The COvid Chronicles June 24-30, 2020: Statues fall, restrictions return–and kids get left behind

By Rocky Mountain Voice Editorial Board

As June gave way to July, Colorado stood suspended in confusion. Were cases going down—or climbing again? Should the public still be afraid? Was it time to reopen bars—or shut them again?

Those were surface-level questions. But the deeper question was this: who was actually being prioritized? While pediatricians urged Gov. Polis and health officials to consider the toll on kids, homeless camps spread into schoolyards and parks—and protesters shut down public meetings. Rioters tore down statues. And millionaire athletes declared that a revolution was not just coming—it was necessary.

What could have been a cautious corner-turn instead gave way to something more combustible. The moment hardened into something worse: the foreshadowing of near-eternal totalitarianism.

These are the COvid Chronicles for June 24-30, 2020…

COvid Chronicles catch-up
• Introducing The COvid Chronicles: How fear and force reshaped Colorado
• COvid Chronicles April 1-15, 2020: Fifteen days that changed Colorado forever
• COvid Chronicles April 16-30, 2020: From tattletales to tyranny
• COvid Chronicles May 1-7, 2020: Seven days that set the stage for open rebellion
• COvid Chronicles May 8-15, 2020: C&C made headlines. Polis made an example. Colorado made up its mind.
• COvid Chronicles May 16-23, 2020: Deaths dipped — but the definition got slippery
• COvid Chronicles May 24-31, 2020: When ‘peaceful protests’ overruled pandemic policy — and unleashed chaos
• COvid Chronicles June 1-7, 2020: Struggle sessions and Stockholm syndrome rewrite the rules
• COvid Chronicles June 8-15, 2020: Can’t visit grandma—but defund-the-police protests are doctor-approved
• COvid Chronicles June 16-23, 2020: Social justice got a platform—police got massive reform

June 24

When it came to the virus itself, Wednesday brought good news across the board. According to the Denver Post, the number of COVID-19 outbreaks in Colorado fell for the second consecutive week, and the growth of new cases and deaths linked to outbreak clusters was the smallest since tracking began.

Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment data showed a 1.6% increase in cases compared to the prior week, and a 2.8% increase in deaths—the lowest growth rates reported since mid-April, when the state began releasing outbreak data.

Down in Colorado Springs, Gazette reporter Evan Wyloge highlighted how improved therapeutics and case management were reducing hospitalizations, ventilations, and deaths. For example, the mortality rate for all COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Colorado dropped to 11% in May—down from 15% in March. For those under 30, the number was zero.

Wyloge even touched a third rail in the medical response: ventilators. He quoted doctors from Banner, Boulder Community, Centura, Denver Health, UCHealth and others, who acknowledged that putting patients on ventilators early often made things worse. As they “learned more about the virus,” doctors increasingly opted to continue hospital care without intubation.

“They’ve learned to listen more to patients,” Wyloge reported, “and if the patient does not appear to be in a crisis, they won’t necessarily be intubated with a ventilator, despite the low blood oxygen levels.”

As doctors learned to listen more to patients, the same demand was quietly rising from parents and pediatricians: that government schools and regulators listen to children and families.

In a guest commentary for the Denver Post, pediatricians Dr. Meghan Treitz and Dr. Rush Lev outlined “the troubling effects” the state-mandated COVID response had on children—from isolation and loss of community to the closure of schools that had once been central to social and emotional development.

“With that in mind,” they wrote, “we urge deliberate planning now for the physical reopening of schools in the fall, with a virtual option for immunocompromised children and families.”

Treitz, president of the Colorado Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and Lev, a chapter member, pointed to rising rates of anxiety, depression, suicidality, obesity, teen pregnancy, accidents and food insecurity tied directly to the prolonged school closures.

Bravely, they challenged the government and union narratives that would persist for months to come—backing up their call with data that showed COVID-19 posed minimal risk to children and that kids weren’t the main vectors of spread.

“Our decisions regarding school openings should be data-driven and based on facts,” they wrote. “It is crucial to recognize that the epidemiology for children is not the same as for adults.”

