Police body cameras reveal Colorado Springs law enforcement used arrests to infiltrate a student socialist group.

Posted on July 18, 2017 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO- Police body worn camera footage accidentally discovered to defendants in the March 26, 2017, protest cases, has revealed a mysterious side story at the Colorado Springs Socialists’ “March Against Imperialism”. At that march, six participants were cited for marching in the street. Meanwhile, a curious seventh was detained, driven off, but not cited. CSPD Officer Krueger’s body-cam recorded what happened and more.

What happened at the March 26 rally, beside the police dispersing a fully legal assembly? This video documents that the CSPD tried to give deeper cover to a team of El Paso County Sheriff’s plainclothes operatives, by giving one of them the credibility of an arrest. In truth, it worked for three weeks and several socialist actions, until the undercover team spooked everyone with their excessively sketchy zeal. As the March 26 evidence was released to defendants, the contradictory police reports began to accrue. Then a file labeled KRUEGER BODY-CAM emerged.

1. Krueger-cam
The first thing you see is the twenty or so protesters, clad in black, waving red flags, rallying on the steps of Colorado Springs City Hall. Speakers are railing against capitalism and imperialism. CSPD Officer Krueger comes upon this scene, among the reinforcements called, because fourteen of the protesters, mostly masked, were observed to have marched on the street.

(Marchers had followed Nevada to Bijou to Tejon to Colorado back to Nevada, trailed by the cruisers of CSPD Officers Mark Keller and Roberto Williamson. Returning to City Hall, participants were told by CSPD Sergeant Clayton Blackwell that they could protest on the sidewalk but would be ticketed if they stepped back into the street.)

As the rally goes on, the officers hear that orders have changed and everyone is going to be ticketed. On camera, Officer Keller relates a possible motive: “LT wants everyone identified.”

(Most of the protesters are masked. Arrests will give police the pretext to register everyone’s identity, whether the person walked in the street or not. By “LT”, Keller may be refering to Lieutenant Webber, who dispatched officers to the scene, or Lieutenant Mark Comte, in charge of CSPD intelligence.)

As officers discuss whether to rush the group or detain two or three protesters at a time, CSPD Sergeant Blackwell discloses to his men: “There’s two UCs in there, and they’ll just take a ticket like everybody else.” Blackwell adds, jokingly: “So hopefully we don’t have to start spraying ‘cause I don’t know which ones they are.”

Officer Keller tells Krueger and Canaan he thinks one of the protesters is concealing a knife. He fingers a masked protester wearing a Carhartt jacket.

Though Krueger and his partner, CSPD Officer Dustin Canaan, were informed about undercovers, they don’t know that they are being tasked with arresting one.

Officers Krueger and Canaan are formally instructed that when the move is made to issue citations to the protesters, they are to apprehend “Carhartt”.

In fact, the first planned arrestee of March 26 is “Carhartt”. Aka the sheriff’s undercover.

Officers encircle the rally as Sergeants Ingram and Blackwell tell the socialists that “Everyone is getting a ticket!”

When the officers confront “Carhartt” he loudly abuses them with expletives proclaiming his innocence. He does this to incite fellow protesters to resist the police effort to detain him. Everybody else however is either walking swiftly away or calmly accepting their citations for Pedestrian-in-the-Roadway and Failure-to-Disperse.

Officers Krueger and Canaan ask “Carhartt” whether he has a weapon. The suspect responds with a strange command, voiced between clenched teeth: “Pat me down at the car.”

They don’t hear his response and so repeat their question. “Carhartt” sticks to his odd refrain: “Pat me down at the car!”

Krueger and Canaan walk “Carhartt” to their cruiser where he admits he has a weapon, a “M&P Shield 9mm”. He alerts the officers that his gun is tucked into his front waistline, with the safety off. In his pocket the officers find an additional magazine clip.

(Let us reflect for a moment, that only Officer Keller knew about this undercover. Imagine if events had escalated and any of the other dozens of police officers had caught a glimpse of the undercover’s gun. What kind of trigger-happy confrontation could have resulted with the socialist marchers caught in the middle? We might also wonder what Carhartt intended to do with two magazines full of bullets.)

Officer Canaan unloads the 9mm, removes the bullet from the chamber, and places everything on the front seat.

The officers ask “Carhartt” whether he wants to be cited and released on the spot, or taken to be booked at the station? The detainee responds he wants to go wherever the other arrestees are being processed.

Asked whether he has a concealed carry permit “Carhartt” replies no.

It occurs to the officers that they can’t catch and release someone, however cooperative, if they’ve apprehended you carrying a concealed weapon without a permit.

Officer Krueger leaves to consult his supervisor Sergeant Blackwell about this arrestee who is carrying a gun without a permit.

Blackwell asks Krueger: “Is he one of our UCs?” He explains again: “We have two UCs. Do you recognize him?”

Krueger says no.

Blackwell comes to the cruiser to see for himself.

Blackwell doesn’t recognize the detainee either.

As Sergeant Blackwell walks away from the cruiser, he tells Krueger the suspect is not one of their UCs, then he ponders: “…unless he’s with the sheriff’s office?”

The suspect gives his name as Mark Jackson, d.o.b. 7/20/75, last digits of SS# 1033, phone number (281) 606-0532. All of which is probably phony.

His partner “Amy Walter” has been sitting nearby on the curb. She didn’t flee like the other participants, but oddly, was neither cited nor unmasked like all those who remained.

(“Amy Walter” kept her cover for months after the arrests. She claimed to drive up from Pueblo and only appeared fully bloc’d up. She’s gregarious and eager, and speaks with an Eastern European accent.)

Jackson remains detained in the back seat. After a few minutes CSPD Officer Mark Keller comes to the window to look at the suspect. He walks off camera, probably to tell Sergeant Blackwell that he can confirm the detainee is indeed an undercover.

Blackwell returns shortly to the cruiser to tell Krueger “We’re good.” Lowering his voice, he adds: “He’s UC.”

After some thought, Krueger turns to Jackson and asks in a whisper: ”Are you with the Sheriffs?” The undercover answers in the affirmative.

Krueger turns off his body-cam.

2. Canaan-cam
The body-cam worn by Krueger’s partner, Officer Canaan, has all the while recorded the same sequence of events, but he wasn’t paying attention to the whispers, so his camera continues to record.

Officer Keller walks back to the cruiser, this time to tease the undercover. Keller leans in and jokes about the arrest he arranged by pretending to suspect that Jackson had a knife.

Keller begins: “You really should hang out with a better crowd.”

Mocks Jackson: “I know. ‘Fuck the Police’. Ha ha.”

Keller goes on: “Hey, youse in the street, I figured you should get a ticket like everybody else.”

The undercover then says: “That’s why I yelled ‘COME FUCKING ARREST ME!’”

The two then discuss whether the undercover’s female partner should also be ticketed. Jackson theorizes that one ticket is enough.

Meanwhile an unspoken decision is made not to carry through with Jackson’s citation. This disturbs the undercover. He asks “How will it look when I don’t get a ticket?”

As Officer Mark Keller leaves the conversation at the cruiser, he looks directly at Canaan’s body-cam.

Undercover Jackson then notices that Officer Canaan did not grasp the development. He tells Krueger “You better tell your partner what’s going on.” Canaan turns off the audio on his body-cam.

ANALYSIS
To recap. Sergeant Blackwell revealed that the city had two UCs planted in the Socialist march. Officer Keller knew of the undercover Sheriff’s deputies “Jackson” and “Walter”. An effort was orchestrated to give a citation to “Jackson” but that plan was aborted. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know why?

Jackson’s detainment did not generate officer reports from either Krueger or Canaan, but the alias “Mark Jackson” was listed in three places. 1) on the March 26 police blotter, 2) in the radio log as “Mark Jackson in custody”, and 3) mentioned in passing in the report filed by Officer Roberto Williamson.

For three weeks “Mark Jackson” continued to infiltrate the socialist group, participating in several counterprotests, until everyone gave him the cold shoulder. His partner “Amy Walter” continues to contact group members.

The infiltration operation is extraordinary when you consider that the “Colorado Springs Socialists” essentially comprises the UCCS Socialist Discussion Group, a year-old student club chartered at the school. Though the students sometimes conceal themselves bandanas and hoodies when they attend social justice protests, they’ve committed zero acts of rioting, violence, or property destruction.

Once the video files had been released to the March 26 defendants, city prosecutors fought tooth and nail to quash the defendants’ subpoenas to the officers involved. The judge refused to review the body-cam footage, explaining that the El Paso Sheriffs Office had the discretion to refuse to provide further information.

Defendants insisted the prosecution was obligated to produce all the witnesses it knew to be on the scene of the alleged offenses, whether the witnesses were uniformed police or undercover. But the court won’t concede that the undercover operation merits looking into. The city stresses the importance of detectives being able to remain undercover to monitor ongoing crimes, in this case, jaywalking. The defendants are charged with obstruction and failure to disperse. If those are the crimes worth embedding undercovers, then the officers ought to be summoned to the trial to testify and secure convictions.

The defendants risked just that by insisting that the undercovers come forward as witnesses, but that risk was worth what the defendants were really after. What were those undercovers doing at the rally and at the march? Were they leading marchers into the street? Were undercovers taunting the cops as a demonstration that the protesters heard police orders to get off the street. Most marchers did not hear any orders, nor see police do much other than block traffic for their procession, contrary to the tone set by undercover Mark Jackson’s “COME FUCKING ARREST ME”. To prove the charge of Failure to Disperse” the prosecution has to prove that the accused wilfully defied the police. Jackson’s words seem meant to stand in for that proof.

Likewise, was Jackson’s belligerant response to police trying to arrest him meant to spark more resistance? Very often, riot cops target their own infiltrators who know to act outraged and resistive so that the crowd responds protectively. Jackson was clearly trying to do that.

Most of all, defendants wanted to get to the bottom of CSPD’s complicated operation to set their undercovers up to “take a ticket like everybody else.” How many officer were involved, and why didn’t officers recognize each other? Are the undercovers in fact with the El Paso Sheriffs Office or are they intelligence contractors or government agents? Who was coordinating this infiltration operation and who decided to call off issuing the ticket?

Who above all, thought they needed to insert an armed undercover, or two, possibly four, in the midst of a peaceful anti-imperialism march? Could a socialist group’s reckless co-opting of city streets warrant an undercover team’s reckless endangerment of unsuspecting activists surounded by very likley PTSD-addled police officers?

Jackson’s jittery behavior while detained in the back of the police cruiser hardly gives you confidence that even he should be trusted to wield a gun.

APPENDIX
The Krueger and Canaan body cam videos are circulating online. We’ll link to them as we locate stable copies. Below is an index of the events described above.

On the KRUEGER body-cam:

[0:45] Officer Mark Keller: “L.T. wants everyone identified.”

[3:05] Sergeant Clayton Blackwell: “There’s two UCs in there, and they’ll just take a ticket like everybody else. So hopefully we don’t have to start spraying ‘cause I don’t know which ones they are.”

[3:50] Off-camera officer: “Guy in the Carhartt [jacket] has a knife in his pocket.”

[9:00] Officers Krueger and Canaan discuss orders to arrest “Carhartt” suspected of carrying a knife.

[14:02] Sergeant John Ingram shouts: “Everyone is going to get a ticket!”

[15:20] Krueger and Canaan contact “Carhartt” who responds in a hostile and provocative manner. Unlike the other arrestees who are fully cooperative, he objects with loud profanity and derision.

[18:05] Krueger and Canaan discover “Carhartt” is armed with a 9mm handgun, tucked in his front waistband, and no concealed carry permit.

[20:04] Suspect gives his name as “Mark Jackson, d.o.b. 7/20/75”, and asks: “How do you know I was in the street?” Officer Canaan replies “An officer pointed you out. He’s been watching you the whole time.”

