Commentary
Amazon tops a list of companies to ditch in support of immigrants’ human rights
This commentary originally appeared in Source NM. Throughout the last year, the Amazon corporation has given American consumers plenty of reasons to question whether we should be using its products and services. The news is filled with horrible stories about Amazon’s treatment of their workers. The company has an astronomical carbon footprint. The billionaire CEO […]
The Colorado GOP is incompatible with democracy
Stop believing the Colorado Republican Party is compatible with democracy. It is not. Its own members have told us so. Some of the party’s defenders keep saying it is, but they’re invariably discredited by the actions of elected Republicans, and after the events this week at the Colorado Legislature, there can be no more doubt. […]
How the Vietnam War pushed MLK to embrace global justice, not only civil rights at home
This article originally appeared in The Conversation. On July 2, 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. stood behind President Lyndon Baines Johnson as the Texan signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although not the first civil rights bill passed by Congress, it was the most comprehensive. King called the law’s passage “a great […]
About the GOP’s historical amnesia on voting rights
If you get into an argument with a Republican about the GOP’s lamentable support for voting rights and its fractured relationship with Black Americans, it won’t be long before your rhetorical sparring partner bellows “Robert Byrd” at you and declares the argument over. The logic here, if it even can be called that, is that […]
The Marshall Fire was a force of humans
On the afternoon of the Marshall Fire, after its dreadful scale had started to sink in, Gov. Jared Polis appeared for his first press conference on the disaster. It occurred “with no warning,” he said on Dec. 30. “This fire is frankly a force of nature.” Wrong. The misunderstanding that could permit the Colorado governor […]
It’s time for Colorado to protect abortion access (again)
Colorado needs to act to protect abortion access, today, tomorrow and always. And as leaders of the abortion rights organization Cobalt, and the reproductive justice organization COLOR, we are calling on the Colorado General Assembly to step in, just as it did in 1967, when we became the first state to decriminalize abortion, and affirmatively […]
A child’s best interests are not the same as what a child wants
The role of a guardian ad litem is not for the faint of heart. The attorney, by putting themselves into that important and often critical role, takes on the responsibility of making recommendations that will significantly affect the direction of a child’s future. I, myself, have never been guardian ad litem, however as a family […]
The next Jan. 6 should worry us more
A version of this commentary originally appeared in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. One year ago on this day, U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle was at his desk at the Longworth House Office Building, near the U.S. Capitol, when he heard an enraged mob, fueled by a former president’s false claims of fraud, making its way up Independence […]
Jan. 6 succeeded. Here’s what’s next.
If the point of the Jan. 6 insurrection was to establish that a significant portion of the country is done with democracy, it succeeded. The attack on the U.S. Capitol one year ago by violent supporters of former President Donald Trump — whose lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him was the fuel […]
Stop posing with guns. It makes you look weak.
It’s not hard to find photos of each one of the three Republicans in Colorado’s congressional delegation posing with guns. The images aren’t just out there on the internet — the members want you to see them. They released them as part of campaigns or policy statements. The discouraging implication is that they assume such […]
The perplexity of a useless boat ramp at Lake Powell
A version of this story originally appeared in Big Pivots. As the sun slipped behind the canyon wall earlier this month, I lingered at the bottom of a concrete boat ramp just outside Page, Arizona. I was there to study the disappearing Lake Powell. We expect the sun to vanish. Not so the giant reservoirs […]
The excruciating choices facing Colorado hospital staff in COVID ‘crisis standards of care’
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. As the omicron variant brings a new wave of uncertainty and fear, I can’t help reflecting back to March 2020, when people in health care across the U.S. watched in horror as COVID-19 swamped New York City. Hospitals were overflowing with sick […]