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Throughout America’s history, Thanksgiving has been celebrated in times of difficulty and dissension. People from diverse walks of life eat together with appreciation for the food and for each other. This Thursday should be no different.

Believe it or not, the first Thanksgiving meal held among native peoples and European migrants was in1565 not 1621. After grueling months at sea, some 800 Spaniards landed safely on the shores of what is now Florida. Thankful to be alive and on land, they celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving and ate a meal with members of the Timucua people who lived nearby.

Their story has been eclipsed by the more popular telling of the Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving feast which they celebrated in autumn 1621 with the Wampanoag people whose crucial aid helped them survive their first year. As with the first Thanksgiving, people who differed in language, ethnicity, faith, culture, and politics shared a meal together in appreciation of God’s goodness.

One of the first official Thanksgiving proclamations was given during the Revolutionary War. General George Washington proclaimed December 18, 1777, the first national day of Thanksgiving. Later, once he took office, he issued the first presidential Thanksgiving proclamation. On that Thursday, November 26, 1789, Washington celebrated by attending church at St. Paul’s Chapel in New York City and donating food and beer to the city’s imprisoned debtors. Gratitude inspires a generosity of spirit.

After President James Madison proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving on April 13, 1815, the tradition languished until the dark days of the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation for the last Thursday of November 1863, imploring the “interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.” This proclamation began the tradition of holding the day on the last Thursday of November.

That nearly changed during the Great Depression. When the last Thursday of the month landed on the last day of November, President Franklin D. Roosevelt feared the shortened Christmas season would negatively affect the struggling economy. FDR moved Thanksgiving to the middle of the month. States balked and for two years, Thanksgiving was celebrated on two different days. Congress passed legislation in 1941 to make Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday of November.

Just as the day of the holiday has changed, the foods served have as well. While the first Thanksgiving likely featured wild game and fish, Native American crops such as beans, squash, and corn and vegetables brought by the Pilgrims such as onions, cabbage, and turnips, modern Thanksgiving meals are a rich hybrid of foods from around the world.

Turkey, green beans, pumpkins, and corn were domesticated in Mesoamerica (today’s southern Mexico and Central America) while the wheat in the bread stuffing and peas were first developed in the Middle East and Near East, along with cows from which we get that ancient invention, butter. Potatoes hale from South America. The marshmallows you might add to another South American-bred crop sweet potatoes, however, were first made in ancient North Africa.

Brussel sprouts, as the name implies, were developed from cabbages in Belgium. Cranberries are native to North America but the sugar that sweetens the tart fruit dish originated in Papua New Guinea. If you have apple pie, thank the ancient farmers of Central Asia. If you’re going for pecans, thank Antoine, a Louisiana slave whose grafting technique in the 1840s took the native North American nut to the next level of deliciousness.

The food alone is worth celebrating! But Thanksgiving is so much more. Celebrated during times of war, economic depression, and strife as well as in years of plenty and unity, the holiday brings together people to eat and drink united in common humanity.

So put political pique aside this Thursday and be grateful to God, or wherever your faith tradition takes you, and for the people who sit beside you at the table.

Krista Kafer is a Sunday Denver Post columnist.

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As someone deeply committed to public safety, civil rights, and the protection of vulnerable communities, I believe Mayor Mike Johnston made the right decision on Denver’s license plate recognition (LPR) cameras. Instead of shutting down a system that has repeatedly proven effective, he chose a thoughtful, community-centered approach – one that strengthens public safety while putting in place some of the strongest privacy protections in the nation.

LPR cameras are a tool, and like any tool, their impact depends on how responsibly they’re governed. We’ve already seen their effectiveness: they have helped locate missing children, recover stolen vehicles, and solve violent crimes across the city. At Denver International Airport, car thefts have dropped by over 80% since LPR cameras were installed. Removing this tool altogether would not have made Denver safer – it would have left families less protected.

But the conversation was never simply about whether LPR technology works. For many of us – especially Black, Brown, immigrant, and mixed-status families – the real question was whether this system could be used against us. Whether it could become yet another mechanism for targeting or surveillance. Whether federal agencies, including ICE, could access or misuse this data. Those concerns were valid, and they deserved action.

Mayor Johnston did what responsible leaders must do: he listened to community concerns and fixed what needed fixing. The new safeguards are not symbolic – they are structural, enforceable, and unprecedented in their strength.

