Since our weekly show falls on the 4th of July this year, I put our Insider panel to the task of talking about ideals of independence. Next year will be our country’s 250th birthday… so, what does independence look like compared to what our Founding Fathers longed for when adopting the Declaration of Independence in 1776? This topic is a great launching pad for this week’s show…

The Evolving Meaning of Independence:

• Alton Dillard, Principal Consultant at the Dillard Group, and Senior Advisor to the firm of Rockford Gray: “I’m looking around the table here, and I don’t think any of us would have had rights in 1776. So of course, we’re living up to the ideals of the Founding Fathers because we’re making sure the 1% stays in the 1%… and this has nothing to do with Democrats and Republicans. This is essentially class warfare.”
• Alvina Vasquez, Advocacy Leader in Denver and member of the PBS12 Community Advisory Board: “Our history is a history of displacement, displacing somebody for the rights of others…. A lot of people are scared right now, fearful of detainment, families are being separated. This is a complete rejection of liberty and freedom for many Latino, Black, Brown families in our country and in our state.”
• Patty Calhoun, Founder and Editor of Westword: “Let’s also remember they weren’t completely open. There were people here who were displaced horribly. But now, the open lands in Colorado, and in the rest of the West are places where everyone can go and enjoy… and remember what a remarkable country it is… and there’s the promise of open space and open minds. That’s something that is worth celebrating during this Independence Day.”
• Kristi Burton Brown, Executive Vice President of Advance Colorado and former Chair of the Colorado Republican Party: “Our founders weren’t perfect men, but they established ideal principles in our Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution. And that… is freedom and equality for all people. Have we always been true to that as a nation? Have we always included all human beings? Do we, even today, include all human beings, for example, the unborn in that definition? We don’t. But can we? Can we strive to continue to make ourselves a better, more equal nation? The answer to that is always yes, and I think it takes work from everyone. We need to encourage our younger generations that our nation is a good nation, and we can all do our part to make it better.”

Large-Scale Takeovers, Brawls, and Gatherings:

• Alton Dillard: “The kids just kept saying, ‘you all don’t understand what it’s like to be young these days,’ because we’re asking ‘why did you all think that was a good idea? What is causing the trauma? What is causing the angst?’”
• Alvina Vasquez: “We are seeing how mob mentality that happens on social media is able to come to real life.”
• Kristi Burton Brown: “They don’t know who they are. They don’t know where they came from, they don’t know where they’re going… and when you run away to social media, it can be a place to hide. It can be a place that distracts you from what’s going on in the real world. Colorado is the second least church state in the nation. There’s a lot of just lack of meaning that people are experiencing, and every person has a drive in them to want to know who they are and what they were made for.”

Pending Denver City Layoffs & the Changes to Who Is Let Go:

• Patty Calhoun: “I feel very badly for the people who took a job, have been doing their job in the city, are getting close to retirement, but all of a sudden may not make that promised retirement and the benefits they assumed they would be getting for doing their job. I hear it’s going to be very ugly. The number of cuts is going to affect all of us with services.”
• Alvina Vasquez: “There is a value in historical knowledge and people who have been in the city for so long, so that the city doesn’t make the same mistakes they’ve done before. And I think that when you talk about how we treat elders and our seniors in the workforce, we have to remember that the historical knowledge and wisdom shouldn’t be tossed aside.”
• Alton Dillard: “The timing of the layoffs is a little suspect… as it precedes the implementation of collective bargaining rights for city workers.”

New Colorado Laws and Their Implications:

• Kristi Burton Brown: “I think we can always encourage people to be educated more on any right they want to exercise but do we have a law that says before you can pull a permit to protest, you have to get education on how to protest peacefully? Do we say before you can exercise your right to be a parent, you have to go through parenting classes? We don’t. There’s no law saying that to exercise almost any other right, you have to get education first and especially not increased education.”
• Patty Calhoun: “When you look at the CBI’s new dashboard requirement and ability to outsource labs to cut down backlog, it’s a reminder that we need robust systems to prevent bad characters from creating very bad outcomes in bureaucracies.”
• Alton Dillard: “Big Brother is watching… these things are listening,” responding to new biometric data laws.

That’s a wrap for this first almost full week of July. Here’s to a happy and safe long 4th of July weekend.