Gov. Jared Polis didn’t appear moved by the plea. He doubled down on his preference for control, urging Coloradans to forgo large Fourth of July gatherings, citing concerns about rising case numbers.

Though the state still technically allowed up to 50 people to gather—a limitation that continued to suppress churches and community groups—Polis personally walked that number back. “Just do it with your family or one other family,” he said. “If it’s up to 50, it could lead to a dozen, two-dozen [person] outbreak.”

That same kind of oversight took another victim: Denver’s Armida’s Mexican Restaurant & Bar. Once a staple of the Capitol Hill neighborhood ravaged by race riots and home to the state Capitol, it shut its doors for good. The Denver Post’s John Wenzel called the loss part of “the disappearance of old Denver… that has shaken the city to its roots in recent years.”

After all, singing with others had become a sin in COVID Colorado.

“Friendships were formed there,” wrote Kyria Lydia Abrahams on Facebook. “Lives were saved there. People found their life purpose was to sing. I encouraged everyone who walked through that door.”

While places like Armida’s closed, open-air drug encampments exploded—especially in Capitol Hill. Mainstream media barely touched it. But on this day, the Denver Post’s Conrad Swanson wrote a piece on what every Denverite saw but few dared to criticize: the colorfully described “struggle to serve people experiencing homelessness” that brought drug markets to school grounds and parks.

Swanson told the story of Brendan McCormick, a father whose 8-year-old son attended the now-closed Morey Middle School. Homeless encampments had taken over the surrounding area, and McCormick called police multiple times to report dumping, trespassing and threats.

“There’s a blue tent across the street where there appears to be some prostitution going on,” McCormick said. “Women have gone into that tent, been there a short time and then they go across the street and buy drugs from guys under a tarp.”

As encampments spread, bike thefts spiked. Denverites saw what was happening, even if officials wouldn’t admit it. Addicts living in these camps were breaking into cars and garages, trading bikes and parts in black-market swaps.

Denver Post reporter Sam Tabachnik noted an 18% spike in bike thefts over the past year, highlighting one example in Capitol Hill. 

Around 4 a.m., Krista Springer and her fiancé Derek Haugen had their bikes stolen from their apartment garage. They investigated themselves—likely because they knew what so many residents had been told by police: there’s not much we can do.

“As the pair walked near 22nd Avenue and Stout Street, they saw Haugen’s bike near a series of tents,” Tabachnik wrote. “Derek walked over and grabbed it, a man nodding as he did. Soon after, a neighbor spotted Springer’s bike in the same area—so she scurried to get her ride back.”

“This wasn’t the safest of choices,” Springer said. “And I don’t think I would do it again.”

Downtown commuter Kate Johnson offered another glimpse of the absurd. On a city-funded light rail, she saw a man holding a bike frame with the front wheel missing—and bolt cutters in the bottle holder. She posted the photo in a bike group, and someone recognized the frame. The thief had listed it for sale on Craigslist, bolt cutters still visible.

She called the police. She had a photo. She had the Craigslist post.

“She got nowhere,” Tabachnik wrote.

“I’m sure they have a lot of other issues going on and bikes are so hard to keep track of,” Johnson said. “But I really think it’s something that needs to be looked at.”

Amazingly, Denver Police spokesman Jay Casillas claimed there were “a million factors” contributing to the thefts—and “no clear reason” for the uptick.

Even more incredibly, another spokesman, Doug Schepman, discouraged residents from recovering their own bikes: “We don’t want people to jeopardize their own personal safety to meet up with someone to get their stolen bike,” he said.

So while police backed away from actual crime, the policing of speech was alive and well—especially in higher education.

University of Colorado Boulder economics professor Phil Graves found himself under investigation for a Facebook post questioning a Boulder Daily Camera story. The original article had referenced district data showing that students of color were referred to law enforcement at two to three times the rate of their white peers.

“That is only a ‘problem’ if they do not commit crimes at 2-3 times the rate of other students. Any evidence of that?” Graves wrote.

Raffi Mercuri, Boulder County Democratic Party Chair, responded to the post with outrage. “It’s frustrating to see that anyone feels the way he does,” he told the Camera. “I felt alarmed that he was a tenured professor at CU and that he felt OK saying something like that in public.”