Here’s what is now guaranteed:

ICE and all federal immigration agencies are fully barred from accessing LPR data. No loopholes, no informal requests, no gray areas. Immigration enforcement cannot use this system – ever.

Only Denver police can use LPR data, and only for active investigations within city limits. No outside law enforcement can tap into the system for their own purposes.

The technology cannot be used to interfere with reproductive healthcare or criminalize healthcare decisions. This is essential in a post-Roe landscape where surveillance has become a real threat.

Strict penalties for misuse – up to $100,000 per violation and possible criminal prosecution. This is one of the strongest accountability measures in the country.

A mandatory review of every technology update. The city – not the vendor – decides what changes move forward.

A four- to five-month no-cost pilot period before any long-term commitment. We get real data, real transparency, and real community oversight before the city makes a final decision.

These protections matter. They reflect the demands of residents who insisted on safety and civil rights – not one at the expense of the other. And importantly, they ensure that Denver’s immigrant families and people seeking reproductive care cannot be tracked, targeted, or harmed by the system.

When the City Council reviews the LPR program this spring, they will be evaluating more than technology – they will be evaluating a new framework built on transparency, accountability, and community protections. The pilot period gives everyone the evidence needed to make an informed decision.

This moment is not about choosing between privacy and public safety. It’s about demonstrating that Denver can – and must – commit to both. The LPR system tracks license plates, not people. It operates on the same life-saving principle behind Amber Alerts: use technology to respond quickly when every minute matters.

Mayor Johnston didn’t abandon a tool that keeps people safe; he made it better, stronger, and more just. He showed that leadership means listening, adapting, and ensuring that all community members – especially those most often overlooked – are protected.

Denver now has an LPR framework that strengthens public safety without sacrificing our values. And that is the kind of governance our communities deserve.

Bianka Emerson is the president of the Colorado Black Women for Political Action, a non-partisan, non-profit organization impacting the community since 1977.

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Denver is on a path toward the destruction of individual privacy under the guise of “safety.” Tech companies are seizing on right-wing fear-mongering about immigrants and “crime” to build a surveillance network that touches every part of our lives.

These same tools could be used to deploy militarized ICE on immigrant communities while data centers in our neighborhoods extract, categorize and process it all. The companies that sell “decision support” for war also sell “case management” and tracking to our city. If this still sounds abstract, here’s a story about chickens coming home to roost.

In May, after public backlash, Denver City Council rejected a $666,000 two-year expansion of Denver’s contract with Flock Safety, a $7 billion company that sells license-plate reader cameras that log every car and let police search it later. Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration then signed a shorter amendment for about $498,500, just under the $500,000 threshold for Council approval, and later announced a separate five-month “no-cost” bridge that keeps the cameras running through March 31, 2026, again without a Council vote. Nine council members have asked Auditor Timothy O’Brien to review whether this maneuvering violated city contracting rules; he has not yet signed off.

Regardless of what happens with the contract, Flock cameras already operate at about 70 sites across Denver. Johnston would like you to believe this data is tightly controlled and used only for official investigations, but logs analyzed by Colorado Newsline show more than 1,400 immigration-related searches touched Denver’s plate data between June 2024 and April 2025, proof that once a dragnet exists, other agencies will query it. And it’s not just targets of immigration: everyone in the city is subject to unfair searches and privacy violations.

These surveillance systems also require immense computing power, driving a boom in data centers that devour electricity and water. In Elyria-Swansea, CoreSite is building a three-building data-center campus that, once fully built, would consume 60 megawatts and about 805,000 gallons of water a day, roughly a third of the zip code’s daily water use and enough electricity to power 70,000 Colorado homes, more than ten times the number of households in 80216. The last thing our neighborhoods need is another data center, but we will see more of them as Denver and other cities expand automated surveillance tools like Flock.

Johnston’s office should put the contracts in daylight and add kill-switches. If sharing limits and fines exist, publish the clauses and enforcement triggers. Add public audit logs and funded exit ramps.

If the mayor’s office wants drones, require a public showing with data that shows how information is protected against immigration or other out-of-policy uses. Reverse the burden of proof and then codify it.

Every dollar for bulk tracking is a dollar not spent on ventilation in schools, EMS staffing, frequent transit and housing stabilization, the things that actually make people safe. Reinvest photo-enforcement windfalls and publish a ledger.

