are required to leave by 8 a.m., when staff head in to disinfect and prepare the dorms for the next night of clients. At 1 p.m. the City opened an “emergency warming center” at the West Age Well Center on Arapahoe Avenue, 3.6 miles from the

beyond just weather needs.”

The City’s new curfew and stay-limit “will change the dynamic of severe weather shelter,” she says, and neither are practices Bridge House would have recommended. During her tenure running Boulder’s severe weather sheltering program, McDevitt says she learned “a curfew is problematic and counter-intuitive.”

Often someone doesn’t realize they need shelter until well past 7 p.m., she says. “Plus, police are picking people up on the street and they often need a place to take somebody who might be at risk. So a curfew, from our experience, especially at that time of night, was not something that we would have done, for those reasons.

“Bridge House has been very consistent in the sense of we do support permanent housing as the goal, but we also think that there needs to be a practical approach to making sure that we have a balanced system and access to life-saving programs, like severe weather shelter.”

More than anything, she adds, “We need to appreciate that [people’s] lives are at risk if we don’t provide at least a temporary option.”

At present, information about severe weather sheltering is disseminated via a hotline people can call, the City and Boulder Shelter websites, email notices to service partners and social media. “Word on the street is probably our best tool, however,” Harms, from Boulder Shelter, explains. He says the 7 p.m. curfew, which has been in place for nonsevere-weather shelter beds for a long time, helps the operation. “Our GREG HARMS, Shelter, where up to 30 people at a time could be executive director of experience has shown that earlier Boulder Shelter for inside. All had to be screened for COVID-19. check-in times lead to fewer behavthe Homeless, says Pop-up services like this are critical when the ioral and safety concerns,” he writes the new programming is designed to via email. need arises, but it’s not best practice, Berg from make the most of NAEH says: “Our thought is that it’s better As for the 30-day stay limit, “We available resources. practice to have shelters open all the time, and to believe that someone who is using be low barrier and anybody can come in who this service for 30 nights shows a wants in.” He says when shelter spaces and willingness to engage with programs warming amenities are weather-triggered rather and sheltering. If we can transition people to yearthan consistent, they can be confusing for unhoused round programs or provide them with diversion serpeople who might not have reliable access to phones vices, we have a better possibility of ending a peror internet service. son’s homelessness,” Ebner explains via email.

More consistency with severe weather shelterOn behalf of MDHI, Meyer applauds HSBC’s ing and day services are two things Isabel response to the coronavirus this past spring — with McDevitt, executive director of Bridge House, has its COVID-19 recovery center that was up and runbeen pushing for years. “Obviously it’s important ning in a matter of days, and success keeping an that people have a place where they can get out of outbreak of the virus out of the Shelter — but there the cold, but also importantly, we see a need for a are elements of HSBC’s current system that “we just place where people can have daytime case managedon’t honor,” Meyer says. That includes HSBC’s sixment, as well as opportunities to look for a job or month residency requirement (implemented in make phone calls or leave their stuff so that they can February 2020) for Navigation or Housing-Focused go to an appointment and have a place to come and shelter, in addition to the severe weather shelter curgo from. We also see the need for day services see SHELTERING Page 14 OCTOBER 29, 2020

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OCTOBER 29, 2020

few and stay limit. These types of policies also go against recommendations from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and HSBC isn’t allowed to use HUD funding in programs with such restrictions.

Meyer questions why Boulder has implemented these requirements, and doesn’t know of any other shelters “that have those kinds of requirements on them.” It’s common for shelters to have entry criteria, “but those tend to be about safety issues and making sure that anyone staying at the shelters isn’t going to endanger anyone else staying at the shelter, and that I can understand.”

Almost all involved agree that more federal funding could go a long way in helping provide more temporary and permanent types of shelter, not only for this winter, but in the future of homelessness mitigation. With budgets stressed, volunteer fleets depleted and unforeseen expenses continuing to accrue in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, “everyone in the homeless service system is managing scarcity,” Meyer says.

O’Connor says it’s important to be intentional with what resources are available. “When we hear we have to save every dollar to put towards housing to maximize the number of people we can house — great. But for a fraction of that, you could alleviate the misery and the danger and the suffering to the majority of people.”

McDevitt with Bridge House agrees. “I think we just need to keep evaluating how we’re doing and really evaluate which policies are working, and have a more fluid approach,” she says. “At the end of the day, there’s always been an acknowledgement that severe weather shelter needs to have a life-saving component, and we should do our best to engage people in more robust programming, but when it’s snowing, when it’s freezing, [preserving life] comes first.”

This concludes a six-part series analyzing how COVID-19 has changed the conversation around homelessness solutions. Reporting for this series was made possible, in part, thanks to the Solutions Journalism Network.

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Boulder Weekly’s 2020

Endorsements

For full analysis of our endorsements, visit Boulder Weekly’s Vote Guide online at boulderweekly.com/special-editions/ vote-guide-2020.

U.S. President: Joseph R. Biden / Kamala D. Harris (D) U.S. Senator: John Hickenlooper (D) U.S. Representative — District 2: Joe Neguse (D) U.S. Representative — District 4: Ike McCorkle (D) CU Regent — District 2: Callie Rennison (D) State Senator — District 17: Sonya Jaquez Lewis (D) State Senator — District 18: Steve Fenberg (D) State Representative — District 10: Edie Hooton (D) State Representative — District 11: Karen McCormick (D) State Representative — District 12: Tracey Bernett (D) State Representative — District 13: Judith Amabile (D) State Representative — District 33: Matt Gray (D) District Attorney — 20th Judicial District: Michael Dougherty (D) (uncontested) Colorado Supreme Court Justice: Retain all Colorado Court of Appeals: Retain all District Court, 20th Judicial District: Retain all County Court Judge: Retain County Commissioner — District 1: Claire Levy (D) County Commissioner — District 2: Marta Loachamin (D) City of Louisville – City Council Ward 3: Kyle Brown (uncontested) Town of Superior Trustees (choose three): Mark Lacis, Tim Howard, Kevin Ryan

Amendment B (Repeal Gallagher Amendment): Yes Amendment C (Conduct of Charitable Gaming): Yes Amendment 76 (Citizen Qualification of Voters): No Amendment 77 (Local Voter Approval of Gaming Regs in Casinos): Yes Proposition EE (Taxes on Nicotine Products): No Proposition 113 (Adopt National Popular Vote): No Proposition 114 (Reintroduction and Management of Gray Wolves): Yes Proposition 115 (Prohibit Abortions After 22 Weeks): No Proposition 116 (State Income Tax Rate Reduction): No Proposition 117 (Voter Approval For Certain New State Enterprises): No Proposition 118 (Paid Family and Medical Leave Insurance Program): Yes City of Louisville Ballot Issue 2A (Single-Use Plastic Bag Tax): Yes City of Boulder Ballot Issue 2B (No Evictions without Representation): Yes City of Boulder Ballot Question 2C (Settlement/Franchise with Xcel): No City of Boulder Ballot Question 2D (Repurpose the Utility Occupation Tax): No City of Boulder Ballot Question 2E (Elect Mayor through Ranked-Choice Voting): Yes City of Boulder Ballot Question 2F (Boulder Arts Commission Charter Amendment): Yes City of Longmont Ballot Question 3C (Revenue Bonds for Funding Water System Improvements): Yes City of Longmont Ballot Question 3D (Charter Amendment to Allow for 30-Year Leases): Yes Sunshine Fire Protection District Ballot Issue 6A: Yes Baseline Water District Ballot Issue 6B: No St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District Ballot Issue 7A: Yes

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OCTOBER 29, 2020

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KEVIN SIPPLE for COLORADO Common Sense for Colorado Candidate for Representative – State House District 13 ABOUT KEVIN SIPPLE

Background in Business - One of founders of Eldorado Artesian Springs, Inc., the bottled water company. Inducted into the Boulder County Business Hall of Fame in 2010, numerous other community awards.

