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news:

Project Censored’s Top 10 stories show missing patterns in corporate news

by Paul Rosenberg, Random Lengths News

buzz:

Pianist Erik Deutsch on stepping away from Leftover Salmon, collaborating with banjoist Andy Thorn and landing a big gig

by Dave Kirby

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music:

23

art:

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feast:

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weed between the lines:

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Daniel Rodriguez didn’t get nominated for a Grammy, but he’s definitely making a hip-hop album

by Caitlin Rockett

Susanne Mitchell explores the legacy of colonization at east window exhibit

by Caitlin Rockett

Japango to give away $100K in gift cards to front-line workers and more food news

by Matt Cortina

Report outlines how to build an environmentally sustainable cannabis industry

by Will Brendza

departments 5 6 7 22 26 27 29 31 33

‘Unhoused’ podcast: Episode 5 — A tiny house, a big step The Anderson Files: After defeat, far right contemplates insurrection Letters Signed, sealed, delivered... your views Events: Flashlight candy cane hunt in Lafayette, Lyons Frozen Parade, CU Boulder Holiday Festival and more Astrology: by Rob Brezsny Savage Love: Losing out Film: Science meets drunken fun in ‘Another Round’ Food/Drink: What to try this week along the Front Range Beer: The time is right for Belgian beer

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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DECEMBER 3, 2020

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We’re here for you.

Our flooring experts are available to call, email, or chat through you favorite app. Connect with us today, and we’ll bring beautiful floors right to you door: or at carpetone.com

Don’t lose your benefits Many vision insurance plans renew on January 1st. And some of us have FSA funds that have to be used by the end of the year. Don’t lose your 2020 benefits.

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Call to schedule an eye exam or to see if we can help you use your benefits in a physically distanced manner.

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DECEMBER 3, 2020

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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 Contributing Writers, Peter Alexander, Dave Anderson, Emma Athena, Will Brendza, Rob Brezsny, Michael J. Casey, Sarah Haas, Jim Hightower, Dave Kirby, John Lehndorff, Rico Moore, Amanda Moutinho, Katie Rhodes, 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, Anson Stevens-Bollen December 3, 2020 Volume XXVIII, Number 16 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

‘Unhoused’ Episode 5: A tiny house, a big step

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iny home communities across several American cities like Detroit, Los Angeles and Portland have helped alleviate homelessness, but the idea has been slow to catch on in Colorado. The Veterans Community Project (VCP) has successfully housed and served homeless veterans in Kansas City, Missouri, by designing and building tiny home villages which partner with existing local organizations to provide wraparound services to help keep people off the streets. Now, the organization is breaking

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ground in Boulder County for its latest project, but are micro communities for non-vets even a possibility given neighborhood push-back and a lack of political will?

From Boulder Weekly and KGNU, join host Emma Athena as she analyzes how COVID-19 has changed the conversation around tiny homes as a solution for the unhoused. Episode 5, “A tiny house, a big step,” is available Thursday, Nov. 3. Find it at boulderweekly.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

DECEMBER 3, 2020

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After defeat, far right contemplates insurrection

by Dave Anderson

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ack in August, I was startled ists with planning “terrorist attacks” to read a lengthy New York on politicians, asylum-seekers and Times article — “Body Bags Muslims. They allegedly were going and Enemy Lists: How Farto mimic the March 2019 attack on Right Police Officers and two mosques in Christchurch, New Ex-Soldiers Planned for ‘Day X’” — Zealand, which left 51 people dead about a thwarted fascist insurrection and 40 injured. in Germany.

Eleven of the men, arrested in The story by Katrin Bennhold countrywide raids in February, are began: “Güstrow, Germany — The accused of being members of a “terexhausted. plan sounded frighteningly concrete. rorist organization” and violating gun Al Jazeera reporter Michael The group would round up political laws. The 12th alleged conspirator Colborne writes that the European enemies and those defending migrants was charged with supporting a “terfar right quickly echoed Trump’s false and refugees, put them on trucks and rorist group.” Authorities claim that claims of election fraud. The most drive them to a secret location. their goal was “destabilizing and ulti- hardline elements “openly hope for “Then they would kill them. mately overthrowing” Germany’s violence, chaos and destabilization in “One member had already government.” the wake of Joe Biden’s win.” bought 30 body bags. More body Meanwhile, Trump’s ambassador In Serbia, the neo-Nazi group bags were on an order Serbian Action said, list, investigators say, “The only gain for along with quicklime, Serbia, Europe and which can be used to humanity, in connecSteve Bannon went on a grand tion with the [post] mask the stench of buried corpses.” election situation in worldwide tour to create a transnational far-right The plot originatthe U.S.A. would be ed in a nationwide the destabilization movement. He proclaimed that the “tide of history chat network for soland disintegration of diers and others with this criminal-monster is on our side.” But the far right stumbled. far-right sympathies. state, which is curBennhold wrote the rently, unfortunately, alleged conspirators unlikely.” included active army Back in 2018, forreservists and police officers as well to Germany, Richard Grenell, mer Trump White House chief stratas “a doctor, an engineer, a decorator, sparked a storm of outrage when he egist Steve Bannon went on a grand a gym owner, even a local fisherman.” told Breitbart that he wanted to worldwide tour to create a transnaSome of the group, including the “empower” the far-right parties in tional far-right movement. He proleader, are members of the far-right Europe. claimed that “the tide of history is on party Alternative for Germany, Grenell was just doing what The our side.” which has become the third largest Donald wanted. Trump’s election in But the far right stumbled. They force in the national parliament.

2016 was a big boost to European far have faced defeats in elections, are As it turns out, German authorirightists. In January 2017, French mired in scandals and are engaged in ties have been investigating the coun- far-right leader Marine Le Pen fighting each other. During the pantry’s underground far-right scene for declared, “We are experiencing the demic, the mainstream parties have some time. There have been a numend of one world and the birth of benefited from a “rally around the ber of recent alarming events such as another.” flag” sentiment. The Alternative for the murder of conservative local poliTrump’s defeat this year is a Germany party at first acted like tician Walter Luebcke in June 2019 crushing disappointment. Le Pen Trump, but that backfired. and an attack on a synagogue in the was asked if she would recognize Chancellor Angela Merkel’s response city of Halle in October 2019.

Joe Biden as the next U.S. presito the pandemic has made her very In November 2020, German fed- dent. She said “absolutely not” until popular. eral prosecutors charged 12 far right- all of Trump’s legal challenges are Financial Times columnist Janan

BACK IN 2018,

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DECEMBER 3, 2020

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Ganesh argues that since there is less immigration during the pandemic, the far right has lost its biggest issue.

But he says that in the long-term the pandemic might boost the far right.

“Economic insecurity, and a stronger focus on the nation-state and its borders, could help them.”

However, Bannon might not be able to exploit this opportunity. In August, the supposed populist was arrested aboard a $35 million, 150foot yacht. He was charged with defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors to a private fundraising effort called We Build the Wall.

In November, Bannon posted a video online suggesting that Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be beheaded.

Bannon said, “I’d put the heads on pikes. Right. I’d put them at the two corners of the White House. As a warning to federal bureaucrats: Either get with the program or you’re gone.”

Was Bannon just trolling? The FBI director he wants to behead said that America’s worst domestic terrorist threat is “racially motivated violent extremism” by white supremacists.

Militiamen are alleged to have plotted to kidnap and execute Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. That was a backup plan to a more ambitious “Plan A” to assemble 200 armed “patriots” who would take over the state capitol building and then hold televised executions of officials.

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

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

To the County Commissioners, Re: Gross Reservoir I am against the expansion of Gross Reservoir. It would require cutting down thousands of trees.

Trucks and tractors would drive miles every day putting out enormous amounts of carbon dioxide. It would disturb residents that live near the highways where trucks pass daily. It would also disturb abundant wildlife in that area. The project will use enormous amounts of energy.

Instead I think we need to address our lifestyles and make some changes and be more conservative with water. Folks can get toilets that use less water for reasonable prices these days. And, “If it’s clear, leave it here, if it’s brown flush it down,” is a motto at my house. (Editor’s note: We like to “if it’s yellow, let it mellow.” To each their own.) Turning off the faucet while brushing teeth or shaving, being conscious of water for dishes, gardens. Perhaps xeriscape instead of maintaining grass lawns. It may be time for fewer golf courses.

In the 1970s here in Boulder, when there were low snow years, restaurants would only give you water if you asked for it. The EPA and EcoCycle state that over 40% of our greenhouse gases come from the way products are extracted from the earth, produced, transported and even dispose of, and that striving for zero waste is one of the easiest and quickest ways to fight climate change.

Educating ourselves on what is recyclable and compostable as contamination continues to be the biggest problem with zero-waste.

(Contamination is putting the wrong items in the wrong bins. If a bin is too contaminated it ends up in the landfill.) We all share this planet and we all need to be fighting climate change every day to ensure a future for our children!

Laurie Dameron/Boulder

Unprecedented un-presidenting We live in unprecedented times.

Between a global pandemic and an unprecedented un-presidenting, the U.S. is in the world spotlight. While we lead the world in infections and deaths, we also lead the world in BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

presidential self-denial. Trump has refused to concede the election to President-elect Biden. I hope I’m not the only one that sees the irony of the Electoral College votes being the same as 2016, in reverse. Pop quiz: When is a landslide not a landslide? When you’re the loser!

Oh, I forgot: Electoral College plus 6 million more popular votes. Ouch!

Trump started casting doubt on the election way before it happened.

His ex-wife, Ivana, told Vanity Fair in 1990 he kept a copy of My New Order, speeches of Adolf Hitler, in a desk drawer (although he asserted it was Mein Kampf). From the book: “His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.” Sound like anyone we know?

Regarding COVID-19, apparently making up stories about a virus that has killed over 250,000 people in the U.S. so that a large group of folks won’t believe it’s real, is just part of the narrative. No worse than the flu, and masks don’t work.

Repeat.

With potential good news about vaccines, Geraldo Rivera puckered up and said, “Why not name the vaccine ‘The Trump?’” Talk about a jinx! Remember Trump failures with steaks, vodka, casinos, an airline, a university. Don’t forget a banned charity.

I’d like to see a new vaccine, one that prevents Trumpism. Seventy-two million people appear to be infected.

(Editor’s note: more than 74 million at press time.) I believe it’s spread subliminally via Fox, Breitbart, Newsmax and Rush Limbaugh.

Perhaps wearing a mask or holding your nose while listening can slow it down. Until then, try earplugs.

Craig S. Chisesi/Rifle

Siren song England has a long and deep traI

dition of acting and theater which carries into its political arena.

Marshall McLuhan (Understanding Media, still an essential read) pointed out the difference between the physical “staging” of the French and British Parliaments, the French a pluralistic semicircle, the British a strictly delineated bipolarity sitting in opposition, a carefully constructed stage set perfect for theatrical oratory. Tony Blair clearly misread his audience when he promoted the Brexit vote and underestimated the antipathy of Europe’s acceptance of multiple political parties in need of coalition and compromise, and Britain’s embrace of a bipolar, essentially Marxist, division of Labor and Capital, winner take all. “Bipolar” is now a recognized psychic condition of a persona divided against itself, at one time this, at another that, always in conflict. Such is the legislative state in America today, the parties sitting on opposite sides of “the aisle,” each locked in the information bubble of its choice, with ever a backstage siren song promising consolidated, autocratic, one-party power and rule. It is all written in the script.

Robert Porath/Boulder

Humanity over greed “Humanity over greed” is my personal philosophy. I’ve seen it both through observation as well as in my own personal life.

First off, looking at the economic environment as it is now is very disturbing. We have people who have stressful work hours with the fear of being fired for running a minute late. It certainly affects traffic.

According to the Colorado Department of Transportation’s Fatality Report, there have been a total of 558 deaths within the state.

(Editor’s note: This number comes from 2018. There were 545 fatalities in 2019 and, thus far, 495 in 2020.)

The highest of these numbers were reported within Colorado’s State Region 1, which is the Denver Metro Area that, sadly, reported 214 total fatalities. If more people weren’t having to work long hours, then our roads would be safer.

Secondly, I would love to be able DECEMBER 3, 2020

to not need money to survive. The places I loved working at are the places I volunteered and worked for free. This mindset is how I truly wanted to work.

