Caveat venditor, slumlords!

 

I have lived in cities across the US, from Las Vegas to D.C and a few in between, and I have never had a bad experience with a property manager until I moved to Colorado. What I have been through brought out my activist side.

In 2019, I testified in support of a Safe and Healthy Homes bill to strip away the landlord's presumption of good intentions in Colorado landlord-tenant law to make us equal in the eyes of the law; the bill also added habitability standards. My testimony described a nightmare situation in 2008 followed by another slumlord situation a few years later and I am still testifying for renter's rights today. Weak consumer protection in Colorado is not new, and it's time to end the exploitation. I'm sharing my testimony from 2019 and hope you will share your stories.

“I want to tell you about my personal experiences with substandard housing and unscrupulous landlords. In 2008, I moved into an apartment in Colorado Springs that was affordable based on my income. In the middle of a cold winter night, I woke up so dizzy and sick that I could not stand. I crawled across the apartment to the front door, opened the door, and fell out across the threshold into the snow. When my head cleared up enough that I could stand again, I opened every window in the apartment and shut off the heater that was burning bright orange flames. The next day, the manager was reluctant to tell me what had happened but the guy that did the work told me he didn't know how I was still alive. He informed me that the gas unit had been red-tagged by the City as hazardous and should not have been used until it had been repaired and inspected. I was that close to being a casualty of carbon monoxide poisoning because my life was not worth the cost to repair a red-tagged gas heater. I was eventually able to move to a larger apartment complex but left when the lease was up because management increased rent by $200 per month which was not affordable.

That move led to my second experience with a slumlord. On moving into an apartment in Fountain, I noted a long list of needed maintenance and repairs including apparent mold in a bathroom wall and ceiling, loose tiles around the tub, a broken window that could not be closed or locked, a sliding patio door that did not have a lock, and other problems. A month went by, then another with nothing but excuses from the manager.

Early the day after Thanksgiving, as I ran the water in the bathroom sink to brush my teeth I noticed the drain was sluggish, then the toilet bowl started to gurgle and back up with brown-colored water. The same gurgling sound crept under the bathtub followed by a stench, then debris and brown water—technically, greywater. I heard people running in the hall trying to figure out how to shut off the water main as greywater filled the bathtubs, sinks, and toilets of every apartment on the first floor. Someone finally reached the property owner. He was not eager to leave his $500,000 home in Monument on a holiday weekend to deal with a maintenance issue at his slum property in Fountain. When he finally arrived, about six hours later, he said he would wait until Monday to call a plumber because the repair would already be expensive; calling a plumber on a holiday would cost even more. I took out my phone and started dialing the local news, other neighbors made threats that I won’t repeat. He relented, but it took the rest of the weekend to get some kind of repair completed and the water back on. Not once did the owner offer to provide water or some other place to stay; he left us to live in that muck for three days.

In either of these situations, if I had an equal legal right to enforce the terms of the lease contract then I would not have faced retaliation or been forced to move out. But that's what happened to me, both times. I didn't choose to live in these places for any reason other than it was affordable based on my income. Rent in the Springs has increased year over year and moving expenses every year or two adds a greater burden, especially given the shortage of affordable housing.

All this bill is about is fairness. This is a health and consumer protection issue. No one should have to live in unsafe or unsanitary conditions because they can’t afford to move elsewhere or to live in a more modern property. I urge the committee to pass this bill. Thank you for your time.”

Safe and Healthy Homes was signed into law. As for the slumlord who hid needed repairs to a gas heater and almost killed me, he died on a tour bus in California when they were hit by a mudslide. The slumlord who left us swimming in shit over Thanksgiving weekend not only sold off the Fountain property but also several Victorian homes in downtown Colorado Springs after the Colorado Springs mayor was informed of that slumlord’s dirty deeds in Fountain. #FAFO, I guess. Never give up, never give in.

What My Renting Experience Taught Me About Who Really Owns My City

 

I have been working on my Colorado Springs housing study for the past few months, in between mini-dramas next door and property management harassment. I have learned that much of my renting experience is explained by foreign entity ownership of rental housing: their use of apps to increase rent (not based on amenities or improvements to the property, just plain greed), hiding ownership behind LLCs, using ratio utility billing to hide other unrelated expenses, polluting the ground water with products related to illegal auto repair work, manipulating app features to generate fees & change lease dates/terms, and harass and bully anyone who challenges their extraction scheme. Actually, one-hundred percent of my experience is explained by foreign LLCs owning rental housing.