CU spokesperson Deborah Mendez Wilson confirmed the post had been reported to the Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance.

Graves defended himself: “I am neither sexist nor racist, but sometimes (if you scroll through my posts) I have been known to be a tad ‘tasteless.’ But, of course, ‘popular speech’ has never needed the 1st Amendment … it is only unpopular speech that needs that protection.”

June 25

In what arguably ranks as one of the most intriguing moments of Colorado’s COVID-era chaos, Denver Nuggets guard Will Barton—a black man earning nearly $13 million that year to play basketball—publicly called for a revolution in response to the alleged oppression of black Americans.

William Norman Barton III, a Baltimore native who earned nearly $100 million over a decade in the NBA thanks to his natural talent, discipline and the stewardship of such white coaches as Jason Smith (Brewster Academy), John Calipari (University of Memphis), and Michael Malone (Denver Nuggets), said the following in an interview quoted by Mike Singer in the June 25 edition of the Denver Post:

“To me, peaceful protesting and speeches and all that, I think it’s past that point. I don’t think us playing and wearing those T-shirts and all that is going to do it anymore. I don’t feel like that’s enough. I think a revolution is the only way at this point.”

“If Black people in America were to say today, ‘We’re going to war. We’re going to war, not with white people, (but) with racist America.’ Would you stand and fight with Black people against racists or would you be out of the way? Would you put your life on the line for a black person for what’s right or what’s wrong?”

“Being defenseless and nonviolent can no longer be the only answer in the face of this cruel beast to ever take people in captivity.”

This happened. These quotes are real. 

Well, Will, in addition to your wealth secured through the freest and most merit-based system in American life—professional sports—you were getting your revolution.

That Thursday morning, Coloradans awoke to find the Civil War monument at the State Capitol grounds—officially titled the Soldier’s Monument—ripped from its base and covered in graffiti that read: “Defund cops Denver, where are you?”

“Just about everything in the complex has been vandalized,” said Doug Platt, spokesman for the Department of Personnel and Administration, which maintains the Capitol grounds.

The Denver Post’s Sam Tabachnik opened his article by soft-pedaling the crime, calling it the toppling of a “Civil War monument that includes a commemoration of the Sand Creek Massacre,” and describing the act as part of a broader national trend: “the latest act by protesters across the nation to tear down statues honoring perpetrators of racist acts.”

“The incident comes as Denver’s leaders have called for the city’s landmarks and public art to be reevaluated through a modern lens,” Tabachnik wrote, “as the debate over how to remember our country’s past rages in cities and small towns from coast to coast.”

So are we to assume this destruction was encouraged—or at least justified—by local officials? What does “reevaluated through a modern lens” even mean? Did Mayor Hancock personally sign off on a demo job?

The absurdity would be laughable if it weren’t criminal.

Let’s begin with the basics: the statue was built in 1906 and dedicated in 1909. According to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, it depicts a Union Civil War soldier holding a rifle, dressed in a raincoat, boots, spurs, Union hat and equipped with a saber, pistol holster and canteen.

Plaques at the base list 22 battles and the names of 279 Coloradans who died serving in the Union Army.

“The memorial cost an estimated $15,000 and was Denver’s tribute to Colorado volunteers who fought for the North in the Civil War,” the Smithsonian notes. “It also represents defiance of Southern Rebels.”

Even Tabachnik eventually admitted that the statue depicted a Union soldier—“not, as some have believed, Col. John Chivington, who led the 1864 massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians in what is now Kiowa County.”

He quickly pivoted into number-spinning to suggest the monument was still problematic. But following pushback from both historians and Sand Creek descendants, lawmakers added a small plaque to provide context instead of erasing history altogether.

“I’ve never seen the statue myself, but it’s my own opinion that it was placed there for a reason,” Even Laird Cometsevah, president of a Sand Creek descendants’ group, told Westword in 1998, after Senator Bob Martinez implored his colleagues to “strike Sand Creek from a state capitol statue commemorating Colorado’s Civil War battles.” 