Thirdly, with COVID having damaged modern society as we know it, it may be time to take a look at how to fix our culture and economy.

Our politicians use us as nothing more than piggy banks for their own greed. But if money meant nothing, then these career politicians would be forced to not only solve the problems, but actually have individuals who are there to help, not for their greed. As bad as it sounds, anarchy would probably solve a lot of our nation’s problems.

In conclusion, I believe our culture needs to focus more on the human element as a priority, and categorize money as tools. We would be a less stressed and more connected society.

Patrick Glover/via internet

Veganism saves lives JBS slaughterhouse in Greeley was cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for failing to protect employees from COVID-19. The negligible fine wasn’t enough to stop the slaughterhouse from calling high-risk employees back to work.

Many people fear that the agency’s scant oversight and lax penalties are putting slaughterhouse workers at risk. News reports indicate that nearly 43,000 U.S. slaughterhouse employees — in 498 slaughterhouses — had tested positive for COVID19 by the end of September. More than 200 of them died, and OSHA issued only two small fines.

Let’s not wait for officials to protect slaughterhouse workers — and animals — from suffering and death.

We can do it ourselves by opting for vegan foods instead of animal-based ones.

Meat, eggs and dairy “products” are not essential. We can enjoy tasty vegan foods, and slaughterhouse workers can join the growing vegan food industry. Visit www.PETA.org for more information and a free vegan starter kit.

Heather Moore/PETA I

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ANSON STEVENS-BOLLEN

Project Censored’s Top 10 stories show missing patterns in corporate news

By Paul Rosenberg, senior editor, Random Lengths News

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very year since 1976, Project Censored has performed an invaluable service — shedding light on the most significant news that’s somehow not fit to print. Censorship in an authoritarian society is obvious, from a distance, at least. There is a central agent or agency responsible for it and the lines are clearly drawn. That’s not the case in America, yet some stories rarely, if ever, see the light of day, such as stories about violence against Native American women and girls, even though four out of five of them experience violence at some point in their lives, overwhelmingly at the hands of 8

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non-Native perpetrators.

“I wouldn’t say that we’re more vulnerable,” Annita Lucchesi, a Southern Cheyenne descendant and executive director of the Sovereign Bodies Institute, told The Guardian.

“I’d say that we’re targeted. It’s not about us being vulnerable victims, it’s about the system being designed to target and marginalize our women.”

And, the media erasure of their stories is part of that same system of targeting and marginalization. While journalists everyday work hard to expose injustices, they work within a system where some injustices are so deeply baked in that stories exposing DECEMBER 3, 2020

them are rarely told and even more rarely expanded upon to give them their proper due.

That’s where Project Censored comes in.

“The primary purpose of Project Censored is to explore and publicize the extent of news censorship in our society by locating stories about significant issues of which the public should be aware, but is not, for a variety of reasons,” wrote its founder, Carl Jensen, on its 20th anniversary.

Thus, the list of censored stories that’s the centerpiece of its annual book, State of the Free Press | 2021 doesn’t just help us to see individual

stories we might otherwise have missed. It helps us see patterns — patterns of censorship, of stories suppressed and patterns of how those stories fit together.

This year, for example, among its top 10 stories there are two stories about violence and victimization of women of color, including the role of media neglect: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (introduced above) and Underreporting of Missing and Victimized Black Women and Girls.

There are similarities as well as differences between them and being able to see them both together in

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Project Censored’s list helps us see them both more fully as distinct, yet connected stories.

There are also three stories concerning the media itself (Monsanto “Intelligence Center” Targeted Journalists and Activists; Shadow Network of Conservative Outlets Emerges to Exploit Faith in Local News; and Revive Journalism with a Stimulus Package and Public Option); there are two climate change stories about overlooked causes and risks (U.S. Military — A Massive, Hidden Contributor to Climate Crisis; and Rising Risks of Nuclear Power Due to Climate Change) while a third (Congressional Investments and Conflicts of Interest) had a climate change component — senators’ fossil fuel investments; and two related to income inequality (Inequality Kills: Gap between Richest and Poorest Americans Largest in 50 Years, about the problem itself; and The Public Banking Revolution, about a promising way to support a more equitable economy).

There are also further climate change threads woven through these stories — a highlighted connection between the extractive fossil fuel industry and violence against Native women, as well as an unmentioned connection via Monsanto’s employment of FTI Consulting, which has been heavily involved in climate disinformation warfare.

The stories listed below are only part of what Project Censored does, however. State of the Free Press | 2021 has chapters devoted to other forms of obfuscation that help keep censored stories obscured. There’s a chapter devoted to “Junk Food News,” meaning cheaply produced stories focused on celebrityhood, industry-generated buzz and other trivia in place of substantive investigative journalism, and another devoted to “News Abuse,” meaning genuinely important topics presented through a distorted lens or two.

There’s also a chapter devoted to “Déjà Vu News,” tracking previous Project Censored stories to update them and track whether they’ve gained some of the wider attention they deserve. And the chapter “Media Democracy in Action” highlights BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

individuals and organizations engaged in building a more inclusive, equitable and democratic society. So, if the Top 10 stories summarized below leave you hungry for more, Project Censored has all that and more waiting for you in State of the Free Press | 2021.

1) MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN AND GIRLS “In June 2019 the Canadian National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released its final report, which received widespread news coverage in the United States,” Project Censored

notes. “U.S. corporate news outlets have provided nearly nothing in the way of reporting on missing and murdered Indigenous women in the United States.”

That’s despite a problem of similar dimensions and complexity, along with the election of the first two Native American congresswomen, Deb Holland and Sharice Davids, who, Ms. Magazine reported, “are supporting two bills that would address the federal government’s failure to track and respond to violence against indigenous women [and] are supported by a mass movement in the U.S. and Canada raising an alarm about missing and murdered indigenous women and girls (MMIWG).”

Four in five Native women experience violence at some time in their lives, according to a 2016 survey by the National Institute of Justice, cited in an August 2019 Think Progress report.

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“About nine in 10 Native American rape or sexual-assault victims had assailants who were white or Black,” according to a 1999 Justice Department report.

“Although the number of Native Americans murdered or missing in 2016 exceeded 3,000 — roughly the number of people who died during the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attack — the Justice Department’s missing persons database logged only 116 cases that year,” Think Progress noted.

“The sheer scale of the violence against Native women and the abysmal failure by the government to adequately address it, explains why the

munities in the United States often lack jurisdiction to respond to crimes.”

This was partially remedied in the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, known as VAWA, but “it left sex trafficking and other forms of sexual violence outside tribal jurisdiction, YES! magazine reported.”

The House voted to expand tribal jurisdiction in such cases in its 2019 VAWA reauthorization, but, Ms. reported, “The bill is now languishing in the Senate, where Republicans have so far blocked a vote.”

Another facet of the problem explored by YES! is the connecLORIE SHAULL tion between the extractive fossil fuel industry and violence against Native women. The Canadian report “showed a strong link between extraction zones on the missing and murdered women crisis in Canada,” YES! noted. “It specifically cited rotational shift work, sexual harassment in the workplace, substance abuse, economic insecurity and a largely transient workforce as contributing to increased violence against Native women in communities near fossil fuel infrastructure.”

“It creates this culture of using and abuse,” said Annita Lucchesi, executive director of the Sovereign Bodies Institute. issue was given such prominence dur- “If you can use and abuse the water ing this week’s presidential candiand land, you can use and abuse the dates’ forum in Sioux City — the people around you too.” first to focus entirely on Native Project Censored concluded, “As a American issues.” result of limited news coverage, the But even that didn’t grab media United States is far from a national attention. reckoning on its crisis of missing and There are multiple complicating murdered Indigenous women and factors in reporting, tracking, investi- girls.” gating and prosecuting, which were explored in coverage by The Guardian 2) MONSANTO “INTELLIGENCE and YES! magazine, as well as Ms. CENTER” TARGETED JOURNALISTS and Think Progress.

AND ACTIVISTS “Campaigners, including the In its fight to avoid liability for Sovereign Bodies Institute, the Brave causing cancer, the agricultural giant Heart Society, and the Urban Indian Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) Health Institute, identify aspects of created an “intelligence fusion center” systemic racism — including the to “monitor and discredit” journalists indelible legacies of settler colonialand activists, Sam Levin reported for ism, issues with law enforcement, a The Guardian in August 2019. lack of reliable and comprehensive “More than 18,000 people have data, and flawed policymaking — as filed suit against Monsanto, alleging deep-rooted sources of the crisis,” that exposure to Roundup [weedkillProject Censored summed up. “As see PROJECT CENSORED Page 10 YES! magazine reported, tribal comDECEMBER 3, 2020

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PROJECT CENSORED from Page 9

er] caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and that Monsanto covered up the risks by manipulating scientific data and silencing critics,” The Hill summarized. “The company has lost three high-profile cases in the past year, and Bayer is reportedly offering $8 billion to settle all outstanding claims.”

“Monsanto adopted a multipronged strategy to target Carey Gillam, a Reuters journalist who investigated the company’s weedkiller,” The Guardian reported.

This took place while also targeting Neil Young (who released a 2015 record, The Monsanto Years), and creating a massive, multi-million dollar spying and disinformation campaign targeting journalists writing about it, as well as scientists and advocates exposing the risks its product posed.

Creating a covert army of seemingly neutral allies to attack its critics was central to Monsanto’s strategy.

The Guardian’s report was based on internal documents (primarily from 2015 to 2017) released during trial. They showed that “Monsanto planned a series of ‘actions’ to attack a book authored by Gillam prior to its release, including writing ‘talking points’ for ‘third parties’ to criticize the book and directing ‘industry and farmer customers’ on how to post negative reviews.”

In addition, Monsanto paid Google to skew search results promoting criticism of Gilliam’s work on Monsanto, and they discussed strategies for pressuring Reuters with the goal of getting her reassigned. The company “had a ‘Carey Gillam Book’ spreadsheet, with more than 20 actions dedicated to opposing her book before its publication.” They also “wrote a lengthy report about singer Neil Young’s anti-Monsanto advocacy, monitoring his impact on social media, and at one point considering ‘legal action.’”

The entire pool of journalists covering the third trial was also targeted in a covert influence operation, Paul Thacker reported for The Huffington Post. A purported “freelancer for the BBC” schmoozed other reporters, trying to steer them toward writing stories critical of the plaintiffs suing Monsanto. Their curiosity aroused, they discovered that “her LinkedIn account said she worked for FTI 10

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Consulting, a global business advisory firm that Monsanto and Bayer, Monsanto’s parent company, had engaged for consulting,” and she subsequently went into a digital disappearing act.

“FTI staff have previously attempted to obtain information under the guise of journalism,” Thacker added. “In January, two FTI consultants working for Western Wire — a ‘news and analysis’ website backed by the oil and gas trade group Western Energy Alliance — attempted to question an attorney who represents communities suing Exxon over climate change.”

Nor was FTI alone.

“Monsanto has also previously employed shadowy networks of consultants, PR firms and front groups to spy on and influence reporters,” Thacker wrote. “And all of it appears to be part of a pattern at the company of using a variety of tactics to intimidate, mislead and discredit journalists and critics.”

“Monsanto officials were repeatedly worried about the release of documents on their financial relationships with scientists that could support the allegations they were ‘covering up unflattering research,” The Guardian noted.

At the same time, they tried to attack critics as “anti-science.”

“The internal communications add fuel to the ongoing claims in court that Monsanto has ‘bullied’ critics and scientists and worked to conceal the dangers of glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide,” it summed up.

“Monsanto’s campaign to monitor and discredit journalists and other critics has received almost no corporate news coverage,” Project Censored notes.

A rare exception was a June 2019, ABC News report which nonetheless “consistently emphasized the perspective of Monsanto and Bayer.”

3) U.S. MILITARY — A MASSIVE, HIDDEN CONTRIBUTOR TO CLIMATE CRISIS It’s said that an army travels on its stomach, but the Army itself has said, “Fuel is the ‘blood of the military,’” as quoted in a study, Hidden carbon costs of the ‘everywhere war’ by Oliver Belcher, Patrick Bigger, Ben DECEMBER 3, 2020

Neimark and Cara Kennelly, who subsequently summarized their findings for The Conversation in June 2019.

The U.S. military is “one of the largest polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries,” they wrote.

If it were a country, it would rank as “the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.”