I framed my examination of Colorado Springs housing policy and developers’ websites through the lens of financialization/neoliberal economic theory to better understand decision-makers’ perception of housing needs. Next, I searched the same source documents for other participants in the decision-making and found the rest of us were not included. We were spoken about but not asked what we needed or what our vision was for our city and neighborhoods. Long story short: when I looked at household characteristics and housing type, I found renters were bearing the heaviest housing cost burden, meaning paying more than 30% of household income on housing alone. No other basic needs, just the roof over our heads. And yet, no one asked us. That is not a democratic process, it is a hierarchical paternalistic entity.

How can Colorado Springs justify to its residents that building more apartment complexes for foreign entity owners to use to extract as much profit for themselves and as little safety and security for us? I say it cannot. Yet Colorado is among the 10 states with the highest number of private equities draining our pockets, and not just in housing. Private equities run our health care, public pensions, and private sector workforce. I can’t share my study here yet, but here’s a report about private equities in Colorado: https://privateequityrisk.org/state/colorado/

If you open the link you can find your state in the drop-down and learn how equities are shaping affordability in your home. Does my experience sound familiar to your own? Please share your story.

Rental Housing in an Antisocial Environment

I’ve heard some of the local NIMBY group members complain at City Council public meetings about overcrowding, heavy traffic, and other typical growth issues when apartment complexes are planned for development pretty much anywhere in the city. But when one of the men complained about window air conditioners decreasing his property value, I was stumped. I had to think about that for a minute. What was he really complaining about? Maybe it wasn’t appearances but behavior. Why can’t we talk about behavior? It’s necessary to talk about behavior when tax dollars are funding so much as a nickel (because we don’t have pennies anymore) toward housing developments.

If this neoliberal economic hellscape we’re living in had a mantra it would be “I will do whatever I want!” That attitude is reflected in the poor living conditions of every Foreign LLC owned and managed rental apartment complex in the city, not just those built for section 8.

Constructing housing for a specific program need does not solve the problem of affordability when the attitude among those who “do whatever I want” destroys the property they live in and the neighborhood around it. And this attitude prevails at Foreign LLC owned and managed apartment complexes. The appearance of window air conditioners is not the worst thing you’re going to find at these apartment complexes. Antisocial behavior is the bigger concern, and it seems like city development plans lack robust situational awareness. Here’s what it looks like when neoliberal laissez faire economics kicks the shit out of civility and common sense; things I see on any given day:

>>kids run screaming around the parking lot and in between cars, throw rocks, vandalize personal property, kill landscaping plants, break branches off the trees, leave bikes and scooters and toys in the middle of the parking lot, cuss at and beat up other kids, speak disrespectfully at all the adults who live here, etc.

>>adult-age tenants disrupting quiet enjoyment by letting their dogs bark without correction

>>exposing neighbors to the toxic effects of smoking and drug use

>>violating quiet hours with loud conversations and stomping their feet, slamming doors and cabinets

>>throwing objects against shared interior walls, pounding on the walls

>>polluting the groundwater by operating illegal auto shops

>>parking in the fire lanes

And this is happening in what is called “market-rate” apartments. The problem is, the owner/management company is a foreign LLC.

A Foreign LLC is only interested in extracting profit from these properties so they promote antisocial behavior by not taking corrective action or in some cases, directly participating in it themselves. The combination of antisocial tenants and antisocial foreign LLCs adds up to uninhabitable living conditions and the curb appeal of a junk yard. 

Rather than fund large apartment complexes, spend our tax dollars on accountability measures: ban Foreign LLCs from owning and/or managing rental properties; establish a rental licensing program for accountability and retention of what remains of habitable rental housing; prioritize small starter homes for retirees wanting to downsize and use their equity for their personal needs, and for individuals who want to secure their financial future with home ownership. The purpose of housing is not to accumulate wealth for asset managers, but to secure our own personal wealth. Constructing apartment complexes does not contribute to individual financial security or stability and is not sustainable model for the development of a thriving city. 

(Un)ethical Leadership: How a “business-friendly” State Puts Workers Last—and At Risk

Smirking corporate lobbyist carrying wads of cash from a legislative building

During the pandemic shut-down, I worked remotely for an employer that required the use of my personal computer, phone, and internet for a year and never offered fair compensation for the use of my property. The employer repeatedly violated labor law concerning meals and breaks and wage theft. The employer demanded logging in and setting up work apps at least 15 minutes prior to scheduled start time and return after lunch but did not allow logging out 15 minutes prior to the end of the day. That is wage theft. Work related matters like professional development or soft skills training were required to be done on your lunch break; they were described as “brown bag” lunches. That violates lunch and breaks free from work. Their shared narrative about workers was that people are poor because they are lazy and will do anything to cheat the system. It sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Blame the people you seek to exploit for trying to cheat you. There is a second narrative that shapes their treatment of workers that I will describe later in this blog.