[23:38] Krueger consults Sgt. Blackwell who determines that “Jackson” is not one of their two UCs embedded in the march.

[28:56] Off camera Sgt. Blackwell tells Krueger “He’s U.C.”

[29:20] “Mark Jackson” admits he is with Sheriff’s Office.

[29:50] Krueger turns off body-cam.

On the CANAAN body-cam:

[16:41] Officer Dustin Canaan unloads the detainee’s “M&P Shield 9mm” and places gun, magazines, and extra bullet on front seat.

[22:02] Officer Mark Keller approaches cruiser to take a look at the detainee’s face.

[24:52] Sergeant Blackwell taps on cruiser window, says “We’re good.” Whispers to Krueger (inaudible, but it’s on the Krueger cam where we hear: “He’s UC”)

[25:03] Officer Keller returns to cruiser to joke with “Mark Jackson” about having arranged his fake arrest. Says Keller: “Hey, you’se in the street, I figured you should get a ticket like everybody else.” To which Jackson replies: “That’s why I said ‘Come fucking arrest me!’”

[25:25] Keller discusses with Jackson whether or not to ticket his female partner.

[26:27] Canaan turns off the audio of his body-cam.

Shit in a Sack

Posted on May 8, 2016 by David Lee Anderson

?
From the front page of the Pueblo Star-Journal and Sunday Chieftain?, Dated Sunday November 6, 1977. The banner headline on the front page cried out in large bold lettering: NEWSMEN TOUR PRISON AND VIEW “LIVING HELL” By Bill Gagnon.

Canon City- A three-man reporter-photographer team from The Pueblo Chieftain and Pueblo Star-Journal stepped out of the bright and warm summerlike weather here last week and into a medieval chamber of horror- Cellhouse 3 at the Colorado State Penitentiary.

?Once inside the grim building, they were stunned by the sight of humans caged in filthy cells and living under the most wretched conditions imaginable, denied even the most simple and basic necessities of life – soap, towels, soaks, clean clothing, blankets and sheets. Yes , they even are denied the necessary materials to scrub and clean their steel hovels.

?For 24 hours a day, seven days a week, these unfortunate creatures are kept locked in their filth-covered cages with nothing to do except learn to hate an indifferent and unthinking society that keeps them there.

?Treated and looked upon as subhuman beings, even medical and dental services available to them are mediocre and to the point they are almost nil. And letters sent to them by loved ones outside the high, gray walls sometimes is delayed for weeks at the prison before being delivered to them.

?While these conditions observed first hand by the Pueblo news team in the prison’s so called “punitive segregation” section made a grown man ill, they were compounded by those seen in the narrow and darkened steel barred isolation cells in the solitary confinement wing. There, faceless and silent occupants huddle and cringe in the darkness amid the pungent stench of filth within the close confines of these cesspools like cubicles, almost concealed from those outside.

?Those confined to this living hell in the infamous Cellhouse 3 are stripped of all human dignity and respect. An aura of frustration and despair hands heavy throughout this living example of man’s inhumanity to man.

?Yet, despite such barbaric treatment, some find an inner strength which turns to outrage and they cry out to the world; “You can’t do this to me; I am a man!” But few outside the walls hear, or want to hear them.

?But the voice of one of these tortured men, David Anderson, in the form of a letter sent to the editors of these newspapers describing the deplorable conditions in maximum security, was heard. And it resulted in the assignment of this news team to investigate the shocking allegations.

?Note: the article also contained several photos of the conditions, and covered two full pages of the newspaper.

While I was confined there, Gerald Hayes, one of the prisoners, sat down in his cell, with an old razor blade, cut off his index finger.

With blood dripping from his hand, he scrawled a message on the wall of his cell “God! Help us, Convicts are people too.”

Gather round children, I’m about to tell you a true story. ?It happened nearly 40 years ago in the Colorado State Penitentiary. It happened in cell house three.

?Cell house three was isolated from the rest of the prison, it was built to house death row prisoners and other prisoners deemed problem prisoners.

?If you caused problems in cell house three, they would then send you to a special tier called the “Dog Cages” This was their jail within a jail within a prison. The “Dog Cages” was a 24/7 lock down in your cell. The only exception was when you were let out of your cell for an hour to take a shower. Some men lost their minds under those conditions. It was quite easy for a prisoner to become so confused after months, that he could not distinguish one day of the week from another.?

Many of the prisoners there committed self mutilation or suicide. In my efforts not to end up hanging from a dirty bed sheet as so many others, I chose humor as a means to hold on to my sanity.

?This is the story of one of those efforts.?

Since the beginning of time when we first started locking men in prisons, the prisoners have made knives for self protection. These homemade knives were called a “Shiv” or a “Shank” and over the years the prisoners found ingenious ways of hiding their “Shank” from the prison guards who were continually searching for the “Shank”.?

For many guards, finding a prisoners hidden contraband, made their day. And for some guards, finding a “Shank” was as near a sexual experience as they could get. They became ecstatic.?

With the hidden “Shank” and the prison guards lustful hunger to find it, I began to set up my plan.?

The chief “Shank” hunter of cell house three was well known; he was Lieutenant D. A. Davis, who was in charge of cell house three on the swing shift. Lt. D. A. Davis loved his job and the power he held over the prisoners lives, he never missed an opportunity to torment the prisoner with late delivery of their mail or medication, the two most important things to a prisoners.?

D. A. had on several occasions during the cold winter months, set the steam heater on the “Dog Cages” at the lowest setting, the control for the heaters were off tier in the control cage, there were many windows on the tier broken and snow would often blow onto the tier. Another little trick that seemed to give D.A. a lot of pleasure; when the food cart came to the cell house from the main dining room, he would let it set until the food was cold. He took joy in making the prisoners suffer, making sure to remind them he was in charge of every aspect of their lives’. ?

D.A. could also be cruel to the other prison guards. He was a Canon City hometown boy, who thought of the prison as their cottage industry, if a guard was from another city or another race ( D.A. was white) D.A. would made them also feel his wrath. guard Rodriquez had two strikes against him; he was Spanish from Pueblo.?D.A. was one of those spit and polish guards, sharp creases in his shirt and trousers, Lieutenant bars sparkling, I think he was afraid to sit down while in uniform for fear of wrinkling his trousers. He was an overweight heavy jowl bully with shifty eyes that seemed always searching as if his deeds would catch up with him.?

While Rodriquez was a complete opposite of D. A. in manner and dress.?

Rodriquez was a small quiet man, his uniform was always a little rumpled, in the several years I knew him, I never once saw Rodriquez mistreat a prisoner. He once confided to me that he thought being locked in a prison cell 24 hours a day was punishment enough and that he was not going to add to it. The empathy for the prisoners in his face was easy to see. He said that he had taken the job as a prison guard as a last resort only to take care of his family, after failing to gain employment in other areas. All the prisoners respected him for the kindness he showed them. Because of the way D.A. treated Rodriquez it could be said that he suffered as much abuse from D.A. as the prisoners did. ?

Rodriquez seemed always to have a slight smile whenever I made D.A. the brunt of one of my schemes, but he never said so with words. I think the enemy of our enemy can become our friend, it was Rodriquez who tossed the newspaper clipping ( Living Hell ) on my bunk one day, the news article was consider contraband and unavailable to the prisoners until I received that copy.

The Plan:
Timing was needed for my plan to be successful; It needed to happen just after D.A came on duty for the 3:00 swing shift, and there would need for one of the prisoners to be out of his cell for a shower. When a prisoner is out of his cell for showering, is the only time he would have access to the exterior windows you see in the photo above.?

I had acquired a small 8 inch by 12 inch plastic bag, in the bottom of this bag I place a 8 inch wooden stick and then took a nice big healthy shit in the bag, adding a smidgen of water so as to make the mixture runny. I rolled up the bag tightly and then wrapped it again in an old newspaper so that the contents were not visible. When you felt this concoction of stick, plastic and paper it felt like there could be a “Shank” hidden within. ?

The Hide:
I tied a short string in the center of this concoction and had the prisoner out for his shower lower it out the exterior window so that it hung between the second floor and the first floor. The time was about 3:15 and D.A. had just came on duty. The guard tower just yards away from the cell house had a clear view of the exterior of the cell house and I was sure what his reaction would be when he spotted it hanging there outside the window.?The prisoner out for his shower waited until the tower guard was on the back side of the tower before he lowered the bag out the window and tied it off on the bars.?

And just as I had planned; The tower guard spotted the bag hanging there a few minutes later, the Tower guard took out his binoculars for a closer inspection of the bag. Ah Ha! what are those convicts up to now? and then the next step, the guard picked up his phone to call the cell house and alert them to the mysterious bag hanging out the window on the “Dog Cage” tier. I heard the cell house phone ring.?
The Jig is up! D.A. the “Shank Hunter” was on the job.?

D.A. hollered out Lock-Up! meaning for the prisoner out for his shower to go to his cell. The cell block door slid open and D.A. came walking in as if he were doing a head count of the prisoners. He walked casually to the end of the tier, not looking at the widow where the bag was tied, on his return trip his demeanor was much different as he excitedly jumped to the window and pulled the bag up, ripping the sting from the bars. Glancing around he darted for the tier door with his prize in hand….of course, I hollered out “D.A. Come Back Here With My Shit!?

The prisoners all locked in their cells exploded in laughter.

?D.A. was still not sure of his prize as Rodriquez later told me of what happen when D.A. entered the cage. He feverishly began ripping opening the bag and discovered the sack of shit, he threw the bag on the floor and it splattered up on his pants. His face turned beet red with embarrassment as he remarked to Rodriquez he didn’t want to hear any talk of this incident. D.A. began to wretch and struggled to keep from vomiting. Of course we prisoners knew that we would have some new punishments coming from D.A., but hearing the laughter was so therapeutic, there are those moments when suffering and punishment reach a point that we don’t care what happen to us. ?

D.A. took a short leave to go home and change his pants.?

When Rodriquez came on the tier, he walked right up to my cell with the biggest smile I had ever seen on his face, and said I know you did it David and it was beautiful! my reply was “What are you talking about?”

The Moral of the story; When Shit Happens… make sure you’re not the one holding the sack.

Pueblo museum excises Mine Workers Union from Ludlow Massacre exhibit!

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Eric Verlo

PUEBLO, COLORADO- 2014 marks one hundred years since the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. A variety of commemorations are planned before the formal anniversary on April 20. I attended one such event on Wednesday, a lecture by a CSU professor to footnote the “Children of Ludlow” exhibit at El Pueblo History Museum. I’m always excitied when attention is paid to Ludlow, a subject regularly left out of American schoolbooks, but I was disappointed to find key elements of labor history excised from the museum’s narrative. Literally. The United Mine Workers of America, the organization central to the strike, which supplied the tent city, and which even today maintains the memorial site, was mentioned only once, IN FINE PRINT! The Ludlow miners voted to strike because the mining companies refused to recognize the UMWA. Unmentioned. The horrors of the atrocity were not tempered, in their explicitness perhaps we think them enough, but there was also the apologist suggestion that some culpability belonged to the miners. I questioned one curator who admitted they were at pains to keep the story “balanced” and that the squeakiest wheel thus far has been the National Guard. Apparently the Guard is offended that its role will be misconstrued. What balance do they want, I wondered. Had they lost children in the “battlezone” too?

Children are at the heart of commemorating Ludlow and at the heart of this preversion of the massacre’s memory. Were they recklessly endangered by their parents and union organizers? Were they dragged into a battlezone? The museum seems to suggest as much, highlighting the beligerence of the miners, mischaracterizing the soldiers, and leaving the union actions largely unexplained.