“It’s part of Colorado’s history. You can’t deny the fact that (Sand Creek) was a massacre. It seems to me that a man ought to be able to stand up and accept what he did, to live with it and try to use the statue as a symbol for teaching young people that we don’t want that to happen anymore,” Cometsevah argued. “Colorado ought to be big enough to leave it there and try to improve its statehood. It ought to be left alone.”

During the morning hours of June 25, city crews used construction equipment to remove the fallen statue from the Capitol grounds. As of 2025, it still resides at the History Colorado Center, where it was “temporarily” housed in October 2020.

The timing was no coincidence. Just a week earlier, Mayor Hancock had announced the city would form a commission to review “landmarks and public spaces, including public art, associated with racist groups or ideologies.”

Well, some charitable citizens beat the commission to it.

Police said they believe four individuals toppled the statue around 1:30 a.m. The incident was classified as “criminal mischief.”

The erasure of Colorado history didn’t stop there. Andy Yamashita of the Denver Post reported that Denver South High School’s nickname—the Rebels—was under review. The school had already begun considering alternatives.

Leading the charge was none other than Denver school board member Tay Anderson. Before his alleged misconduct with underage students was exposed, Anderson was quoted constantly by legacy outlets advocating for the renaming of Stapleton, the removal of statues and the rebranding of school identities.

“Is this who we are? Are we better than this?” Anderson said, speaking of the Union statue. On the Rebel mascot, he added, “I’m hoping that, one, we are able to take the plaque down and, two, we can be able to decide as a community: Is this the statue we want in Civic Center, and what can we replace it with?”

Denver South Principal Bobby Thomas defended the mascot change as a commitment to “equity.”

“We have a tagline, ‘We are Denver South,’” Thomas said. “Or in particular, each of us would say, ‘I am Denver South,’ and what that means—that’s around equity, that’s around community, and that’s around inclusion. This has been my calling ever since I got to Denver South, to strive to have that inclusion, that everybody’s voice matters… We know that our efforts will help ensure that our entire school community will feel affirmed, appreciated, and valued.”

Not everyone was on board. Dick Nelson, a former teacher, said many alumni were already upset that the school had replaced the traditional “Johnny Reb” imagery with a gargoyle.

“If you talk to any devoted South person,” Nelson said, “they can’t stand that Gargoyle business.”

Within four months, the change was official. The Rebels were no more. Denver South would now be known as the Ravens.

Celebrities crafted revolution rhetoric in the press. Criminals tore down monuments in the night. School officials rewrote history in the name of “inclusion.” There was just one piece left to complete the formula: a lawsuit.

Just hours after the statue came down, the ACLU of Colorado filed a federal lawsuit for Black Lives Matter 5280 and nine plaintiffs, alleging Denver police and other agencies had violated demonstrators’ constitutional rights by “indiscriminately using excessive force—including deploying tear gas, pepper spray, less-lethal bullets and chemical irritants—to disperse the crowds.”

Among those named was activist Elisabeth Epps, who would later leverage the media attention to win election to represent East Colfax in the state legislature.

“The city’s actions, while unconstitutional in any context, are even more pernicious here because the use of this dangerously excessive force specifically targeted peaceful demonstrators who assembled to protest police brutality, particularly law enforcement violence that disproportionately targets Black and brown people,” said ACLU legal director Mark Silverstein.

In March 2022—less than two years later—a federal jury ruled in favor of the protesters and ordered Denver, meaning its taxpayers, to pay $14 million to 12 of them.

June 26

The revolution rolled into the weekend—and this time, the city helped it along with its own hands.

Late Thursday night, protesters with the Afro Liberation Front tore down a 15-foot bronze statue of Christopher Columbus in Denver’s Civic Center Park, yanking it off its pedestal with ropes around 11:15 p.m. Video was posted to social media within hours.

But that wasn’t all. In a preemptive move to spare the anarchists the trouble, Denver officials removed a more than 100-year-old statue honoring frontiersman Kit Carson outside the Pioneer Museum. 

No vote. No council hearing. No public process. Just the city itself striking its own history in the name of “equity.”

As the Denver Post’s Sam Tabachnik reported, the Carson statue was part of the city’s “reexamination of the names and depictions of hundreds of other buildings and statues.”

