‘Steal This Story, Please!’
Calling all fans of The Sopris Sun, KDNK and independent media nationwide! Come out this Thursday, Aug. 20, for a one-night showing of the film “Steal This Story, Please!” at the Crystal Theater. This documentary about journalist Amy Goodman has won audience-choice awards at several film festivals and is selling out in theaters across the country. In these days of corporate media consolidation, independent media is more important now than ever.
Thursday’s showing is a fundraiser for Mountain Action Indivisible. Showtime is 7pm; doors open at 6:30 pm. More info and buy tickets at MountainActionIndivisible.org.
Debbie Bruell
Carbondale
Plight of Haitians
As a family physician, I’ve traveled to many countries on medical relief trips. Two of these trips were to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. These trips opened my eyes and made me sympathetic to the plight of Haitians in the United States.
I spent a week in the Dominican Republic, traveling daily to refugee camps. While most of my colleagues were American, we worked with one Haitian physician. She served some of the most disadvantaged patients I ever worked with, while educating us about local needs and cultural concerns. While we had traveled further, her daily challenges to join us were greater. She was required to pass through eight separate checkpoints upon entry and departure, harassed at each one because she was a woman and a Haitian. She was undeterred and showed up daily to help people in desperate need.
More recently, I participated in a medical relief trip to Haiti. We treated patients who had been chronically displaced by the 2010 earthquake. They were further impacted by cholera outbreaks inadvertently caused by relief workers. Our shifts at refugee camps were rescheduled due to risk of violence, and we were unable to travel without security. Since then, the country has been torn apart by violence, political instability and economic collapse. The U.S. Department of State just placed Haiti under a level 4 (highest) travel advisory. This is the scenario that our Haitian immigrants — who have recently been under Temporary Protected Status, but now are at risk of being deported — are expected to return to.
Not only are they neighbors and community members, they are employed in valuable health roles across the U.S. More than 100,000 Haitians work in health professions, particularly caring for our elderly and disabled. They make up nearly 1% of our healthcare workforce. Deporting them poses a humanitarian risk while creating a significant clinical shortage in the U.S. Please contact your congressmen to ask them to protect Haitian immigrants’ status in the U.S.! And remember, use your voice — vote in November!
Maria Chansky
Glenwood Springs
Right to hunt
My right to ski in Colorado ought to be enshrined in our state Constitution.
As a native with ancestors born and raised in the Centennial state, skiing is my family tradition, my heritage, and thus it is my God-given right to shred the slopes.
Of course, I’m joking.
Skiing is in my blood, but never would I ever attempt to force my choice of outdoor sport into the mother of all laws: the state Constitution.
Unfortunately, a horde of predator-hunting-and-fur-trapping-obsessed folks are pushing for a potential ballot measure that would entitle them a “right” to hunt or trap in Colorado. Do they even know that hunting, trapping and of course fishing are already legal recreational sports in Colorado?
The millions of dollars they will undoubtedly raise should just go to Colorado Parks and Wildlife for current needs.
What a waste of time for everybody. Although … it could set a really nice precedent for my right to pickleball.
Julie Marshall
Lafayette
Colombia earthquake
Colombia has been hit hard by the 7.4 earthquake on Aug. 10. This is a poor country and it’s often the poor who lose their homes entirely because they are not well built. The destruction is worst in the cities where multi-story buildings have collapsed. I am in a rural area where mostly the water system for many people doesn’t work. I am lucky because I was already awake and dressed and simply ran out of the house to sit on the ground away from it in case it collapsed. It looked like the house danced with the north-to-south, south-to-north waving earth. Besides debris from china, glass, potted plants and plaster, the house itself is fine. My water, electricity and internet are restored but that is not the case for many.
If you wish to and can help, CARE and World Central Kitchen are active here, so is a medical organization called Direct Relief. You can check out your favorite charities to see who is doing what, where in our world full of needs and help. Now, Indonesia has been hit too.
I have been in Colombia the past three weeks working on an environmental education program with children ages 5 to 12 and university students. All the schools are shut down as each is examined for damage. The video one of the university students shot as she ran from a building was entire sections of walls falling down at the University of Quindío. We can’t restart the younger children’s program until we have water in the buildings we use. I have no idea how working parents are managing this lack of care and safety for their kids with no classes, no school lunch. Once we can restart our program, our focus will be bird-related activities, as Colombia has more bird species than any other country in the world. They are truly a national treasure. I am also collaborating with the local school on a bird education project. The birds were all singing within a half hour of the quake.
Illène Pevec, PhD
Carbondale
AVLT on South Bridge
If you have followed recent news about South Bridge, you may wonder why Aspen Valley Land Trust (AVLT) is involved.
AVLT’s mission is to protect open land for agriculture, wildlife and community benefit — forever. We work with willing landowners to conserve their land using perpetual conservation easements. Landowners continue to own and manage their property, while AVLT assumes the legal responsibility to protect the land’s conservation values by upholding an easement in perpetuity.
The Jackson family has lived and ranched south of Glenwood Springs for decades. Beginning in 1995, the family permanently protected its ranch with an easement, including land now proposed for South Bridge, and they received a commendation of appreciation from the city. The ranch and its easements provide an important agricultural and scenic buffer and protect sensitive wetlands, river habitat, wildlife resources and rare native plants.
The conservation easement prohibits South Bridge from crossing the ranch. The city must use eminent domain to acquire the conserved land that it needs for the project, and it must terminate (through judicial proceedings) the portion of the easement that protects that land. Therefore, AVLT cannot enter into a “friendly” agreement that bypasses the required court oversight for any easement termination. We must vigorously defend an easement and its conservation values forever, unless or until it is terminated by a court.
AVLT supports meaningful public review of this easement’s condemnation before irreversible environmental impacts occur. South Bridge deserves to be examined by the public through a transparent and thorough review process. To that end, the county requested that the city submit a 1041 land-use review application, and the city declined. So, the county filed a lawsuit asking a court to determine whether that review is required. AVLT believes the 1041 process would allow for thorough vetting of South Bridge and its environmental impacts, with ample opportunities for public review and comment.
Conservation easements are lasting commitments. Families like the Jacksons, together with the broader community, rely on AVLT to uphold them, even when doing so is difficult. We will continue to fulfill that responsibility in good faith throughout this process.
Annie Perry
Stewardship Director, AVLT
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