First I’d like to declare how I tire of the objective irrelevance which results when academics seek the approval of government technocrats. I am also disturbed by educators who pretend blindness to subtle inferences which shape a political takeaway. To them, “remembering” Ludlow seems sufficient in itself. I can hardly see the point to remembering Ludlow unless we have discerned its lessons. Until we are remembering the LESSONS OF LUDLOW, our educators’ self-proclaimed raison d’etre will be self-fulfilling: “history will repeat itself.” This Pueblo exhibit suggests no lesson other than the exploitation of tragedy, and leaves me fearful about the Ludlow commemorations to follow. The anti-union, pro-military climate which prevails these hundred years since the massacre will make for a travesty of a remembrance unless someone with a worker’s perspective speaks up.

NOT BROUGHT TO YOU BY…
Let’s start with this exhibit, which alas has already escaped critique since September. Its full title, as evidenced in the photo above: “Black Hills Energy presents: Children of Ludlow, Life in a Battlezone, 1913-1914.”

I’ll bet curators thought it a measure of truth and reconciliation that the Ludlow presentation was sponsored by a local extraction industry business. Black Hills Energy trades not in coal but natural gas. In fact they’re among the frackers tearing up Southeastern Colorado. I think the irony more likely suggests how the UMWA’s starring role was left on the cutting room floor. There are generic mentions of “the union”, as at right, keeping a ledger of which families were assigned tents, but only in the fine print is the UMWA named as owning the ledger.

BATTLEZONES
More troubling is the skewed framing of the museum’s narrative. It begins with the subtitle, “life in a battlezone.” That’s taking a rather curious liberty don’t you think? The event we accept now as “Ludlow” became a battlezone on April 20, and the regional Coal Field War which followed was a battlezone to which both revenge-seekers and militia thronged, but the tent colonies in which 12,000 lived, 9,000 of whom were the children of the title role, were camps full of families. That they were straffed regularly by the guards makes them shooting galleries not battlegrounds.

Calling Ludlow a battlezone is like calling Sand Creek a “collision” or calling the Middle East a “conflict”. All of these mask the role of the aggressor.

I will credit the curators for offering a candid detail of horrific import. In a description of the day before the massacre, when the Greeks among the immigrants were celebrating Greek Easter, mention is made of the mounted National Guards offered this taunt: “You enjoy your roast today; we will have ours tomorrow.” No one should deny today that the events of April 20, which culminated in the torching of the tents and asphyxiation of women and children, was a premeditated act.

THE CHILDREN
Should the miners have put their children in harm’s way by defying the mining companies? How could they not? As immigrants they didn’t have nearby relatives to foster their children away from the random bullets. Also left unsaid by the display: many of the children had already been working in the mines and counted among those on strike. This was before child labor reforms.

Curiously, the exhibit did include a famous photograph of the notorious activist Mother Jones leading a childrens’ march through Trinidad. The caption explained that Jones “wasn’t above using real children to advance the cause of Colorado’s coal miners.” Emphasis mine. While technically true in a modern context, it’s probably disingenuous to imply someone is using the children when a key issue of the demonstration is CHILD LABOR.

No really. Mother Jones was leading a march of children, many of them workers of the mines, for the reform of labor practices which abused children. This and subsequent campaigns eventually led to child labor laws. Is saying “Mother Jones wasn’t above using children” in any way an accurate characterization?

Compounding the inference that the Children of Ludlow were jeopardized for the cause, was the implication that the miners were combatants who contributed to the battlezone. As the displays progressed in chronological order, the first weapon on display was a rifle used by the miners. Immediately behind it was an enlarged photograph vividly depicting miners posed with two identical specimens.

Moving along the exhibit chronologically, anticipating the rising violence, the museum goers is apparently supposed to register that the strikers were firing too, if not first. Recent historical accounts have deliberated about who fired first. I think the motive is suspiciously revisionist in view of today’s dogma of nonviolence absolutism: if your protest devolves into violence, you deserve every bit of the beating you get.

Whenever it was that the miners began firing, the single militia and three guard casualties were not recorded until after the massacre took place, belying the narrative that the miners invited the massacre. Witnesses conflict about when the three union leaders were executed. I’ll give the museum credit for defying the National Guard in summarizing that among the casualties, three of the miners were “executed”.

PARITY OF WEAPONS
Students of the Ludlow accounts know that many of the miners were better riflemen than the soldiers. Many were immigrants who’d served in Bulkan wars and outmatched Colorado’s green guardsmen. That is not to suggest that the miners and their harrassers were equally armed, yet…

The only other weapon on display is a rifle of vintage used by the national guard. It shares a case with a uniform and sabre, lending it official authority. Also, the rifle is not presented as having been used at Ludlow, so it doesn’t project an aura of culpability. Missing is the machine gun depicted in the photograph of the machine gun nest which fired down upon the camp. It’s depicted with a caption about the Guard being a welcome presence. Missing too is the armored car dubbed the “Death Special”. Obviously the armor protected its operators from being hit by striking-miner bullets as it drove through the canvas encampment, straffing the tents with its mounted machine gun.

HUMANIZING THE PERP
Right after the photo of armed miners was the display at right, with a very contrived bit of spin catering to today’s military families. Although the photo shows soldiers actively aiming their gun at the camp, the caption assures us that the “Ludlow families feel relief with the arrival of National Guard”. This supposition is based on the fact that when the soldiers first arrived they were serenaded with the “Battle Cry of Freedom” and greeted with American flags. Most of the miners being immigrants, they were eager to show their patriotism, but the conclusion drawn here is a terrible mendacity. The miners and union organizers knew full well the purpose of the National Guard. They knew the strikebreaking role it played in famous strikes of the past. The miners feted the soldiers hoping to sway them from their eventual task. Protesters of all eras hold out this hope every time they face riot police.

A following paragraph suggested that by the time the massacre was committed, most of the soldiers had been mustered out and replaced with militia members and company guards. This is slight of hand. After the official inquiry, which was prompted by the public outcry, twenty National Guard soldiers were court martialed. All were acquitted. Is the Guard wanting us to believe they were acquitted because they weren’t there?

This attempt to put a friendly face on the National Guard, coupled with an abdication of effort to give the union its due, seems engineered to appeal to the average Pueblan of today, many probably related to an active-duty soldier and long since indoctrinated against evil unions. When I asked the lecturer about the omission of the UMWA, she prefaced her answer for the audience, explaining that unions of old were not like those despised today. I told her I thought failing to describe the hows and whys of the strike was a real teaching opportunity missed.

HISTORY COLORADO
It’s probably important to point out that the Ludlow presentation at the History Museum was developed with the assistance of History Colorado, which finally shuttered a contested display: a Sand Creek Massacre exhibit with a similar flavor of whitewash. Like labeling Ludlow a battlezone, History Colorado tried to typify Sand Creek as a “collision.”

Also typical of History Colorado is the propensity to address their exhibits to children. Programming for school bus visits invariably dumbs down what can be presented and I hardly think the compromise is worth it. If children ran the world, maybe Disney versions of history would suffice.

I’d like to have seen it highlighted that the Ludlow miners were mainly immigrants who were looked down upon by the residents of Colorado. If the museum audience were the “Children of Ludlow” in the extended sense, as a few descendants probably were, more of us were the children of the soldiers of Ludlow, or the citizens who cheered them on, or joined the militia or built the armored car at Rockefeller’s Pueblo factory. If we’re going to remember Ludlow, we ought to remember our role in it so we don’t do that again. It’s easy to pretend we were the martyrs. In all probability that’s who we will be if the lessons of Ludlow are discarded.

More bilingual protest chants: Obama, Pendejo, Close Gitmo Now You Weirdo!

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Eric Verlo

Must we say please? “OBAMA, PENDEJO, POR FAVOR CLOSE GITMO!” When the chants on your march are multilingual, even in Colorado some people need the Spanish translated for them. Do you know what “Obama, Escucha, Estamos en la lucha” means? Is it true, we’re prepared to fight? This is irrelevant bluster from the mouths of SEIU organizers, paid to rally volunteers in spite of the futility, probably only if futility is guaranteed actually. Otherwise they’re Obama supporters, who assure everyone “This is what democracy looks like” and promise victory through electoral politics. Here’s a popular one: “El pueblo, Unido, Jamas sera vencido!” Really? Shout it with conviction all you want, it doesn’t make success inevitable. For English speakers who don’t drink the Koolaid that’s : The people, Kept busy, Run circles til they’re dizzy.

Manitou Indian Center yet Idle No More

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Eric Verlo

MANITOU SPRINGS- Idle No More organizers from Denver and Pueblo woke the sleepy local Native American community with a spirited gathering on Saturday, smack in the middle of Manitou, neath the town clock, only blocks from the CS Indian Center.

Michelle Obama visits Pueblo for Latino Dream Act vote, not to hear or see you

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Eric Verlo

PUEBLO, COLORADO– Chris Curry had this to say about First Lady Michelle Obama’s appearance in Pueblo yesterday: “No signs were allowed anywhere in or around the building and the cops had cattle cage barriers around the entire perimeter. It felt like we were being herded into a gas chamber with Michelle Obama as the bait.”

Are Colorado Springs Citizens Being Gagged On Fracking Issue?

Posted on May 16, 2012 by NMT

Our colleague Lotus has initiated some fruitful correspondence on the subject of the still-impending fracking of the Pikes Peak region. In light of the City’s abrupt cancellation of the May 17 public hearing, we’ll present excerpts of his emails and telephone notes here.

Are Colorado Springs Citizens Being Gagged On Fracking Issue?

The fracking hearing was cancelled. The more I learn about how the fracking issue is being dealt with in Colorado Springs, the more it looks like citizens have very little room for input. This even seems to be true of the way the City Council Advisory Committee on fracking was run – very little room for public input.

The letter from Councilman Val Snider below seems to be saying that the public will only be allowed to respond to the recommendations of the advisory committee, will not be allowed general input concerning the issue of fracking.

It appears that 4-5 people from Huerfano/Las Animas Counties, who have been harmed by fracking, may be willing to speak to the city council and the public here in Colorado Springs. But the process seems to be so closed that it does not appear likely that these people who were harmed will be allowed to speak, allowed to warn people here in Colorado Springs what may be in store for them if they allow fracking in Colorado Springs. The informal Council meetings do not allow for public input. The formal meeting only allow for 3 minutes of input on subjects not on the agenda. And what will be on the agenda may not allow for general input, will be limited to discussion of the recommendations of the committee.

I read articles about how the El Paso County Commission dealt with fracking, and they ignored the recommendations of their own planning commission when they watered down their regulations. Where is the protection of our water, land and air when it comes to fracking? There does not seem to be much of any.

Lotus

From Colorado Springs City Councilman Val Snyder:

Hi Lotus,

The city will not be having any public meetings on fracking. The city will have public meetings on the recommendations of the Oil and Gas Committee on areas of potential regulation for oil and gas activities. The first public meeting on this is May 24, 6-8pm, at the City Administration Building.

There will be opportunities for public comment before City Council, as the potential oil and gas regulations work their way through the process. The first is tentatively scheduled for June 12, a formal Council meeting.

…

Thank you for your writing.

Val

From a telephone conversation with May Jensen:

Anti-Fracking Info From Mary Jensen & Other Info
(From my notes, so hope is accurate.)

I have been wondering why people from other communities who have been harmed by fracking (their land, water, personally, etc) have not been asked to speak to the local Colorado Springs City Council, El Paso County Commissioners, etc. So I finally located the author of a letter to the editor of the CS Independent, Mary Jensen, who has a doctorate in applied clinical nutrition.

Mary Jensen’s March 8-14, 2012 email:

Fracking concoction by Mary Jensen:

Across the state and the country, there is documented evidence of wells being contaminated by chemicals used in oil and gas fracking. Yet Gov. John Hickenlooper recently demonstrated how supposedly safe fracked water is by taking “a swig of it.”

