Author: Vince Bzdek
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How important is military service in race for 5th Congressional District?
By Vince Bzdek Colorado’s 5th Congressional District has one of the highest concentrations of military facilities in the country — Peterson Space Force Base, Schriever Space Force Base, Fort Carson, Air Force Academy, NORAD, the headquarters of Northern Command, Space Force and Space Command. Yet, ironically, the district has not been represented by someone with…
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Montrose citizens’ assembly puts the ‘We’ back in ‘We the People’ | Vince Bzdek
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By Vince Bzdek It started with a completely random encounter in a buffet line. Harry Gottlieb, founder of a national civic organization called Unify America, and his president, Michelle Sobel, were at a Chicago fundraising conference, talking about trying to find a good U.S. city for a pilot project called a “citizens’ assembly.” A citizens’…
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Can Artemis unite a torn country the way Apollo did in 1969? | Vince Bzdek
I remember resenting the moon a little back in 1969. Because of the moon, my parents had cancelled our trip to ride the paddleboats at City Park in Denver to watch the multicolored fountains in the middle of the lake spray their night rainbows into the sky. For a 9-year-old, nothing much beat those fountains.…
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New Mexico throws lifeline to newspapers. When will Colorado?| Vince Bzdek
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There is one single profession mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. Journalism. “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” That’s because our profession isn’t just a profession; it’s an essential civic cornerstone. The free press has always been one of the central pillars holding up the foundation of our…
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It’s time to let unaffiliated voters caucus | Vince Bzdek
There’s no getting around it: Colorado’s 3,000 county caucuses, which just wrapped up recently, left half the electorate out in the cold. Since unaffiliated voters now make up 51% of all Colorado voters, a majority of Colorado electors are barred from participating in our first round of democracy, which is reserved exclusively for card-carrying Democrats…
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Before there was Google, there was Linda Navarro | Vince Bzdek
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Journalism legend marks 60 years at the Gazette When she was a young girl in Missouri, Linda Navarro used to religiously read the comic strip “Brenda Starr,” which chronicled the escapades of a glamorous reporter who chased scoops around the world for The Flash. “Brenda Starr was a female journalist” when there weren’t a lot…
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Can deliberation save democracy? | Vince Bzdek
In September 2019, 523 Americans traveled to Dallas for an experiment called “America in One Room.” The gathering was designed to test a theory: Could representative citizens deliberate productively even in an era of intense polarization? The event focused on policy proposals in five polarizing issue areas: immigration, the economy, health care, the environment and…
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What is the state legislature trying to hide?| Vince Bzdek
What is it that the State Legislature is trying to hide? A bill that passed out of committee last week lets governments squirrel away important public notices on their own websites rather than publishing them in newspapers and other news sites that actually reach the public. That would mean the public isn’t really notified of…
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The freest man in Colorado history | Vince Bzdek
Every Coloradan should know the story of Buffalo Soldier John Taylor, who fought harder and longer than perhaps any man in our history to be truly free. Taylor’s story stands out above all others in a thought-provoking exhibit about Buffalo Soldiers down at Fort Garland. Taylor was a slave working on a plantation in Kentucky…
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Ken Salazar donates archives to Borderlands project, hoping history helps unify country
About the same time the Pilgrims were setting up shop 400 years ago in Plymouth, Ken Salazar’s family was scratching out a toehold in what is now New Mexico, helping to establish the city of Santa Fe. The Salazars had already been in the Southwest 250 years when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the…