Studies of greenhouse gas emissions usually focus on civilian use, but the U.S. military has a larger carbon footprint than any civilian corporation in the world.

“The U.S. military’s climate policy remains fundamentally contradictory,” their study notes.

On the one hand, “The U.S. military sees climate change as a ‘threat multiplier,’ or a condition that will exacerbate other threats, and is fast becoming one of the leading federal agencies in the United States to invest in research and adoption of renewable energy [but] it remains the largest single institutional consumer of hydrocarbons in the world [and] this dependence on fossil fuels is unlikely to change as the U.S. continues to pursue open-ended operations around the globe.”

While the military has invested in developing biofuels, “the entire point of these fuels is that they are ‘drop-in’ — they can be used in existing military kit — which means that, whenever convenient or cheaper, the infrastructure is already in place to undo whatever marginal gains have been made in decarbonisation.”

Things will only get worse.

“There is no shortage of evidence that the climate is on the brink of irreversible tipping points,” the study notes. “Once past those tipping points, the impacts of climate change will continue to be more intense, prolonged and widespread, giving cover to even more extensive U.S. military interventions.”

Understanding the military’s climate impact requires a systems approach.

“We argue that to account for the U.S. military as a major climate actor, one must understand the logistical supply chain that makes its acquisition and consumption of hydrocarbon-based fuels possible,” the study

states. “We show several ‘path dependencies’ — warfighting paradigms, weapons systems, bureaucratic requirements and waste — that are put in place by military supply chains and undergird a heavy reliance on carbon-based fuels by the U.S. military for years to come.”

Data for their study was difficult to get.

“A loophole in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol exempted the United States from reporting military emissions,” Project Censored explains. “Although the Paris Accord closed this loophole, Neimark, Belcher and Bigger noted that, ‘with the Trump administration due to withdraw from the accord in 2020, this gap ... will return.’” They only obtained fuel purchase data through multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

Finally, by way of conclusions, Project Censored stated: Noting that “action on climate change demands shuttering vast sections of the military machine,” Neimark, Belcher and Bigger recommended that “money spent procuring and distributing fuel across the U.S. empire” be reinvested as “a peace dividend, helping to fund a Green New Deal in whatever form it might take.”

Not surprisingly the report had received “little to no corporate news coverage” as of May 2020, beyond scattered republication of The Conversation piece.

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4) CONGRESSIONAL INVESTMENTS AND CONFLICTS OF INTEREST Exposition, political corruption and conflicts of interest are age-old staples of journalism. So, it’s notable that two of the most glaring, farreaching examples of congressional conflicts of interest in the Trump era have been virtually ignored by corporate media: Republicans’ support for the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and bipartisan failure to act on catastrophic climate change.

“The cuts likely saved members of Congress hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes collectively, while the corporate tax cut hiked the value of their holdings,” Peter Cary of the Center for Public Integrity reported for Vox in January 2020.

It was sold as a middle-class tax cut that would benefit everyone.

“Promises that the tax act would

boost investment have not panned out,” he noted. “Corporate investment is now at lower levels than before the act passed, according to the Commerce Department.”

Once again, “trickle down tax cuts” didn’t trickle down.

“The tax law’s centerpiece is its record cut in the corporate tax rate, from 35% to 21%,” Cary wrote. “At the time of its passage, most of the bill’s Republican supporters said the cut would result in higher wages, factory expansions and more jobs.

Instead, it was mainly exploited by corporations, which bought back stock and raised dividends.”

Buybacks exceeded $1 trillion for the first time ever, the year after the cuts were passed, and dividends topped a record $1.3 trillion high.

The benefits to Congressional Republicans were enormous.

“The 10 richest Republicans in Congress in 2017 who voted for the tax bill held more than $731 million in assets, almost two-thirds of which were in stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other instruments,” which benefitted handsomely as a result of their votes that “doled out nearly $150 billion in corporate tax savings in 2018 alone,” Cary noted. “All but one of the 47 Republicans who sat on the three key committees overseeing the drafting of the tax bill own stocks and stock mutual funds.

“Democrats also stood to gain from the tax bill, though not one voted for it,” he wrote. “All but 12 Republicans voted for the tax bill.”

Two special features deserve notice. First is a newly created 20% deduction for income from “passthrough” businesses or smaller, singleowner corporations.

“At least 22 of the 47 members of the House and Senate tax-writing committees have investments in passthrough businesses,” Project BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Censored noted.

Second was a provision allowing real estate companies with relatively few employees — like the Trump organization — to take a 20% deduction usually reserved for larger businesses with sizable payrolls.

“Out of the 47 Republicans responsible for drafting the bill, at least 29 held real estate interests at the time of its passage,” Project Censored pointed out.

As to the second major conflict, “Members of the U.S. Senate are heavily invested in the fossil fuel

companies that drive the current climate crisis, creating a conflict between those senators’ financial interests as investors and their responsibilities as elected representatives,” Project Censored wrote.

“Twenty-nine U.S. senators and their spouses own between $3.5 million and $13.9 million worth of stock in companies that extract, transport or burn fossil fuels, or provide services to fossil fuel companies,” Donald Shaw reported for Sludge in September 2019.

While unsurprising on the Republican side, this also includes two key Democrats. Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware is the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee. He has “up to $310,000 invested in more than a dozen oil, gas, and utility companies, as well as mutual funds with holdings in the fossil fuel industry,” Shaw reported.

But his record is not nearly as I

questionable as Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who “owns between $1 million and $5 million worth of non-public stock in a family coal business, Enersystems,” and reported earning “between $100,001 and $1 million” in reported dividends and interest in 2018, plus $470,000 in ‘ordinary business income,’” Shaw reported.

Manchin’s support for the industry was significant: He was the only Democrat to vote against an amendment to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling in 2017, and he was one of just three Democrats to vote against an amendment to phase out taxpayer subsidies for coal, oil and gas producers in 2016. Manchin has also voted to approve construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, expedite the approval process for natural gas pipelines and override an Obama administration rule requiring coal companies to protect groundwater from toxic coal mining waste.

While there has been critical coverage of 2017 tax cuts, this has not included coverage of lawmakers personal profiting, Project Censored noted.

“In addition, despite the significant conflicts of interest exposed by Donald Shaw’s reporting for Sludge, the alarming facts about U.S. senators’ massive investments in the fossil fuel industry appear to have gone completely unreported in the corporate press.”

5) INEQUALITY KILLS: GAP BETWEEN RICHEST AND POOREST AMERICANS LARGEST IN 50 YEARS “In public health, decades of research are coming to a consensus: Inequality kills,” DePaul University DECEMBER 3, 2020

sociologist Fernando De Maio wrote for Truthout in December 2019.

Even before COVID-19, his research added fine-grained evidence of broad trends highlighted in three prominent governmental reports: The gap between rich and poor Americans had grown larger than ever in half a century, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 annual survey, with dramatic evidence of its lethal impact; people in the poorest quintile die at twice the rate as those in the richest quintile, according to a report by the Congressional General Accounting Office (GAO); and, this is partly because job-related deaths are increasingly rooted in the physical and psychological toll of low-wage work, as opposed to on-the-job accidents, as documented by the United Nations’ International Labor Organization (ILO).

All these conditions were made worse by COVID-19, but they could have been seen before the pandemic struck — if only the information hadn’t been censored by the corporate media, as Project Censored noted: As of May 2020, Project Censored has not been able to identify any corporate news coverage on the GAO or Census Bureau reports on inequality and premature mortality, or on the ILO report about workrelated illnesses, accidents and deaths that take place when workers are offduty.

The August 2019 GAO report was based on health and retirement surveys conducted by the Social Security Administration in 1992 and 2014, looking at those between 51 and 61 years old in 1992, and dividing them into five wealth quintiles. “[T]he GAO found that nearly half of those (48%) in the poorest quintile died before 2014, when they would have been between 73 and 83 years old. Of the wealthiest quintile, only a quarter (26%) died,” explained Patrick Martin, writing for the World Socialists Website Death rates increased for each quintile as the level of wealth declined.

It’s at the level of cities and communities “that the most striking links between inequality and health can be detected,” De Maio wrote. “At the see PROJECT CENSORED page 12

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city level, life expectancy varies from a low of 71.4 years in Gary, Indiana, to a high of 84.7 in Newton, Massachusetts — a gap of more than 13 years.”

And at the community level, “In Chicago, there is a nine-year gap between the life expectancy for Black and white people. This gap amounts to more than 3,000 ‘excess deaths’” among black Chicagoans, due to “heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and kidney disease. All of these are conditions that an equitable health care system would address,” he concluded.

“The poorest Americans are also more likely than their rich counterparts to face illness or premature death due to the inherent dangers of lowwage work,” Project Censored noted.

“In 2019, you no longer have to hang from scaffolding to risk your life on the job,” María José Carmona wrote for Inequality.org. “Precariousness, stress and overwork can also make you sick, and even kill you, at a much higher rate than accidents.”

She reported on an ILO story that found that less than 14% of the 7,500 people who die “due to unsafe and unhealthy working conditions every day” die from workplace accidents.

The greatest risk comes from “increasing pressure, precarious contracts and working hours incompatible with life, which, bit by bit, continue to feed the invisible accident rate that does not appear in the news,” Carmona wrote. “The most vulnerable workers are those employed on a temporary or casual basis, those subcontracted through agencies and the false self-employed.

ILO data shows the rate of accidents for these employees to be much higher than for any others.”

6) SHADOW NETWORK OF CONSERVATIVE OUTLETS EMERGES TO EXPLOIT FAITH IN LOCAL NEWS In late October 2019, Carol Thompson reported in the Lansing 12

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State Journal that, “Dozens of websites branded as local news outlets launched throughout Michigan this fall ... promising local news but also offering political messaging.” The websites’ About us sections “say they are published by Metric Media LLC, a company that aims to fill the ‘growing void in local and community news after years of steady disinvestment in local reporting by legacy

media,’” Thompson wrote. But it soon emerged that they weren’t filling that void with locally generated news, and the 40 or so sites Thompson found in Michigan were just the tip of the iceberg.

A follow-up investigation by The Michigan Daily reported that, “Just this past week, additional statewide networks of these websites have sprung up in Montana and Iowa,” which was followed by a December 2019 report by the Columbia Journalism Review, revealing a network of 450 websites run by five corporate organizations in 12 states that “mimic the appearance and output of traditional news organizations” in order to “manipulate public opinion by exploiting faith in local media.”

All were associated with conservative businessman Brian Timpone.

“In 2012, Timpone’s company Journatic, an outlet known for its low-cost automated story generation, which became known as ‘pink slime journalism,’ attracted national attention and outrage for faking bylines and quotes, and for plagiarism,” CJR’s Priyanjana Bengani reported.

Journatic was later rebranded as Locality Labs, whose content ran on the Metric Media websites.

“The different websites are nearly indistinguishable, sharing identical DECEMBER 3, 2020

stories and using regional titles,” Michigan Daily reported. “The only articles with named authors contain politically skewed content. The rest of the articles on the sites are primarily composed of press releases from local organizations and articles written by the Local Labs News Service.”

“Despite the different organization and network names, it is evident these sites are connected,” Bengani wrote. “Other than simply sharing network metadata as described above, they also share bylines (including ‘Metric Media News Service’ and ‘Local Labs News Service’ for templated stories), servers, layouts and templates.”

Using a suite of investigative tools, CJR was able to identify at least 189 sites in 10 states run by Metric Media — all created in 2019 — along with 179 run by Franklin Archer (with Timpone’s brother Michael as CEO).

“We tapped into the RSS feeds of these 189 Metric Media sites,” over a period of two weeks, Bengani wrote, “and found over 15,000 unique stories had been published (over 50,000 when aggregated across the sites), but only about a hundred titles had the bylines of human reporters.” That’s well below 1% with a byline — much less being local. “The rest cited automated services or press releases.”

“Their architecture and strategy is useful to understand the way they coopt the language, design and structure of news organizations,” Bengani explained.

Automation can make them seem far more prolific than they really are, and can help build credibility.

“Potentially adding to the credibility of these sites is their Google search ranking: In the case of some of the websites set up in 2015-2016, we observed that once sites had gained ample authority, they appeared on the first page of Google Search results just below the official government and social media pages.”

So, the sites aim to fool people locally about the source of their “news,” and Google helps fool the world.

