Learning

What I'm Reading/Listening To

Articles, books, blog posts, podcasts, music, and other media that expand my perspectives.

Nicole Speer

05 Jan 2025 — 53 min read

Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič / Unsplash

Week of September 15, 2025

Communities flourish when roles are seen as complementary, not competing. I’ve come to see this as part of a larger cycle of humanity. The young create, imagine and leap. The elders remember, reflect and steady. And those of us in the middle? We’re the bridge.

Factors in the commissioners’ decision... included the “crushing need” seen by safety-net organizations... Applications for food and financial assistance are at all time highs, with close to 8% of Boulder County’s population now enrolled in the federal food assistance program.

*About 48 Boulder residents are meeting seven times this year as a community assembly to learn and discuss 15-minute neighborhoods in the city.*

'Just say no': Colorado activists protest potential new ICE detention center in Hudson

The facility is one of six potential new ICE detention centers in Colorado revealed by the ACLU as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit earlier this year... the facility, along with another dormant prison in Walsenburg, is under consideration by the agency...

Week of September 8, 2025

*This shift toward a grayer population is unfolding across the country, and Colorado has one of the fastest-growing over-65 populations.*

*Under the proposal, property owners could obtain a license for up to 29 consecutive days during “large festival special events” ...*

*"Never again letting the Pride flag fly on municipal flagpoles rolls back precedents and shifts the town of Erie in a dangerous direction"... [Erie Councilmember Emily] Baer said.*

Colorado orders pharmacies, insurers to maintain broad access to COVID-19 vaccines

Colorado’s chief medical officer, Dr. Ned Calonge, issued a standing order that will “serve as a prescription for eligible Coloradans to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.”

*By going smaller and ever more precise, scientists might also pursue questions that have eluded them for decades.*

Week of September 1, 2025

*The factory is producing all-electric, solar-powered and affordable modular townhomes. Each townhome-style unit houses two families.*

*Micro-connections are small yet powerful moments of engagement that make us feel human together.*

*As fire season picks up, Forest Service employees said the agency is running low on staff members who can fight increasingly severe wildfires.*

*Beyond screenings, leaders said the festival in Boulder will include panels, music, industry meetings and networking for artists, as well as opportunities for acquisitions.*

US Health and Human Services agency orders states to strip gender from sex ed

Sexual education programs, at their best, are age-appropriate, fact-based and informative at a time when young people need this information to keep themselves healthy...

Week of August 23, 2025

*A month’s stay in an emergency shelter costs more than a month of stable housing with wraparound support.*

*The revenue would fund prevention, crisis response, addiction treatment, recovery services and programs to help residents navigate resources.*

*For more than 20 years, the water at San Lazaro mobile home park has been considered undrinkable, sometimes smelling like a murky pond, other times like bleach.*

*The show features Kagan and Doughty plus* *Shaun Derik**, a national youth speaker and performer, as the Rainbow Socks Rangers.*

Cobalt Red: How the blood of the Congo powers our lives

Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo.

Week of August 18, 2025

*Nonprofits were never meant to be the sole safety net for entire communities; we are meant to partner with local and federal governments to meet challenges together.*

“I appreciate that this framing really encourages us to refuse to accept homelessness as an unsolvable tragedy,” Mayor Pro Tem Lauren Folkerts said. “It really pushes for finding and moving towards a solution.”

*...fascism cannot prosper where empathy exists...*

What makes the most sense in today’s world is to have farmers and farmworkers who can live on the property they’re farming and use some open space tax dollars, not only to buy some of that land, but also be able to build some housing on that land...

*Being prepared for abrupt changes and having contingency plans can mean the difference between quickly helping an ecosystem recover and losing it entirely.*

Week of August 11, 2025

*Imagine what we might build if we led with curiosity instead of conviction. That’s where resilience begins.*

*If a lot of people leave science in the U.S. and don’t come back, being able to recover from that is going to be really challenging and is going to take a long time...*

*The Longmont City Council has tabled its decision on a proposed land swap that could open the door to a Boulder County composting facility...*

*She died a famous woman denying her wounds, denying her wounds came from the same source as her power*

Week of August 4, 2025

While raising the minimum wage is popular even in red states, raising the subminimum wage for tipped workers has proved far more challenging [due] to the power of the National Restaurant Association, an industry lobby that some labor advocates call "the other N.R.A."

*...we invite you to join the work of honest conversation, tough decisions and prioritization through the* *Fund Our Future* *project...*

*Councilmember Nicole Speer said the county’s proposal should reflect the city’s broader financial strategy at a time when* *sales tax revenue growth is leveling off* *and budgets are tightening.*

Federal policy jeopardizes health care access and affordability in Colorado, experts tell lawmakers

The law’s reduction in health care premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act insurance enrollees will mean premium increases of 50% to 150% or more for nearly 300,000 Coloradans, said Adam Fox, the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative’s deputy director.