I am incensed at the example he’s setting — playing Russian roulette by drinking water that may or may not have been sanitized for a cheap publicity stunt. He need only look as far as his own state to see the irreparable harm done to our people, our livestock, our air, our water and our lands.
Here are some materials Hickenlooper might have ingested in his fracked beverage:

• Benzene, a powerful bone-marrow poison (aplastic anemia) associated with leukemia, breast and uterine cancer. It may also cause fatigue, skin and mucous membrane irritation, and narcotic behavior including lightheadedness, disorientation, loss of consciousness and coma.

• Styrene, which may cause eye and mucous membrane irritation, neurotoxic effects in the central and peripheral nervous systems, loss of consciousness and death.

• Toluene, which may cause muscular incoordination, tremors, hearing loss, dizziness, vertigo, emotional instability and delusions, liver and kidney damage, and anemia — besides potential harm to developing fetuses.

• Xylene, with cancer-causing and neurotoxic effects, which can cause reproductive abnormalities and death through respiratory or cardiac arrest. More toxic than benzene and toluene!

• Methylene chloride, which may cause cancer, liver and kidney damage, central nervous system disorders and worse.

• Or any of more than 1,000 other safe “food additives” used by the oil and gas industry.

Hickenlooper is welcome to come down to Huerfano and Las Animas counties to talk with the ranchers and other folks who have been irreparably damaged by these poisons.

— Mary Jensen, Ph.D.

From telephone conversation with Mary Jensen on 5-12-12:

Mary especially emphasized that we should get Josh Joswick to speak to our elected leaders. Josh Joswick: commissioner in southern Colorado’s La Plata County, which successfully fought state regulators and companies in court for a say in oil and gas production.

http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Drilling-threatens-nature-Colorado-residents-say-1968302.php

Josh Joswick is now a Staff Organizer, Oil and Gas Issues the San Juan Citizens Alliance Staff Organizer, Colorado Energy Issues josh@sanjuancitizens.org Josh brings nearly 20 years of experience in dealing with the oil and gas industry to the position of Oil and Gas Issues Organizer. He served three terms as a La Plata County Commissioner from January 1993 to January 2005; in that capacity, locally he worked to see that La Plata County’s oil and gas land use regulations were not only enforced but expanded to protect surface owners’ rights. Josh has dealt with numerous agencies, and legislative and Congressional elected officials, to uphold the rights of local governments to exercise their land use authority as it pertained to oil and gas development, and to assert the right of local government to address with the environmental impacts of oil and gas development.

http://www.sanjuancitizens.org/otherpages/contact.shtml

http://www.spoke.com/people/josh-joswick-3e1429c09e597c10008191b9

Mary Jensen said there are probably at least 4-5 people who have been adversely affected by fracking that would be willing to travel to Colorado Springs in order to speak to the Council. Many people have gone to court and signed a settlement that they later learned prevents them from speaking to the press. Many of these people have spent everything they have fighting the fracking companies in court.

Silencing Communities: How the Fracking Industry Keeps Its Secrets
http://truth-out.org/news/item/9004-silencing-communities-how-the-fracking-industry-keeps-its- secrets

See attached two page fracking information add that was run in the LaVeta Signature and Huerfano County Journal. Organizers paid over $2,000 for these adds.

Mary mentioned that 6 people in her area have died of brain cancer, and another person has brain cancer.

Mary Jensen went on to say that she had heard that drilling down around Trinidad was disastrous in terms of contaminating many wells, but she did not have specifics. Her understanding is that the gas company declared bankruptcy and walked away from it all. (Contaminated wells are not likely to be usable for 100 years.)

In one of the Gazette articles, see below, it said that the Colorado Springs moratorium on fracking ends May 31, 2012. (A reason to extend the moratorium would be in order to provide more time to revise the regulatory structure.)

Mary said that fracking, this dangerous method of oil and gas extraction, is not more effective than simply drilling for oil and gas. Read: Deborah Rogers Transcript of “In Their Own Words: Examining Shale Gas Hype”

http://preservethefingerlakes.org/?p=127

Mary said that there is now a network of 14 anti-fracking organizations. The contact for getting on the Grassroots EnErgy activist Network (GREEN) is Citizens for Huerfano County, Kelly Kringel, kkringel@gmail.com

The CHC website is http://www.huerfanofrack.com/.

Also there is going to be a Colorado Grassroots Fractivist Summit, Jun 9, 2012

Mary stated that it was important that I visit the website TEDX http://www.endocrinedisruption.com/home.php and learn about the 600+ chemical used in fracking hundreds of which adversely affect the endocrine system.

http://www.endocrinedisruption.com/home.php

Mary said another important resource on fracking is A Primer for Local Governments on Environmental Liability

http://www.mrsc.org/subjects/environment/envliabprim.pdf

She said that the president of Citizens for Huerfano County, Kelly Kringel, kkringel@gmail.com , would be able to provide me with access to this document. The CHC website is
http://www.huerfanofrack.com/

On http://www.huerfanofrack.com/ I located POW: Protect Our Wells appears to be a mainly Colorado Springs based group. The president is Sandy Martin, 719-351-1640, sandra@protectourwells.org .

Other board members also seem to have CS area phone numbers

http://www.protectourwells.org/ ,
http://www.protectourwells.org/BOD.html .
http://www.huerfanofrack.com/
also listed the Sierra Club
http://rmc.sierraclub.org/ppg/
and Green Cities Coalition, which I am already familiar with.
http://www.greencitiescoalition.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=88&Itemid=30

Both of these organizations have people on the committee advising the Colorado Springs City Council on fracking.

Mary said that Perry Cabot from Colorado State University in Pueblo was helping people in her area with base line water studies. These are needed in order to later prove well contamination.

Mary said the Land Owner’s Guide To Oil and Gas Development by the Oil and Gas Accountability Project was another important document. And also the book Oil and Gas At Your Door: 970-259-3353.

Citizens for Huerfano County President, Kelly Kringel, kkringel@gmail.com, asked in an email if I knew Mary Talbott. I do not, so I did a search and came up with:

Mary Talbott & fracking issue:

Commissioner to energy company: ‘We’re scared of you’

http://www.gazette.com/articles/drilling-127253-county-approved.html

Citizens, county respond to frack attack

(Talbott, who is retired from the El Paso County Department of Health and Environment and does not live near prospective drill sites)

County, city leaders to get a present on Tuesday

(She plans to hand them a copy of “Split Estate,” a 75-minute DVD about drilling issues in Rifle, Colo. )

http://thecountyseat.freedomblogging.com/tag/el-paso-county-commissioners/

Talbott presented fracking report to El Paso County Board of Health (bottom p 3)

http://www.elpasocountyhealth.org/sites/default/files/11_14_11_Minutes.pdf

What has happened in El Paso County…Majority of Commissioners Ignored head of own planning commission, and the recommendations of the Commission!

Gazette article:

County adopts slimmed-down oil and gas regulations

ANDREW WINEKE
THE GAZETTE

http://www.gazette.com/articles/talbott-129368-denver-citizens.html

El Paso County commissioners on Tuesday narrowly approved a basic set of regulations to govern oil and gas drilling in the county.

The Board of County Commissioners voted 3-2 to approve a proposal that was significantly scaled down from what the county’s planning commission approved earlier this month. The regulations govern transportation, emergency response, noxious weeds and, controversially, water quality issues related to drilling.

Commissioners Peggy Littleton and Darryl Glenn objected to the water quality regulations, arguing that the county was overstepping its authority because the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission also regulates drilling-related water issues.

“I think it would be irresponsible for us to open ourselves up to lawsuits,” Littleton said.
The Attorney General’s Office and oil and gas commission director Dave Neslin have expressed concern over the county’s proposed rules, both in the version approved by the planning commission and a trimmed-down version the county’s planning staff developed last week, arguing that the county can’t regulate areas where the state has its rules in place.

However, commissioners Amy Lathen, Sallie Clark and Dennis Hisey said that water quality was too important to leave up to the state.

“I really don’t mind pushing the envelope when it comes to our water quality,” Hisey said.
The water quality monitoring regulations adopted by the county are similar to what the oil and gas commission has agreed to in other counties, requiring wells to be monitored initially for a baseline measurement and then at one, three, and six-year intervals after drilling begins.

The commissioners scrapped most of the rules proposed by the planning commission, including measures that would have governed setbacks from structures and property lines, mitigation of visual impacts and noise and impacts to wildlife. The commissioners will instead try to address those issues by working with the oil and gas commission on an intergovernmental agreement.

Getting some kind of oil and gas regulations in place was vitally important for the county, since a moratorium on oil and gas permits expired at midnight Tuesday and the county had no other regulations in place. Houston-based Ultra Resources has applied to drill six wells in El Paso County, four in unincorporated parts of the county and two more in Banning Lewis Ranch, inside the Colorado Springs city limits. The city imposed its own moratorium and set up a task force to study oil and gas regulations. The task force plans to make a recommendation to City Council by early May.
All of this was decided in a meeting that stretched nearly nine hours Tuesday. Several dozen speakers weighed in on the proposed regulations on each side of the issue.

Jeff Cahill, who lives near the Corral Bluffs Open Space, said that the proposed drilling has already hurt his property values and made it difficult for he and his wife to sell their home.
“They say they’re not going to impact us,” he told the commission. “Well, they’ve already impacted me.”

Steve Hicks, chairman of the El Paso County planning commission, urged the commission to pass more stringent regulations such as those approved by the planning commission.

“At times, there needs to be extra regulation where the state doesn’t go far enough, and this is one of them,” he said.

Other speakers praised the economic potential of expanded oil and gas development in the county.
Bob Stovall recounted his experience as an oil and gas lawyer and a city attorney in Farmington, N.M.

“Air is pretty clean there. Water is pretty clean there – and that’s after 100 years of oil and gas,” he said. “If oil and gas is around in this county, it could be good for us and it can be done well.”

Tisha Conoly Schuller, president and CEO of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said the county’s new regulations were a good framework to build on.

“The El Paso County commissioners made significant progress today,” she said. “The rules passed are 90 percent within the guidance provided by the Attorney General. There are still a couple of important issues to work through, but I am confident that the county is serious about finding common ground, and after seeing the progress made today, we will continue to work toward county regulations that are protective of the environment and within the scope of the county’s jurisdiction.”

Read more:

http://www.gazette.com/articles/county-132696-water-quality.html#ixzz1ujNiqAjK

Split Estate: an eye-opening examination of the consequences and conflicts that can arise between surface land owners in the western United States, and those who own and extract the energy and mineral rights below. http://splitestate.com/

http://www.splitestate.com/video_clips.html
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?rh=n%3A2625373011%2Ck%3Asplit+estate+dvd&k eywords=split+estate+dvd&ie=UTF8

“split estate,” in which landowners have surface rights but someone else owns the rights to the underground minerals. Josh Joswick : commissioner in southern Colorado’s La Plata County, which successfully fought state regulators and companies in court for a say in oil and gas production.

http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Drilling-threatens-nature-Colorado-residents-say- 1968302.php ;

http://www.spoke.com/people/josh-joswick-3e1429c09e597c10008191b9

Gasland, a documentary on fracking.
http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/whats- fracking/affirming-gasland ,
http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/
http://gizmodo.com/5905909/gasland-the-definitive-documentary-on-fracking

Frack-happy Ultra Petroleum is the city’s largest private landowner. What kind of neighbor might it be?