Expertise with Regulatory Agencies, Including the EPA, FDA, CDPHE Also various County and City Agencies including Land Use, Zoning, and Building Departments.

PUBLIC SERVICE

Volunteer in various Boulder County Agencies. 1992-2002 Placement Alternatives Commission, an appointed Board managing seven social services programs designed to keep families together, and Victim Advocate with the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office 2001 to present, a program that provides assistance to victims of crimes, personal tragedies, and natural disasters.

Member of Colorado Organization of Victim Assistance. Member of the Suicide Prevention Coalition of Colorado. Strongly supports the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Member of Colorado Union of Taxpayers.

ISSUES I SUPPORT

Why Vote for Me: I believe that you, not the government, are in the best position to make decisions about what is right for you and your family. It’s not the role of government to dictate or regulate anyone’s personal choices. If elected, I pledge to do my best to keep alive free choice, fairness, and the American Way.

Fiscal Responsibility: The Government should spend our tax dollars wisely. I support sensible spending, no new taxes, and not wasting our money on “showboat” projects.

Rule of Law: Government agencies and officials should follow the law, not their own preferences or laws they’ve made up. If the government won’t follow the Laws, why should anyone?

Law Enforcement: I’m a strong supporter of Law Enforcement.

Defunding the Police is a terrible idea.

Military: I’m a strong supporter of the Military and Veteran’s Services.

Agriculture: I’m a strong supporter of Agriculture.

Environment: I support maintaining strong enforcement of our environmental regulations in order to keep our air, land, and water clean.

I support maintaining the Endangered Species Act. Constitution: I am a strong supporter of the protection and enforcement of our Constitutions.

These documents are a large part of the reason our nation and state are such a good place to live. Fully support the second amendment Energy: I support the development of all forms of energy, Wind, Solar, Hydro, and Fossil Fuels. Fossil Fuels will be necessary until wind and solar power are more developed.

Education: I support school choice and especially school safety.

WHY I’M RUNNING FOR OFFICE

Twenty-eight years ago when I entered public service as a volunteer, I discovered the great personal satisfaction that came from helping people. I consider the pursuit of public office in the State Legislature an opportunity to continue my public service.

www.KevinSipple.com Paid for by Kevin Sipple for Colorado

COURTESY CAL-WOOD EDUCATION CENTER

Varied groups demand ICE release people in detention, citing increase in confirmed COVID-19 cases

C After fire, Cal-Wood seeks donations

T

he Cal-Wood Education Center has used the ponderosa pine forests outside Jamestown as an outdoor classroom. In the recent wildfire named after the center, those ponderosa pine forests were severely damaged, and the group is hoping the community can help support its efforts to rebuild.

“We were struggling to survive the pandemic, and now a fire. 2020 has been truly devastating,” Rafael Salgado, Cal-Wood executive director, said in a statement.

The group says it needs to reseed grasses, plant trees, remove hazardous/ damaged trees, rebuild trails and bridges, and perform soil and erosion control.

Cal-Wood reports that its revenue has been reduced by 70% this year due to program cancellations caused by the pandemic.

It was Cal-Wood staff that reported the fire on Oct. 17. The group manages about 1,200 acres in the area for fire mitigation; about 600 of those acres have been damaged, it reports. The fire is currently at more than 10,000 acres, but thanks to some cooperating weather and efforts by firefighting teams, it is over 75% contained as of Oct. 28. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Go to calwood.org if you’re interested in helping the rebuild efforts.

CU researchers find ice on the moon… maybe

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olorado state legislators, activists, medical professionals and more called on the Colorado Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office Oct. 26 to release everyone in the GEO detention facility in Aurora amid rising COVID-19 cases among those detained and staff members.

There were 34 new cases among detainees in the week before Oct. 21, while two GEO staff members tested positive, according to a report from ICE officials to Rep. Jason Crow’s office. That brings the total number of positive cases among those detained to 111 since March 30. Activists said they suspect the number of COVID-19 cases may be higher than what was reported due to a lack of testing in the facility.

“GEO has put the lives of all of those detained in the Aurora facility and all of those who work there in jeopardy with their inexcusable safety practices. As health care workers ,we know that the only safe way to stop the spread of COVID-19 in ICE detention is to release all people detained.

We cannot stand by as people die in detention,” said Danielle Loeb, a primary care physician at UC Health, in a press release.

48 Colorado state legislators signed and submitted a letter on Oct. 25 asking the ICE field office “to release on humanitarian parole all individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 and all individuals with underlying health conditions that put them at a greater risk of complications with COVID-19, so that they may isolate at a community isolation center, at home with loved ones, or given a voucher to isolate safely at a hotel.”

The lawmakers also cited an ongoing inspection of the GEO facility by state health inspectors, prompted by reports of “moldy food, lack of medical care, lack of sanitary living conditions, and previous disease outbreaks” from those within the facility. The results of that inspection will be submitted to the General Assembly in January, but those who signed onto the letter wrote, “We cannot wait until January to hold GEO accountable to prevent further cases in the facility and save lives from this deadly disease.”

For more information, visit coloradopeoplesalliance.org and afsc.org.

ater could be prevalent on the surface of the moon, hiding in tiny ice patches in permanent shadows. That’s the big news from a study by CU researchers published recently in the journal Nature Astronomy.

“If you can imagine standing on the surface of the moon near one of its poles, you would see shadows all over the place,” Paul Hayne, assistant professor in the Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics at CU-Boulder, said in a press release. “Many of those tiny shadows could be full of ice.”

In some cases, researchers found, the shadows could be no bigger than a penny, but because those shadows exist in perpetual darkness, “cold traps,” as they put them, they can

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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permanently hold ice. The ice would behave like a rock, Hayne said; that is, it wouldn’t go anywhere.

Researchers, using data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, suggest the moon could have as much as 15,000 square miles of permanent shadows, which have never been touched by a single ray of sunlight for billions of years, potentially.

“If we’re right, water is going to be more accessible for drinking water, for rocket fuel, everything that NASA needs water for,” Hayne said.

It should be noted, though, that the researchers can’t yet prove that ice exists in these shadows — future researchers and rovers will have to dig in the shadows to find out for sure.

OCTOBER 29, 2020

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f you live in Boulder County, you’ve probably heard the story of Zayd Atkinson and John Smyly. On March 1, 2019, Atkinson, a Naropa University student, was picking up trash outside his apartment complex, when Smyly, then a Boulder PD officer, stopped and began asking questions. The next several minutes were tense, all caught on the officer’s body cam, as it became increasingly clear that Smyly, who is white, considered Atkinson, who is black, a threat, eventually calling for backup and even drawing a weapon.

The community outrage was swift, as was the City’s response.

Smyly resigned soon after, officials condemning his actions, saying he didn’t follow protocol. Although, he did stay on payroll until January to account for staff accrued paid leave and left with severance.

Subsequent news reports followed City Council’s plan to adopt a new civilian oversight model for the police department, and a $125,000 settlement awarded to Atkinson, with little mention of Smyly.

That is until September, when the NAACP Boulder County branch uncovered that the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office had hired Smyly for a civilian tech support role in January.

The organization was quick to call the situation problematic, quicker still to applaud Smyly’s second forced resignation from a law enforcement agency in as many years — but not without offering to “work with Mr. Smyly using a ‘healing justice’ model that is similar to ‘restorative justice,’” according to a press release.

Healing justice is an increasingly used term in the cultural vernacular of not just criminal justice reform efforts but also in Southern racial justice movements, where it has its roots. But what exactly is it?

“I’m not sure there’s any one definition of it,” says G. Scott Brown, chair of the NAACP Boulder County Healing Justice Working Group, who also runs Active Peace Circles, a community process based in restorative justice practices. “When I think of healing justice, I think of a big umbrella, and my Active Peace Circle is just one thing. [But it all] has in common [the idea] that we have to change the system, we have to recognize that there are beliefs and assumptions that go into these repetitious patterns of harm and abuse, and we have to do our utmost to break those cycles because it’s killing people and it’s killing us as a society.“

Building power

How healing justice reimagines the world

by Angela K. Evans

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

If healing justice is an umbrella, then the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective, along with its cofounder Cara Page, is the manufacturer.