When survival's at stake, there's no 'right' or 'wrong' way to immigrate

... for millions of immigrants, whose journey to America involved extreme hardship, outmoded laws, dysfunctional bureaucracies, complicit American employers and life or death decisions, reality refuses to fit into tidy policy abstractions, and it defies simple notions of right and wrong.

Week of July 28, 2025

*“This is not even just relevant to our community, but to anyone who’s facing unemployment. The system is really difficult.”*

*"We’re dealing with an administration that has a relentless focus on inflicting cruelty upon those at the bottom end of the economic scale."*

*Federal funding pays for* *approximately 70% of CU Boulder’s research* *each year. That’s about $495 million in the 2023-2024 fiscal year.*

*[The bill] mandates that the secretary of the Interior Department make federal lands available for oil and gas leasing on, at minimum, a quarterly basis in nine states, including Colorado.*

*Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order.*

Week of July 21, 2025

Boulder Weekly fires newsroom, leaving paper's future unclear

When ownership decides to make deals like this behind closed doors, it's the community and local journalism that suffers. - 9News reporter Rhea Jha

...there has never been a time when your light was needed more...

*I can't believe I ever thought I could lose you.*

*Men who sell machines that mimic people want us to become people who mimic machines. They want techno feudal subjects who will believe and do what they’re told.*

*We believe that plants bring diverse peoples together, no matter the time or place.*

Week of June 23, 2025

*...only 11 out of Colorado’s 46 counties with a county jail have an opioid treatment program in the community that can dispense methadone.*

*All solutions to homeless deaths begin and end with housing — with safe, stable and affordable housing...*

*We need our elected officials to address the rise in antisemitism in our schools, our cities, and our campuses — not just when the cameras are on, but when it actually matters.*

*A map from the Outdoor Alliance* *highlights over 300 million acres of federal land across the West as eligible for sale.*

*[the bill] would decrease the wealth of the poorest 10 percent of households by...* *a $1,600 average annual decrease* *for these families. Meanwhile, the richest 10 percent of households would see their wealth increase by $12,000 yearly.*

*Although homeowners in Colorado have built a large amount of equity, and delinquencies are low, borrowers could face higher strains if their incomes are disrupted.*

Dwelling in expressions of disdain, disgust, and sanctimony... does not build power. And while... some folks mistake that kind of acting out for the work of doing politics, the right is accumulating more and more actual power and taking even greater control of our lives.

The choice is ours: retreat into our own enclaves, or build a multiracial, multi-faith democracy that proves inclusion is stronger than exclusion, that justice is more powerful than hate, and that love of neighbor transcends the barriers that divide us.

Week of June 9, 2025

*Thousands of people packed the Pearl Street Mall on Sunday, June 8, for the Boulder Jewish Festival...*

*The whole Jewish community is reeling, shocked that this hideous hate crime could happen right here in downtown, beautiful Boulder, Colorado.*

After Trump announced he was federalizing the National Guard troops on Saturday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said other measures could follow... active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton were on high alert and would also be mobilized “if violence continues."

Less than six months and this is where we are. We're moving with such speed that things start getting...reckless and dangerous.

*This series showcases what it looks like to take a solutions-focused approach to homelessness and highlights the work of those playing critical roles in these communities.*

Week of June 2, 2025

*...sometimes adults think that things might work, but they really just don't.*

...the world’s permafrost currently holds at least twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere. If future warming causes widespread permafrost thaw and releases that carbon, it could trigger irreversible changes to the planet’s climate.

*...at least two Boulder-based groups...lost nearly all their funding, and a third that was preparing to launch a new program.*

...federal data suggests the decrease in fatal overdoses is linked to changes in the drug supply and the way people use powerful synthetics like fentanyl, along with increased funding and support for frontline harm reduction groups and health care clinics providing lifesaving services where people live.

Week of May 19, 2025

*...the impact of the federal cuts extends far beyond job losses...NCWIT provides vital infrastructure for more than 1,600 member organizations nationwide...*

*The Foundations for Leaders Organizing for Water and Sustainability, or* *FLOWS**, is one of the few environmental and climate justice organizations in Boulder County...*

*... [they] have shown Amazon workers everywhere that it is possible to build worker power and wrest concessions from the company through large-scale, disruptive actions.*

*...the union was able to show management “ways to boost engineers’ wages ... without causing any significant budget issue or requiring a fare increase.”*

*Systems once designed for administration have become tools for tracking and predicting people’s behavior. In this new paradigm, oversight is sparse and accountability is minimal.*

*Flock’s new product, called Nova, will supplement license plate data with a wealth of personal information sourced from other companies and the wider web...*

Trump-aligned club for the ultra-rich launches in Washington The referral requirements and prohibitive pricing is meant to ensure the C-suite crowd can mingle with Trump advisers and cabinet members without the prying eyes of the press and wanna-be insiders.