Although The New York Times did publish an article in October 2019 that credited the Lansing State Journal with breaking the story about pseudo-local news organizations, Project Censored notes that, “Corporate coverage has been lacking. ... The Columbia Journalism Review’s piece expands on the breadth and scope of previous coverage, but its findings do not appear to have been reported by any of the major establishment news outlets.”

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7) UNDERREPORTING OF MISSING AND VICTIMIZED BLACK WOMEN AND GIRLS Black women and girls go missing in the United States at a higher rate than that of their white counterparts. That very fact goes missing, too.

“A 2010 study about the media coverage of missing children in the United States discovered that only 20% of reported stories focused on missing Black children despite it corresponding to 33% of the overall missing children cases,” Carma Henry reported for the Westside Gazette in February 2019.

But it’s only getting worse.

“A 2015 study discussed in the William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice found that the disparity listed in the 2010 study between the reportage and the reality of missing Black children had increased substantially,” Project Censored noted: 35% of missing children cases versus just 7% of media stories.

That discussion appeared in a paper that made two other pertinent points. First, that Black criminal perpetrators are over-represented in the media, while Black victims are underrepresented, and second, that “because racial minorities are identified as criminals more often than not, non-minorities develop limited empathy toward racial minorities who are often perceived as offenders.”

Non-minorities in the media are obviously not exempt.

“Media coverage is often vital in missing person cases because it raises see PROJECT CENSORED Page 14

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community awareness and can drive funding and search efforts that support finding those missing persons,” Project Censored noted.

It went on to cite an illustrative extreme case: In October 2019, “The Atlanta Black Star shed light on perhaps the most prolific offender against Black women and girls in recent history, Jason Roger Pope, who has been indicted on charges relating to human trafficking and child sex crimes,” Project Censored wrote.

“Pope, a white South Carolina promoter and popular disc jockey better known as DJ Kid, has made claims suggesting he may have participated in the trafficking, assault, and/or rapes of nearly 700 African American girls — primarily underaged — right up until his arrest in August 2019.”

The arrest didn’t come out of the blue.

“Pope has police records going as far back as 2011 relating to sexual misconduct with minors. Yet outside of a few local news outlets, the corporate media has been silent on Pope’s crimes.”

Blacks are also over-represented as victims of sex trafficking, according to statistics from Human Trafficking Search: They account for more than 40% of confirmed victims compared to 13.1% of the population.

While there is some coverage from small independent sources, “this gap in coverage of missing Black women and girls has gone widely underreported,” Project Censored noted.

It cited two exceptions (one from ABC News, another from CNN).

“But, broadly, U.S. corporate media are not willing to discuss their own shortcomings or to acknowledge the responsibilities they neglect by failing to provide coverage on the search for missing and victimized Black women and girls.”

8) THE PUBLIC BANKING REVOLUTION The year 2019 marked the 100th anniversary of the U.S.’s first publicly owned state bank, the Bank of North Dakota (BND), and in October, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Public Banking Act, authorizing up to 10 similar such banks to be created by California’s

city and county governments. In response, the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles both announced plans to do so. It was the culmination of a decade-long effort that began in the wake of the Great Recession that’s also been taken up in nearly two dozen other states. Beyond the benefits North Dakota has reaped in the past, such banks could have greatly assisted in responding to COVID-19’s economic devastation, and could yet help fund a just transition to a decarbonized future, along the lines of a Green New Deal.

Yet, despite California’s agendasetting reputation, Project Censored notes that, “No major corporate media outlets appear to have devoted recent coverage to this important and timely topic.”

“The Bank of North Dakota was founded in 1919 in response to a farmers’ revolt against out-of-state banks that were foreclosing unfairly on their farms,” Ellen Brown, founder of the Public Banking Institute wrote for Common Dreams. “Since then it has evolved into a $7.4 billion bank that is reported to be even more profitable than JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, although its mandate is not actually to make a profit but simply to serve the interests of local North Dakota communities.”

“The state of North Dakota has six times as many financial institutions per capita as the rest of the country and it’s because they have the Bank of North Dakota,” Sushil Jacob, an attorney who works with the California Public Banking Alliance told The Guardian. “When the great recession hit, the Bank of North Dakota stepped in and provided loans and allowed local banks to thrive.”

As a result, “North Dakota was the only state that escaped the credit crisis,” Brown told Ananya Garg, reporting for YES! magazine. “It never went in the red, [had] the lowest unemployment rate in the country, the lowest foreclosure rate at that time.”

“There are two ways in which a state bank can fund state investment for a greener future,” Eric Heath wrote in an op-ed for The Hill. “First, the bank can provide loans, bonds and other forms of financing for investments to the state government

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and private organizations on better terms than those available in regular markets.”

Some such projects might not even be considered.

This is not because green investments are unprofitable, “but because their profits slowly accumulate and are widely shared across a community,” Heath explained. “Second, a public bank will improve a state’s fiscal health. By holding state deposits as assets, the bank’s profits can be returned to state coffers to fund direct state investment. Additionally, the activity of the state bank — which will prioritize investing state assets and extending credit within the state for the benefit of the state — will improve the state economy,” just as has happened in North Dakota.

A new surge of interest in public banking came out of the Standing Rock movement’s Dakota Access Pipeline protests. While individuals could easily withdraw from doing business with fossil fuel-financing banks — Wells Fargo, in this case — governments have no such similar options to meet all their banking needs.

In short, “From efforts to divest public employee pension funds from the fossil fuel industry and private prisons, to funding the proposed BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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Green New Deal and counteracting the massive, rapid shutdown of the economy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, public banking has never seemed more relevant,” Project Censored wrote.

It’s a time-tested practical solution the corporate media refuses to discuss.

9) RISING RISKS OF NUCLEAR POWER DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE As early as 2003, 30 nuclear units were either shut down or reduced power output during a deadly European summer heatwave.

But almost two decades later, the corporate media has yet to grasp that, “Nuclear power plants are unprepared for climate change,” as Project Censored notes. “Rising sea levels and warmer waters will impact power plants’ infrastructure, posing increased risks of nuclear disasters, according to reports from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Truthout from September 2019,” it explains. Yet, “Tracking back to 2013, corporate news media have only sporadically addressed the potential for climate change to impact nuclear power plants.”

“Nuclear power is uniquely vul-

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nerable to increasing temperatures because of its reliance on cooling water to ensure operational safety within the core and spent fuel storage,” Christina Chen wrote for NRDC. In addition, Karen Charman, reporting for Truthout, noted that “nuclear reactors need an uninterrupted electricity supply to run the cooling systems that keep the reactors from melting down,” but this will be “increasingly difficult to guarantee in a world of climate-fueled megastorms and other disasters.”

Sea level rise — combined with storm surges — represents the most serious threat. That was the focus of a 2018 report by John Vidal from Ensia, a solutions-focused media outlet, which found that “at least 100 U.S., European and Asian nuclear power stations built just a few meters above sea level could be threatened by serious flooding caused by accelerating sea-level rise and more frequent storm surges.”

There have been more than 20 incidents of flooding at U.S. nuclear plants, according to David Lochbaum, a former nuclear engineer and director of the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“The most likely [cause of flooding] is the increasing frequency of extreme events,” he told Vidal.

Yet, in January 2019, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC, decided to weaken staff recommendations to reassess the adequacy of hazard preparations. In dissent, Commissioner Jeff Baran wrote that NRC would allow power plants “to be prepared only for the old, outdated hazards typically calculated decades ago when the science of seismology and hydrology was far less advanced.”

“As of September 2019, 444 nuclear reactors are operating in the world, with 54 under construction, 111 planned and 330 more proposed,” Charman reported.

“Many of the world’s new nuclear plants are being built on the coasts of Asian countries, which face floods, sea-level rise and typhoons,” Vidal wrote. “At least 15 of China’s 39 reactors in operation, and many of the BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

plants it has under construction, are on the coast.”

“Nuclear stations are on the front line of climate change impacts both figuratively and quite literally,” leading climate scientist Michael Mann told Vidal. “We are likely profoundly underestimating climate change risk and damages in coastal areas.”

for public media,” not for Downton Abbey reruns, but “earmarked specifically for emergency support, education, and especially local journalism.”

For example, “The Los Angeles Unified School District teamed up with PBS SoCal/KCET to offer instruction over the airwaves while kids are out of school, with separate

ON THE QUESTION of cost, we must

first remind ourselves that a viable press system isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity. Similar to a classic ‘merit good,’ journalism isn’t a want, but a ‘need.’

— Victor Pickard, in Jacobin

10) REVIVE JOURNALISM WITH A STIMULUS PACKAGE AND PUBLIC OPTION In late March, Congress passed and President Trump signed a $2.2 trillion coronavirus rescue package, including direct payments of $1,200 per adult and more than $500 billion for large corporations. Before passage, Craig Aaron, the president of Free Press, argued that a stimulus package for journalism was also urgently needed. “In the face of this pandemic, the public needs good, economically secure journalists more than ever ... separating fact from fiction, and holding politicians and powerful institutions accountable,” Aaron wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review.

Aaron’s organization, Free Press, placed journalism’s needs at $5 billion in immediate emergency funds, “less than half of 1% of a trillion-dollar recovery package” and asked that “Congress put a foundation in place to help sustain journalism over the long term.”

Aaron presented a three-pronged plan: First, “Doubling federal funds I

channels focused on different ages.”

Second, “Direct support for daily and weekly newsrooms,” which have lost tens of thousands of jobs over the past three decades. “Direct, emergency subsidies of say $25,000 per newsgathering position could make sure reporters everywhere stay on the local COVID beat,” he wrote. “Just $625 million would help retain 25,000 newsroom jobs.”

Third, “New investments in the news we need. ... for a major investment in services that provide community information [and] to support new positions, outlets and approaches to newsgathering, [which could] prioritize places and populations that the mainstream outlets have never served well.”

Arguing that a “resilient and community-centered media system” is necessary to get through the pandemic, Aaron concluded, “Now is the time to act. We need significant public investments in all corners of the economy, and journalism is no exception.”

In an article in Jacobin, media scholar Victor Pickard advanced a DECEMBER 3, 2020

more robust proposal, for $30 billion annually (less than 1.4% of the coronavirus stimulus package, Project Censored noted).

“On the question of cost, we must first remind ourselves that a viable press system isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity,” he wrote. “Similar to a classic ‘merit good,’ journalism isn’t a ‘want,’ but a ‘need.’ ... Democratic nations around the globe heavily subsidize the media while enjoying democratic benefits that put the U.S. to shame.”

Writing for The Guardian, just after the McClatchy newspaper chain bankruptcy was announced, Pickard noted that, “For many areas across the U.S., there’s simply no commercial option. The market has failed us.”

And thus, “With market failure, journalism’s survival requires public options.”

The need was fundamental.

“All foundational democratic theories — including the First Amendment itself — assume a functional press system. The fourth estate’s current collapse is a profound social problem.”

And he suggested a broad range of funding possibilities: We could raise funds from taxing platforms like Facebook and Google, placing levees on communication devices and repurposing international broadcasting subsidies. Other sources include spectrum sales and individual tax vouchers. We could leverage already-existing public infrastructures such as post offices, libraries and public broadcasting stations to provide spaces for local news production.

“While corporate news outlets have reported the ongoing demise of newspapers and especially local news sources, they have rarely covered proposals such as Aaron’s and Pickard’s to revitalize journalism through public funding,” Project Censored wrote.

Paul Rosenberg is an activist turned journalist who has written for the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, the Denver Post, Al Jazeera English, Salon.com and numerous other periodicals. He has also written more than 300 book reviews.

He has worked as an editor at Random Lengths News since 2002.

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RYAN MARSHALL SALM

a little downtime A LITTLE DOWNTIME

Pianist Erik Deutsch

on stepping away from Leftover Salmon, collaborating with banjoist Andy Thorn, moving a Steinway to Mexico, figuring out a home studio and landing a big gig

by Dave Kirby

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’ve had a great 2020.”

We’re not sure, but we suspect that Erik Deutsch is about the only working-age adult in North America who’s actually been enjoying this year’s pandemic home-detention sentence.

That whole, “Hey, cheer up, you have time to get caught up on home projects and maybe find a new hobby” meme lost its dubious zing for us about three months ago, to the extent anyone bought into it in the first place. To say nothing of those of us who lost jobs, fell sick or otherwise got bonked sideways like a lonely two-pin dispatched by that spikey little bowling ball.