As history was erased—whether by mob or municipal decree—estimates began rolling in for what these “mostly peaceful” protests had cost the city and its businesses: more than $5.5 million in damages and overtime expenses, and that number was expected to rise.

Private businesses downtown reported at least $2 million in property damage, according to Britt Diehl of the Downtown Denver Partnership. Was that a conservative figure back then? Probably. Are we still feeling the fallout? Absolutely.

“We know that many properties experienced damage but haven’t reported it,” Diehl told the Post’s Conrad Swanson.

Damage to city property was already over $1 million, city spokesperson Julie Smith confirmed. On top of that: $2.57 million in added personnel costs.

It was apparently a price worth paying for S. James Anaya, dean of the University of Colorado Law School, who penned a guest commentary in the Post arguing that “all symbols whose pedigree is bound to white supremacy should be similarly discarded.”

“In saying this,” he added, careful to offer his personal confession, “I am keenly aware of my position of privilege and power as the dean of a law school, and of not being nearly as vulnerable to racism’s indignities and tragedies as other Black or Brown people because of that.”

This from the man charged with teaching Colorado’s future litigators about liberty and justice for all.

Meanwhile, the University of Colorado Boulder was putting a bow on its commitment to safety, tolerance and obedience. 

The school announced an update to its student code of conduct: students who failed to wear masks in public, maintain social distancing, or follow public health orders “could be disciplined… including being put on probation or suspended,” and may face “educational interventions.”

Those interventions, according to Interim Assistant Dean of Students Devin Cramer, included “motivational interviewing”—a form of guided reflection where students are asked how their behavior affects others, contradicts their values and interferes with their academic goals—as well as “restorative justice” sessions offered through campus health and compliance offices.

“This policy sets the overarching requirements around which we will base all decisions about the return to campus this summer and fall,” said Dan Jones, associate vice chancellor for integrity, safety and compliance. “We will depend upon the members of our community learning and following these requirements and ensuring that they are taking the steps necessary to protect themselves, their fellow students and coworkers and the Boulder community. We will succeed if everyone does their part to make the campus safe for living, learning, and working.”

June 27

As the reckoning over race took root, media attention shifted back to the virus.

Weeks after politicians and journalists gave their full-throated approval to mass gatherings—so long as they served the right political cause—new data emerged showing what many expected: case numbers were climbing again.

Evan Wyloge, the Gazette’s go-to reporter for COVID statistics, published a front-page, above-the-fold article declaring that the virus was making “a comeback.” His accompanying graph showed the number of new daily cases in Colorado had reached the highest point since May 30, rising more in the past 10 days than at any time since the state’s springtime decline began in April.

Wyloge reported the uptick wasn’t isolated to one region. State epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy called Colorado’s position “a bit tenuous.”

He also quoted a consortium known as the Colorado COVID-19 Modeling Group—a team of researchers from various state universities—who urged residents to maintain “a 55% to 65% reduction in social interactions” to avoid overwhelming hospitals.

“But Coloradans,” Wyloge wrote, “have been increasingly moving around the state, cellphone data has shown. In mid-April, the portion of Coloradans who spent their time entirely at home peaked at about 50%. Since then, people have been staying at home less. And restrictions on businesses have been relaxed, with bars and restaurants open with tightened capacity restrictions, but large gatherings such as concerts and sporting events still restricted.”

In other words: after all the sacrifices, lockdowns and school closures, the same officials who excused massive street protests in June were now blaming the public again for daring to resume normal life.

June 28

The full-court press to rename, erase and rewrite whatever the activist left deemed offensive was now fully underway—and nowhere was that clearer than in the Gazette’s Sunday edition out of Colorado Springs.

There, veteran political reporter Marianne Goodland devoted a front-page feature to what was next on the chopping block in the state’s “racial reckoning.” The article, titled “A review of Colorado place names reviews a checkered past,” led with a large photo of Columbus Park—its sign freshly graffitied with “La Raza Park.”

From there, Goodland ticked off some of the most prominent pioneers, statesmen and explorers in both national and state history—Zebulon Pike, John Evans, Christopher Columbus—as examples of men whose names and legacies, she suggested, were stained by racial atrocity and therefore ripe for erasure.