In the early 2000s, Page says, a lot of organizers in the areas of racial, gender, LGBTQ, reproductive and environmental justice in the South were experiencing burnout — depression, grief and loss — from heightened anti-black racism and anti-immigrant, homophobic and Islamophobic violence that was increasing during the Bush presidency, especially after 9/11. “And of course, now that’s accelerated in this current administration,” she adds.

Then in 2005 came hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which hit the Gulf Coast and exposed what a Kindred post on Medium calls “the callous abandonment of people” by the state.

So the Kindred Collective shaped a political framework — building off a lineage of black, indigenous and people of color movements — that seeks collective liberation by addressing collective trauma resulting from generational state and community violence. Healing is achieved by focusing on the psychic, emotional, physical, spiritual, mental and environmental wellbeing of the whole community.

“We’re talking about building power,” Page says. “It’s I

OCTOBER 29, 2020

looking at modalities of healing but also shifting the paradigm of what it means to build infrastructure for care and safety as a political strategy for change.”

Rooted in black feminism idealogy, Kindred’s healing justice is anticapitalist and anti-fascist. And it’s rooted in transformative justice, a philosophy that responds to violence, harm and abuse without perpetuating more violence or reliance on state systems and institutions.

Rather it cultivates “healing, accountability, resilience, and safety for all involved,” Mia Mingus writes at transformharm.org.

Transformative justice, like Kindred’s healing justice, views the world through an abolitionist lens, calling for an end to institutions and systems that Page says are “inherently racist, classist, ableist, homophobic and transphobic.”

“We’re talking about building infrastructure for collective care and safety that does not rely on the systems that exist because they have not been useful to us,” she explains, which includes not just the criminal justice system driven by the prison industrial complex, but also the health care system, driven by the medical industrial complex.

Kindred began by sending integrative care units, a combination of wellness teams and health practitioners, to pro-racial and -migrant justice rallies, which were met with counter demonstrations in the Southeast especially.

The collective also worked with organizers on large campaigns, like those who desperately tried to prevent the execution of Troy Davis, a Georgia man who many say was wrongfully convicted for killing an off-duty police officer. Ultimately, he was executed by lethal injection, and Kindred “came in to hold collective grief and trauma for the organizers in that space,” Page says. Kindred is currently working to both shut down the Irwin Detention Center in rural Georgia as well as provide care and community support for immigrants currently held there, many of whom report horrible conditions, medical neglect and, recently, forced sterilizations that made national headlines.

As Yolo Akili Robinson, founder of BEAM (Black Emotional and Mental Health), recently told Bon Appétit: “Healing justice really says we must reimagine the world.” see HEALING JUSTICE Page 20

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“HEALING JUSTICE … goes deeper, it’s

community-led, it’s community-initiated.”

— G. Scott Brown, NAACP Boulder County

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OCTOBER 29, 2020

HEALING JUSTICE from Page 19

While Kindred created the framework, other political organizers have begun adapting this concept of healing justice into their work as well.

Black Lives Matter uses it in its organizing work against systemic oppression, declaring that creating spaces for healers within activist communities will “continue to be essential to how we sustain ourselves and how we create new ways of being along the way,” according to a toolkit from the BLM Healing Justice Working Group.

Not all healing justice work operates within the same context as the Kindred Collective, however. In recent years, the concept has continued to morph, making its way into criminal justice reform efforts and expanding restorative justice practices.

“The goals are the same, which is to identify the different ways or maybe the similar ways that people were hurt and then to identify how do they move forward both individually and collectively,” says Katie Monroe, executive director of the Healing Justice nonprofit, founded five years ago to address the collective harm caused by wrongful convictions.

The organization hosts retreats for crime victims with their families and exonerated individuals and their families, creating a space for all to share and heal together. Law enforcement and prosecutors are also invited into these conversations, but Monroe says they “haven’t found anyone willing to do it yet.” Healing Justice also holds listening sessions to allow the same people to share their stories in front of policy makers and justice officials in a safe space where “their experiences are honored and not challenged in any way,” Monroe says: “Both the listeners and the storytellers feel changed by that.”

But unlike the Kindred Collective and other social movements that use its healing justice framework, seeking to upend the current system and replace it, Monroe’s nonprofit hopes to bring reform and change by working within the current system. It’s more aligned with the practice of restorative justice, which works to repair harm caused by crime without the punitive measures served by a traditional court process.

In Boulder County, Brown’s Active Peace methodology blends all of this into a process that seeks to address the underlying white supremacy that informs all of our current system. But it does so within the framework of restorative justice, implementing the principles Brown has used for years working with both the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office and Longmont Community Justice Partnership.

“The way I approach healing justice is very consistent with restorative justice, albeit it goes deeper; it’s community-led, it’s community-initiated, it’s not systems-led or systems-initiated,” he says.

The process focuses initially on a specific incident.

“We unpack what happened, what the harm is, and do our best to repair/hear that harm,” Brown says. “In the process we address the deeper underlying root causes and do what we can to break patterns of harm, abuse and violence. So it starts quite specific, but unfolds (depending on the incident) to include systemic issues such as organizational and cultural beliefs, assumptions and patterns. In the end, I hope it will prove to be a way to serve racial healing writ large.”

And this is what’s being proposed to former Boulder PD officer Smyly, although he has yet to accept the NAACP’s offer, Brown says. If he does, Brown doesn’t have any preconceived plan about how exactly the process will go, or what the outcome will be.

But that’s not the point, he says. The goal is to allow people to “come together to speak in a deep, uninterrupted, from-the-heart-kind-of way.” Only then can individual and collective healing begin.

“If we’re going to deal with something like police violence and racial profiling, it’s going to be deep, challenging work. We’re going to have to be very creative, very holistic in meeting people where they’re at,” Brown says. “It really cuts against the grain of our habitual patterns and our enculturation and our white supremacy so much. ... It’s a deep nonviolence campaign, it’s sacred activism.”

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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by Maggie Saunders

To my surprise, there are still three Cardinal Climbers which have bloomed in the chill of mid-October; their regal red trumpet petals open & held high toward the sky, they sound the smell of survival for remaining bird calls; the sweet high pitched chirps & echoing ca-caws, the flowers which still bloom; Cardinal Climbers, Calendula, Daisies, Cape Marigolds & Aztec Marigolds; fill dropping temperatures with the aroma of life still blooming, in an atmosphere of forceful winds which carry the falling toward change; I’ve read the Aztec Marigold is called the flower of the dead, in honor of the slaughtered Aztec People who used to harvest these delicate & vibrantly hued sacred blooms to adorn temples of worship; now, it is used to decorate Mexican Graves; I do not know much about the Ancient Aztecs, let alone my neighbors in Mexico; but I do know death; I know the decay of my father; the first person who taught me how to dig a garden, plant the seeds, water them, watch them grow; 18 years later, & I dug this garden, planted these seeds of Cardinal Climbers, Calendula, Daisies, Cape Marigolds & Aztec Marigolds, I’ve watched them grow; I do know death, & because I know death, I know growth; I see each day how the two are entangled together; carried by the rustle of wind shaking leaves off tree bones; the clicking of dried leaves skipping; the frenetic wave of branches; shakes awake my heart, which is equally yours; my eyes open to the drift of clouds floating in the sea of sky like wisps of driftwood ghosts; I contemplate the stairway to heaven Mom believes in; I contemplate the shapes of the clouds; I feel you kiss my cheek as the wind brushes past; the wind grows louder, your presence grows even more ephemeral; leaves are plucked from tree bones & spiral in the wind like confetti celebrating the anniversary of your passing; I do not celebrate your passing; I celebrate the realization that you are still here; my eyes mesmerized, follow the flow of leaves, find the glow of several Forsythia sprigs still holding on to the bush branch which points up toward the sky like a gallant knight protecting this home; protecting this sacred life; this sacred death; this sacred & ephemeral growth; protecting the memory of my childhood garden, all that grew in that 4x4 plot of backyard; picking and planting seeds, overalls and work gloves, doing the hard work of making memories; & you, doing the hard work of making sure I knew the manifestation of a vision is a power I held in the palm of my eight-year-old hand, sharing snap peas and cucumbers with our neighbor who is now with you, pickling leftover harvest; I’ll pickle these memories if it means I can savor them forever in the palm of my eight-year-old self’s hand; the garden of my childhood home grew next to the Forsythia bush; the garden of my home at 26 grows next to the Forsythia bush; this bush, like a gallant knight, wears sprigs of armor which glow in the sunlight, protecting the Cardinal Climbers, Calendula, Daisies, Cape Marigolds & Aztec Marigolds; protecting the garden bed grave of fallen leaves, the antecedent of vitality for blooming to rise up toward your windblown kiss when it travels back to us in spring; leaves and seeds scattered like celebratory confetti of your eternal arrival; Maggie Saunders is a composition notebook poet, amateur gardener and lifetime learner who lives in Boulder. She wrote this piece in honor of the anniversary of her father’s passing, which was on Oct. 19, as well as to reflect on the closure of the growing season.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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boulderweekly.com OCTOBER 29, 2020