Deutsch, though, is pretty much OK with it.

Well, to be fair, Deutsch had a few plans of his own derailed. We caught up to him by phone at his place in Mexico City a week or so ago, initially because we wanted to preview his EP-release gigs in Boulder and Denver with Leftover Salmon banjoist Andy Thorn, scheduled for the first week of December ... both of which got axed, naturally. Or, at least postponed. But the music is still coming out.

“We’re going to release the EP, on vinyl,” Deutsch says. “A six-song EP. We released the single last week [“Tangled Sea”], with my wife, Victoria, and Andy sing-

ON THE BILL: The EP Tangled Sea can be preordered here: andythornmusic. com

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ing. The concert was scheduled in August or September, and it was kind of wishful thinking. I think Colorado has been more aggressive in terms of planning musical events. It was exciting that we could figure this out and do the shows at Boulder Theater and Cervantes, but we always had it in the back of our minds that it could get canceled. So we’re going to reschedule for March or April.”

And Deutsch sees an upside to early spring, anyway: “I’m excited about that for a couple of reasons. Y’know, traveling around the States this month just seems a little unnecessary. And reason number two, I really hoped to play more when I came to Colorado. And, just thinking out loud, the last time I was in Colorado was the New Year’s show with Leftover Salmon [at Mission Ballroom, marking the band’s 30-year anniversary]; that’s how long it’s been. I mean, I’ve been in Colorado just about every six weeks for the last five years with Salmon. Seventy-five days a year, more or less. So we were only able to pull together these two shows in December. Normally when I come, I’m going to teach a little bit, do some radio, play a house concert, maybe get up to Vail.”

The six-track EP, Tangled Sea, comes from a session last winter when Thorn and his wife, Cecelia, ambled down south to hang with Deutsch and his wife in Mexico City and give Deutsch’s home studio an acoustic-only recording workout.

Instrumental save for the title track, the music bears a surprising poise, balanced deftly between composed and improv figures traded between Thorn’s marksman

banjo and Deutsch’s rich piano.

Flourishes of ’grass and blues color the proceedings, but the cumulative product is decidedly neither, a tantalizing hybrid that showcases both players’ virtuosity gently without showboating, leaving the listener practically crying for more.

Seems to us that banjo and piano make for a challenging pairing — both essentially percussive instruments, harmonically bound, whose natural intersection in a duo setting can be a challenge to reveal. Sure, Bela Fleck and Chick Corea did it successfully some years back, but it’s not necessarily an easy lift outside a band setting when both voices are playing into a collective. Creating something musically and aesthetically coherent in the spare confines of a duo, without leaning too heavily into familiar genre pathways, requires a little — a lot — of musical telepathy.

“The thing about a banjo and a piano is they can both be rhythmic instruments, but Andy has the ability to play lead, whether it’s melody or improvisation, and he can really sing and speak in that way,” Deutsch says. “I think most piano players are better as melody or harmony players than rhythmic players, but I do like playing rhythmically on the piano, and I think when it’s the right two guys, it allows you the chance to pass those roles back and forth.

“I think that’s what Andy and I realized together right away, when we were onstage with Salmon — I mean, we did about 400 shows together – and we would trade improv back and forth, which was a blast, and just became clear that we should try to do something together.”

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So for now, the music will be coming out shortly, and a release party will be coming in a few months. The timing is a bit odd, though. After four-plus years holding down the keyboard seat in Leftover Salmon, an opportunity came up last winter that forced Deutsch to reluctantly step away from the band: a chance to tour with The Chicks (formerly Dixie) upon release of their new album, Gaslighter. Full-on tour, April to October. Arenas, press, TV. The works.

The call came via a recommendation from producer/songwriter Jack Antonoff, whose portfolio includes credits with Taylor Swift, St. Vincent, Lorde and a host of others, as well as being the former drummer for defunct indie rock band fun. and vocalist for Steel Train. At 36, Antonoff is one of the industry’s star producers, up for a Grammy this year. Deutsch himself has a lengthy career as a sideman on a lot of projects over the years — he thinks he’s played on over a hundred records — but if Antonoff calls for a gig like this, you take the call.

“I’ve been through enough nibbles and auditions for ‘big gigs’ that I can kinda tell... sometimes, some of those big gigs can be a little uncomfortable. I’ve been through some bad experiences and some good ones. This one had ‘good experience’ written all over it. Great organization, great people, fun, generous, good music.

“And at the beginning of 2020, the situation with Salmon was looking like we weren’t going to work as much, little bit of a crossroads for us, I think, and with a heavy heart... it was a tough decision, because Leftover Salmon really feels like my family, but I just felt like this was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. And I hope it didn’t mean that it would be the end of my ability to play with Salmon.”

And then, of course, after an initial press push, the pandemic hit, the tour got postponed (“It’s definitely going to happen, but we’re just not sure when”), and everything stopped. For Salmon, for The Chicks, for everyone.

But maybe not so much for Deutsch.

He and his wife moved from their Williamsburg apartment to Mexico a couple of years ago, with all their belongings and music equipment, including navigating the Byzantine paperwork and nail-biting logistics of moving a Steinway 2,700 miles across an international border, and has spent most of his downtime teaching himself home recording, having enjoyed the luxury of playing and recording in others’ studios for years in New York. His BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

wife, Victoria Reed, an accomplished singer and songwriter, has been recording, having just signed to a Mexican label, and Deutsch has kept cheerfully busy.

“I’m an optimist by nature, anyway,” he says. “We’ve been in our apartment in Mexico City, getting proficient in our studio, having fun and collaborating with a ton of folk people I probably would not have been able to otherwise. I just did a track with Lukas Nelson, or a track he was singing on. I’ve been doing tracks

with [avant singer/artist] Theo Bleckmann all year, someone who I did gigs and tours with, but never had a chance to record with. Victoria and I have been prolific together, we’ve been able to connect more with the scene here in Mexico... I released a 45 for a Brooklyn-based label, a solo piano improv thing, and I released my [pre-pandemic] live album Live at LunÀtico in May. And, I just did an MTV Unplugged thing in October with a Mexican band called Phobia. That will air

in December.

“And, on the personal side, I haven’t had a break in 25 years, since Fat Mama... I hadn’t been in my Mexico City apartment, since we moved here in January 2019, for more than two weeks since we moved here. I was out with Salmon every 10 days or so.

“Like I was saying to Victoria, I just want to be home for a month. Y’know, put up shelves, eat tacos. Do cool things. Get some sleep.”

Hazel’s for the Holidays Give the gift that never gets returned.

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DECEMBER 3, 2020

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events

events

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

ANNUAL HOLIDAY SHOW WEB-A-THON.

2-10 p.m. Dec. 5, Facebook LIVE, LongmontPublicMedia.org or Comcast Channels 8/880.

This epic fundraiser extravaganza will be broadcast live and direct from Stewart Auditorium, featuring a dozen musical acts over eight hours.

Musicians will perform original tunes and holiday standards to help get us into the mood of the season. The evening will be interspersed with live interviews and unexpected moments. And, in classic telethon style, donations will be taken online and over the phone for the duration of the show in support of the Longmont Museum.

CU BOULDER HOLIDAY FESTIVAL 2020.

FLASHLIGHT CANDY CANE HUNT.

6:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 11, City Park, 450 N. 111th St., Lafayette. Register at lafayetteco.gov. Cost: $5 for residents, $8 for nonresidents. For more information call 303-665-0469.

A particular someone left candy canes over the grounds at City Park. Bring your flashlights and help find them. Children will get a chance to decorate their bag before the hunt, and prizes will be awarded for the candy cane hunters that find the special hidden elves and the golden candy cane. Parents must accompany children (no charge for adults). This event is for ages 3 and up.

BOULDER NABLUS SISTER CITY PROJECT PRESENTS CONCERT FOR A CAUSE.

11 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 6. To attend, please make a contribution at paypal.me/bnscp. BNSCP requests a minimum donation of $15, however, all amounts are welcome — give what’s best for you.

The Boulder Nablus Sister City Project will be hosting a performance of Palestinian musicians to raise $3,000 to provide 16 scholarships to music students from Askar Refugee Camp in Nablus. Each scholarship will provide music lessons for a full year.

100% of funds raised go to music scholarships. Watch a short video of the performers and get more information: bouldernablus.org/concert-for-a-cause.

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DECEMBER 3, 2020

Dec. 4-Jan. 4. Single ticket: $20; Household: $40; Group: $80, cupresents.org.

This December, there’s really no place like home for the holidays. This special video celebration of Boulder’s treasured tradition, the decades-old Holiday Festival, brings together faculty and students from across the College of Music to perform seasonal favorites and other classic selections recorded throughout the fall. You’ll be able to play the enchanting all-ages concert from home while you decorate gingerbread houses, relax with a cup of cocoa or even sit beside a warm fire as the snow falls outside.

STONE COTTAGE STUDIOS PRESENTS: DAFNA.

Goes live on Tuesday, Dec. 8 at stonecottagestudios.com.

Stone Cottage Studios is hosting an Artist Session with local singer-songwriter Dafna on Dec. 8. Dafna released her debut album I LOVE YOU on Sept. 25. Her set of four tracks from the album will be intimate and stripped down, just the way she wrote them: “When I write music, I’m writing it alone at the piano just thinking about the lyrics and the way they interact with the melody,” Dafna said in a press release. “So a stripped down session of just me and the piano is the best way to truly encapsulate what I was feeling when I wrote these songs.” Stone Cottage Studios’ Artist Sessions are an interview-style series where musicians have a chance to tell their stories and connect with fans and followers on a deeper level. They record the discussions and performance with topquality technology and filmmakers to provide audiences with an incredible digital experience.

LYONS FROZEN PARADE.

Saturday, Dec. 5, lyonscolorado.com.

This year, the traditional Lyons Holiday Parade of Lights is transforming into a pandemic-safe event, as a stationary Frozen Parade.

The Frozen Parade of Lights will feature illuminated vehicles and trailers throughout town, as decorated by residents and businesses.

Spectators can drive through, to both enjoy and become part of the parade. The parade will span across town, transforming Main Street and High Street into a tour of lights. Visit lyonscolorado.com to register for the Frozen Parade.

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

music

©MELEAH SHAVON PHOTOGRAPHY

music

by CAITLIN ROCKETT

If Leonard Cohen, Jim Morrison and the Wu-Tang Clan had a baby Daniel Rodriguez didn’t get nominated for a Grammy, but he’s definitely making a hip-hop album

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hen we set up a time to talk, Daniel impetus for his move to Colorado — went on an Rodriguez still had an intimate dinner indefinite hiatus, and a 14-year romantic relationshow scheduled for Dec. 5 at Boulder ship came to a close.

Theater.

He wrote his way through the pain, and the That’s of resulting album, Sojourn of ©MELEAH SHAVON PHOTOGRAPHY course been postponed (to a Burning Sun, is an aching late April), but Rodriguez still embrace of the lessons has plenty to chat about, like only true heartbreak can his debut solo album’s surteach. prise inclusion in the first “Separated from the round of Grammy considerswelling sea / Came rolling ations. in a single wave,” he sings “Somebody who is a votin the title track. “In the ing member [of the Recording warmth of a mother’s womb Academy] told me that they / In the web of what’s to saw [the album] on the ballot come / Soon the days when for Best Americana Record,” the flowers bloom / The Rodriguez says. “And if peosojourn of a burning sun.” ple aren’t aware of you, you Sure enough, the jourkind of get lost in the shuffle. ney of the sun has brought So I just tried to make as Rodriguez to a new place many people aware of the fact today: free from the diplothat I was on there as possimatic confines of working in ble. I haven’t heard anything a band, he’s making music since... So fingers are his way; he’s found love crossed, but no expectations.” again, and he’s on the hunt Words to live by, in this year more than ever. for a new house in Boulder.

(Spoiler alert: Rodriguez didn’t make the cut when But the stripped down emotion of the album the Grammy noms were announced on Nov. 24.) has always been multi-faceted for Rodriguez.