Ultra Petroleum Corp., which owns subsidiary Ultra Resources…has most of the leases and permits in El Paso County and Colorado Springs

http://www.csindy.com/coloradosprings/close-up/Content?oid=2422410

Colorado Springs Occupy saved from the haters, Occudrama: the Final Act

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Eric Verlo

He bragged at GA about how he’d personally mobilized tonight’s contingent to descend upon Occupy Colorado Springs to depose its leadership, but did Agent Dumb really think someone who’d sworn to destroy OCS, another who’d stolen the first Facebook group, another who’d tried to sabotage OCS actions, another who’s snitched to both the press and FBI, and another who’d betrayed each and every occupier, would be entrusted to decide the fate of OCS? Agent’s sidekick Wolf, who’d swiped the FB group, kept hissing “make everyone admin, make everyone admin.” But when Agent Dumb pushed forward with a proposal it was this: “Dissolve every element of Occupy, its website, Facebook group, and all its infrastructure.” Seriously?

He felt disenfranchised by the probationary terms to which he was being held, but basically Agent Dumbass’s renewed interest in Occupy was only because he wanted to kill it. The hater tag-team could not have, of course, because OCS actions go on, headless. At least now the insurgent chatter should lessen, now we can recruit real occupiers, free of those who wanted to wrestle control so they could call the shots from online, never having to attend a thing, and making sure to prevent OCS from scheduling meaningful actions. Been there, done that. Occupy Colorado Springs LIVES!

Was it heavy handed to rain probation slips on their anti-occupy parade? It came as quite a shock that mob rule wasn’t the rule with Occupy. I think the most important message sent is that you can’t overwhelm a meeting with greater numbers and declare yourself in charge. That’s war, not democracy. Occupy Colorado Springs is much greater than the members who attend its meetings. There’s nothing undemocratic about telling would-be usurpers to bugger off. Occupy Pueblo fell to a similar attack. They let some newbies in and lights out.
The most important message

Growth Busters’ all white cast asks dark skinned people not to have kids

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS- Local filmmaker, city council candidate, and critic of urban sprawl, Dave Gardner, screened his new doc GROWTHBUSTERS to a receptive hometown audience last night, on the heels of its world premier in Washington DC. Gardner has long defined his personal mission as questioning the wisdom of “growth”. Finally his unpopular theme is gaining traction. With GrowthBusters Gardner addresses economic growth, rampant consumption, carbon footprints and over-development, building to what he’s decided is the most elephantine challenge in the room, global population growth. Except, I’m sorry, that’s an elephant of another color. I resisted the Q & A, not wanting to pull down the evening’s celebratory curve. A giddy panel of white folk is for me as much a temptation as the easy target Gardner chose. In the privacy of the internet, we at Not My Tribe don’t have bubbles we’re too reluctant to burst.

Dave Gardner’s long unrewarded campaign against our city’s recidivist, graft-driven, and ever tragically unsustainable growth is so damn laudable, and his chopping away at the Capitalist assumptions of neoclassical economists is so urgently pertinent. But by folding both into the Inconvenient Truth of exponential global population rise, does Gardner mean the Colorado Springs audience takeaway to be we must distribute condoms to our Machiavellian land developers?

Let me first applaud Gardner’s critique of our region’s imbecilic growth. It’s ugly and residents are unhappy but powerless to depose the greedy exploitative speculators in charge. A memorable segment describes the Southern Delivery system being built to bring Pueblo water northward to serve El Paso County’s endless eastward developments. The energy to pump that water uphill will require the output of an average coal fired power plant, that much more emissions, pollution and coal ash.

Over the years Gardner has proven to be more than a gadfly battling our land barons. When he challenged Jerry Heimlicher, a pro-growth incumbent for a seat at the city council, the otherwise like-minded progressive adversary beat him, only to resign after his victory to make a sudden move out of town, leaving the position to be chosen by the usual undemocratic powers, looking suspiciously like his campaign had been a desperate measure to keep Gardner’s anti-growth voice off the council. There’s more to applaud about Gardner locally, but first–

I know this is easy to overlook in Colorado Springs, but Dave, the demographic character of the Stargazer Theater audience was what, last night, entirely white? It was, and probably not coincidentally, the dozens of experts you interviewed onscreen were also with one single exception white. Further, I’m sure we can agree the economic class represented was equally homogeneous; let’s call it comfortable. Tell us then, Dave, what does Middle America’s middle class white birthrate add to the worrisome arc of population growth?

Not that I think any socioeconomic group should address itself to out-breeding the next, but an audience with a zero or negative birthrate hardly needs to concentrate on curbing its numbers. Anticipating the challenges of exponential population growth is important, but HOW UNSEEMLY for a white community to plot counter-reproductive measures for the larger masses, specifically the darker-complected Global South, virtually all of its peoples lesser advantaged?

And let me add, how embarrassing that a Grist Magazine editor wants to brag about her lifestyle choice not to have a family, exchanged for the benefit of a “more dynamic schedule” which leaves her more easily free to join three similarly unencumbered friends for coffee.

We’re trading our biological imperative to live a Seinfeld episode?

I am not accusing anyone of deliberate racism, unlike the Sierra Club, who was certain this documentary took aim at Hispanic Americans. This was a detail we learned from the post-screening panel discussion. The local Sierra Club chairperson who sat on the panel last night told us that the national office was alarmed to learn that its Colorado Springs chapter was cosponsoring a documentary which called for curbing population growth. She assured her headquarters that she knew Dave Gardner personally and that GrowthBusters‘s thesis was above reproach. In particular, she explained, it didn’t target illegal immigration, which she presumed was their worry. To clarify, she was thinking: not birthrate but immigration rate, not global population growth but national population growth.

Population growth as it threatens America.

Once again we are reminded of the provincial brain freeze that characterizes our community. Even progressive ideals become distorted by the gravitational pull of our Tea Party tendencies. We support national reformist campaigns, but only to the limit of our stunted conservative comprehension.

Yes, discussing how to limit the birthrate of people of color is racist. It’s White Man’s Burden theology to believe that it is the privilege of the developed white world to decide for our lesser brethren whether they can procreate.

How is rushing to Dave Gardner’s defense, vouching for him that no racist insensitivity was intended, very much different from the excuse given by Congressman Doug Lamborn when he called President Obama a Tar Baby? Lamborn explained that he didn’t know black people were offended by “Tar Baby”. Would it really surprise Gardner that his call for White America to be alarmed about population growth, would threaten the of-color communities whose cultures still encourage having children?

Dave Gardner partnered with strange bedfellows when he took his anti-growth message to what he thought was the next level. The experts he interviewed are well aware their prognostications invite accusations of racism. I found it rather odd that one of them, speaking for the Club of Rome, was not introduced with his organization’s repute fully disclaimed.

If I were to guess, hitting upon the population question is where Gardner’s production finally took wing. Friends were recounting last night how he’d labored on the project for over half a decade, one scene shows Gardner lamenting the lack of financing available for a subject such as his. In the local sequences of GrowthBusters, the subject was about development and sustainability, while all the national interviews concerned population growth. When Gardner described the last year spent immersed in the project, I’m guessing that’s when underwriting for the population meme kicked in. The small cadre of usual suspects advancing today’s equivalent of eugenics theory were probably eager to add a fresh name to their roster. Yesteryear’s infamous population doomsayer Malthus was reviled because people inherently equated dire population projections with depopulation solutions. Malthus’ inheritors are accustomed to the same heat.

It is hard not to wonder if the First World’s cavalier disregard of climate change is because depopulation programs are being readied on the front burner. Peak oil, diminishing resources, declining agricultural yields and higher ecological toxicities cease to threaten human survival with the implementation of depopulation scenarios. Presentations like Gardner’s which reinforce the imperative of reducing the world population, create the popular consent with which population control compliance can be manufactured.

I’d have no problem with population growth engineering if it meant applying in the Third World, the proven method that has subdued the birthrate in the First World. Prosperity. If developed nations could share their abundance and education with the developing world, rendering the wealth of Africa’s natural resources back to Africa’s people for example, they’ll arrive at zero birthrates just like ours.

SPOILER ALERT: Redistribution of resources is not in the cards among the solutions which GrowthBusters suggests. Instead the feel good conclusion of this movie revolves around local applications of sustainability measures. Here I should confess I have a prejudice to corpulent over-eaters lecturing others on sustainability. Austerity measures are danced around, and a suggestion of cutting work hours to twenty one hours a week masks obviously a 50% cut in income.

Just as Gardner celebrates a return to hands-on farming, the oversimplified doubt he casts on the benefit of financial growth ignores the technological progress we all enjoy as its result. Gardner lampoons government planners who look to compensate for trends toward zero birthrates. They’re not “pro-growth”, they mean to fill diminishing labor pools. This is why the US invites its illegal immigrant workers. An increasingly idle population, mostly aging, needs people to service it. The benefit of growth and development was by design at least a rising tide for all.

I say we all, but who is comforted by Gardner’s thesis? How many of us have the savings to invest in a house with land to farm, install an orchard and solar panels to take ourselves off the grid, prepared to barter with our neighbors for the necessities we cannot make ourselves? Few of us live near an American dairy brave enough to defy government regulations against raw milk, I dare say that demographic has shrunk to approximate, no coincidence, the currently proverbial “one percent”. How many of us have access to community shared farms? I’ll hazard a guess you probably can’t afford to buy shares in the farms we have already, Grant Farms or Venetucci.

Let’s be honest about who’s supposed to be cutting back on having babies, and who’s in the position to weather the austere future mankind faces. One of the final scenes of Gardner’s domestic sustainable bliss depicted a model family unit belonging to one of the population growth think tanks. I’d like to think this was an oversight, but in a passing bit of the b-roll footage the audience was let to see that one of the white affluent women was pregnant.

Colorado Springs administrators think 100 years is old enough for local trees

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Pueblo Colorado Colorado Springs city administrators have announced they will have to cut down a number of 100-year-old trees in the historic downtown area,
due they explain, to diminishing water access and the resultant risk of limbs falling, jeopardizing motorists. Rescuing the majestic trees is apparently beyond the city’s budget, so they’re on the chopping block, literally. The scenario reminds me of the fate of Pueblo’s Old Monarch, a 388-year-old cottonwood which the city felled in 1883 because it didn’t fit with the city fathers’ street plan. Hundreds of residents tried to save Old Monarch, they petitioned, rallied and for a while they prevailed. You can read what happened on a brass plaque which now commemorates the site. I’ll reprint it here. Interestingly, the narrative seems to celebrate Pueblo’s treachery.

“The day came, however, when the value of the tree in the middle of the main business street was challenged. In spite of 366 protesting citizens, the South Pueblo Council ordered it to be cut down.

Men hired by the Council approached the tree and informed the gathering crowd that they were only there to trim the branches. This, of course, was the news the protesters wanted to hear and soon dispersed. As soon as the crowd had gone, the Council sent orders to girdle the tree. Once that task was done all hope of saving “Old Monarch” was lost.”

To girdle a tree means to make a cut along the circumference deep enough to sever the half dozen rings which are still live conduits, effectively cutting off its nutrients.

Taking a lesson I suppose, today’s downtown residents can thwart Colorado Springs’ move. For one, color over the orange marks which distinguish the trees to be culled. Better yet, stay the axe by marking every tree downtown with the same paint. Or of course, send a delegation to city hall and propose the obvious, that these trees should stay, they can grow to be many hundred years older, urge that proper effort be made. The City Council must be steward to Colorado Springs’ resources, not merely their reaper.

Cartographic traces of Lake, Colorado

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Maybe like me you’re wondering how a landmark falls off the face of the earth, in particular Google Earth, assuming as we do that web crowdsourcing is archival, not perishable. A stagecoach watering hole in Kansas Territory, formerly Arapaho, was Hedinger’s Lake, between present day Limon and Hugo. Like the history of Colorado’s water, Lake became Lake Station, later a railway siding, today a creek.

First some back-story: 1750. When gold looked to become the carrot to drive white man’s Manifest Destiny, the Indian Territories of what would become Colorado were labeled simply the Gold Region.