Week of May 12, 2025

*Medicaid is so much more than health insurance. It’s a lifeline for people living with disability.*

*[Ending this program] is going to ultimately put a lot of people into the cycle of homelessness at a time when homelessness is already on the rise.*

*The National Endowment for the Arts...is among several cultural agencies targeted for elimination in Trump’s* *2026 budget* *proposal.*

*The* *White House’s proposed 2026 budget* *would slash federal research funding* *by billions — including eliminating several agencies entirely and halving the budgets of others.*

*...for protests to succeed, they must be backed by movements with the ability to promise to withhold—**labor,* *debt payments*, *rent payments**, or* *consumer support**...*

Week of May 5, 2025

*...Boulder’s population has* *decreased over the last decade* *while surrounding areas, especially Longmont, have grown.*

*...weaponized prosecutions are just part of the authoritarian playbook. They always go in that direction, and they always use that against whomever their political enemies are...*

*...the framing of institutionalization as “treatment” obscures both its* *violent history and its ongoing legacy*.

*Powerful figures in Silicon Valley advocate a new-age religion that sees humanity as a transitional species — one whose time is almost up.*

Week of April 28, 2025

*The unemployment rate rose from 4.7 percent to 4.8 percent in March, according to Colorado’s labor department. That’s higher than the national rate of 4.2 percent.*

*We sometimes need to slow down these preparedness processes a little bit, so we can talk to more people and consider their diverse perspectives.*

*While the plains and foothills have less snow than average, many mountainous areas, like the headwaters of the Colorado River, sport average or higher-than-average snowpacks.*

*Housing First meets a person where they are... and provides an appropriate intervention and support to sustainably end their homelessness.*

*...these [authors] spit on their own reduction and invent new ways to endure, telling their own stories in bold, unapologetic voices.*

Week of April 21, 2025

*At best, the law should restrain people like Trump from doing the wrong thing. At worst, it can aid them. And our situation is possible because it has been focused on the latter.*

*They're using this as a test case to justify disappearing people... if they can normalize outsourcing imprisonment, they're not just sidestepping the law, they're obliterating it.*

*“What we are clearly seeing is that with this administration, they are not responding to congressional inquiries,” said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, a New Mexico Democrat.*

“This goes against all the normal contracting safeguards that are set up to prevent contracts from being awarded based on who you know,” said Scott Amey, the general counsel with the bipartisan Project on Government Oversight.

*Maybe with a little less distance between us, her work suggests, we can see each other more clearly.*

Week of April 14, 2025

*Before a community can establish an emergency network, neighbors need to do the simple but rare act of getting to know each other.*

*"The act of continual learning is an act of resistance." -BPL Board President Doug Hamilton*

*The NIH is by far the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, with an annual budget of US$47 billion paying for more than 60,000 grants.*

*...when you take support away from a highly efficient operation, you actually create inefficiencies with a more magnified effect.*

Week of April 7, 2025

*Together, the measures are intended to tackle a range of overdue projects, including roads, public facilities and basic upgrades at Boulder’s aging rec centers.*

*Sustainability without social equity is a problem for everyone.*

*If we want to become a menace to our enemies, we need to be deeply invested in one another. We need to prioritize our connectedness. Without empathy, we lose. Period.*

*There are no red states or blue states. There are only purple states, purple like a bruise, and people trying to survive in a broken-promise land.*

*What I can't accept, ever, is that there's nothing for the next generation.*

Week of March 31, 2025

*We see a pretty significant amount of cooling by increasing tree canopy, as well as a pretty stark increase in temperature from losing tree canopy.*

*This moment is a testament to what happens when a community comes together to champion art, culture, and connection.*

We become invested in each other through collective action in ways that start to break down the illusion of our separateness... My sense of safety can become bound up in yours. My understanding of what it means to defend myself can become bound up in defending you.