Even working remotely, a paternalistic environment of distrust and discrimination permeated operations. The top-level managers were male, the majority of task supervisors were male, and the majority of workers were female. All tasks were processed by separate, very small “teams” of employees who were not allowed to communicate with each other. Any such communication was admonished and the workers scolded. If you took what a supervisor thought was too much time to review a messy task you would see a pop-up message asking, “what are you doing?” or “do you need help?” Supervisors, of course, had the freedom to play with their kids, wash laundry, and order DoorDash while overlording a “team” to ensure workers enjoyed no such freedom of movement. Instead of focusing on serving people and getting the process right, supervisors tracked task completion and monitored keyboard activity. Typically, correcting one task created multiple additional tasks because the entire process was broken into multiple individual but interdependent tasks yet no access to the overall situation and feedback about how to improve the process was slapped away as offensive. The more task data the better to justify needing more funding which effectively disincentivizes doing the right thing the first time which would mean processing would be holistic rather than segregated.

To top it off, when the employer and a third-party contractor transferred 10 years of data from an archaic system to a new one, they left the connection open resulting in multiple private parties who had logged on to the website for their own use to download that data into Excel spreadsheets. Eventually, that data was discovered for sale on the Dark Web. It would be reasonable to expect the employer to take responsibility for their negligence and publicly report it so the thousands of people impacted by the theft of their name, address, DOB, SSN, work history, education, and bank account information could immediately lock their credit preventing fraudulent transactions in their name. Yet, that is not what happened. Why did they not disclose this security breach? Who the hell is this employer? 

The employer was the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, Unemployment Insurance Division. And rather than serving as a watchdog protecting workers, it serves as a lapdog for businesses. Businesses pay into the unemployment insurance fund, workers do not. Once the money is in the fund CDLE UI treats that money as the State’s asset and believes their mission is to protect the State’s asset by every available means. It generates burdens in the application process supposedly to filter out those who do not truly need the assistance; consider misleading legalese on forms, confusing instructions, automatic denial of benefits, administrative processes limited to their 9 to 5 schedule instead of your availability. These are mechanisms used across our tax-payer funded safety net programs as well. That approach alone calls for an overhaul. But at least one reason we don’t address how we gauge need versus greed is exposed in the labor department’s automatic bias in favor of the businesses. Money and power buys elections and lawmaking.

The monetary relationship between business and the labor department is why the state confidently advertises itself as being “business-friendly.” It is why an employee can quit a job without giving a notice, per at-will employment, but be judged ineligible for unemployment insurance. It is why an employer can treat employees as sub-human, firing them for using sick leave or for needing time off to respond to a family emergency or for daring to walk away from an employer for treating them as less than human. It is why CDLE sets up clawbacks after emergency federal funding ends. These behaviors are rooted in old norms of the Industrial Age that judged workers as lazy and we didn’t have 1099 workers to the extent that we do now. CDLEs paternalism feels like living in the 1950s. Despite its age, it lacks a clear situational awareness of the labor environment. For example, CDLE was gob-smacked to learn there were hundreds of thousands of Coloradans working in non-wage jobs, and many of them working both W2 and 1099 jobs. This should call their jobs data into question at the very least, but that’s for a future post. 

Returning to clawbacks, this was the most disturbing thing about CDLE, in my view. After September 4, 2021, CDLE sent notices to recipients to verify the dates and reasons for each weekly request for benefits they had made before a short deadline expired or they would be required to pay back the benefits. This occurred a year or more after the benefits were requested and went back to the beginning of the pandemic. People had gone back to work, and the media had warned of fraudsters using fake CDLE websites to contact benefit recipients. Nonetheless, no response generated a debt of tens of thousands of dollars per recipient who did not respond, required scheduling a bureaucratic hearing, and if absent from the hearing, sent to collection and or garnished from their wages and tax refunds. CDLE clawed back assistance to workers after the Great Recession that followed the housing bubble fiasco. Have they always done this to workers? This was the moment I began to understand why so many American workers, including Coloradans, are furious with government. A government that does not work for them or protect them from exploitation but serves the hand that feeds it. This explained how so many have been duped by a 1%er to elect him, to attempt an insurrection, to believe that immigrants are the cause of their hardship, and to re-elect him when the other party, the one that previously labeled them “a basket of deplorables,” hedged on issues important to all workers.