Pandemic aside, Rodriguez has been through “The album, at least the emotional content of some stuff in the past two years. In 2018, his long- the record, has evolved with how I’ve evolved time, hard-touring band, Elephant Revival — the throughout time,” he says. “I think I wrote the

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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songs with an open perspective. I didn’t write them specifically for heartbreak — even though it’s totally a heartbreak album — but I weaved within it kind of a future self that was looking at myself at that moment and kind of being like, ‘Hey, this is going to be alright; some limbs have to snap in order for new limbs to grow.’ It has ascending qualities to it so that when do I sing the songs now, it still feels good.”

Nowhere is this ascending quality more evident than the closing track, “The Unknown,” a song so vulnerable, Rodriguez says it almost didn’t make the cut: The storm is over / The chaos took me down / To a place where no one really knows anymore / And I’m getting older / But I’m a new man again / Gone down in a ball of flames / I’m shattered but I’m getting up again / But time is on my side / I bought a ticket now I’m on a ride / I just have to see what’s on the other side / And our love might not be anymore / But now there’s an open door / For whatever that needs to come and go / And love is all we are / That’ll never change / But who we choose to love that remains Firmly on the other side, Rodriguez is clearly enjoying the ride. He has a whole album’s worth of new material ready for recording, and he’s producing a hip-hop record with a friend on the East Coast.

“We’re going by 21st Ancient,” he says. “If Leonard Cohen, Jim Morrison and the Wu-Tang Clan had a baby, that’s what it sounds like.”

DECEMBER 3, 2020

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PODCASTS

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PODCASTS

‘DOLLY PARTON’S AMERICA’

In a deeply divided country, there’s one thing Americans can agree on: Dolly Parton. This nine-part series by RadioLab’s Jad Abumrad explores how one country singer — enhanced by silicon and bedazzled in rhinestones — from the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee become such a unifying figure in the United States. Abumrad — himself raised in East Tennessee — makes the series part sociological study, part entertainment by homing in on the “quivering mass of irreconcilable contradictions” that make Parton such a beloved anomaly: raised in a one-room cabin, Parton’s business acumen spits in the face of Southern stereotypes; a professed Christian, Parton has proudly dressed, in her words, like the “town tramp” all her life; she’s an icon in the LGBTQ community, but refuses to make a public stance on politics; and yet despite her open-minded compassion, her Pigeon Forge dinner theater, Dolly Parton’s Stampede, for years performed reenactments of the Civil War in which the South could sometimes win. But Abumrad didn’t forget the music. In true RadioLab fashion, Abumrad remixes “Jolene,” and offers one professor’s radical reimagining of the Dolly classic.

— Caitlin Rockett

‘THE HABITAT’ Save on local dining, entertainment, retail and wellness. bestofboulderdeals.kostizi.com Go to website to purchase

Someday humans will live on Mars. But how do we prepare for such a mission?

In 2015, six non-astronaut volunteers entered a small dome on a volcano in Hawai’i, which resembles the surface of the red planet, and wouldn’t emerge for a year in a mission organized by NASA. From Gimlet Media, The Habitat follows the volunteer crew through voice recordings sent to science journalist Lynn Levy, who narrates the series interspersed with commentary about prolonged isolation and anecdotes about previous space missions. The voice diaries are fascinating, despite the monotony of life inside the dome, and Levy’s narration is engaging. It’s like reality TV but with large implications for the future of space travel and, perhaps, humanity.

— Angela K. Evans

‘INHERITED’

A single-file line of young people walked the winding corridors of the U.S. Capitol in search of Nancy Pelosi’s office in November 2018. They wore black, singing and chanting, demanding political will to address the climate crisis. The scene drew international attention to the Sunrise Movement, a group of young leaders working to elect officials committed to addressing climate change and advising on climate policies at all levels of government. It’s also the scene featured in the first episode of Inherited, a new podcast exploring the stories of youth activists and young people impacted by the climate crisis and working to abate it. The pilot season explores a wide range of topics, from political activism to community recovery following natural disasters to deteriorating mental health arising from the existential crisis climate change presents for young people. From Critical Frequency, Inherited presents stories from, for, and by the youth climate movement.

— Angela K. Evans

‘THROUGHLINE’

If nothing else, 2020 begs the question, “How did we get here?” In NPR’s first history podcast, Throughline, hosts Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei explore moments that changed everything, that shaped the world as we know it today. But these slices of history are often a passing news headline or not told at all.

Abdelfatah and Arablouei narrate each episode spliced with historic soundbites and modern-day interviews, and the pair — succinct, engaging, affecting — are everything we want in podcast hosts. Recent favorites include “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” about how the advent of the war on drugs led to the acclaimed singer’s untimely death; “The Everlasting Problem,” about the start of America’s everlasting health insurance problem; and “James Baldwin’s Fire,” not to mention a slew in November about the U.S. electoral system. It’s history like never heard before.

— Angela K. Evans

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DECEMBER 3, 2020

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

ART

ART

Keen, Aetrex,

Susanne Mitchell explores legacy of colonization at east window exhibit

by Caitlin Rockett

W

hen Susanne Mitchell first traveled to Malawi in 1995, she found people very eager to share their thoughts.

“People were yelling out their opinions because they could,” Mitchell says over the phone from her home in Boulder. To meet her Malawian partner’s family, a 20-something Mitchell — fresh out of art school in California — had landed in one of the least developed nations in the world right as it was instating its first multi-party democracy after decades of English colonial rule, and then decades more of repressive autocracy under Hastings Banda.

“They could have dreadlocks, they could leave the country before they were 18, so there was all this stuff that happened at that time in Malawi,” Mitchell says. “I was quite young and naive... I didn’t know a lot. So it was kind of the beginning of this long process of understanding myself.”

Over the years, Mitchell has used her art to aid her exploration of race and privilege, often creating pieces that blend images and materials to highlight the legacy of colonialism in Malawi. Nonprofit art gallery east window (4949 Broadway, Unit 102-B) is currently displaying three of Mitchell’s works (inkjet prints mounted on aluminum) through Dec. 29.

Mitchell’s work often uses a fabric called chitenge, used by Malawian women as clothing and for other domestic functions like swaddling babies or cleaning when the cloth begins to grow ragged. Drawn to the “life force” imbued in these common fabrics, Mitchell juxtaposes them with Victorian imagery, like furniture or French explorers, which emerge from tears in the fabric, offering a symbol of the effect colonialism has had on this landlocked East African country.

Mitchell says the recent movement to remove Confederate and colonial era monuments in the States made her revisit this particular selection of her work, which was originally made in 2012.

“I was a visiting artist at a studio in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2014 and 2015, when there was a movement where they started tearing down statues [associated with apartheid],” she says. “And so it was so interesting to see it start to happen here [in the United States] a few years later. It made me think about how, with my work, I always feel a little insecure or worried about it — whose story am I telling? And how am I telling it? And I think a lot about that, because I think it’s very important. But I feel like we all need to tell the stories. I think that everyone needs to tell these stories and they need to be told from multiple, different perspectives because we still have so far to go.”

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shoes

Open Range Competition Teams Summer Day Camps Classes & Private Lessons

Target & Hunting Full Service Retail Pro Shop & Service Recurve & Compound

High Altitude Archery 455 Weaver Park Rd #500 Longmont, CO 80501 720-491-3309

DECEMBER 3, 2020

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LIBRA

SEPT. 23-OCT. 22: “I made the wrong mis-

Keep in touch this Holiday Season

BY ROB BREZSNY ARIES

MARCH 21-APRIL 19: An anonymous blogger on

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Tumblr writes the following: “What I’d really like is for someone to objectively watch me for a week and then sit down with me for a few hours and explain to me what I am like and how I look to others and what my personality is in detail and how I need to improve.

Where do I sign up for that?” I can assure you that the person who composed this message is not an Aries. More than any other sign of the zodiac, you Rams want to be yourself, to inhabit your experience purely and completely — not see yourself from the perspective of outside observers. Now is a good time to emphasize this specialty.

TAURUS

APRIL 20-MAY 20: “Humans like to be scared,”

declares author Cathy Bell. “We love the wicked witch’s cackle, the wolf’s hot breath, and the old lady who eats children, because sometimes, when the scary is over, all we remember is the magic.” I suppose that what she says is a tiny bit true. But there are also many ways to access the magic that don’t require encounters with dread. And that’s exactly what I predict for you in the coming weeks, Taurus: marvelous experiences — including catharses, epiphanies and breakthroughs — that are neither spurred by fear nor infused with it.

facebook.com/theboulderweekly instagram.com/boulderweekly twitter.com/boulderweekly

boulderweekly.com We’re here so you can Live and Die Your Values.

GEMINI

MAY 21-JUNE 20: In 1994, the animated movie The

Lion King told the story of the difficult journey made by a young lion as he struggled to claim his destiny as rightful king. A remake of the film appeared in 2019. During the intervening 25 years, the number of real lions living in nature declined dramatically. There are now just 20,000. Why am I telling you such bad news? I hope to inspire you to make 2021 a year when you will resist trends like this. Your assignment is to nurture and foster wildness in every way that’s meaningful for you — whether that means helping to preserve habitats of animals in danger of extinction or feeding and championing the wildness inside you and those you care about. Get started!

CANCER

JUNE 21-JULY 22: Is there anyone whose forgiveness you

would like to have? Is there anyone to whom you should make atonement? Now is a favorable phase to initiate such actions. In a related subject, would you benefit from forgiving a certain person whom you feel wronged you? Might there be healing for you in asking that person to make amends? The coming weeks will provide the best opportunity you have had in a long time to seek these changes.

LEO

JULY 23-AUG. 22: Scientists know that the Earth’s

Seth

Karen

Dan

rotation is gradually slowing down — but at the very slow rate of two milliseconds every 100 years. What that means is that 200 million years from now, one day will last 25 hours. Think of how much more we humans will be able to get done with an extra hour every day!

I suspect you may get a preview of this effect in the coming weeks, Leo. You’ll be extra efficient. You’ll be focused and intense in a relaxing way. Not only that: You will also be extra appreciative of the monumental privilege of being alive. As a result, you will seem to have more of the precious luxury of time.

VIRGO

AUG. 23-SEPT. 22: Adventurer Tim Peck says there are Thank you for voting us for Best New Business & Best Independent Business

Colorado’s 1st Holistic Funeral Home and End-of-Life Resource Center

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102 West Chester Street (Just off S. Public Rd in downtown Lafayette) Parking: South of our center off the alley, or in public lot on S. Public, by the florist.

Call (720) 515-2344 for info thenaturalfuneral.com

DECEMBER 3, 2020

three kinds of fun. The first is pure pleasure, enjoyed in full as it’s happening. The second kind of fun feels challenging when it’s underway, but interesting and meaningful in retrospect. Examples are giving birth to a baby or taking an arduous hike uphill through deep snow. The third variety is no fun at all. It’s irksome while you’re doing it, and equally disagreeable as you think about it later. Now I’ll propose a fourth type of fun, which I suspect you’ll specialize in during the coming weeks. It’s rather boring or tedious or nondescript while it’s going on, but in retrospect you are very glad you did it.

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takes,” said Libran composer and jazz pianist Thelonious Monk. He had just completed an improvisatory performance he wasn’t satisfied with. On countless other occasions, however, he made the right mistakes. The unexpected notes and tempo shifts he tried often resulted in music that pleased him. I hope that in the coming weeks you make a clear demarcation between wrong mistakes and right mistakes, dear Libra. The latter could help bring about just the transformations you need.

SCORPIO

OCT. 23-NOV. 21: “Home is not where you were born,”

writes Naguib Mahfouz. “Home is where all your attempts to escape cease.” I propose we make that one of your mottoes for the next 12 months, Scorpio.

According to my astrological analysis, you will receive all the inspiration and support you need as you strive to be at peace with exactly who you are.

You’ll feel an ever-diminishing urge to wish you were doing something else besides what you’re actually doing. You’ll be less and less tempted to believe your destiny lies elsewhere, with different companions and different adventures. To your growing satisfaction, you will refrain from trying to flee from the gifts that have been given you, and you will instead accept the gifts just as they are. And it all starts now.

