Supporting Velasco for HD57

When you imagine a government that works, what is it? When you imagine the ideal person to represent you and everyone in your community, who are they? What would make you believe that your government actually cares about our collective wellbeing?

For me, the person I imagine, and in whom I put my wholehearted trust, is Elizabeth Velasco. Elizabeth is running for HD57, a new district from Parachute to Aspen.

I see myself in Elizabeth: a woman in her 30s, building a life and career in the Roaring Fork Valley. Someone who grew up in the area, and knows it like the back of her hand. Someone for whom family is a top priority. Someone who, like me, cares about the wellbeing of everyone, not just some.

I trust Elizabeth Velasco. She’s not a career politician, vying for power and reputation. Elizabeth is a regular person, with incredible drive and skill and resourcefulness, who is deeply connected to diverse groups in our district. She knows our struggles personally and professionally: housing, wages, commutes, healthcare costs, drought, fire.

I trust that Elizabeth will prioritize people over profits, people over the special interests that dilute policy solutions so that we, the people, don’t get what we need and deserve. She will fight for the bold solutions required to address our dire social, economic, and climate crises at the state level. Elizabeth will represent voices that have never been at the state capitol before, voices that are important and who matter. Those voices deserve to have Elizabeth Velasco as HD57’s representative. We all do.

Join me to support her! Visit elizabethforcolorado.com. Juntos podemos! Stronger together!

Sophia Diamond Clark

Carbondale

Capitalism’s assault on journalism

Ogden Newspapers, which purchased the Aspen Times and Glenwood Springs Post Independent in December, isn’t a hedge fund or private equity firm, but Alden Global Capital, the outfit that’s taken over the Denver Post and the Boulder Camera, is.

This is all part of a disturbing and dangerous trend. In 2002, 5% of newspapers were owned by hedge funds or private equity firms. By 2019 it was 23%. Alden Global itself has acquired approximately 200 papers.

These capitalistic predators make these purchases with borrowed money, which isn’t exactly good for the economy, then transfer those debts to their new companies, which requires those enterprises to take drastic austerity measures to stay afloat. That’s why the editorial staffs at the Denver Post and the Boulder Camera have been cut by two thirds. Readers are getting a higher dose of AP wire copy and fewer stories of local interest.

Capitalism has been having its usual effect of misdirected priorities on the newspaper business for a long time. The amount of news you get bears no relation to the amount of news there is to report, but how much advertising the ad pushers were able to sell for that day.

When I covered the tragic 1994 Storm King Mountain Fire, where 14 firefighters died, for the Glenwood Post, I got back to the newsroom tired and dirty and started to hammer out what was the biggest story in Glenwood Springs history. The managing editor poked his head out of his office and said, “Cut it short. We have a light paper tomorrow.”

He was kidding, but he might not have been. Profits rule all.

Fred Malo Jr.

Carbondale

Embarrassing

Unlike thousands of honorable men and women of both parties who have served in Congress over the two-plus centuries of our nation’s existence, our representative cannot let an invited guest speak without making an embarrassing, self-serving spectacle of herself.

Matthew Laurel Trinidad

Glenwood Springs

Attention getting?

CDOT 2021 statistics show 691 fatalities for Colorado. The electronic signs along I-70 post the message “Speed Kills, Slow Down.”

CDOT, Colorado State Patrol, local enforcement, businesses and families everywhere want us home at the end of the day.

Take A Minute/Slow Down in Town wants the same thing in our communities where encounters between motorists and pedestrians will be the most deadly for pedestrians.

Take a Minute, think about it…

Does driving over the speed limit, have anything to do with preserving small town character?

Invest and protect our communities, accept the fact that how each of us drives does make a difference.

Let our actions speak louder than words, Slow Down in Towns.

Diane Reynolds

Glenwood Springs