Since 2021, Colorado lawmakers created a program to pay unemployment insurance benefits to undocumented W-2 workers and is one of fourteen states that offer health coverage regardless of immigration status, including undocumented. Policies like these are likely fueling current anti-immigration tactics but without showing clear evidence for their actions. While there are a lot of problems with our social safety net programs, not the least of which is accountability in government administration, the reason for their existence is related to labor law. To summarize, CDLEs attitude toward workers exposes who they are and who they serve. CDLE judges. It doesn’t ask questions. It is a machine built to protect businesses. Furthermore, the unemployment insurance fund establishes a symbiotic relationship between business and the state, exclusive of workers. We need to ask questions: Where does the state use the money? Is it retained for future benefits? Is every penny of the fund retained, or just a percentage? CDLEs UI Fund ran dry just 3 months into the pandemic. How is jobs data and unemployment data collected and how is it analyzed?   

At the conclusion of Colorado’s legislative session this year, the governor vetoed a record number of 11 bills meant to set rules protecting Uber and Lift gig-workers, protect workers from wage theft, protect renters from rent-hiking app algorithms, and uncomplicate the process of forming a workers’ union. This record seems to confirm the pursuit of labor laws that favor business and government oversight mechanisms that restrict access to assistance. Ethical leadership matters. Government accountability and transparency is a fair expectation if we will have a government of, by, and for the people. Coloradans deserve better. All working people deserve better. How does your labor department treat workers in your state? It matters. We need answers and accountability.

If you have ever been stalked, you know: Some people are bat-shit crazy and you're on your own to cope with it

Image of a camera with a frowny face in the lens

September 2020, I moved into a new apartment in a nice, quiet neighborhood. I said hello to the female next door and she ignored me, looked the other way. Odd. Some weeks later I saw her again and said hello. This time she glared at me. She seemed hateful for whatever reason so I stopped making the effort to be civil. Anytime I saw her after that I looked past her like she was invisible and looked away when it was impossible to avoid walking past her.

Around spring or summer 2024 I received a piece of mail for her address, misdelivered by the mail carrier. Since I had not sifted through my mail at the box, I noticed I had her vehicle registration renewal notice mixed in with my mail as I walked up the stairs to my apartment. Well shit. I thought I would do the responsible thing despite her horrific attitude and give her mail to her. I knocked on her door. She opened the door and stared blankly at me without a word. I held out the notice and said it had been misdelivered to my mailbox. She snatched it out of my hand before the word ‘mailbox’ left my mouth and slammed the door in my face. I said ‘you’re welcome’ to the door.

February 2025, I noticed a ring camera had been installed on the door of the angry female’s apartment, aimed at my deck. On the rare occasion I went out to clear a path in the snow from my door to the stairs I heard the microphone on her camera engage and some odd noise uttered into the mic. I said out loud, partly to myself, “if you’re testing your mic it works.” It seemed that confirmation ended her curiosity. Until it didn’t.

Throughout the summer 2025, I would go outside to put my umbrella up to block the sun from heating my apartment to 85 degrees by 0700. The angry female repeatedly keyed her mic and made noises at me. I told her camera to get its eyes off me. At other times I said shut the fuck up. And at others I resorted to sign language. You can guess which finger. Why the interest in escalating the harassing and stalking aided by her camera aimed at my deck after her unilateral mic-check during the winter? Her drug addiction, maybe?

During this record-setting hot summer, the stench of pot smoke and cigarette smoke coming from the angry female’s apartment had become a regular nuisance and directly harming my health. The smoke was so heavy it permeated the entire south end of the building, lingered in the stairwell and on my deck, and entered my apartment through my window air conditioner and front door. I had raised the issue of smoke getting into my apartment many times with the manager, but he would not address it. Therefore, as of June 27^th, I started dropping complaints to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment citing the violation of the Clean Indoor Air Act. Although the law designated CDPHE responsible for implementation, they declined stating they did not have enforcement authority and told me to contact El Paso County Public Health. At the same time, I filed a complaint on the GoCOS app used by the City to manage public communication which ended up being assigned to CSPD; CSPD also told me to contact EPC Public Health. City Code designates enforcement of smoking regulations to EPC Public Health. I continued filing complaints with CDPHE, per state law, and began reporting the problem to EPC Health as well, per City Code. EPC also claimed they did not have enforcement authority. I filed 12 complaints between the end of June and the end of July with both CDPHE and EPC Public Health. Additionally, I used about 2 bottles of ZEP smoke odor eliminator to clean my air conditioner, twice, and deodorize the air outside my door during her day-long pot smoking sessions that contaminated my property and the air in the stairwell, my deck, and the storage space at the end of my deck.