Put the Surveillance Technology Task Force and Council in the room before any extension, pilot, or “no-cost” deal, and heed the Auditor’s findings. Johnston should respect the oversight he created.

Finally, apply the same rules to data centers. No subsidies for high-draw data centers; require a health impact assessment, fenceline air monitoring, water-use transparency, generator runtime caps, noise/light standards, and a community benefits agreement, all published with permits, especially for projects in over-burdened neighborhoods like Elyria-Swansea.

This isn’t anti-technology; it’s pro-democracy. Through its contracts, Denver should define “safety” as affordable homes, healthy food, clean air and water, frequent buses and community health clinics for our most vulnerable neighbors, and write the deals to match. Budgets can move from funding a surveillance dystopia to funding real safety and stability.

Robin Reichhardt is a community organizer who lives in north Denver.

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Just last year, Colorado was leading the Mountain West in the transition from dirty coal plants to clean energy. Federal funding was assisting on rural clean energy while coal plant retirement dates were on track to meet the state’s critical climate goals.

How quickly things change.

This year the Trump administration is resisting coal’s decline with unprecedented executive orders and by actively canceling and stalling clean energy projects meant to bring down energy prices, killing thousands of renewable energy jobs.

Unfortunately, some Pueblo County leaders and Congressman Jeff Hurd joined in and informed Colorado regulators that they intend to ask President Trump to keep coal-fired operations at  Pueblo’s Comanche 2 and 3 coal units continuing indefinitely.

The sudden push to keep coal burning is a slap in the face to Colorado voters who have supported renewable energy, more affordable bills, and who are demanding cleaner air. Surely they could expect Gov. Polis to step in to defend the state’s critical climate goals, right?

Apparently not. In a shocking twist, the state of Colorado just sided with Xcel Energy and petitioned regulators to keep the Comanche 2 unit open past its retirement date scheduled for the end of the year to cover for Comanche 3’s most recent, massive outage.

In effect, this agreement would allow Xcel Energy to charge customers for its own mistakes. If approved, Xcel Energy can run Comanche 2 for an additional year without clear guidelines to restrict pollution. This means the company could run Comanche 2 past its retirement date in addition to Comanche 3 once it’s repaired. Instead of one coal unit burning in 2026, there could be two — a full abandonment of previous commitments, which could increase air pollution and potentially raise energy costs for Coloradans.

Comanche 3 has been a reliability disaster and its pollution contributes to disease and cancer.  Given its high cost–both financially and in its toll on public health–and its frequent outages, backtracking on coal retirements has nothing but downsides for Pueblo and Xcel ratepayers.

As a local environmental justice policy advocate, I’ve participated in an enormous amount of debates over what to do about Comanche 3 and have talked to countless people in the community. People want clean energy and good-paying jobs.

Xcel’s motivations are clear. Coal is expensive and they have a captive customer base allowing them to send big profits to their shareholders and CEOs. These profits are earned off the backs of workers while pollution costs the public millions in healthcare bills.

A truly “just” transition should include treating Pueblo with respect, addressing historical inequities like those experienced by the Pueblo community, and giving back to the community for helping to power Colorado for decades at the expense of its own public health.

A recent study found an advanced Renewable Energy Park could replace $40 million in lost annual tax revenue and provide 300 permanent jobs. That’s more money and more jobs than Comanche 3 is providing now. Pueblo could continue exporting power in Colorado, but this time with cleaner air and lower costs. Instead of only gratifying profits, we can advocate for utilities like Xcel to prioritize massive buildouts of rooftop solar to help reduce energy bills for families and businesses.

In Colorado, jobs in the clean energy sector are already outpacing jobs in fossil fuel industries and wages in renewable energy are outpacing the national average which could benefit Pueblo’s economic future while also protecting workers, public health, and the environment.

If you agree that Colorado needs to move past coal and embrace our renewable energy future, I encourage you to contact the Public Utilities Commission and tell them we don’t need federal and corporate interference in already settled matters. Let them know that you believe a just energy transition should address the historic inequities resulting from Xcel’s coal plant as well as our current climate realities with the implementation of a renewable energy park that can provide jobs and tax revenues with little or no pollution.

Jamie Valdez is a community advocate from Pueblo and works with GreenLatinos as a Colorado Transportation and Energy Advocate.

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