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BOULDER WEEKL INSIDER E NEWSLETTER SENT EVER THURSDA

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events

events

BY BOULDER WEEKLY STAFF

If your organization is planning an event of any kind, please email Caitlin at crockett@boulderweekly.com.

FIVE SHORT FILMS BY AMIR GEORGE.

7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 29, east window, 4949 Broadway, Unit 102-B, Boulder. Price: Free.

Amir George is a filmmaker and curator based in Chicago. He is the co-founder of Black Radical Imagination, a touring program of short experimental films and video, focusing on new stories within the diaspora and the boundaries and limitations historically given to people of color in film. As an artist, George creates spiritual stories and fragmented vignettes populated by characters who tend to dwell outside of social norms. The evening’s programming has a run time of just 11 minutes. The entire program will screen repeatedly between 7 and 9 p.m. This is an outdoor screening, so dress appropriately, wear a mask and bring something to sit on if desired.

THE SPELLBINDER STORYTELLERS SPIN SPOOKY TALES FOR HALLOWEEN PROGRAM.

UKULELOWEEN.

6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 31 via Zoom. Registration required, boulderukulelegroup.com.

Big B.U.G. Circus, presented by the Boulder Ukulele Group, features an evening of ukulele performances sure to surprise and delight on Halloween night. Local and national talent alike will showcase this little instrument of joy and bring you the fun you thought you were going to miss this Halloween, with ukulele bands, a ukulele open mic, strum-alongs, jokes, lessons, dancing and general frivolity. Put on your costume, grab a beverage and some candy and enjoy.

THE MIPSO SHOW.

5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 29.

Tickets are $6. Virtual Event URL: noonchorus.com/mipso.

North Carolina Americana quartet Mipso partnered with independent venues across North America to host this virtual concert experience: $5 from every ticket sold goes directly to partner venues, including the Fox Theatre in Boulder and the Aggie in Fort Collins. Each ticket purchase includes on-demand access for 48 hours post-event. Limited edition merch bundles are also available while supplies last. Mipso will perform new songs for the first time, as well as fan favorites and more.

4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 31 via WebEx. The program is free but advance registration is required.

Once registered, participants will receive instructions on how to join the Webex program, LongmontColorado.gov/Library.

The specially trained dramatic storytellers of the Longmont chapter of the Spellbinder Storytellers will bring some haunted fun to families throughout the community on Saturday, Oct. 31 from 4-5 p.m. The Spellbinders will share all kinds of slightly scary fairy tales and other stories for kids of all ages. Plan to don your costumes, grab some candy and feel some delightful shivers as these storytellers mesmerize you with their tales.

HALLOWEEN @ WOW!

Friday, Oct. 30 to Saturday, Oct. 31, WOW! Children’s Museum, 110 N. Harrison Ave., Lafayette. Tickets: $11 per child; $7 per member child; $6 per adult; free for infants, wowchildrensmuseum.org.

Looking for a safer alternative to Halloween this year? Join WOW! for socially distanced spooky activities, including games, slime to-go, pumpkin painting, a family photo station and more. Come dressed up and collect non-candy treats around the museum. Each time slot is limited to 50 guests. Appropriate COVID face masks are required for ages 11 and up to attend this event — Halloween masks/costumes are not considered protective face coverings.

FREE RANGE DAIRY PRESENTS BOULDER’S STORY SLAM — GRAND SLAM CHAMPIONSHIP (VIRTUAL).

6 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1. Suggested donation: $10-20.

Tickets available on Eventbrite, thedairy.org.

Log in for a laugh-inducing, heart-opening, edge-of-your-seat night of true, fiveminute stories told from the heart — that you get to enjoy while curled up on your couch. The theme for the night is free. Did you ever go dumpster diving? Did you free yourself from the chains of your hometown and head out on the road? Did you judge someone in a judgment-free zone? All the story slam winners from the last year will come back to face off for the Grand Slam Title. Hosted by Johanna Walker with guest musician and co-host Hal Walker, multi-instrumentalist of TikTok fame. If you are unable to donate but would still like to attend this event, please email Shay Wescott at swescott@thedairy.org. see EVENTS Page 24

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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OCTOBER 29, 2020

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ART

EVENTS from Page 23

‘I STILL EXIST’: GRAPHICS BY RENÉE MILLARD-CHACON AND MICAELA IRON SHELL-DOMINGUEZ.

ART ‘DRAWING PARALLELS’: COMMUNITY ART & ARTIFACTS FROM 2020.

Opening Nov. 1. east window, 4949 Broadway, Unit 102-B, Boulder, eastwindow.org.

Through November.

Artists Renée Millard-Chacon (founder of Womxn From The Mountain) and Micaela Iron ShellDominguez (director of operations for International Indigenous Youth Council) created I STILL EXIST to raise awareness around missing and murdered indigenous women and girls who have been victimized as a direct result of corporate environmental exploitation and degradation. This installation demands corporations assume liability and work to redistribute wealth to communities affected by negligent and criminal actions.

Opening Oct. 30. Museum of Boulder, 2205 Broadway, Boulder, museumofboulder. org. Through March 2021.

Drawing Parallels invites viewers to explore the relationships among simultaneous, sweeping events — from world wars to movements for civil rights to pandemics — in Boulder’s past and present. Drawing Parallels cuts through the onslaught of today’s news to discover how people in the past dealt with concurrent historic moments and to present contemporary perspectives on 2020 from local artists, frontline workers and community members.

NEST AND FIREHOUSE WINTER RESIDENCY: JENNIFER COLE AND AMY HOAGLAND.

Opening Nov. 1. Firehouse Art Center, 667 Fourth Ave., Longmont, firehouseart.org. Through February 2021.

The Firehouse Art Center and the Nature, Environment, Science & Technology (NEST) Studio for the Arts have announced a new partnership for the upcoming winter and summer residencies at the Firehouse. University of Colorado Boulder graduate students Jennifer Cole and Amy Hoagland will use this art installation to study psychological experiences of art. Cole is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, and Hoagland is an MFA student in the Department of Art and Art History. They are collaborating together to create a site-specific art installation featuring an artificial natural environment, based on a shared interest in how people relate to nature.

heavy

rotation

by CAITLIN ROCKETT “BLUE,” NEWDAD

Taking cues from the hazy guitars and breathy vocals of mid-aughts indie rock (à la Silversun Pickups), Irish rockers NewDad measure the growing distance between two people in their new single “Blue.” With one mired in the bitumen of depression, neither feels they can move forward: “While you took your time, you wasted mine / I said I wanted you / You said you felt too blue / And while you were making up your mind / I lost mine.”