On July 26^th I filed a maintenance request on AppFolio that manages the property citing the pot smoke coming from her apartment into my apartment. On the 29^th the manager finally took action, sort of. A notice was emailed to all residents clarifying the smoking restrictions overall and for each building. Building 901 was directed to stay 25 feet from any shared entryway and no smoking was allowed in the atrium. Building 855, where I live next to the pot smoker, was directed to not smoke near an open window where your smoke might go into another person’s unit and if smoking on the balcony ensure your smoke is not going toward another unit.

Well, you can guess correctly that the angry female lost her mind and began to harass me as I described above to include her throwing absolute toddler-style tantrums in the form of door slamming and pounding her fists the entire length of the shared wall from my living room to my bedroom. It is now October and she continues with the tirades. That is some bullshit. But I have my own camera now and I have a record of every door slam and fit she throws. I don’t go outside my door without an umbrella or a big hat or shopping bag to block my face. For some reason that really annoys her, too. Whatever.

It seems a waste of time, money, and resources to create state laws that no one will enforce, and local control effectively renders useless. I have encountered the same emphasis on process and lack of accountability in my job administering social safety net programs. Including immigrant status verification. The Social Security Administration can verify status which determines eligibility for assistance programs, each with its own, very different eligibility requirements. However, when they find a fraudulent document, SSN, or ID number it’s not like they’re going to go knock on that door or notify law enforcement. Lack of transparency, providing clear evidence, and failure in leadership have put us where we are. We need to start asking more questions, listen with intention, and ask more questions to understand what is going on. Especially when engaging elected officials and bureaucrats. Don’t believe everything you hear because you think this or that politician has your back. The only safe assumption in this chaos is to assume they don’t. Think critically. Ask questions. Search for the facts instead of repeating the easy political narratives. In the end, without accountability in government we are all living in hell.

Here are the radicals: Do they sound left-wing to you?

With the White House’s dissemination of inflammatory disinformation about an imagined “radical left,” I invite anyone reading this to watch and listen for yourselves the vitriol and hatred of a cult in Woodland Park that has historically supported and hosted TP USA at its so-called conferences. Do they sound like they are to the left of anything? The WH is disseminating dangerous rhetoric, meanwhile this “conference” in Woodland Park is underway yet again. You can find it yourself at truthandliberty dot net. Below you can read my summary and analysis of the 2023 conference. I could not stomach watching any additional conferences, but they are there if you want to indulge.

2023 Truth and Liberty conference at Charis Bible college in Woodland Park Colorado. If I were to give this event an accurate descriptive title it would be “How to Kill a Democracy.”

Summary: The conference ticked all the boxes of cult leadership tactics described in The Cult of Trump by Steven Hassan, PhD, a former Moonie turned writer, scholar, and psychotherapist. The Wommack Truth & Liberty coalition have created their own worldview through which all events are interpreted; established their followers as the in-group opposed to the evil out-groups (democrats, LGBTQ+, etc); requested donations or “offerings” and solicited volunteers for future events/protests; created myths establishing their credibility, especially of family members who died and came back to life through prayer; established multiple campaigns, such as recruiting school board candidates, registering church congregations to vote, etc.; distracted attendees from thinking critically by using rapid-paced speech stringing together every sentence with “and,” using repetitive phrases, and altering historical facts to fit their objective; and they one-up the MAGA chant with one that “re”establishes this country under one religious belief, a theocracy. All efforts, every political and issue campaign, need to focus on responding to the lie that the U.S. was once a theocracy, a Christian Republic.

This is a cult and they know what they’re doing. When session speakers, for example Faridi and Porter, delivered loaded language about stolen elections and racist tropes about Muslims, I noted their lack of conviction or belief in what they were saying in contrast with their smirks and smiles as the crowd of around 40 attendees clapped and cheered. Watch a portion of a session and look at the speaker’s eyes, their body language; they are toying with people, manipulating them. Did you ever watch The Manchurian Candidate? This conference is the real-life version.