Back in 1815, the West was still La Louisiane, and place names were native, French and Spanish. Taos was one of the oldest Spanish settlements, site of the First American Revolution, against the Spaniards, and another revolt when the US invaded. Camp de Baroney sits on the Arkansas River, eventually resettled as El Pueblo. And there’s La Fourche Republicaine, a fork of la Rivoire Missouri, soon to lead a prominent migration trail west.

By 1848, St. Vrain’s Fort and Grante Ft., Bent’s Fort, were already protecting Anglo trading interests. (Note by the way, Old Park and New Park, eventually to be become the “North” to South Park.)

By 1864, the Cheyenne and Arapaho found themselves bordered on the west by the “Military Department of Utah” and ceding their lands to the Kansas Territory. (On this map we can see Montana City, the original Denver City. Denver eventually overtook Auroria and the metropolis. Mineral Springs became Manitou and Colorado Springs at the foot of Pikes Peak.)

Note the curiously singular representation of a “Kansas Lake” depicted at the tip of the south fork of the Republican River, whose waters will originate in the later to be named Lincoln County, at whose heart will lie Lake, Colorado.

The Rocky Mountain region lost many lakes by the mid 1800s when beaver were hunted to near extinction and with them the beaver dams. Note just West of “Kansas Lake” lies Beaver Creek.

With the gold rush, settler trails crisscrossed the West, for wagon trains, stagecoach and mail carriers. Lake was a stage at the convergence of the Butterfield Overland Dispatch and Republican Fork Trails, where they crossed the Big Sandy Creek to join the Smoky Hill South and North Roads (after similarly named rivers which were starting points in Kansas) or the spartan Starvation Trail to Denver. Today’s I-70 follows Smoky Hill North.

Was Hedinger’s Lake the water which travelers sought at the end of the South Republican Fork Trail?

This 1868 Union Pacific map predicted the stops heading eastward from Denver to be Parkhurst, Beaver, which later became Deer Trail, and Coon Creek, which became Kit Carson, opposite Sand Creek.

By 1870, Kansas was a state and the Kansas Union Pacific RR reached Denver. (Beyond the mountains: North Park, Middle Park and South Park.)

By 1873, leaving for Denver from Fort Wallace, there were stops at Kit Carson, Aroyo, Lake, Agate (pronounced “A-Gate”) and Deer Trail. (Note: still no Colorado Springs.)

A map circa 1880s, shows Hugo, Lake, River Bend, Godfrey, Agate, Deer Trail, and Byers, named for the founder of the Rocky Mountain News, formerly Bijou.

When the Chicago Kansas and Nebraska Railroad sought a direct route to Colorado Springs, it decided to intersect the Kansas Pacific at a new stop called Limon and that was the end of Lake. At Limon the westbound trains performed what was called the “Limon Shuffle” where passenger and freight cars were separated depending on which were going to Denver and which to Colorado Springs.

Lake Station remained a stop for the Union Pacific, and on this map which accompanied the 1910 census, it’s gone, in favor of a late addition, Bagdad.

As trains no longer needed to take on water, and could reach their destinations more quickly, many stops were eliminated. This 1925 train Union Pacific train schedule lists only Cheyenne Wells, Kit Carson, Hugo and Limon before reaching Denver.

Lake is still marked on railroad maps, though there’s not even an access road to reach it.

On other maps it’s just Lake Creek, spanned by an impassable decaying bridge. It’s now a wetlands area that provides a bird sanctuary.

For the USGS, Lake still serves as namesake for the topographical map of the Lake Quadrangle.

To be continued…

Amazon pedophile guide author Phillip Greaves is going to Disneyland!

Posted on December 21, 2010 by Eric Verlo

PUEBLO, CO – Self-published self-abuser Phillip R. Greaves is going to Disneyland! Do I mean Disney World –because the molestation e-book author is being extradited to Florida? Naw. Thanks to the gung-ho deviant-phobic Florida Polk County Sheriff, the Amazon-banned-infamous, now civil-liberty-abridged, self-scribed child-lover will be jerking off all the way to the bank. Greaves’ The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure is accused of violating obscenity laws and haven’t we been down this road before? Freedom of speech, what’s indecent, Larry Flynt, Nabokov, to name the obvious?

Now I have to tell you, I’d much prefer to defend a literary classic than this Stuart Smalley act for the NAMBLA set, and I wince as I imagine the ACLU inviting more tar-and-feathers as it defends another pedophile, but freedom of expression is absolute. It applies to heretical dissidents as much as to Sarah Palin. Idiots have opinions too, that doesn’t mean you have to listen to them.

Greaves’ DIY rotten-oeuvre probably does not redeem itself with literary merit, I’m guessing, nor do charges mention the book contains contraband photos. Thus the Polk County Sheriff attack may be soiling new ground. The how-to manual is being adjudged indecent based on written accounts of defiling underage fictional characters. Greaves is not under suspicion of having committed the crimes. We can deduce by the lack of charges that no minors were harmed in the making of Phillip Greaves’ fantasies. His “guide book” contains no pictures of exploited children. Greaves is being charged with describing illegal sexual acts which are injurious to minors. So what exactly differentiates this book from other tasteless works of fiction which recount criminal acts, even the most taboo?

There will always be a bible-belt backwater to send out invites for a book-burning. I’m upset I suppose because the Polk County authorities were able to convince Colorado law enforcement in Pueblo to arrest Greaves on their behalf, based on his having shipped a copy of his weirdo book over to their Florida jurisdiction. So it turns our Colorado lawmen are uneducated enough that they went along. At least we could be grateful that evidently they lack the initiative to devise such a sting themselves.

In his zeal to whomp on Phillip Greaves on behalf of the angry mob over at Amazon thirsty for fictional pedophile blood, the Polk County Sheriff bragged he hoped to have the author “eating processed-turkey this Christmas.” As good an admission as any that prison chow is intended to be punishment. This one defines “cruel and unusual” which used to be rationale enough to prohibit state practice, but these days we can’t be bothered to prevent torture.

I shouldn’t minimize the ordeal which Greaves will face with his jailers and fellow inmates, needless to say he’ll be earning every penny of the huge civil liberties settlement to which he is entitled. Maybe in turn he’ll be able to sue Amazon too.

The upshot for the residents of Polk County Florida is that internet merchants will have to be very careful about what they ship to zip codes 33830, 33837, 33841, 33843, 33868, 33898, and 34759. I hope the Polkels get nothing at all in the mail until they recall the grandstanding idiot they have for a sheriff.

But seriously. Are we cheerleading for the prosecution of thought crime? If Greaves had written in the third person, would police be serving a warrant on a page-bound protagonist?

Compared to pedestrian pornography, Phillip Greaves is an amateur. In US sex culture every fetish seems to find its audience. Who can deny that the sexualization of American children is pervasive across print and screen? This isn’t about the arbitrary condemnation of the fantasy life of perverts. Subversive classics of literature are often censored based on accusations of obscenity.

Ojore Nuru Lutalo, aka Leroy Bunting arrested with Anarchist literature

Posted on January 29, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Former political prisoner Ojore Nuru Lutalo, ne Leroy Bunting, was pulled off an Amtrak train in La Junta, Colorado, for scaring fellow passengers with his cell phone conversation. The FBI’s Colorado Springs Joint Terrorism Task Force was alerted about the 64 year-old armed with anarchist literature from the “Afrikan Liberation Army” (sic) which he had obtained while speaking at the LA Anarchist Book Fair for the Anarchist Black Cross, a prison rights organization. Just yesterday I listened to a local law enforcement type defend the 2nd Amendment, the right to bear arms, by suggesting that if we substituted “books” for guns, no one would think to regulate them. His compatriots seem to have confused the argument by charging the former Black Liberation Army member for “endangering public transportation” with what they called terrorist recruiting propaganda.

According to the Pueblo Chieftain, police found “a large amount of propaganda recruiting materials from the Afrikan Liberation Army, including photos of President Barack Obama and other items that raised suspicions.”

Break the Chains reports that Ojore was released Yesterday, and will return to the Otero District Court for an appearance February 5th, the charge now “Interfering with Public Transportation.”

How absolutely disingenuous to misquote the source of the so-called Anarchist literature, seeing as reportedly there was so much of it. This is the usual media disinfo to prevent giving the causes visibility. The Pueblo Chieftain has obtained the affidavit of the arrest, which should list the items found on Ojore. Until that’s made available, we can search online for what he was likely carrying. Our bet, they don’t want to call attention to the New Afrikan Liberation Front (NALF).

Here’s a list of the exhibitors at the 2nd Anarchist Book Fair:

Semiotext(e)
www.semiotexte.com
Earth First Journal
www.earthfirstjournal.org
Taala Hooghan: Infoshop & Youth Media Arts Center
www.taalahooghan.org
Modesto Anarcho
www.modestoanarcho.org
South Central Farmers
www.southcentralfarmers.com
Skylight Books
www.skylightbooks.com
Institute for Anarchist Studies
www.anarchist-studies.org
Critical Resistance
www.criticalresistance.org
Las Vegas Alliance of the Libertarian Left sonv.libertarianleft.org
Catholic Worker
www.lacatholicworker.org
Anti-Racist Action/Turning the Tide
www.antiracistaction.us
Anarchist Black Cross Federation L.A. www.abcf.net/la
PM press
www.pmpress.org
Microcosom Publishing
www.microcosmpublishing.com
AK press
www.akpress.org
Little black cart
www.littleblackcart.com
Make/Shift magazine
www.makeshiftmag.com
Journal of aesthetics and protest
www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org
R.A.C. : Revolutionary Autonomous Communities
www.revolutionaryautonomouscommunities.blogspot.com
I.W.W
www.iww.org

Then there is also the Southside ABCF zine collection, the Crossroad Newletter, and the publications of the Spear and Shield. Here’s the New Afrikan Declaration of Independence, as printed on Prairie Fire:

“New Afrikan Declaration of Independence”

WE, New Afrikan People in America, in consequence of arriving at a knowledge of ourselves as a people with dignity, long deprived of that knowledge; as a consequence of revolting with every decimal of our collective and individual beings against the oppression that for three hundred years has destroyed and broken and warped the bodies and minds and spirits of our people in America, in consequence of our raging desire to be free of this oppression, to destroy this oppression wherever it assaults humankind in the world, and in consequence of inextinguishable determination to go a different way, to build a new and better world, do hereby declare ourselves forever free and independent of the jurisdiction of the United State of America and the obligations which that country¹s unilateral decision to make our ancestors and ourselves paper-citizens placed on us.

We claim no rights from the United States of America other than those rights belonging to human beings anywhere in the world, and these include the right to damages, reparations, due us from the grievous injuries sustained by our ancestors and ourselves by reason of United States lawlessness.

Ours is a revolution against oppression–our own oppression and that of all people in the world. And it is a revolution for a better life, a better station for all, a surer harmony with the forces of life in the universe. We therefore see these aims as the aims of our revolution:

To free black people in America from oppression;

To support and wage the world revolution until all people everywhere are so free;

To build a new Society that is better than what We now know and as perfect as We can make it;

To assure all people in the New Society maximum opportunity and equal access to that maximum;

To promote industriousness, responsibility, scholarship, and service;

To create conditions in which freedom of religion abounds and the pursuit of God and/or destiny, place and purpose of humankind in the Universe will be without hindrance;

To build a Black independent nation where no sect or religious creed subverts or impedes the building of the New Society, the New State Government, or achievement of the Aims of the Revolution as set forth in this Declaration;

To end exploitation of human beings by each other or the environment;

To assure equality of rights for the sexes;

To end color and class discrimination, while not abolishing salubrious diversity, and to promote self-respect and mutual understanding among all people in the society;

To protect and promote the personal dignity and integrity of the individual, and his or her natural rights;

To place the major means of production and trade in the trust of the state to assure the benefits of this earth and our genius and labor to society and all its members, and

To encourage and reward the individual for hard work and initiative and insight and devotion to the Revolution.