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“MY BABY JUST CARES FOR ME,” LOU HAYTER

Lou Hayter first found recognition as the keyboardist for the New Young Pony Club in the midaughts as the wave of the nu rave scene crested.

Hayter went on to make new wave sounds with Nick Phillips as the New Sins, and sassy French pop in the duo Tomorrow’s World with JB Dunckel (from the electro space-pop duo Air). Now she’s set to release her first solo album in 2021. This first single showcases Hayter’s penchant for spaced-out synths and playful language: “You speak in English but your kiss is French,” Hayter cheekily tells her lover.

When her lover has to go, Hayter parties out her blues with her friends: “No sweat, ’cause we’re tight like that.” see EVENTS Page 26

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

EVENTS from Page 24

“THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS,” NABIHAH IQBAL

Nabihah Iqbal blends shoegaze vocals with a moody bassline on this second single from the Chalo compilation by The Jazz Diaries. The collection features artists from South Asia (Iqbal’s parents immigrated to the U.K. from Pakistan in the ’80s) and benefits the Human Rights Law Network and Zindagi Trust. Iqbal — who DJ’d around London under the moniker Throwing Shade for many years — is a multi-instrumentalist with a degree in ethnomusicology. Her debut album, 2017’s Weighing of the Heart, moves between jazz, new wave and house, reflecting Iqbal’s diverse proclivities.

“TRY TO REACH ME,” SOFIE

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Sofie Fatouretchi is perhaps best known for her monthly SOS Radio program on online radio station NTS. Classically trained on violin and viola, there’s immense breadth and depth to her musical interests, as evidenced by her eclectic Boiler Room DJ sets.

Her first album, Cult Survivor, takes a ’60s dream-pop approach, with lyrics that reflect Fatouretchi’s education in psychology and philosophy: “Try to reach me lately / I’m always around / Doesn’t matter if you think I don’t wanna be found.”

“SKYDANCE,” LXURY

With winter just around the corner, “Skydance” offers a heater for the dance floor wherever you can make one. In the vein of producers like Four Tet, Londonbased Lxury (Andy Smith) has made a name for himself with prismatic house tracks, often using obscured vocals to create texture rather than broad strokes. He forgoes the vocals but puts all four on the floor with this clean, effervescent cut from his newly released EP Trinity Lounge.

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HOMEVIEWING ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’

by Michael J. Casey

G

eoffrey is not Geoffrey.”

Well, on the outside, Geoffrey is Geoffrey, but Elizabeth (Brooke Adams) knows something’s off with her husband. It’s a spousal sixth sense: They can tell with a simple hug if you’re happy or sad, anxious or calm. When Elizabeth hugs Geoffrey, she recoils.

Matthew (Donald Sutherland) might be a little too happy hearing this. He’s in love with Elizabeth, and this might be the window he’s been waiting for. If only Matthew knew the truth.

Truth is, Geoffrey’s been replaced. Space goo that floated across the galaxy has settled on Earth — San Francisco to be specific — in the form of attractive flowers. Those flowers intoxicate people and produce large pods that replicate them identically. Once the individual falls asleep, the pod people siphon off what’s left and take the victim’s place. All that remains from the original is a large dusty pile of dryer lint.

Released in 1978, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was the second time Hollywood adapted Jack Finney’s 1955 novel. The previous incarnation — released in 1956 and directed by Don Siegel — was a Cold War classic. Most saw the emotionless dupes as an allegory for communism, though a few wondered if the criticism was pointed in the wrong direction. Might these mind-numbed masses stand-in for McCarthy-era groupthink?

That fear takes a much deeper root in the 1978 version, directed by Philip Kaufman from a screenplay by W. D. Richter. In this version, the presence of a surveillance state only adds to the willies. Blank faces watch Matthew and Elizabeth’s every move, compromised government officials are always one step ahead, and no one knows who’s been duped and who hasn’t until it’s too late.

Talk about effective. And the lion’s share of the credit goes to the late, great cinematographer Michael Chapman who died Sept. 20, 2020, at the age of 84.

He gives Body Snatchers a profound layer of unease. Everything looks displaced and unnatural. From rat droppings found in a soup to telephone cords retracting into walls like snakes lying in wait. Then there’s the city of San Francisco: Victorian houses built on steep hills exaggerate canted angles, crooked shadows engulf claustrophobic spaces, fog shrouds what’s right in front of us, dampness permeates everything — it’s tailor-made for terror.

Few cinematographers were better adept at finding the sinister corners of a city like Chapman. Just a few years before, Chapman shot Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, another tale of terror (for vastly different reasons).

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a little more Halloween-friendly. It’s unnerving, no doubt, but there’s a touch of humor courtesy Leonard Nimoy and Jeff Goldblum (playing a psychiatrist and a poet, respectively). They hold the horror at bay long enough for all hope to slip away. By that time, neighbor has turned against neighbor, loved ones become strangers, and the faceless mob has consumed all. As Kevin McCarthy warns: “They’re already here. You’re next.”

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, The Criterion Channel, DirecTV, Hoopla and Showtime.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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“The Boulder Mountainbike Alliance ran ads recently in the Boulder Weekly to promote our annual Membership Party and Colorado Gives Day. The campaign was a huge success and BMA raised $34,320 - all going towards improving Boulder County’s trail system! The Boulder Weekly ads led to additional awareness of BMA and played an important part in this extraordinary fundraising campaign. Thanks Boulder Weekly!”

Wendy Sweet President, Board of Directors Boulder Mountainbike Alliance

BY ROB BREZSNY ARIES

MARCH 21-APRIL 19: Reed Galen is an American

political consultant who has worked long and hard for conservative causes. But in next week’s election he opposes conservative Donald Trump, whom he regards as an authoritarian tyrant. He writes, “Democracy is on the ballot. It’s a binary choice between good/bad, honorable/dishonorable, healthy/sick, forward/backward. There has been nothing like this in our lifetimes.”

If you’ve read my words for a while, you know I’m a connoisseur of ambiguity and uncertainty. I try to see all sides of every story. But now I’m departing from my tradition: I agree with Galen’s assessment. The American electorate really does face a binary choice between good and bad. I also suspect, Aries, that you may be dealing with a binary choice in your personal life. Don’t underestimate how important it is that you side with the forces of good.

TAURUS

APRIL 20-MAY 20: Taurus politician Dan Coats has

belonged to the conservative Republican Party all his adult life. He served in the U.S. Congress for 24 years, and later as President Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence. Since leaving that office, Coats has criticized his ex-boss. He has said, “Trump doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie.” In accordance with astrological omens, I urge you to be fiercely non-Trump-like in the coming weeks. It’s crucial to the welfare of you and yours that you tell the whole truth.

GEMINI

MAY 21-JUNE 20: Many stories that were popular

long ago are still studied today. One example is the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, originally told during the first century BC. Another is Homer’s epic tale The Odyssey, which harkens back to the sixth century BC. I have no problem with learning from old tales like these. It’s important to know how people of previous eras experienced life. But for you in the coming months, I think it will be crucial to find and tell new stories — tales that illuminate the unique circumstances that you are living through right now.

CANCER

JUNE 21-JULY 22: I’m surprised when I hear that

fans of Donald Trump enjoy my horoscopes. My political views, which are deeply aligned with my spiritual philosophy, have always been very progressive. And I’ve never hidden that fact. How can someone who appreciates my ideas also like Trump, a vile bully who has unleashed enormous cruelty and chaos? If you yourself are a Trump fan, I understand that after reading the preceding words, you may never read my words again.

But I need to follow my own astrological advice for us Cancerians, which is: Be bold and clear in expressing your devotion to the ideals you hold precious. For me that means supporting Joe Biden, an imperfect candidate who will nevertheless be a far more compassionate, intelligent and fair-minded leader than Trump.

