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Dec 4, 20

“Safer Boulder Leaks” Shines Light on Anti-Homeless Network in Boulder, CO

The following report from Safer Leaks looks at the anti-homeless network Safer Boulder which has called for increased policing of the local houseless community in Boulder, Colorado.

Like other cities across the nation, Boulder, Colorado is facing it’s own set of challenges as activists work in collaboration with local houseless people to create safer options and to fight back against problematic legislature that criminalizes homelessness. Boulder, who’s median annual income is $88,500 per year, is a town of just over 107,000 people and home to the University of Colorado. Boulder is known widely for it’s fairly progressive, white, hippy culture. But, as they say, scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds.

An anonymous activist coalition, Safer Leaks, released the Slack chats of a closed, anti-homelessness group who, despite their name “Safer Boulder,” and their so-called commitment to finding solutions for homelessness, expresses violent fantasies, hatred, racism, ableism, classism, and trans* and queerphobia, just to name a few. This group has been platformed at Boulder City Council meetings and has ties to city council members and the Boulder Police Department.

 

In public, Safer Boulder is actively working to criminalize the houseless community in Boulder, with their largest project being a petition demanding an increase of policing of homeless Boulder residents, which has over 7,600 signatures as of this writing.

 

In private, a more violent, disturbing dialogue is happening:

In addition to the leaks, Safer Leaks also exposes the identities of Safer Boulder’s leading members. Here’s a breakdown of this vile group:

  • Mark Mallen, owner of Glacier Ice Cream and Rocket CBD. Mark likes to host Safer Boulder’s hate-meetings at his ice cream shop. More about Mark here.
  • Todd Root of Boulder Bike Sharing‘s contributions to the chat are particularly violent & horrifying. He has expressed his desire to tie up houseless young people to 5 lb buckets of feces, as well as posting racist comments in response to racially motivated policing. Todd is active in the chats, posting multiple times a day, everyday. More about Todd here.

On October 11th, in a completely unsurprising response to the leaks, Safer Boulder published their own blog titled, “Safer Boulder Doesn’t Have Time for Bullies.” It is a pathetic, hollow attempt to cover their bigotry by trying to center themselves as the victims of such accusations. Safer Leaks responded by tearing through Safer Boulder’s blog point-by-point, and ending the response with:

Safer Boulder can use all the weasel words they want to imply that our release of their Slack Workspace is fraudulent, but at the end of the end day, they have provided no evidence to backup any of their claims against us, while we have over 1,000 screenshots from their chats that you can access and come to your own conclusion about the group.

Safer Boulder exists in a network of anti-homeless groups across the country like Safe Seattle and Save Austin Now who organize to make their cities more hostile and less habitable to poor and unhoused residents. These groups typically rely on pressuring local police to increase homeless sweeps and ticketing while encouraging local governments to defund shelters and other lifesaving programs. The goal of anti-homelessness groups is inherently exterministic and fascistic: They want to use the State to purge their cities from ‘degenerate others’ in order to restore them to a mythologized former glory.

photo: Jon Tyson 

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