In mutual trust and great expectation, We the undersigned, for ourselves and for those who look to us but are unable personally to affix their signatures hereto, do join in this solemn Declaration of Independence, and to support this Declaration and to assure the success of the Revolution, We pledge without reservation ourselves, our talents, and all our worldly goods.

Or the creed:

“New Afrikan Creed”

1. i believe in the spirituality, humanity and genius of Black people, and in our new pursuit of these values.

2. i believe in the family and the community, and in the community as a family, and i will work to make this concept live.

3. i believe in the community as more important than the individual.

4. i believe in constant struggle for freedom, to end oppression and build a better world. i believe in collective struggle; in fashioning victory in concert with my brothers and sisters.

5. i believe that the fundamental reason our oppression continues is that We, as a people, lack the power to control our lives.

6. i believe that fundamental way to gain that power, and end oppression, is to build a sovereign Black nation.

7. i believe that all the land in America, upon which We have lived for a long time, which We have worked and built upon, and which We have fought to stay on, is land that belongs to us as a people.

8. i believe in the Malcolm X Doctrine: that We must organize upon this land, and hold a plebiscite, to tell the world by a vote that We are free and our land independent, and that, after the vote, We must stand ready to defend ourselves, establishing the nation beyond contradiction.

9. Therefore, i pledge to struggle without cease, until We have won sovereignty. i pledge to struggle without fail until We have built a better condition than the world has yet known.

10. i will give my life, if that is necessary; i will give my time, my mind, my strength, and my wealth because this IS necessary.

11. i will follow my chosen leaders and help them.

12. i will love my brothers and sisters as myself.

13. i will steal nothing from a brother or sister, cheat no brother or sister, misuse no brother or sister, inform on no brother or sister, and spread no gossip.

14. i will keep myself clean in body, dress and speech, knowing that i am a light set on a hill, a true representative of what We are building.

15. i will be patient and uplifting with the deaf, dumb and blind, and i will seek by word and deed to heal the Black family, to bring into the Movement and into the Community mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters left by the wayside.

Now, freely and of my own will, i pledge this Creed, for the sake of freedom for my people and a better world, on pain of disgrace and banishment if i prove false. For, i am no longer deaf, dumb or blind. i am, by inspiration of the ancestors and grace of the Creator — a New Afrikan.

New ICE building is half windowless

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Eric Verlo

As reported by the Gazette on Nov 30, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security has opened an office in Colorado Springs in the Pueblo Bank and Trust Building. The implication is of a lonely field office to monitor the busy I-25 corridor, but the Nation Magazine is reporting that ICE locations nationwide are being used as unmarked and unmonitored detention facilities for undisclosed detainees. I can’t vouch for ours. Anyone up for a photo field trip? Bring your papers.

According to the Gazette, the office has been a pet pork project of Congressman Doug Lamborn. Their description of the new facilities:

The downtown office in Colorado Springs is the ninth ICE office in Colorado and houses several cubicles and conference rooms as well as a cache of secure rooms to be used for interviews, confidential paperwork and holding weapons.

Detentions have been until now subcontracted with El Paso County. Currently the county holds approximately 150 detainees for ICE.

Did you catch this choice segment of the story? County Commissioner Jim Bensberg apparently confuses “to have a chilling effect” with crime deterrence:

“The presence of the federal office will have a chilling effect on a wide variety of activities,” he said, without elaborating.

“There were days I thought this would never happen,” he said. “If I had a tail right now, I’d be wagging it.”

Does your elected representative need to hear from you?

Posted on December 8, 2009 by Eric Verlo

The emails are flowing in furiously. Senator So & So needs to hear from you; we need your donation to run this ad; our voices must be louder than the interests arrayed against reform. I ask you. On the issue of health reform, climate change, or ending the US wars, does your elected representative still need to hear from you? What sort of amnesia is there in DC, that the party given a mandate in 2008 suddenly lacks for moraL conviction?

Change That Works has organized an AMBULANCE TOUR for Colorado Springs, Canon City and Pueblo on December 8 to keep alive the issue of Health Care Reform, although of course it’s still framed unfortunately to specifications dictated by the insurance lobby as “Health Insurance Reform.”

It may not happen tomorrow at 10am, give or take a sign or two calling HEALTH CARE REFORM A SHAM, but the callous bastards will ultimately get what’s coming to them, being cut out of the middle entirely. Health is a universal human right which the insurance giants will not be able to deny Americans for much longer. Universal health care is a human right There is no moral basis for earning profits by standing between people and the care they need. Universal health care for all. Profiteers to the gallows.

Colorado Springs power plants not among world’s 200 dirtiest by much

Posted on November 6, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Good news, Colorado Spring’s main power plant is not among the world’s 200 biggest carbon offender power plants. But our neighbors are. One quarter of the world’s dirtiest power plants (53) are in the US. All in red states, because the uneducted are the new black. Actually in the West many of these coal plants are foisted on the Indians, the enduring black.

Colorado Springs is surrounded by:

LARAMIE RIVER, Wheatland, Wyoming at 15 million tons of carbon
INTERMOUNTAIN, Delta, Utah at 16 million
CRAIG, Colorado at 12 million
NAVAJO, Page, Arizon at 20 million
SAN JUAN, New Mexico at 12 million
MONTICELLO, Mount Pleasant, Texas at 18 million
WELSH, Pittsburg, Texas at 12 million
LA CYGNE, Kansas at 11 million

(For the record, the worst offender is the TAICHUNG plant in Taiwan, which emits 40 million tons of carbon every year. Clean plants emit 0.)

Falling short of ranking in the 200 worst, surrounding Colorado Springs, are:

CHEROKEE, Denver, Colorado at 5 million
COMANCHE, Pueblo, Colorado at 5 million
HAYDEN, Colorado at 4 million
PAWNE, Brush, Colorado at 4 million

Carbon emissions ratings are based on a plant’s efficiency relative to its intensity. On an interactive map offered by Carbon Monitoring For Action (CARMA), the dirty plants are in red, the clean in green. The mainstream media is working off of maps offered by Forbes magazine, not CARMA’s. Notice the Forbes article sponsor is Shell Oil, who’s leading the effort to extract oil shale, an ugly alternative to coal. But don’t be fooled by Forbes’ interesting omissions. Colorado Springs is red.

The three plants operated by Colorado Springs Utility fall into the dirty category:

DRAKE, Colorado Springs, 80903 at 2.3 million
RD NIXON, Fountain, at 1.8
BIRDSALL Colorado Springs, 80907 at 0.1

That’s right, the “cloud maker” located at Colorado Springs’ center, is squarely in the red, pollution wise. A model of Clean Coal.

Considered relatively cleaner are:

FRONT RANGE POWER, Fountain, Colorado at 1.2 million
FOUNTAIN VALLEY, at 0.2 million
WN CLARK, Canon City, Colorado at 0.4 million
LIMON, at 0.1 million

Clean:

COLORADO SPRINGS WICKS at 0
TESLA, Manitou Springs, Colorado at 0
NORAD, at 0.03 million

Falling onto the sky….

Posted on January 1, 2009 by Brother Jonah

jewelry4
Hairy Christmas and a Hippie New Year.

jewelry

jewelry2

jewelry3

People popping off fireworks and the occasional firearm, making the poor stupid little dog next door bark insanely.

Ok, headphones on, music, relaxing ahhhh…

Anyhow, these are some of the jewelry pictures.

So, how they evolved, when I was recycling some computer parts, I had the magneto from a floppy drive and was trying to visualize how best to take it apart, strip the copper wire from it efficiently.

One of my nieces and her friend were there, the little girl said “Oh, that would make a really pretty necklace.”

And she was right.

So I started making them like that, there’s about a hundred dfferent kinds of these magnetoes in various disk drives. Plenty of creative room using circle patterns.

Me likey muchly.

And then, I moved up here.

People told me about the Medicine Wheel, which I had never seen.

So I looked it up.

There’s one up near Sturgis which has been a prayer site for centuries, best guess is just before the Spanish came up from Mexico, and the Anasazi had just faded into the desert pueblos.

The tradition is, when you go there, you’re in the center of the Heart of the Earth.

Meaning the Black Hills.

The Sioux and the other northern nations say that it’s alive, this heart.

And, when you look down on the Black Hills, from high enough up, and can see the whole thing, it DOES look a whole lot like a human heart.

Some of the prophets, like Black Elk, say and said that this land could be killed. Maybe they’re right.

The name Bad Lands only means that it’s not any good for farming, you can’t grow much there, it’s “bad land”.

The blood-soaking and general rape of this Heart of the World didn’t really start until the early 1800s.

First it was over the Fur Trade.

Indians took what furs they needed to survive, leave the rest.

The French and especially the English had a huge market for it back in Europe, so Money reared it’s ugly head.

Then gold was discovered there.

Standing Bear Butte, where the Great Medicine Wheel is, was suddenly the center of a raging war.

For centuries, 500 years at least, people had gone there to experience the strongest of Medicine.

Medicine is a catch all translation of a huge number of Indian words, spirit and magic and life and it’s all woven together, no part is separate from the rest, it’s the Great Circle.

One of the translated words is manitou.

Another is the garden of the Gods.

See, most of this I only learned once I came here.

The kokapelli, for instance, it’s a bizarre coincidence like the medicine wheels I put together….

But when I was crippled up, recovering from the first surgeries like 16 years ago, sitting in a wheelchair, at my sister’s apartment, feeling sorry for myself… and one of my nieces had gotten a bag of toys from her school… and one of the toys was a Recorder. Ein Zauber-Flut. La Flauta Inglesa.(the English Flute) La Flauta Dulce – sweet flute.

The kids were running around blowing it like a whistle, really annoying in a cute way, but I had a sudden idea, I said “Gimme that, I’ll learn how to play it right” and the next day I checked out a book from the library on How To Play The Recorder and started in.

Flash forward, and I come up here, to Manitou, and started learning the Indian ways.

Finding out that the Flute Player, Kokapelli, is kind of the local hero. And what the medicine wheel means.

A lot of medicine is what you feel, that’s how you “know” and “learn”it.

English doesn’t do it justice.

Meditation comes close. Intuition, which means you learn from within.

A line from one of the hymns based on Ode am die Freude, “Spirit, in our spirit speaking, makes us sons of God, indeed.”

I can get really mystical and misty eyed describing it.

A lot of the stuff you experience up here, how do you put it to where people would believe it? That you could be walking a path and have somebody, a stranger, join you, talking to you and walking along with you, a cloud-shadow passes over and you’re standing alone, no tracks beside yours…

A dream from long ago, perhaps.

In the Indian conscious state, and this varies from person to person how you experience it, live it… but the Dreamtime is just as real as something you can touch.

I saw a picture of the Great Medicine Wheel, taken from the air, and that’s the only way you can see the whole thing.

For centuries when somebody goes there to pray-make medicine-commune-learning spirit…

he puts a stone at the end of each spoke of the wheel.

The wheel is now about a mile across.

It takes hours to walk around the edge of it.

And, it looks just like the medicine wheels shown in the pictures, the ones a little child told me “that would make a pretty necklace”

It’s not something you grab intellectually, you just feel and see and hear and ARE the medicine.

The other side of these, they’re recycled. Something that would, if left in a landfill somewhere, the first thing they would do is run a bulldozer over it, breaking it up just enough to let the toxic parts ooze out…

To kill the mountains, and kill the waters.

We would follow, everything we know as Human would set its feet upon the rainbow, One way of putting it is “falling onto the sky”.

Following the sun every evening into the Dreamtime of the west, only, without the life of Earth or man, the Dreamtime, too, would die away.

One of Black Elk’s sayings is we would live long enough to know what we had done… and pass away in great sadness.

United against 47, 49 and 54, not 46?