LEO

JULY 23-AUG. 22: Dionysus was the ancient Greek

god of drunkenness, ecstasy and madness. His followers were inclined to immerse themselves in those states. Yet as historian Robert Parker points out, Dionysus himself “was seldom drunk, seldom mad.” His relationship with his consort Ariadne was “dignified and restrained,” and “smiling tranquility” was his common mood. I recommend that in the coming weeks you act more like Dionysus than his followers — no matter how unruly the world around you may become. The rest of us need you to be a bastion of calmness and strength.

VIRGO

AUG. 23-SEPT. 22: Virgo military expert Jim Mattis

enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps when he was 19 years old. Forty-three years later, having been a Marine all his adult life and a general for six years, he retired. Later, he served under President Donald Trump as the U.S. Secretary of Defense. After leaving that position, Mattis testified that Trump was “dangerous” and “unfit,” adding that Trump “has no moral

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compass.” Be inspired by Mattis, Virgo.

Do your part to resist the harmful and unethical actions of powerful people who affect you. Be extra strong and clear in standing up for integrity.

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LIBRA

SEPT. 23-OCT. 22: “Feeling too much is a hell of a

lot better than feeling nothing,” declares Libran author Nora Roberts. I trust you will see the wisdom of that perspective in the coming weeks. On the downside, there might be some prickly, disorienting feelings arriving along with the rich flood of splendor. But I’m convinced that most of the surge will be interesting, invigorating and restorative — although it may take a while for the full effects to ripen. And even the prickly, disorienting stuff may ultimately turn out to be unexpectedly nurturing for your soul.

SCORPIO

OCT. 23-NOV. 21: Scorpio politician Joe Biden

wasn’t my first choice for president of the United States. During the selection process, I championed his opponents Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. But now I support Biden wholeheartedly. He has several policies I don’t agree with, but on the other hand I know it’s critical that we Americans ensure he replaces the appalling, corrupt, incompetent Trump. In the coming days, I advise you Scorpios to also consider the value of wise and pragmatic compromise in your own sphere. Don’t allow a longing for impossible perfection to derail your commitment to doing what’s right.

SAGITTARIUS

NOV. 22-DEC. 21: The United States has suffered terribly

from COVID-19. Of all the world’s countries, it has had more cases and more deaths. Why? One major reason is President Donald Trump. He has consistently downplayed the seriousness of the disease, has advocated many unscientific cures, and has been lax and erratic in supporting the therapeutic measures that virtually all epidemiological experts have recommended. It’s no exaggeration to assert that Americans will reduce their coronavirus misery by electing Joe Biden as president.

In this spirit, and in accordance with astrological omens, I invite you to meditate on how you could reduce any and all of your own personal suffering. The time is right. Be ingenious! Be proactive!

CAPRICORN

DEC. 22-JAN. 19: “By my love and hope I beseech

you,” pleaded philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “do not cast away the hero in your soul! Hold holy your highest hope!” That’s always good advice, but it’s extra crucial for you now. You will generate good fortune for yourself by being in close connection with the part of you that is bravest and wisest. The people whose lives you touch will have a special need for you to express the vitalizing power of intelligent hopefulness. More than maybe ever before, you will be inspired to cultivate your heroic qualities.

AQUARIUS

JAN. 20-FEB. 18: I’ve been writing my horoscope column for a long time, and it has evolved dramatically. One aspect that hasn’t changed is that every four years, I’ve endorsed a candidate for the president of my home country, the United States. Another unchanging aspect is that I regularly reveal my progressive views about political matters. Some people who have only recently discovered my writing express dismay about this. “I don’t want politics with my horoscopes!” they complain. But the fact is, politics have permeated my horoscopes since the beginning. Now I urge you to do what I just did, Aquarius, but in your own sphere: If there are people who are not clear about who you really are, educate them.

PISCES

FEB. 19-MARCH 20: “The worse the state of

the world grows, the more intensely I try for inner perfection and power,” wrote Piscean author Anaïs Nin during World War II. “I fight for a small world of humanity and tenderness.” I encourage you to adopt that perspective for the rest of 2020. It’s an excellent time to respond boldly to the outer chaos by building up your inner beauty. I also suggest this addition to Nin’s formula: Call on your resourceful compassion to bolster the resilience of your closest allies.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

SCHRAMM FILM

Seven shorts and a feature Plenty to see at the Denver Film Festival

by Michael J. Casey

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f you’ve frequented film festivals in the past, then you ON THE BILL: Both the Shorts 1: know the highlight of any fest can be found in the short Narrative package film packages. And this year’s Denver Film Festival is and ‘Undine’ are no exception. You can find more than 80 programmed playing the virtual into specific blocks: Animated, Avant Garde, Colorado Denver Film Festival until Nov. 9, dff.

Spotlight, Documentary, Narrative, Student Shorts and more. eventive.org.

This week, we’ll focus on the Shorts 1: Narrative collection — seven shorts, all of them good, three of them great: Lance (In a Neck Brace), the story of a young man trying to get over a failed relationship with the assistance of an audiobook; White Eye, a stolen bicycle reveals a world broken by intolerance; and Exam, a sister becomes her brother’s drug mule. Looking to get the most bang for your festival buck? Start here.

Moving now to feature-length fare, Undine — the latest from German filmmaker Christian Petzold — is a curious little mystery about one woman, two men and a whole lot of water.

Derived from the Latin word for wave, unda, Undine is a water nymph in European mythology, which ought to clue you in to what kind of character Undine (played by Paula Beer) is. She’s a historian by trade — the city of Berlin is her métier — and she’s in love with two men: Johannes (Jacob Matschenz), who we learn little about, and Christoph (Franz Rogowski), a diver who maintains a dam turbine in the mountains outside of Berlin.

Christoph is the more smitten of the two. Maybe because every time he dives, he sees an ancient stone arch with the name “Undine” painted on it.

Who painted the name, when they painted it and why remains a mystery.

He also sees an enormous catfish in the reservoir. Whether or not anyone beyond Christoph can see the catfish is up to the viewer.

Undine may not be a direct movie, but it is an engaging one — and a bit mischievous. Petzold makes viewers ask a lot of questions but refrains from giving them too many answers. The clue, if there is one, might lay in the movie’s central metaphor: Berlin. Thorough the film, Undine lectures tourists about the city, its history and its architectural makeup. As she points out, Berlin is oblique by design. A museum built in the 21st century is meant to look like an 18th-century palace repurposed. A century worth of regime changes allowed for foreign influence. Citizens can travel through centuries by merely walking across the street. It’s as if time has collapsed in on itself. For example, when Christoph returns to Undine’s apartment, he finds another couple living there. We’ve been here for months, they tell Christoph. But Christoph points to a wine stain on the wall; he made that when he knocked a glass off Undine’s nightstand just a few weeks ago.

Some movies have unreliable narrators; Undine plays more like an unreliable narrative. It may not have the profundity of Petzold’s previous films, Phoenix and Transit, but it’s a transfixing work that pulls you down deep.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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Ferris Brie-ller @ Lindsay’s Boulder Deli

LINDSAY’S BOULDER DELI. 1148 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-443-9032, lindsaysboulderdeli.com

LINDSAY’S BOULDER Deli is a local staple, and it’s made the switch to pandemic service seamlessly. There’s a well-stocked case of to-go meals, and there’s plenty of room to socially distance while ordering and eating; and it’s the eating for which we go back to Lindsay’s time and again.

On a recent visit we chose the Ferris Brie-ller, an ultra-satisfying sandwich comprised of turkey, brie, sliced apples, arugula and pesto jam.

Stuffed onto a crusty ciabatta roll — you choose 1/4 or 1/2 pound of meat to determine just how stuffed everything is — it’s a well-balanced sandwich, with salty and funky cheese, tart and crispy apples, peppery arugula and savory turkey.

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1 Drink this: Coors’ Barmen Pilsner NAMED AFTER ADOLPH Coors’ birthplace in Germany, Barmen Pilsner was first brewed by the Golden-based brewery in 1997 for a select few. Restaurants that carried the beer had to commit to serving it in specific glassware and honor the “seven-minute pour,” allowing the lager to build a beautiful, whipped-cream-like head of foam. Finding it on tap was rare, and packaged was non-existent — until now. Coors has released a specialty mix-pack: Batch 19, Banquet and Barmen, available in liquor stores across Colorado for the remainder of the year.