But the most telling detail? For expert commentary on why Colorado’s place names should be rewritten, Goodland didn’t call on a professor, elected official or indigenous elder. She quoted her own daughter.

“Slurs against Native Americans are built into our cultural and literal geographical landscape,” said Jennifer Goodland, a Colorado public historian, to her mother.

While legacy and language were under attack, the war on law enforcement had now expanded to the religious realm. The Denver Post’s Shelly Bradbury reported that several of the city’s faith leaders were launching a new task force—not just to examine police practices, but to “dismantle the system and rebuild it from the ground up.”

“We’ve done a lot of work trying to improve the current model of policing that has been in existence since the 1800s,” said Robert Davis, vice president of the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance. “What we’re hearing from the community, through statements like, ‘Defund or abolish the police,’ what they’re actually saying is this current model doesn’t work… The system and the model we’ve been working from is just flawed, and we need to rethink it and come up with something that is new and innovative for the 21st century.”

Meanwhile, Coloradans who still lived in the real world were sounding the alarm on the dangers of this crusade—especially the decision by Denver Public Schools to remove School Resource Officers (SROs) from campuses.

William Woodward of Boulder, writing in a letter to the Denver Post, said what many already knew: this decision had risked staff safety and contributed to student deaths.

“Taking school resource officers out of schools is wrong!” wrote Woodward, who serves as the director of training at the CU Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence and is a former director of the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice.

“If the objective is to reduce the ‘school to prison pipeline,’ then adding well trained SROs and social workers and nurses to schools would be the answer. Of all the School Resource Officers I have trained, I have never found one who was interested in arresting a student unless absolutely necessary. They were in constant communication with educators, and mental health and social services workers trying to find ways to help the student stay out of trouble.”

June 29

The revolution found its newest battleground: trash-strewn sidewalks and hypodermic-littered medians. And according to legacy media, the real crisis wasn’t the illegal encampments—it was the city’s occasional efforts to clean them up.

In a long-form article published across Colorado’s major news platforms, Jakob Rodgers of Kaiser Health News reported that sweeps of homeless camps in Denver and other cities were “counter to COVID-19 guidance and pile on health risks.”

To illustrate the cruelty of not allowing mentally ill and/or drug-addicted individuals to squat on public or private land indefinitely, Rodgers profiled 57-year-old Melody Lewis—“a nomad in the heart of downtown Denver.”

Rodgers described how she poked her head out of her green tent to show him where the city had the audacity to remove her previous camp—on a sidewalk median—so they could install fencing, landscaping, rocks and signs asking people like Rodgers to keep out.

“Lewis then moved just a quarter-mile to a new cracked sidewalk,” Rodgers wrote, “with new neighbors and potentially, homeless advocates fear, new sources of exposure to the coronavirus.”

The horror.

Rodgers explained that Denver’s actions—like those of other cities—were “bucking” CDC guidance by continuing encampment sweeps, thus allegedly increasing the risk of virus spread at a time when officials were trying to “gain an upper hand on the pandemic.”

According to the CDC’s recommendation: if individual housing isn’t available, cities should allow homeless encampments to remain in place, provided tents are spaced 12 feet apart and camps of 10+ people are equipped with handwashing stations and hand sanitizer.

“Clearing encampments can cause people to disperse throughout the community and break connections with service providers,” the CDC guidance reads. “This increases the potential for infectious disease spread.”

Twelve feet apart? Has anyone at the CDC ever seen an encampment in an American city?

“In downtown Denver encampments, dozens of tents stand packed together,” Rodgers admitted, “often less than a foot apart along sidewalks. Hardly anyone wears masks, and many in the tent community said the virus is low on their list of concerns.”

Also buried several paragraphs into the 1,354-word article: a single cleanup in early May netted 9,500 pounds of trash and more than 50 hypodermic needles, according to Nancy Kuhn, spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure.

But for those pleading with the city to get a handle on the encampments outside their homes and businesses, the latest news was another gut punch. The Denver City Council canceled its upcoming Monday meeting “in anticipation of a second takeover from protesters,” reported Denver Post journalist Conrad Swanson.

