Metro Denver Community Rights supports the mission of the Colorado Community Rights Network (COCRN) to advance the inalienable right of towns, cities and counties to protect their citizens’ health, safety and the environment against harmful corporate / government-sanctioned activities.
The Metro Denver Community Rights group meets on the second Thursday of the month. Contact Dianne Thiel, [email protected] for meeting location.
We advocate for the right of communities to offer a higher level of protections for public health, safety, well-being, and the environment than the Federal and state government allows. Examples of our work include working with other community rights groups to give our counties, cities and towns the right to say NO to fracking within their boundaries, joining with local groups to raise the minimum wage above the low state-set limit, pass a Homeless Bill of Rights, and fight for housing for our houseless population. We want Colorado citizens to have the right to determine the character of their communities while protecting the basic human rights of all people.
Other Metro Denver work has included gathering signatures for COCRN state ballot initiatives in 2014 and 2016, holding educational events to challenge the mythology of US democracy, supporting the Children’s Trust lawsuit [delete “and”] appeal, and supporting a challenge to Amendment 71 to return the full right of initiative to the people of Colorado,
Please join us in making Colorado a truly democratic state in which our communities can be free from corporate domination, and where all our people and nature can thrive!
November 18, 2018
On October 26, 2018, the Denver Elections Division notified the Denver City Council that the Denver Right to Survive Initiative had met the requirements to be placed on the May 7, 2019 municipal ballot. The proponents got 9,979 signatures over a six month period. 7,046 of these signatures were valid.… Read the rest
From producer Michelle Swenson and the project Community Matters and Denver Open Media, this is the first video to cover how Denver mayor Michael Hancock has removed more open space in Denver’s parks than any previous mayor — and is indeed the first mayor to do so! Watch:
This Colorado map shows many of the toxic industrial sites in our state. The Metro Denver group spent many tens of hours researching the types and locations of these facilities. After a while, due to the large number of facilities that have to fit on the map, the best we could do was to put the facility icons in the correct county. Joint proposals by the City of Denver and the Colorado Department of Transportation seek to widen and lower an I-70 viaduct into a trench below the water table within Environmental Justice neighborhoods that occupy an unremediated Superfund Site in the most toxic zip code in the U.S.; as well as digging a 2-1/2 mile stormwater drainage system for 100-year flood protection of the project just south and parallel to I-70, named the “Platte to Park Hill.”… Read the rest
Members of the Metro Denver Community Rights group have been supporting efforts by Denver Homeless Out Loud to pass a statewide Right to Rest Act in the Colorado Legislature. This Act would allow homeless people to exist and survive in public spaces, to sleep in a legally parked car, to share food or eat in public spaces, and have a reasonable expectation of privacy for their personal property in public spaces.… Read the rest