OFM Breaking News: June Issue Edition

Live and In-Person: Denver PrideFest Returns to Civic Center Park

Say goodbye to small and virtual gatherings because Denver PrideFest is making its long-awaited return to Civic Center Park.

Hosted by The Center on Colfax, the two-day celebration will be held June 25-26 with an array of in-person activities. Attendees can expect a 5K race, Rainbow Alley for youth, 250 exhibitors, 30 food and beverage vendors, a colorful parade, and a fierce entertainment lineup that will feature Australian pop queen Betty Who; singer/DJ Cazwell; and RuPaul’s Drag Race superstars Kylie Sonique Love, Silky Nutmeg Ganache, and Denver’s hometown girl, Yvie Oddly.

This event has drawn more than 525,000 people in the past, making it the largest Pride festival in the Rocky Mountain region. 

“I think I can speak for everyone at The Center by saying we are incredibly delighted to have it fully back live and in person,” says Bella Barkow, associate director of special events and strategic partnerships. “It’s going to be a fabulous event, and we are expecting a higher crowd this year.” 

According to Barkow, this year’s theme is “Together with Pride.”

“With everything that’s been going on over the past two, three years, I think people are very excited to get out and be around their peers,” she says, “have that actual human interaction you don’t necessarily get through a computer screen.”

Although the world slowly started to reopen last year, COVID-19 still posed a great risk to large-scale events. Therefore, 2021’s PrideFest was a hybrid mix of in-person and virtual activities, and Pride hubs were scattered throughout the city for participants to celebrate with the community in smaller, safer settings. 

“People were very grateful that they were able to get out and do anything,” Barkow says. 

COVID numbers may have dropped significantly within the last few months, but Barkow wants to remind people to be smart. Safety procedures will be put in place, and The Center is currently finalizing COVID-19 protocols, which will follow guidelines from local government ordinances and the CDC.

Denver PrideFest is The Center on Colfax’s biggest fundraiser, typically bringing in more than $1 million to the organization to help support Colorado’s LGBTQ community. 

“I don’t think a lot of people realize this,” Barkow claims. “We’re really trying to make sure that people understand that Pride isn’t just a party or political statement. It’s also something that pays for year-round programming for things like Rainbow Alley, senior programming, and trans programming in our community. It’s super important for people to know that.”

Usually held on the third weekend in June, last year’s event was moved to the last weekend of the month, and Barkow says this will most likely be a permanent change. 

This year, attendees will notice a couple other noticeable differences.

“We have extended the border out to include Lincoln Park, so there’s a lot more space for people to spread out,” Barkow explains. “We are also introducing a new sober area. It’s become sort of a big trend in our community for people to live a cleaner, sober, alcohol-free lifestyle. So, we’ve created an 18-plus zone that’s specifically for adults who want to hang out at Pride and be in a safe and alcohol-free environment.” 

Stay up-to-date, follow The Center on Colfax on Facebook @denverpridefest, Twitter and Instagram @centeroncolfax, or visit denverpride.org. 

The Fight for Reproductive Rights Continues

On May 2, 2022 a Supreme Court opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito outlining the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was obtained and leaked by Politico. While the draft opinion is not an official ruling, it sparked demonstrations across the country in favor of reproductive rights.

Many were and continue to be concerned with the vast majority of privacy rights which could be affected if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned based on the reasoning in the leaked draft opinion.

“Take this seriously,” former U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance writes on Twitter. “If Roe falls, rights that are further up that branch of the tree are also vulnerable.”

The draft opinion cites a range of protections from the right to same-gender marriage the high court declared in 2015, to the right to contraception established in 1965, to the right to engage in interracial marriage adopted by the court in 1967.

After citing 14 such cases, Alito declares them irrelevant to abortion and confidently asserts that yanking Roe from the fabric of American jurisprudence would pose no threat whatsoever to any of those rights.

Yet, many are skeptical about the ripple effect this could have on American jurisprudence.

“It would mean that every other decision relating to the notion of privacy is thrown into question,” President Biden says of the ruling. “If the rationale of the decision as released were to be sustained, a whole range of rights are in question.”

Biden specifically suggests that same-gender marriage could be again outlawed in some states if Alito’s view holds sway at the high court.