*Now is not the time for the left to cede any ground to a movement that wants to see trans people* *eradicated* *from public life. We must continue to defend the rights of the trans community, not because it is sometimes popular, but because it is always right.*

*The only thing we should be concluding is that individuals associated with the federal government are behaving in a way that is totally inconsistent with liberty under law.*

Week of March 17, 2025

Week of March 10, 2025

*We need to ensure that these ideas and strategies — developed by the people most affected — aren’t just heard but actually implemented.*

*No one should resign themselves to this government’s malicious plans. But to keep our country, you must abandon old delusions.*

*Your breathlessness is a sign of your bravery. It means you are awake to what's happening right now.*

*In a crisis, our need for each other will not be dictated by how much we like each other. We have to be able to work in concert with people who aren't of our own choosing.*

*The decision closes a chapter in a decades-long debate over zoning regulations many criticized as outdated and discriminatory.*

Week of March 3, 2025

*Government and nonprofit resources are stretched too thin to meet growing need for help*

Debate over how to pay tipped workers in Colorado's priciest cities

This isn't fair to our city council members who spent months listening to and working with our community to get input on what minimum wage on what minimum wage was best for our city,” added Kade Smith, who works in the restaurant industry in Boulder. “More importantly, this isn't fair to our tipped workers who are better able to pay for their rent and groceries thanks to Boulder's minimum wage increase this year.

*A Boulder County Democratic vacancy committee will convene on March 18 to select a successor to former Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis of Longmont.*

Week of February 24, 2025

*I hope that this offers the beginning of a bridge between information and action.*

*...the illegal seizure of power isn’t just another story to be swept away in the deluge of other stories. It’s the foundational framing to understanding everything.*

*In April 2015, the IHRA’s Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial addressed the issue of how to spell antisemitism.*

*...as institutional investors snap up affordable, entry-level homes, they push working-class families, particularly those from minority communities, further out of the housing market.*

The US Has Deported Immigrants En Masse Before. Here’s What Happened.

As history shows us, mass deportations are nothing new in this country.

Week of February 17, 2025

*In 2025, we are facing some truly existential issues, and we need to solve them together.*

*Like ancient Rome, which crumbled under the weight of its own contradictions, America — still a young nation — now faces growing fractures.*

*Remember, you cannot organize people you hold in contempt.*

*...those who monopolize resources monopolize imagination.*

Voters were right about the economy. The data was wrong.

... you could be homeless on the streets, making an intermittent income and functionally incapable of keeping your family fed, and the government would still count you as “employed...” If you filter the statistic to include as unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a poverty wage (roughly $25,000), the percentage is actually 23.7 percent. In other words, nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today...

Week of February 10, 2025

*My two January trips to Eldora were the first time I’d skied in over 15 years...*

*By focusing on policies that empower workers and create equitable opportunities, Boulder can become a city where everyone — regardless of income — has a stake in its success.*

*The work of collective survival requires us to build bonds of fellowship and defy the isolating, alienating norms of this system.*

...means and ends must cohere because the end is pre-existent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.

*There are new miners in America now, mining your social security number and your privacy and your rights and freedom. Mining the Treasury, which they will pocket.*

Week of February 3, 2025

*Boulder has the same amount of money as Longmont to deal with twice the amount of snow.*

*With so much at stake, developers rarely gamble on unique designs.*

*Many in the “opposition” prefer to profit off the threat rather than prevent it.*

*It’s easier than you might think to make a real difference...*

*Colorado is a hotbed of activity for employee-owned companies...*

Week of January 27, 2025

Week of January 20, 2025

Feel. Then do. Our work in this new era.

...when you give yourself the chance to grieve and rage and cry and feel, you open up the space to get through past denial into acceptance... in order to grasp, clearly, what is, now. When we give ourselves space to feel the loss, we can get over to the place of understanding what is happening, without illusion, without pretending, and without telling ourselves that there's nothing that we can do. Because that is another lie.

Income inequality and the erosion of democracy in the 21st century

...economic inequality is one of the strongest predictors of where and when democracy erodes. Even wealthy and longstanding democracies are vulnerable if they are highly unequal... For concerned citizens seeking to understand why so many democracies are eroding and how to stop this process, our study indicates that policies for ameliorating inequality are a promising path forward.

Where do we go from here: Chaos or community?

Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance... It would be grossly unfair to omit recognition of a minority of whites who genuinely want authentic equality... But they are balanced at the other end of the pole by the unregenerate segregationists who have declared that democracy is not worth having if it involves equality... The great majority of Americans are suspended between these opposing attitudes. They are uneasy with injustice but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it.

Leadership on the line

The strain on solidarity in diversity is palpable around the world. We need to break this vicious cycle. Citizens need to face the complexity and consequences of their demands. But politicians need to engage citizens more honestly and artfully to lead that process. It's not enough for office holders to work hard to comprehend the issues if they then shield their constituents from tough choices. Profound change is more honest than grandiose, more incremental than the experience of it, and builds from the enduring values of individuals of human beings and the orienting values of human communities.

Is Boulder ready for the next big wildfire? An interview with Wildland Fire Division Chief Brian Oliver

Fire is the only natural disaster where humans are arrogant enough to think we can change the outcome...We don’t send a battalion of troops down to Florida when the hurricane is coming to turn the hurricane around. We know it’s a natural disaster. We evacuate everybody and then go back and see where we can clean up.