The protestors’ demands? More checks against the mayor, fewer police on the streets and “myriad other changes.”

Why the cancellation? Brace yourself: too many people in council chambers posed a COVID infection risk, said Council President Jolon Clark.

That’s right—the city that endorsed shoulder-to-shoulder mass protests in June suddenly remembered virus protocols when the crowd turned on them.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get more bizarre, Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca declared the cancellation itself was—of course—racist.

“It’s literally intended to silence the protesters who happen to be championing Black liberation,” CdeBaca said.

The cancellation didn’t deter the hopeful demonstrators, who still planned to show up at City Hall anyway. The Party for Socialism and Liberation created a Facebook event for a “town hall” in place of the meeting.

“We can still make them listen. They canceled their event, not ours,” the activist group AfroLiberationFront wrote on Twitter.

In keeping with the pattern that had defined so much of the COVID coverage to date, the only flicker of common sense in Monday’s newspaper came from a letter to the editor.

Douglas E. Lierle of Lone Tree wrote in to question what would be next on the activist erasure list—and why anyone was still pretending this wasn’t about erasing the American story itself.

“We’re talking about two of our Founding Fathers and the founder of America’s extraordinary national parks system,” Lierle wrote. “What’s next? Will these un-American, un-Patriotic radicals dynamite Mount Rushmore? They are sure to think of a way to include Abraham Lincoln on their list of white supremacists. …They are creating hatred and racism on a level that will lead to a civil war in this country, and they will lose.”

June 30

So much for the fun. Just 10 days after reopening bars and nightclubs, Gov. Jared Polis shut them down again—blaming a rise in cases, especially among younger Coloradans. On this Tuesday, the state recorded 204 new COVID-19 cases.

Polis explained the reversal in classic government-speak, announcing that bars would close again because the state’s powers-that-be had found no way “for them to be a reasonably safe part of people’s lives during the month of July in our state.”

Unless, of course, you were one of the lucky bars that also happened to sell food. Those that “function as restaurants,” Polis clarified, could remain open—so long as patrons sat six feet apart and, above all, did not mingle.

The Denver Post’s Jessica Seaman provided the rationale: although young adults and teenagers were at low risk of complications, they could still “transmit the virus to those most vulnerable without experiencing severe symptoms—or even any symptoms—themselves.”

The governor’s abrupt about-face wasn’t just a public health maneuver—it was an economic gut punch for business owners like Justin Anthony of Denver, who had just completed a patio expansion at his Larimer Street bar, American Bonded, when the news came down.

“It is a daunting prospect,” Anthony said, “to go through all of the planning… to set up something that is not just inviting but safe. All of the considerations that you’ve never had before, and what happens if the plug is pulled?”

Speaking of plugs being pulled: after three members of the Denver Nuggets’ “traveling party” tested positive—while asymptomatic—the team shut down its facilities, according to a league source.

Meanwhile, Post columnist Sean Keeler used the sports section to lament that even considering the return of Major League Baseball was selfish. In his view, letting the Rockies play ball during a pandemic was an unjustifiable risk to players and staff.

“As we’ve learned the hard way, COVID-19 doesn’t give a flying glycoprotein about your plans,” Keeler wrote. “Or your pitching staff. [Rockies Manager Bud] Black? Charlie Blackmon? Ian Desmond? They’re all guinea pigs now. Millionaire guinea pigs, but guinea pigs nonetheless.”

“No bubble, every town—hell, every day—is a roll of the dice,” he continued.

Keeler’s obsession with bubbles didn’t stop with the MLB. He ended his column with a field report from western Iowa, where he had traveled for a family friend’s funeral.

“During one off week, I drove back to my hometown in western Iowa to attend the funeral of a family friend,” he said. “There wasn’t a facial covering in sight. Not outdoors. Not indoors. Restaurants were just opening up. Some of the dives followed local guidelines for 50% capacity. Others shrugged it off.

“It was only nine hours and change away from the Front Range,” he concluded, “but it felt like a completely different planet. A land where the coronavirus was somebody else’s problem.”

Said Keeler: “It’s everybody’s problem. Still. And it’s not going away.”