submitted by Michele Swenson
Call to Reclaim our Open Spaces, Environment & Government
Sunday Dec. 3 2:30pm
City Park Golf Course: 26th & York St.
People will gather Sunday Dec. 3 at City’s “Wall of Shame” – a 6-ft high chain link fence walling off City Park Golf Course – scheduled to be bulldozed and over 260 trees removed – part of a misguided plan to provide 100-year flood protection for developers along I-70.
In 2010 Denver City Council ceded complete control over our parks to the Mayor’s office. Since then the City has done clear-cut logging – eliminating trees that are the “lungs of our city,” said recently deceased urban planner John Prosser. Clearcutting has occurred at Hentzel Park and Globeville Landing Park, and is planned in significant portions of City Park and Park Hill Golf Courses. The city is poised to remove over 240,000 square feet of mature tree canopy that provide natural air conditioning in City Park Golf Course, with an extensive root system capable of holding and mitigating extensive amounts of flood water. Besides eliminating bird and animal habitat and threatening contamination of ground and surface water, the city’s plan demolishes “Tom Bendelow’s design for City Park Golf Course….a low-water need, small-greens, high plains links layout with magnificent views” over the city center, said Prosser.
Bring drawings, pictures, poems and prose to adorn the City’s ‘Wall of Shame’ – a reminder that the people need to reclaim our public spaces, the environment and our government. All have been coopted by our leaders who place service to big money special interests over service to people and the environment.
T/D/P: 4:30 p.m. Friday, December 1, Alfred J Arraj Courthouse, 901 19th St. Demver CO, 80294.
RIGHTS OF NATURE ACTION IN RESPONSE TO ATTORNEY GENERAL’S THREAT OF SANCTIONS IN COLORADO RIVER ECOSYSTEM V. STATE OF COLORADO
The Colorado Attorney General has threatened the attorney who filed the first federal rights of nature lawsuit with sanctions if he does not voluntarily withdraw the Complaint.
Rights of Nature activists will gather at dusk (4:30 pm) on Friday, December 1st, outside the Alfred A. Arraj Federal Courthouse, 901 19th St, Denver, CO 80294 in a display of creative resistance. They will demand that the Colorado River have her day in court, condemn the Attorney General’s intimidation tactics, and call for the American legal system to grant the Colorado River Ecosystem the same rights as corporations.
Attorney Jason Flores-Williams, in a letter he sent to the Colorado Attorney General’s office Tuesday morning, November 27th, stated, “The Attorney General’s threat of sanctions is a legally baseless attempt to harass and intimidate a civil rights attorney in good standing who has dedicated his career to protecting the powerless from the powerful.”…“They didn’t threaten to sanction Exxon attorneys for lying about global warming, or Bank of America attorneys for fraudulently foreclosing on people’s homes, or Nestle attorneys for privatizing our water and selling it back to us—but try to equal the playing field between corporations and the environment and they try to personally damage you.”
Will Falk, a writer, attorney, and one of the next friends in the lawsuit, denounced the Attorney General’s threats, saying, “The Attorney General is duty-bound to work solely for the good of the people, but through these threats the Attorney General is working solely for the good of corporations.”