This is not the 2020 release to skip. Follow the proper pouring directions on the can, aim for the full seven minutes, and you’ll produce a crystal-clear honey-hued liquid topped with a head of meringue-like foam. The nose is sweet and clean with a touch of fresh-cut grass. The flavor has a hint of grain and a pop of bitterness behind a blast of earthy malt and tangy hops. It’s phenomenal — the kind of beer you’ll want to enjoy daily.

BOULDER WEEKLY

TRY THIS WEEK:

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Boulder County Farmers Markets offers year-round produce BOULDER COUNTY FARMERS MARKETS (BCFM) will close all of its in-person markets by Nov. 21, but for the first time in the organization’s 30-year history, it will offer sales of produce and packaged goods from local growers and makers throughout the winter. A pandemic’ll do that, we suppose. Produce and packaged goods will be available via curbside pickup and delivery, which BCFM Executive Director Brian Coppom says are systems the organization was able to hone this year amid stay-at-home and social distancing orders. Delivery available exclusively in Denver starting Nov. 2, with Boulder County markets offering curbside pickup throughout the winter.

More info at bcfm.org.

OCTOBER 29, 2020

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Went the fest well?

Dispatches from the 2020 Great American Beer Festival

by Michael J. Casey

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virtual beer fest? How’s that gonna work?”

So went the refrain once the Brewers Association announced that their crown jewel, the annual Great American Beer Festival, was moving from a three-day, four-session, in-person soiree to two nights of virtual events and a livestreamed award ceremony. The Brewing Network (a multi-media broadcasting website) would host.

There would be a live DJ, brewer talks, seminars on glassware, cooking demonstrations and beer tastings. On the plus side, you could participate from anywhere and tickets were significantly cheaper. On the downside, beer was not included.

And so it went with any festival scheduled in the time of the pandemic. But while a virtual film/book/music festival can at least capture the essence of why people would gather for such an event, this year’s virtual GABF proved that Zoom has its limits.

There was one component, however, that remained the same: awards.

2020 was the 34th time brewers were awarded gold, silver and bronze medals in specific categories. And this year, the BA welcomed 8,806 beers from 1,720 breweries — a sizeable number and, considering that the judging process had many COVID-era restrictions in

place, not an easy feat.

From those 8,000-plus entries, 115 beer judges narrowed it down to 272 award winners from 240 breweries in 91 categories. (See sidebar for Colorado results).

The announcement of the winners on Friday, Oct. 16, kicked off the festival proper and was followed by five segments (another five segments broadcasted on Saturday, Oct. 17) that

ranged from 10 to 30 minutes each.

Connections weren’t great, and multiple participants led to more than one person trying to talk over each other. Toss in one too many proclamations of “how much we miss seeing you all in Denver,” and GABF felt more like a happy hour Zoom call with your parents than a beer fest.

It’s been a tough year for brewers, tougher, maybe, for the BA. The loss of

revenue from events like GABF, the Craft Brewer Conference and Savor forced staff layoffs.

But the BA only represents the direction brewers take; it does not dictate them. And right now, that seems to be a holding pattern. Sales at the breweries are down, but to-go and package sales are up. Margins are thinner there, but with some assistance from the Paycheck Protect Program, ease on evictions and plenty of goodwill from the beer community, the doomsday closures predicted this spring have largely been sidestepped — at least for now. There’s a general, if unquantifiable, assumption among brewers and drinkers that the chickens will come home to roost, probably in early 2021. To borrow a line from one presidential candidate, “We’re about to go into a dark winter.”

At least the BA gave it a shot. While they haven’t released an official number of participants of this year’s virtual fest, the viewer counter in the corner of each broadcast indicated that only a few hundred were watching — as opposed to the tens of thousands who have attended GABF in years past. There are some things a high-speed internet connection can’t replace; it appears that a beer fest is one of them. A pity — beer without community is just a beverage.

Hardware for the state, hardware for the County

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f the 272 medals awarded this year, Colorado brewers netted 26 medals, eight of them gold — a little more than half of 2019’s haul (40 total medals, 13 of them gold).

Zero in on Boulder County and the number drops to four: Wibby Brewing in Longmont took home gold for its Volksbier Vienna in the American Amber Lager category; The Post Brewing Co. in Lafayette claimed bronze for Dry Stout in the Stout category; Sanitas Brewing Co. in Boulder nabbed silver for Déluge in the Mixed-Culture Brett Beer category; and Avery Brewing Co. won gold for Liliko‘i Kepolo in the Fruit Wheat Beer category.

Look for reviews of all four in future editions of Boulder Weekly.

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BOULDER WEEKLY

T Can-do attitude

Ku Cha House of Tea owners launch new line of no-additive, flavor-forward canned teas

by Matt Cortina

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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he pandemic has forced many in the local food industry to adapt… quickly. Qin Liu and Rong Pan, the husband-and-wife founders of Ku Cha House of Tea, have leaned into that change, launching a new line of canned iced teas brewed from some of the Japanese and Chinese wholeleaf teas they carry in their stores.

It’s a slight pivot that may prove crucial as we enter a third spike of the virus.

“Any day Governor Polis can ask [us] to close down,” Pan says. “So for the business to be more resilient, we need more channels.”

The pandemic was the “kick” Pan and Liu needed to launch their new line. It was something the CU Leeds School of Business grads always wanted for their growing company, which now has locations in Fort Collins and Cherry Creek in addition to its flagship Boulder location, but hadn’t gotten to yet. Sometimes necessity creates the best opportunity, and so this July, Pan and Liu started brewing and canning batches in a commercial kitchen.

Pan says the packaging process was too time-intensive, so they partnered with Full Metal Canning in Longmont to produce an initial line of five teas: organic Sencha green, Golden Monkey black and Summer Tranquility white, as well as jasmine oolong and a kombucha made from it.

Each can has nothing in it but water and tea — no additives, save for the kombucha, which requires sugar for fermentation. By tasting each, you wouldn’t know it, though.

“There is absolutely nothing added to it other than tea because we want the tea to be the star,” Pan says. “If the tea is good enough, you don’t need anything else to cover it up.”

Ku Cha’s initial line is proof of Pan’s diagnosis that, “to put it mildly” most iced teas are disappointing — loaded with sugar to cover up inferior tea. If you’ve ever stopped in to Ku Cha for a tea ceremony (pre-pandemic, of course), for a to-go cup or for a bag of loose-leaf, then you know they’re using choice tea leaves sourced from around the globe. And if you’ve had the pleasure of chatting with Pan or Liu, you know they have a sommelier-level knowledge of tea, as the beverage has been elemental in their lives since they were young, growing up in China.

That expertise all comes through in the canned teas. The Sencha green tea is herbal, with a pop of lemongrass and a buttery undertone. The Golden Monkey, a prized style of Chinese black tea, is malty and chocolaty. The white bursts with peach and apricot, the jasmine oolong is packed with that recognizable flavor and the kombucha made from it is well-executed.

Liu says iced teas pair well with plenty of foods: Sencha green with sushi; golden monkey with burgers or brats; jasmine oolong with Middle Eastern or Indian fare; and the Summer Tranquility white with fried chicken.

The plan, Pan says, is to test the market with these flavors (you can currently get cans at any Ku Cha location, with more third-party retailers coming on board soon) and to expand the line with some unique flavors of tea, like plum or cherry.

So, yes, the canned teas are a way to “have some product readily available to reach our customers” in the event of another stay-at-home order, Pan says. But given how well-executed Ku Cha’s canned teas are, it’s easy to imagine these offerings, and more, on grocery shelves across the county long after the pandemic is gone.