“Does this mean that in Florida, they can decide they’re going to pass a law saying that same-sex marriage is not permissible, that it’s against the law in Florida?” the president poses. “It’s a fundamental shift in American jurisprudence.”

Though the draft opinion presents a terrifying reality for many in republican-run states that would jump at the chance to outlaw abortions, the Supreme Court doesn’t have the final say in abortion politics. The democrat-controlled congress could vote to codify Roe v. Wade, making it difficult for the SCOTUS to overturn.

Many have questioned why democrats have, thus far, dragged their feet on codifying Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (a case from 1992 affirming the rights Roe secured with some restrictions). Some argue that leaving abortion rights hanging in the balance bolsters democrat votes.

It should also be noted that the purposed opinion does not ban abortions on a federal level but instead leaves individual states to decide their own abortion laws. While this has devasting effects for many, Colorado, along with 15 other states and Washington, D.C. have passed laws codifying the right to have an abortion.

“In the state of Colorado, the serious decision to start or end a pregnancy with medical assistance will remain between a person, their doctor, and their faith,” Governor Jared Polis says of the law.

“This bill simply maintains the status quo regardless of what happens at the federal level and preserves all existing constitutional rights and obligations,” he adds.

Because of this, Colorado could see a large uptick in people seeking reproductive healthcare, should Roe v. Wade be overturned. In 2021, 11,580 people had abortions in Colorado, and 13.6% of them were from out of state. That’s a 3% increase from 2019, the majority of which were from states with restrictive laws.

Fears of the possible overturning were summed up accurately in an opinion piece written by the editorial team of the Washington Post.

“(Alito) would inaugurate a terrifying new era in which Americans would lose faith in the court, distrust its members, and suspect that what is the law today will not be tomorrow. They would justifiably fear that rights will be swept away because a heedless conservative fringe now controls the judiciary,” The Washington Post writes.

“The court’s conservative majority appears to be on the verge of abandoning justices’ sacred charge to stand firm for individual rights.”

Dr. Fauci Says U.S. is Entering an ‘Endemic’

As summer approaches, and hospitalizations continue to fall, many Americans feel as though the coronavirus pandemic is in the rearview. Though the risk of severe symptoms has been quelled by multiple doses of vaccines, health experts say that the virus is still a threat for much of the world.

“We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase,” Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told PBS in April.

Fauci also tells the Washington Post that the U.S. has entered the “control” stage of the pandemic, as hospitalizations and deaths continue to decline.

“We are now transitioning—not there yet, but transitioning—to more of an endemicity, where the level of infection is low enough that people are starting to learn how to live with the virus, still protecting themselves by vaccination, by the availability of antivirals, by testing,” Fauci says.

Previously, Fauci described five phases of pandemics. The first phase is a full-blown pandemic, which would describe the last two years. The second is deceleration, followed by control, which is where Fauci puts the U.S. now.

The final phases are elimination and eradication, though experts say COVID-19 will most likely never be fully eradicated. Fauci, who is President Joe Biden’s top COVID adviser, tells The Post that entering a new phase doesn’t mean the entire pandemic is over.

“The world is still in a pandemic. There’s no doubt about that. Don’t anybody get any misinterpretation of that. We are still experiencing a pandemic,” he says.

Globally, there are nearly 700,000 average COVID cases per day, in a steady decline from where cases were this time last year. The World Health Organization (WHO) recorded its lowest weekly global death total since March 2020 this April at just over 15,000.

A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday found that 58% of the U.S. had evidence of previous coronavirus infections as of February, based on tens of thousands of blood samples. Sixty-six percent of the country has been fully vaccinated, and 46% of the population has had booster shots, according to the CDC.

“If you add up the people who’ve been infected plus the people who’ve been vaccinated and hopefully boosted, you have a rather substantial proportion of the United States population that has some degree of immunity that’s residual,” Fauci tells PBS.

Though things in the U.S. are looking optimistic, WHO warns that the risk of new and dangerous variants persist.

“As many countries reduce testing, WHO is receiving less and less information about transmission and sequencing,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tells NBC News. “This makes us increasingly blind to patterns of transmission and evolution, but this virus won’t go away just because countries stopped looking for it. It’s still spreading; it’s still changing, and it’s still killing. The threat of a dangerous, new variant remains very real.”