Civil Rights & Immigration
Florida gave voting rights to people with felony convictions. Now some face charges for voting.
Florida authorities arrested a Black man while he was staying in a homeless shelter and charged him with voting illegally in a case tied to Republicans’ drive to root out election fraud. But Kelvin Bolton’s arrest raises questions about the rollout of Amendment 4, passed by Florida voters in 2018 to restore voting rights to […]
U.S. House panel looks into disinformation targeted at communities of color
WASHINGTON — Experts tracking disinformation efforts online detailed to lawmakers on a U.S. House Administration panel Thursday how communities of color are targets for those disinformation campaigns. Democrats on the Subcommittee on Elections expressed their concern about how communities of color are the subject of election and COVID-19 misinformation through various social media platforms such […]
U.S. Interior secretary to promote big spending jump for tribal, climate programs
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will ask a U.S. House spending panel to increase funding for the department’s tribal programs and climate resilience efforts, according to written testimony released ahead of a hearing scheduled for Thursday. The administration’s budget request for fiscal 2023 would significantly increase spending for the Interior Department. Its agencies oversee onshore oil […]
Aurora officials had their say on the city’s camping ban. What do the unhoused think?
“You show me a homeless person, and I’ll show you a person who’s faced with circumstances beyond their control.” This is according to John Alexander, a man who’s been experiencing homelessness in the Denver metropolitan area for 20 years, and who had no idea Aurora recently passed an urban camping ban. Following in the footsteps […]
Congress expands Brown v. Board of Education historic site beyond Kansas
The U.S. House cleared a bill Tuesday that would expand the Kansas site honoring the U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning school segregation, adding National Park Service sites in other states to commemorate their roles in the decision as well. The bill would designate sites related to school desegregation cases in Virginia, Delaware, South Carolina and […]
Lakewood man who alleged police brutality cleared of all charges stemming from 2021 arrest
Ameer Allen waited over a year to hear the words that he knew to be true. A six-person jury found Allen not guilty on April 22 of four misdemeanor charges stemming from a fight that ensued between him and a tow truck driver, which led to Allen’s arrest, in February 2021. Since the incident, Allen, […]
Data brokers provide ‘back doors’ for ICE to target immigrants, report says
Colorado sanctuary laws prevent county sheriffs and state agencies from sharing personal data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But according to a new report, ICE enjoys access to extensive information on the people it targets for deportation through the data sharing platform LexisNexis. “Colorado law enforcement data gets into ICE’s hands by two main private-sector […]
3 Colorado counties rank in top 100 with high poverty, high COVID death rates
Three counties in Colorado rank in the top 100 counties in the United States with high poverty and high COVID-19 death rates, according to a report published this month. Bent, Otero and Conejos counties were ranked as part of a report published by the Poor People’s Campaign, which works to improve legislation to help low-income […]
Ute tribes invited to address annual joint session of Colorado Legislature
Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill into law last week that some say will support the Ute tribes in Colorado and foster a strong relationship between the communities and the state. The Tribal Governments Annual Address To Joint Session law requires the state House and Senate to invite representatives from the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe […]
What are book bans really about?
This commentary originally appeared in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. More years ago than I really care to count, the children’s librarian in my little town in rural northwestern Connecticut, apparently tired of my endlessly renewing the same book over and over again, pressed a copy of “The White Mountains” by John Christopher into my eight-year-old hands. Mrs. Bullock was her name. […]
LGBTQ community, people of color in the crosshairs of banned book movement
Students in one Pennsylvania school district were not allowed to read a biography of the first Black President, Barack Obama. In some Tennessee classrooms, a nonfiction comic book about the atrocities of the Holocaust is banned. And one school district in Wisconsin banned from libraries a picture book about a gay rights activist who was […]
What is white nationalism?
This story was originally published in the Michigan Advance. At the very core of white nationalism and white supremacy lies ethnocentrism that advocates for a white nation through the exclusion of people of color. That objective is carried along on revolutionary, anti-government themes. “Eugenics is at the heart of white nationalism because you have to […]