SAGITTARIUS

NOV. 22-DEC. 21: “Pictures of perfection, as you know,

make me sick and wicked,” observed Sagittarian author Jane Austen. She wrote this confession in a letter to her niece, Fanny, whose boyfriend thought that the women characters in Jane’s novels were too naughty. In the coming weeks, I encourage you Sagittarians to regard pictures of perfection with a similar disdain. To accomplish all the brisk innovations you have a mandate to generate, you must cultivate a deep respect for the messiness of creativity; you must understand that your dynamic imagination needs room to experiment with possibilities that may at first appear disorderly. For inspiration, keep in mind this quote from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”

CAPRICORN

DEC. 22-JAN. 19: Capricorn novelist Anne Brontë (1820–

1849) said, “Smiles and tears are so alike with me, they are neither of them confined to any particular feelings: I often cry when I am happy, and smile when I am sad.” I suspect you could have experiences like hers in the coming weeks. I bet you’ll feel a welter of unique and unfamiliar emotions. Some of them may seem paradoxical or mysterious, although I think they’ll all be interesting and catalytic. I suggest you welcome them and allow them to teach you new secrets about your deep self and the mysterious nature of your life.

AQUARIUS

JAN. 20-FEB. 18: Aquarian philosopher Simone Weil

formulated resolutions so as to avoid undermining herself. First, she vowed she would only deal with difficulties that actually confronted her, not far-off or hypothetical problems. Second, she would allow herself to feel only those feelings that were needed to inspire her and make her take effective action. All other feelings were to be shed, including imaginary feelings — that is, those not rooted in any real, objective situation. Third, she vowed, she would “never react to evil in such a way as to augment it.”

Dear Aquarius, I think all of these resolutions would be very useful for you to adopt in the coming weeks.

PISCES

FEB. 19-MARCH 20: In June 2019, the young Piscean

singer Justin Bieber addressed a tweet to 56-year-old actor Tom Cruise, challenging him to a mixed martial arts cage fight. “If you don’t take this fight,” said Bieber, “you will never live it down.” A few days later, Bieber retracted his dare, confessing that Cruise “would probably whoop my ass in a fight.” If Bieber had waited until December 2020 to make his proposal, he might have had more confidence to follow through — and he might also have been better able to whoop Cruise’s ass. You Pisceans are currently at the peak of your power and prowess.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

BY DAN SAVAGE Dear Dan: I’m at a bit of a loss. I met a guy that I really like at a nudist resort of all places. I didn’t realize at the time just how much I was falling for him. He was trying to be more in the beginning but I missed some very obvious signs. Hindsight is 20/20. I’m incredibly guarded after growing up in an emotionally abusive household and am still dealing with some trauma after being raped a few years ago. By the time I realized how I felt about him, he surprised me by telling me he had a girlfriend. I was trying to arrange a time to see him after I disappeared for a bit to face some demons from the past. I wanted to tell him how I felt in person.

Before I got that chance, he already had a girlfriend. He and I run in the same kinky circles and I ran into them at an event. I actually got a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach, which I didn’t expect. I never told him how I felt about him. I’m happy that he is happy with her but it hurts, nonetheless. He matters enough to me that I would be content keeping him in my life even if it’s just as a friend. My question is should I tell him how I feel and risk losing him altogether or do I let him be happy with his girlfriend and not tell him that I fell hard for him? I know he might not reciprocate my feelings.

That’s OK if he doesn’t, but the not knowing I think hurts more than the truth would.

—Hopeless Romantic Nailing The Hopeless Part Dear HRNTHP: If the not knowing hurts more than losing his friendship would — if not knowing whether you had a shot with him and blew it — then you should tell him how you feel (or felt) and express regret for missing the obvious signs and disappearing on him. And as painful as it might be to hear that he wouldn’t want to be with you even if he were single — and that’s the worst-case scenario — you will get over it and get over him. Best-case scenario, HRNTHP, he had no idea you were into him, he’s not serious about the new girlfriend and he’d rather date you. Less-than-bestcase scenario, he might be willing to date you if 1) things don’t work out with his new girlfriend and 2) you’re still single at that point. In the meantime, don’t pass on any other opportunities that come your way and be courteous, polite and non-toxic when you run into them together at kinky events.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Dear Dan: I’m writing to beg you — to implore you — to make some sort of desperate, last-ditch attempt to hold back the tide of linguistic confusion over the word “come.” Yes, that is the word, readers of Savage Love. It’s “come,” it’s not “cum.” The past tense is “came,” not “cummed.” (Yes, Dan, people are now saying and typing “cummed.”) In the past I’ve been content to merely grumble cantankerously. The final straw came over the last several months when, while watching a lot of international TV and movies, I noticed — to my horror — that the people responsible for the subtitles are using “cum.” Yes, the semi-literate usage of online free-porn-posters has now polluted the entire planet’s comprehension of this simple English word. I turn to you, DS, to do something about this.

To come out loudly and proudly for coming, loudly and proudly. This isn’t just about spelling. It’s about losing the meaning of the word: It signifies an arrival.

—Canadian Opposes Mangled English P.S. You owe me one, Dan. I was raised in Winnipeg, whose inhabitants, Winnipeggers, refer to their home affectionately as “The ’Peg.” You’ve turned any reference to my hometown into a source for snickers amongst the same sort of childish people who use “cum.” The least you can do, in recompense, is to restore the simple dignity of “come.”

Dear COME: I’m on your side, COME. I’ve been fighting a lonely battle against “cum,” “cumming” and (shudder) “cummed” for as long as I’ve been writing this column. I confess to having sinned a few weeks ago when I used the term “cumblebrag.” But in my defense, that was obviously a pun and — for the record — my one-time use of “cum” in the service of a joke should not be construed as an endorsement of “cum.” (The eye stumbles over “comeblebrag,” so it wouldn’t have worked to use “come.”) As I’ve written before, we don’t have alternate spellings for other words that have both sexual and non-sexual meanings. Seeing as we don’t “suk dik” or “eet pussee,” there’s no earthly reason why we should “cum” on someone else or be “cummed” upon ourselves.

P.S. Sorry about that, Winnipeggers.

Send emails to mail@savagelove.net, follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage, and visit ITMFA.org.

On the Lovecast, Dan chats with Amy Chan of “Breakup Bootcamp.” www.savagelovecast.com I

DECEMBER 3, 2020

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Roll out the barrel Science meets drunken fun in ‘Another Round’

by Michael J. Casey SAMUEL GOLDWYN FILMS

ON THE BILL: ‘Another Round’ opens at CU-Boulder’s International Film Series virtual theater on Dec. 4.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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artin has been immobilized. He’s only 40, but the life drained out of his face years ago. His wife barely talks to him, and his high school students arrange a parent-teacher conference to tell him he’s terrible.

While at a colleague’s birthday dinner, Martin is described as banal. “I think you lack self-confidence,” the friend says. “And joy.”

Martin is played by Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, a performer who can convey rugged sexuality and intellectual sophistication simply by being. Here, he’s a doormat reduced to tears. Around the table are his only friends: Nikolaj (Magnus Millang), Peter (Lars Ranthe) and Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen). They’re not doing much better, but they all seem happy. That’s because they each have a glass of Champagne in their hands — 2013 vintage with minerality so bright, it’ll transport drinkers to ripe vineyards in France. Martin has a tumbler full of sparkling water with lime: a dead-end drink.

So, Martin starts to drink. A lot. They all do. One of the friends recalls Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skårderud’s theory that humans are born with a 0.05% blood alcohol deficiency. What if they got their booze on and maintained a 0.05% BAC level throughout the day? There’s some slurring in their speech, and they can’t drive home from work, but the positives are undeniable.

Martin becomes a much more engaged teacher and a better lover, and Tommy turns out to be a pretty decent soccer coach. Peter and Nikolaj also see improvements.

Well, if life is good at 0.05%, what about 0.08%? 0.12%? Is there a limit? If so, what does that look like?

Alcoholism, my friend.

As the saying goes: One drink is fine, two are too much and three is never enough. And Another Round goes there, but not in the manner you might expect. Written and directed by Thomas Vinterberg (who co-wrote the script with Tobias Lindholm), Another Round opens with hoards of Danish teens drinking to excess in the name of cultural tradition. Their binge habits are inferred three more times in the narrative, suggesting Vinterberg and Lindholm may have more on their minds than middleaged men leading lives of resignation. Curiouser still, Vinterberg and Lindholm suggest that while alcohol might be the cause of some problems, it is also the solution. It crumbles defenses, opens up emotions, alleviates anxiety, narrows the focus and creates community. And that’s all Martin and company wanted in the first place, wasn’t it?

Maybe. Another Round is a really good movie with a questionable conclusion, but you should expect nothing less from the cofounder of the cinematic movement Dogme ’95. The other cofounder is Lars von Trier, a mischievous filmmaker with dubious assumptions if ever there was one.

Vinterberg is the more reserved of the two, even if his movies find chaotic waters and question stability at every turn. That’s a pretty good way to stir up debate. And you know what goes best with a good debate, don’t you?

DECEMBER 3, 2020

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Stronger, together.

It goes without saying that we would not be here without the support of our Boulder community.

To express our gratitude, we’re on a mission to give away $100,000 in gift cards to our local frontline heroes and others impacted by the pandemic by the end of February. Want to help?

For every $100 in gift cards you buy, we’ll give away $50 in gift cards.

To learn more or to order gift cards, visit BoulderJapango.com/Grateful Thank you!

Great Gifts of the Finest Foods & Imported Specialty Goods Skip a plane ride over the pond this holiday season and excite all of your senses in “La Vie Parisienne Boheme” while experiencing a truly original European Marketplace right here in Colorado!

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103 Main St, Longmont, CO (303) 772-9599 www.cheeseimporters.com 30

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DECEMBER 3, 2020

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BOULDER WEEKLY

PHOTOS BY STAFF

TRY THIS WEEK: The Larkburger @ Larkburger

LARKBURGER. 2525 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, 303-444-1487, larkburger.com

WITH ALL THE kerfuffle surrounding In-N-Out’s recent arrival in Colorado — people reportedly waited in line 14 hours to place an order — we thought we’d skip the chaos and revisit what many consider the Centennial State’s entry into the fastcasual burger wars: Larkburger. We ordered the classic Larkburger — a one-third-pound black Angus beef patty cooked to order, placed atop a chewy bun with lettuce, tomato, red onion, pickle and a mustardy house sauce. What more could you ask of a burger: the meat patty is crisp and lightly charred, but so juicy on the inside; the toppings are all fresh; and the fries are substantial. And if you’re looking for something extra, add truffle to your burger, fries or tots; it’s right there on the menu.

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Chop5 Salad Kitchen opens in Boulder

Food truck park and cidery coming to Louisville THE ROSE & RAVEN, a cidery and food truck part, is coming to Louisville and will be located just off South Boulder Road.

The Louisville City Council recently approved the project, and the tax incentives for it. The project includes several slots for food trucks, deck and patio seating, a tavern/food hall and a 2,000-square-foot cidery. The project is run by Corvus Nidus LLC with collaboration from EVG Hospitality — the group behind Raglin Market in Gunbarrel, the Rossonian in Denver, and other hospitality spots throughout the country. Check back with Boulder Weekly for more details, including an opening date, when they become available.

BOULDER WEEKLY

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THE CHAIN CHOP5 Salad Kitchen opened its first Colorado location in Boulder Dec. 1.

As you might’ve guessed, it’s got a whole bunch of salads — from unique spins on classics like cobb, Greek and California, to some signature salads like Korean chicken and grilled ginger salmon. You can also build your own salad bowl with choice of greens, grains, produce, nuts, cheese, dressings and much more. It’s at 2525 Arapahoe Ave., Unit H6 in Boulder. Order online and/or check out the menu at chop5.com/boulder.

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Now Open 7 Days A Week

Curb-Side Pick-Up via 303.604.6351 or Doordash or Grub Hub Hours: Mon & Tues 8am-3pm, Wed-Sun 8am-8pm

BOTTOMLESS WINE WEDNESDAYS 4-8pm MORNINGGLORYCAFE | 1377 FOREST PARK CIRCLE, LAFAYETTE | 303.604.6351

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Order on our site or by phone and we’ll bring it out to you. (Alcoholic beverages available with valid ID.) D E LI V E RY

Your Japango favorites are also available for delivery.

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Our extended patios are heated and decorated for the holidays. If you would like to dine inside, we’re strictly following the latest health safety protocols.

R E S E RVATI O N S , M E N U S & S P E C I A L S

+1 303 938 1136 | BoulderJapango.com H O U R S & LO C ATI O N

Open Daily at 1 1 am – 10pm 1 1 36 Pearl St. Boulder, CO

Elevated Seltzer is The Nation’s and Colorado’s First Independent Hard Seltzer Company!

