Caffeinating Liberally was a very crowded place yesterday morning. It reminded me a bit of the Women’s March in Denver — when I arrived it was very crowded, it grew to about a couple dozen people and the ratio was about 3-1 women to men.
Just a sampling of the folks and drinks (yes, that quiche, or egg pie in the foreground).Second from the right in the picture above is Denver city councilman Rafael Espinoza, who came to give us information on many issues facing Denver, including the “Big Ditch”, or Denver’s plan to turn the elevated portion of I-70 into a portion running below grade instead, partially covered and partially below the water table, slated to cost at least 1.6 billion dollars when there are much cheaper alternatives that not only would not cost so much, but would not also evict some 40-80 people out of their homes. CDOT says they have the funding for this — involving lots of federal funds. I’m sure lots of construction companies are going to make out very well from this project.
Other issues discussed were questions from a new transplant who was interested in learning how much and what type of a drug problem Denver might have (she had heard stories). Discussions included the past election. Kossack Leftcandid, (who was the campaign manager for the Democrat in Colorado’s US House District covering the north and eastern side of Colorado) said that the best correlation nationwide between whether Trump won or Hillary won a district was the level of opioid use/abuse — if there were more abusers who were trying to escape their pain and had gone down the road of overusing pain killers, those districts tended to be more depressed and fearful and felt more helpless, so they turned to the guy who was promising them the moon even though everyone who had a brain left could see he was lying to them. They didn’t care — he was offering them a way out of their pain and I guess Hillary wasn’t. We discussed the local Denver city council, the new elections for the various restructurings of the state and local party committees and a whole host of other things.
There was a bit of glare here, but this is another angle.The next edition of Caffeinating Liberally will be February 25th, 9AM to noonish. We’re likely going to be at Common Grounds, but as you can see, we really did fill our space. Keep watching the Colorado State Open Thread to see if there is a location change.
On the matter of the Colorado State Open Thread, I am going to be changing from Sunday mornings (I know — you finally found this) to Monday evenings beginning February 6th. I am going to be busier on Sundays and it’s easier for me to leave the mornings free. I plan to publish at 7PM, Mountain Time. I’m always looking for contributors — please let me hear from you.
As a matter of fact, let me hear from you now, down below in the comments. Were you at the meeting yesterday morning? Were you out snowshoeing? Were you sleeping in? Were you out organizing? What is on your mind this morning?