OCTOBER 29, 2020

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point before the six-month mark, ITALIANE, you blew up at him about a waitress or someone he follows on Instagram. And at that moment he realized he Dear Dan: I’ve been in a relationship couldn’t tell you he works with a wonderful guy for the past year. The with a woman he used to fuck. Because only problem is that he works with a girl he now he feared — because now he knew — used to fuck. It wasn’t just sex — they you would lose your EJP shit over it would go on dates and even went on because he’d seen you lose your EJP shit vacation together. He kept this little “detail” over far less. to himself for six full months before giving The only thing more exhausting than himself away by mistake. He then apolobeing with an EJP is dealing with an EJP gized, said he hadn’t told me so that I who resents you for hiding something from wouldn’t worry for no reason, and that he them — something like working with an ex no longer has any feelings for her whatso- — that would set them off for days or ever. Disclaimer: I’m an extremely jealous months. I get it, I get it: he kept this from person with huge trust issues, so knowing you. But if the last six he kept all this from me is ROMAN ROBINSON months (!) are proof of anydevastating. I no longer trust thing, ITALIANE, they’re him. Just thinking that he’s proof your boyfriend was seeing — on a daily basis right to keep this from you.

— a woman he used to Since changing jobs wasn’t sleep with is driving me an option and since he can’t nuts! I repeatedly asked him jump in a time machine and to let me meet her in pergo un-fuck this woman, what son, at the very least, but it other option did he have? didn’t happen. So one night, Given a choice between tellafter giving him a heads-up, ing you and spending the I showed up at their worknext six months dealing with place. He had said it would your bullshit or keeping his be OK for me to stop by mouth shut and hoping you sometime, but once I got there he freaked never found out, he quite understandably out. He accused me of not trusting him! chose the path of least bullshit.

My question: Am I being crazy and overreIf you can’t see how your own behavacting — I’ll admit I’ve been agonizing ior may have contributed to his omission non-stop about this — or is he acting like — and if you can’t forgive him and you an asshole with something to hide? I’ve can’t take, “No, I’m not fucking her now,” been struggling to curb my anxiety about for an answer and you refuse to see this this, and I’ve even had a few panic attacks as your problem, not his — then do your he’s not aware of. Him changing jobs is boyfriend a favor and dump him. If you out of the question. don’t and if you keep this shit up, if you —I’m Terrified About Losing It And keep saying you can’t trust him one minNuking Everything ute and then complain about him accusing you of not trusting him the next (?), be Dear ITALIANE: How long were you prepared to have your ass dumped. dating this guy before you outed yourself Because there’s only so long a person, as an extremely jealous person (EJP)? guilty of wrongdoing or not, will put up I’m guessing at least a few weeks, with an EJP’s bullshit.

ITALIANE, if not a few months. Because as And finally: your boyfriend was under you’re no doubt aware — as all EJPs are no obligation to disclose the current location aware — it’s not a desirable trait, which is of every girl he’d ever fucked at the start of why very few EJPs disclose on the first your relationship, ITALIANE, or at any other date. (“I grew up in Milan, I have two sispoint, for that matter. While some people ters, and I’m the type of person who’ll show can be open with their partners about their up at your workplace and cause a huge pasts and their partners can be open with scene if I think you might be fucking some- them, it’s not compulsory. And if someone one else or have ever fucked someone wants to try and make it work with an EJP, else.”) If you’re anything like EJPs I’ve it’s not a good idea. I don’t know why anydated and dumped, you didn’t show your one would want to make it work with an boyfriend this side of yourself until long EJP, ITALIANE, but there are people out after he’d developed feelings for you, mak- there who do. Your boyfriend might be one ing it harder — harder by design — for him of them. But don’t push your luck. to end things.

On the Lovecast, Emily Bazelon from I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess Slate’s Political Gabfest, savagelove.com. he found out his new girlfriend is an EJP Send questions to mail@savagelove. before you found out your boyfriend works net, follow Dan on Twitter @fakedansavage with a woman he used to fuck. At some and visit ITMFA.org.

BY DAN SAVAGE

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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Call 720.253.4710 All credit cards accepted No text messages

OCTOBER 29, 2020

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Alternate routes

New marijuana disposal rules allow for less waste, easier recycling and greater industry sustainability

by Will Brendza

A

sk people in the cannabis industry what their top priorities for marijuana sustainability are and you’re going to hear a lot of talk about waste. From the biomass waste that comes out of cannabis grows to the plastic childproof containers that products are required to be packaged in, waste is abundant on both the producer and consumer ends of the market.

When the Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED) released a survey to cannabis businesses this year about sustainability, waste was again a prominent theme. But it’s something that can be readily addressed, according to Kaitlin Urso, small business consultant for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE).

“We kind of felt like it was the low hanging fruit,” Urso says. “Waste was a really easy, tangible problem that rose to the top as a priority for the industry.”

Subsequently, after a recent rulemaking hearing, the MED rolled out new exemptions for biomass disposal and package recycling tactics. They’re new rules that stand to greatly improve the sustainability of Colorado’s cannabis industry, while also saving growers money and even creating new resource streams.

Like composting marijuana biomass. Currently, Colorado’s growers are legally required to dilute their organic waste with an equal amount of other garbage materials, like coffee grounds, sand, glass, bleach, oil, sawdust, shredded paper and plastics in order make it “unrecognizable.”

That’s to prevent illegal diversion, Urso explains.

“The idea is is by mixing it with 50% non-marijua-

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na waste, it’s then rendered ‘unusable and unrecognizable,’” she says.

Just in 2019, Colorado’s cannabis industry generated 3,650 tons of marijuana biomass waste, according to the CDPHE: that’s stalks, trimmings, roots and unusable leaves and nuggets. Not only does the 50% rule literally require growers to double the amount of waste coming out of the state’s cannabis grows, but it also makes all 7,300 tons of it non-compostable. The landfill is the only viable destination for it.

Now there’s another option. Thanks to the MED’s new exemptions, cannabis producers can now compost their biomass.

“It’s going to save producers processing fees and staff time without having to manage all this waste and grind it up and make sure that it’s in a 50-50 ratio,” Urso says.

It will potentially halve the amount of waste growers are required to dispose. They’ll also have the organic plant-matter left over to reuse as fertilizer or sell to another agriculturalist.

Another sustainability option for the cannabis industry involves a process known as anaerobic digestion.

“It’s basically where you just put composting waste inside of a box,” Urso explains. “Then, not only do you recover the nutrient value, but you can also recover those waste gases and use them as commodities.”

Anaerobic digestors create new resource streams for cultivators in the form of methane and CO2 released by the composting process. Those gasses

OCTOBER 29, 2020

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are captured, stored in containers and can then be either reused on-site or sold to a third party.

Other new exemptions to the 50% rule include pyrolyzing the waste into biochar, which, when added to soil, allows plants to consume and convert more CO2, stimulating growth; and biomass gasification, which converts biomass into hydrogen or other gas products without combustion. All of these alternate routes for biomass represent sustainable disposal options and generate resources instead of unrecognizable landfill content.

The exemptions address the issue of waste on the consumer end of the cannabis industry as well.

Due to the psychoactive nature of THC products, they are required to leave dispensaries in a child proof plastic containers, which, Urso says, are so small they aren’t easily recovered at recycling facilities.

“So, even though consumers might be putting them in their recycling bins, they may not actually end up getting recycled,” she says.

Earlier in 2020, the state legalized “take-back programs,” that allow dispensaries to accept returned cannabis containers for recycling. However, Urso explains, the law required that the collection bins be situated back within the retail space.

“They were where consumers didn’t have access to them, essentially,” Urso says. “So how would they know that they could recycle their packaging if they didn’t even see the place to return it?”

The MED’s new exemptions have changed that.

Now those collection bins can be placed in plain sight, right in the waiting room where they can be seen and used.

These new exemptions represent a huge step forward for sustainability within Colorado’s cannabis industry.

“This was kind of a win-win-win for everybody,” Urso says. “[These changes] are going to be good for the community, they’re good for the environment and for these businesses. It’s just positive all around.”

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