JapangoRestaurant

They established Elevated after 17 years of being in the craft beer industry to add a unique twist to continuously growing brewing culture and newly surfaced seltzer culture.

JapangoBoulder

Stronger, together.

You can find them in Olde Town Arvada on Yukon Street. Surrounded by a lively downtown and new developments, it’s the perfect place to enjoy our seltzers, craft beer, cocktails & our diverse food menu.

We would not be here without the support of our Boulder community. To express our gratitude, we’re on a mission to give away $100,000 in gift cards to our local frontline heroes and others impacted by the pandemic by the end of February. Want to help? For every $100 in gift cards you purchase, we’ll give away $50 in gift cards. To learn more, please visit BoulderJapango.com/Grateful. Thank you!

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DECEMBER 3, 2020

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

The time is right for Belgian beer

by MATT CORTINA

W

hile excellent holiday beers pop up from local brewers throughout December, you’ll also notice a stable of traditional Belgian winter beers on the shelves of your local liquor store.

Steeped in history, Belgian winter beers are made for the cold months — MATT CORTINA often strong, robustly spiced and imbued with flavors of dried fruits, caramel and chocolate.

While you should stop by Boulder County’s local Belgian beer purveyors — 12Degree, West Flanders, for example — for a to-go package (or dineoutside pint, if possible), now’s also a good time to dip into the best of what our local liquor stores are importing from Belgium. Here are a few to check out.

VAL-DIEU WINTER ALE

The Winter Ale is one of five traditional beers brewed by monks at The Abbey of Val-Dieu in Belgium. What’s more, the Abbey claims it’s the only living abbey to still produce beer, in line with traditions of the Belgian Trappist monks.

Val-Dieu monks make beer that’s

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

inspired by the original recipes of those early brewers, and still use the secondary fermentation process in the bottle — so when you pop open a Val-Dieu beer, watch out for the cork.

What’ll hit you immediately is the beer’s strong, yeasty aroma. It smells alive, which is more pleasant than it might sound — Val-Dieu uses an old mushroomderived yeast strain, which imparts a nearly umami characteristic to the beer.

But what’s remarkable about the Winter Ale is that for as heady as the aroma is, the light-amber, slightly sparkling beer is light on the tongue. If you’re not into Belgian beer, this makes for a good primer. And if you’re really into Belgian beer, then you probably know finding the subtle notes of banana and hints of clove and caramel on your tongue keep each sip interesting.

DELIRIUM NOEL

The Huyghe Brewery goes back 100 years, in a Belgian town (Melle) that has

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a brewing tradition centuries old.

Delirium Noel is without a doubt its most renowned export, and you can easily find it on liquor store shelves across the U.S. Just look for the pink elephant.

This Belgian strong ale pours a deep red with a foamy beige head. You’ll get a ton of red wine and toffee on the tongue, with bright accents of cinnamon, clove, black pepper and hops.

At 10% ABV, it’s remarkably drinkable, with a dry, spicy finish that resets the palate for another sip of those dark, luxurious flavors and textures.

ST. BERNARDUS CHRISTMAS ALE

You’ve probably been seeing the St. Bernardus Christmas Ale on liquor store shelves for years. This 10% ABV Belgian quad is in an iconic holiday sipper with century-old roots — a group of monks fled France around 1900 to avoid paying tax on the cheese they were making; flash forward to 2020, and the operation has grown into 4-million-liter brewing facility (though you can still visit the dairy site, which is a guest house).

But back to the beer — the Christmas Ale is big. You’ll get notes of anise and a wallop of nuttiness on the nose, with a smooth mouthfeel and abundant flavors of caramel and dried fruits on the tongue.

St. Bernardus recommends you drink this as a digestif, and indeed it pairs well with much of what you’ll have around the house this holiday season: chocolate, pie and baked goods.

DECEMBER 3, 2020

Left Hand launches ‘The Milk Box’

L

ongmont’s Left Hand Brewing Company recently announced the launch of The Milk Box, with a variety of unique beers, some sold exclusively in this package.

This 12-pack includes Left Hand’s notorious Milk Stout — rich in chocolate, caramel and coffee flavors — in four varieties.

The Chai Milk Stout, typically only available on nitro, will be offered in a CO2 version. There’s also a Bittersweet Imperial Milk Stout (exclusive to the box) and Peanut Butter and Raspberry varieties.

“We keep expanding upon the things we do best,” said Jeff Joslin, director of brewing at Left Hand, in a press release. “Our brewing team uses our smallbatch pilot system to experiment with Milk Stout varieties, and we’re excited for the craft beer community to enjoy our favorites.”

Since the options to enjoy a flight of beer out at a brewery are severely limited this holiday season, The Milk Box provides a way to get the best of Left Hand in your home for safe consumption. Find it at your favorite local beer store.

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DECEMBER 3, 2020

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BOULDER WEEKLY

Japango to give away $100K in gift cards to front-line workers SUSAN FRANCE

C

iting the support already shown by the Boulder community for those most impacted by the pandemic, Japango announced it will give away $100,000 in gift cards to front-line workers by the end of February. You can help them do it.

For every $100 gift card you buy, Japango will give away a $50 gift card to people who have sacrificed greatly during the pandemic, particularly front-line health care workers.

Japango’s Erin and Jon Banis wrote in an announcement of the giveaway that they wanted to make this year “one of giving back.”

“For us personally, we have become more acutely aware of the ways front-line workers carry us through some of the most pivotal emotion-filled times in our lives,” they wrote. “In April as we were getting to know them through Feed the Frontlines, the most amazing team of nurses held our hands (emotionally and physically) while we welcomed our first baby into a world fraught with uncertainty.

In October, we watched as our friends’ houses burned, but also the many heroes who worked tirelessly to stave off destruction that could have been far worse.

“Every month in between, front-line workers protected some of the people dearest to us as they battled through COVID. With cases spiking again, we know the health of our loved ones are so precariously close to depending on their hands.”

SUSAN FRANCE

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To participate and purchase a gift card, go to boulderjapango.com/grateful.

There, you can also nominate someone to receive a $50 gift card: “someone who

has been an immense ‘helper’ these many months or a person who may have lost a person, a job or a home and deserves to be treated to an escape.”

Moxie voted one of America’s best bakeries

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hose of us in Boulder County know Moxie Bread Co. (in Louisville, with a grain-focused outpost now in North Boulder) is a gem. Baker Andy Clark and company’s bread, pastry and sandwich creations are unique, delicious and made from well-sourced ingredients.

It’s also garnered national attention, with Clark earning a James Beard Award nomination in 2018 for Best Bakery. And now, another accolade: Food & Wine Magazine recently named Moxie one of the 10 best bakeries in the U.S. The magazine noted Clark’s perseverance opening Feed + Seed (the Boulder spot) during a pandemic, and his work launching the Colorado Grain Chain, which supports sustainable, local development and production of local grains.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Colorado restaurateur collects millions of signatures for more stimulus

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DECEMBER 3, 2020

olorado, and Boulder County, has been at the forefront of pushing for federal aid to restaurants hard-hit by the pandemic. Frasca’s Bobby Stuckey, for instance, took a leadership role at the Independent Restaurant Coalition, which galvanized chefs locally and nationally to push for more state and federal support for their companies and employees.

Add Stephanie Bonin of duo in Denver to the list. Earlier this year, Bonin started and circulated a change. org petition asking for regular $2,000 stimulus checks. The petition has since collected almost 2 million signatures.

With Congress stalled on a second stimulus package since July, Bonin is hoping the petition catches the ears of lawmakers as they negotiate a package this December. (A bipartisan group of legislators announced a “compromise” package recently that does not include stimulus checks.)

“My small business is suffering and my family is afraid — and I know I’m not alone,” Bonin said in a press release.

“With newly elected officials taking office at all levels of government, we have a new opportunity to push for more relief checks.”

This winter could be rough for restaurateurs locally and beyond. Many jurisdictions, including Boulder County, have halted indoor dining, which buoyed restaurants over the summer.

Already, several restaurants have closed, including The Med, Zolo and Eureka.

To sign the petition, go to change. org/p/give-2000-month-to-every-american-moneyforthepeople-covid19.

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Guiding a growing industry

New report outlines how governments and businesses can build and maintain an environmentally sustainable cannabis industry

by Will Brendza

W

hen the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA) approached Kaitlin Urso last year about writing the recently released “Environmental Impacts, Best Management Practices and Policies for the Cannabis Industry” report, she knew it was a deeply needed resource. But she also understood it wasn’t something she could do alone.

The NCIA’s goal was to create a guide for cannabis businesses to recognize their environmental impacts and to understand how they can invest in sustainable systems; but also a guide for governments to craft cannabis policy that incentivizes and promotes sustainability as a tenet of the industry.

Urso is the environmental consultant, project manager and small business assistance program specialist for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE). She’s worked with craft breweries to facilitate more environmentally sustainable brewing practices, and she’s currently working with Colorado’s cannabis industry to institute similarly sustainable systems for growing, packaging, distributing and selling cannabis.

Still, even with such extensive environmental experience behind her, she knew that undertaking a project like the NCIA report would require a diverse

team of specialists. That’s because cannabis, as an industry, is not very green — it’s pollutive and resource-intensive, and impacts the environment in many different, nuanced ways.

“I really felt like I couldn’t necessarily comment on all the impacts,” Urso says.

She was happy to lead the project for NCIA (the largest cannabis trade association in the U.S.) and act as an unbiased third-party, but Urso wanted it to be a collaborative effort.

“So we really tried to get a good mix of experts and people from government and private industry to really have a diverse group,” Urso says. “I think we struck a good balance with all the authors that we had.”

The report reviews the impacts cannabis has on soils, land use, water, energy generation and consumption, air quality and the challenges associated with waste.

For each of those impacts, the report offers recommendations for best management practices that businesses in the industry can easily invest in and adopt.

Then it outlines policy considerations for governments seeking to build a sustainable future for their cannabis industry.

It also explains the financial incentives for sustainable investments and developments. The authors make the case that sustainable best practices like proper land use, water conservation, air quality control, energy efficiency and

waste reduction all represent ways to actually save money. Urso says that businesses will be able to take lessons from this paper, apply them to their operations and actually see a return on that investment. For states, the report is meant to be a tool to build a sustainable cannabis industry from the ground up, using environmentally conscious policy and incentives.

“I think that this is exciting timing, given that in the last election cycle a handful of states legalized new marijuana markets,” Urso says, adding that New Jersey is already planning on adopting some of the policy recommendations.

The policy considerations outlined in the report go into great detail explaining the recommendations and how to implement them. Generally, though, it recommends improving water quality through usage limits and regional disposal requirements; it recommends implementing energy policies that set climate goals, and incorporating structural and financial incentives, education and transparent access to energy and market data; and it recommends protecting land and soil health by requiring final product testing to reduce unregulated fertilizers, toxic pesticides, and other harmful chemicals from entering the environment.

Perhaps the most influential and sweeping environmental policy recommended in the report, though, is that of

federal legalization. The illicit cannabis market, by nature, is unregulated — meaning there’s no incentive for participants to practice environmentally sustainable means of production.

Because of that, black market cannabis contributes to all other impacts outlined in this report: Illegal grows divert water without concern for usage limits; they often use toxic, prohibited pesticides and fertilizers; they protect their grows from animals (and humans) with trapping snares, poison or firearms; they use generators, or tap into the electrical grid for power; and more often than not, when an illegal grow is abandoned, it isn’t cleaned up.

“One of the primary goals in supporting the shift to environmental excellence should be to displace the unregulated, untested and unsafe illicit market,” the report reads.

And with the possibility of federal legalization looming under a Biden presidency, Urso sees an unprecedented opportunity for environmentally sustainable practices to become the national standard from the outset of the national industry.

“I think this paper is crucial to getting us all on the same baseline conversation,” Urso says. “In order for the cannabis industry to really move forward in sustainability we have to recognize where we’re at today, what our current impacts are and where the opportunities for sustainable improvements are.”

Call 720.253.4710 All credit cards accepted No text messages

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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DECEMBER 3, 2020

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ALL TOP SHELF BUDS. NO STRAIN RESTRICTIONS. ONE TIER PRICING.

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