Posted on November 4, 2008 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO- The unions mounted a very visible opposition to the proposed Colorado Amendments 47, 49 and 54. Vote NO, their posters and stickers urged, in support of Colorado’s firefighters, police and teachers. I might have agreed more if they’d mentioned better reasons.

I was accosted in Pueblo by someone asking people to wear stickers which said NO ON 47, 49 & 54 for the sake of the firefighters. I told him that I had nothing against firefighters, but don’t they get plenty of recognition already? I would wear the sticker in support of UNIONS in general. That’s who the ballot amendments are targeting, and that’s who need our support. His face lit up appreciatively.

It’s too bad that the Colorado public can’t be trusted with the real argument about what’s at stake. Especially coming from such strong unions as protect the firefighters, police and teachers. What about the other unionized vocations? Especially those not yet, or no longer, protected by unions? I would have liked to see labor use this opportunity to bring the issue of collective bargaining into the public discourse. That would mean the stronger unions looking out for their weaker comrades.

I’m reminded of friends I had at UPS, who apologized for belonging to the Teamsters. What’s wrong with that picture? Or how about the USPS workers, paid good wages owed entirely to a strong union, who otherwise vote as anti-labor conservatives?

I would also like to have seen the NO ON 47, 49 & 54 group throw another number on their clipboard. Why not oppose Amendment 46, which attacked Affirmative Action? That’s a jobs related issue that would show solidarity with minority workers.

Can American voters be expected only to look out for themselves? Each of the presidential candidates seemed to campaign like they were buying votes. Did Obama have to promise he wouldn’t tax 95% of the populace? Did McCain have to argue for the reverse? Is there no room for altruism in American politics? Maybe the pundits are right to have talked about “socialism” like it was a dirty word.

Obama Pueblo Colorado rally illustrated

Posted on November 2, 2008 by Eric Verlo

PUEBLO, COLO- Here are pictures of Saturday’s Obama campaign rally in Pueblo, which his family wedged in between appearances the same day in Nevada and Missouri. Our peace contingent positioned early at the rally entrance on Main and C Street and greeted absolutely every of the over 25K attendees, from the Orange Pass-holders to the public whose line extended over the horizon.

We stood near a facilitator who barked this instruction to folks who’d arrived to the entrance from the wrong direction, with very likely an unconscious lack of warmth, “Obama welcomes you! [Go to the] back of the line!” Another volunteer warned attendees to please remove their campaign pins, empty their pockets of change, and leave their cell-phones and cameras on for the security inspection. These lines offered us a great opportunity to add our own admonitions. Don’t let them take your voice, for example. In addition to forbidding bags and non-disposable water bottles, participants were forbidden to bring signs.

Department of Homeland Security officers wore their strange black gloves.

A group of anti-abortion protesters managed to sneak through the preliminary security cordons and were summarily ousted. It was tempting to weigh in on what of course should have been their right to political expression in a public area, regardless their extremist views, except that they make such creepy bedfellows. Angry white idiots demonstrating against women’s rights. Even the woman who held the Catholic Vote sign was not a Catholic.

Wherever the anti-abortion “bad change” white guys next attempted to raise their signs, Obama volunteers blocked their visibility with pro-Obama placards. The Obama enthusiasts even borrowed our PLEASE OBAMA NO MORE WAR poster for the purpose. If you count the rally holders themselves as protesters of the current administration. The anti-abortion disruptors would be the counter-demonstrators, as would we. Which means the counter-counter-demonstrators used our counter-demonstration poster, and the who’s who gets cloudy.

The Pueblo police force were in constant communication with each other.

Tony brought a Halloween costume to represent another disenfranchised minority.

The DHS officer pictured in the middle accosted me immediately after I took this photograph. He threatened me with arrest if I did not put down my camera. If I was neither coming nor going, he forbid me from documenting the security area in the interest of protecting the country from terrorism.

We walked around the perimeter of the secured area in order to reach our car. This is the view we had of the press recording the rally.

This is the main stage from which the Democratic candidates were speaking.

Attempting to cross Union Street, north of the Historic District, our crossing was blocked by a security detail amidst a scene so quiet it seemed to be anticipating an important arrival.

Sure enough, within minutes the Obama motorcade arrived. Michelle Obama waved to everyone as their vehicle passed.

The SUVs disgorged their passengers. Secret Service agents exited from every door.

Obama needs your support in Pueblo

Posted on November 1, 2008 by Eric Verlo

PUEBLO- NOV 1st.
It may be the last Colorado whistle stop on the way to the White House. Come see Candidate Obama and make sure he hears what you expect from him. No more wars period. Not in Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Columbia, Bolivia, or Haiti. No more economic war of attrition against America’s own people.

You and I know there aren’t any White Supremacists of sufficient IQ, nor Cuban Loyalist mobsters, nor CIA rogues, nor Southern Separatist holdout, nor probably Zionist hit squad, who have it out for Barack Obama. Nobody is threatened by his intended reform but the Neocons. If the Bush Cheney Gang aren’t convinced they’ve squeezed the American economy of its last trillion dollars, I don’t imagine they plan to let anyone interrupt their gig.

The eyes of America are on this election and on Barack Obama. We aren’t seeing record voter registrations and early voting turnout for any other reason than that the citizens want change. They’re counting on their right, as advertised on TV, to elect the person they want to the presidency. No Texas Book Depository, nor shadow government cabal is going to get in the people’s way.

Obama has a chance to hear from Pueblo

Posted on October 30, 2008 by Eric Verlo

PUEBLO, COLO.- How exciting to live in a swing state! Obama returns to Colorado on Saturday Nov 1st, 3pm Pueblo. If Obama becomes president, when will we have a better chance to reach him with an antiwar message? Michelle Obama’s visit to COS on Tuesday looked progressively Blue, Blue, Blue, until you got inside the City Auditorium and saw the Red White and Blue pro-militarism imagery. We need to put the peace logo back at the front of this train. As usual, expect campaign lieutenants to throttle the pacifist tone.

Change We Need Rally
with Barack and Michelle Obama

The Union Avenue Historic District
Intersection of S. Union Ave. and D Street, Pueblo
Public Entrance: Corner of C Street and S. Main St.,

Saturday, November 1st, Gates Open: 1pm, Program Begins: 3pm

The event is free and open to the public. …For security reasons do not bring bags or umbrellas. Please limit personal items. No signs or banners allowed.

Confront GOP vote fixers Monday Oct 27

Posted on October 23, 2008 by NMT

EVERY VOTE MATTERS “Election Protection” Town Hall featuring Office of El Paso County Clerk & Recorder (confirmed) and Sec. of State (invited)
Monday, Oct. 27, 2-3:30 p.m. Carnegie Room, Penrose Library,

20 N. Cascade Ave. Downtown. If you cannot attend, watch live at koaa.com or on Comcast Channel 9 (CS) or Channel 247 (Pueblo). Email questions you want asked by Oct 26 to jweiss (at) csindy.com
town hall meeting

McCain campaign crashes alongside economy

Posted on October 21, 2008 by Tony Logan

I know it all looks so rosy out there, as the stock markets momentarily rise, the gas prices go down, and the leaves change color. What’s to worry about? Obama opens 8-point lead over McCain And to the liberal heart, the McCain campaign is crashing alongside the economy! Now surely Ship America will automatically right itself once again! Wrong. Tomorrow, you might want to go tell Joe Biden, the next president of the US, what you think about the sorry ass Republicrats that he is candidate for? Joe Biden to Campaign in Colorado Springs & Pueblo Let Joe the Plumber know that it really does stink with American politics!

Tent State stole park from DNC demos

Posted on August 27, 2008 by Eric Verlo

DENVER- Wednesday was a day of major betrayal of DNC protesters. The Denver park from which demonstrations were being launched was today suddenly completely fenced off OVERNIGHT. Clever move on the part of city. Civic Center Park had been serving as the point of reference for activists who now did not know how to find each other after the convergence center at 38th and Brighton was raided by police. Here’s what happened to the park.

The organizers of “Tent State” had a permit to use Civic Center Park on Wednesday. Since Saturday, Recreate-68 and Unconventional Denver had used it as a rallying point. Two weeks ago Eric Jung of Tent State announced that they would not be using the Wednesday permit. At the last Consulta, R68 organizers asked Jung to relinquish the permit so that others could keep using the park. Jung said he would, but he didn’t. As a result, the city pounced on the chance to begin setting up canopies for the annual Taste of Colorado scheduled for Friday. Have you ever seen a park fair event that wasn’t assembled the same morning of the event? This was a thinly disguised move to leave DNC protesters without a communications hub. Courtesy of Tent State.

Hopefully this will be the last of the many DNC betrayals by Eric and his friend JoJo Pease. They told 5280 magazine that R68’s turnout would be in the double digits, while theirs would number thousands. But Tent State turned out to be more like a pueblo. A camp circle more accurately.

After the IVAW cross city march I saw Pease bragging about how well their work had gone. The role the two played to destabilize and divide the 2008 DNC efforts should discredit Eric and JoJo from participating in a single important anything else. Damnable degenerates.

from Rudyard Kipling’s..

Posted on June 5, 2008 by Brother Jonah

The man who would be king…

“…and they (the tribe who lived upstream) urinate in the river”
This in reference to the “runoff” election iniative.

Why should all those poor, indeed Indigent, on food stamps and sleeping on park benches Business Leaders in Colorado Springs have to pay for the toxic waste that runs off their parking lots every damn time it rains?

They probably wouldn’t drink the stuff, unfiltered, that comes off their pavement, but, hey, it’s off their property, must be Somebody Else’s Problem.
And the fact that the filtration processes to get the poison out of the water, those processes, yeah…

They cost money. But the people downstream from Colorado Springs (hint: the entire western United States, Mexico, etc… yeah, those people) they can buy their own filtration processes to get OUR poisons out of THEIR water… and all those lawsuits about it? Pshawww… that’s Frivolous Litigation, haven’t they ever heard of Tort Reform?

They don’t want to drink our urine or feces either, but guess what? the amount of runoff water from the pavement really does FLOOD the same treatment plants.
Both here, and in Pueblo, and Wolf Creek, and Albuquerque, and El Paso, Laredo, Del Rio, McAllen, Brownsville…

Not to mention Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Acuña, Matamoros, I won’t even mention these because the people who want to dump their waste for FREE don’t even consider Mexican citizens to be human, just “potential wetbacks”. …and that’s just from ONE of the four major watersheds.

We already are being sued by Pueblo, which has a lot of Civil Servants, federal employees, living there.

Also the Military Bases all around have to filter the same wastes from the same water, at public expense. That would be EVERYBODY’S, in the entire nation, expense.

Did I mention that the runoff water also makes it more expensive to treat the Raw Sewage from our toilets? Why, yes, I did, I really really did.

Should I mention, you reckon, that the same people who oppose this “taxation” are the same ones who think it’s a good idea to change their oil in their front yards and not ever have to pick up their pet droppings?

Why, I believe I just did…

Of course, they’ll try to tell us again that Social Responsibility means Socialism, a word they still try to frighten the working class by using. They’ll also say it’s an unfair burden on the poor, because we’d have to pay higher prices to compensate for the Rich not getting corporate welfare.

Like they seriously ever gave three quarters of a fat rat’s rump about the poor to begin with.

	LL on Owl City writes lyrics most fo…
	lizzie on The ‘success maker…
	gary cummings on Common Dreams? Or is it censor…
	kennetha on The Stiles Unit of Beaumont
	Cristian on Shlomo Sand and shattering a n…
	Vic Currier on Why should you attend the Denv…
	Vic Currier on Sovereign constitutional oath…
	Robyn KenyaStar Prui… on White Native Americans
	Debra Gill on The Stiles Unit of Beaumont
	Xaldyn on The ‘success maker…

Not My Tribe

The Myth of Middle Ground

Tag Archives: Pueblo