I noticed a lot of mirroring, Hassan’s word, but pundits use the term “flagging.” Mirroring or flagging is when the speaker accuses the other side of doing something the speaker is actually doing. For example, Connelly talked about the holocaust implicitly equating Nazis to democrats; he stated that lying to people and creating fear was the key to Nazis killing 11 million people and democrats did the same through covid quarantines. It’s actually Wommack et al. lying and creating fear, their objective is to restore the country to what they claim is its original single-religion and religion-based education, to establish a theocracy. The establishment of a theocracy would of course dismantle democracy and result in violence and death of far more than 11 million people.

Throughout the sessions, the cult uses mirroring to delegitimize election processes, education, and other foundational elements of our democracy. However, I sense they are one component of a larger strategy under the old Tea Party apparatus to defund the federal government, specifically the departments overseeing education, healthcare, energy, and environment as promised by several republican presidential candidates in recent history. The Convention of States Action is led by Mark Meckler, the founder of the Tea Party movement. COSAs intent is to establish republican control of the necessary two-thirds of the states per Article V of the Constitution to call a convention and enact their agenda to defund the federal government, specifically the departments responsible for education, healthcare, energy, and environment. COSA, the Freedom Caucus/Tea Party and Truth & Liberty converge on defunding the department of education. This is not to say that cult members are not also engaged in defunding other departments, consider climate change deniers, they likely are, but taking the larger view exposes the broad base of overlapping interests in taking down our democracy. Christian nationalism is driving the anti-government agenda that is rooted in the Southern states going back to the Civil War. It’s not a coincidence that most of the Truth & Liberty speakers are residents of the deep south.

Returning to our lane on education, it is imperative to understand that higher education is being used to disseminate disinformation which has a ripple effect on local school districts and other campaigns. There are at least two disinformation spreaders at UCCS, one funded by Koch and the other by Turning Point USA. Koch funded a “research” center at UCCS, headed by faculty of the Political Science Department, in appreciation for inviting and sponsoring Trump’s campaign rallies on UCCS campus in 2016. Koch’s influence is called The Center for the Study of Government and the Individual and is supported by several of Koch’s extremist factions. The first incident that peaked my awareness of Koch’s access to our campus was the dissemination of The Epoch Times to all UCCS email users after 2016. Fast-forward to January 6, 2021, that disinformation rag, Epoch Times, was in the pockets of thousands of insurrectionists. For a few months immediately after the insurrection, I assisted Insurrection Hunters with the identification of symbols, military patches, documents, vendors, and organized groups among the participants. I flagged some papers sticking out of the back pocket of a “cowboy” with a gun tucked into his waistband. Another Hunter identified the papers as The Epoch Times that had been circulated at a rally that morning. The “cowboy” I had worked to identify was later arrested for stabbing someone to death in a park sometime after he returned home—drug deal gone sideways. The feds made a deal with him for information about 1/6. He’s free. I have moved on, but many continue to identify insurrectionists and their work has contributed to the arrest and conviction of hundreds of Americans who have been brainwashed. Until the leaders are processed by the justice system, the public, and our democracy that depends on a well-informed public, teeters on the brink.

In addition to the Koch bros on our campus, a Wommack collaborator Turning Point USA has established a student group at UCCS. I have observed clapboards on campus advertising bible study groups and prayer groups, but I do not recall the name of the student group that organized it. More likely, Turning Point USA at UCCS would recruit protest participants for the upcoming Kingdom to Capitol marches as well as local protests, school district actions, and to serve as poll watchers. Note the word choice, ‘kingdom’; it suggests dominion over the state, aligned with their theocracy over democracy objective.    

The Wommack cult made it very clear that this is a war, they have declared it. Therefore, I am using their war framework to analyze their plan of action. Below, I have outlined the order of battle (OOB) starting with the strategic level, moving on to the operational level including organizations and leaders, and finally, the tactical level detailing their methods as described by the operational leaders during the conference. I categorized and color-coded the major campaigns: Red denotes congregation voter registration drives, legal action, and policy writing; Orange indicates all direct actions opposing public education; Gold represents anti-abortion actions and dovetails with education on anti-LGBTQ, anti-CRT, etc.; Blue signifies protests/counter-protests and disruption. The campaigns directly involved in the attack on education include a cross-collaboration between the National School Board Coalition/Ted Mische, Christian Home Educators of Colorado/Carolyn Martin, Family Policy Alliance/Autumn Leva, Nehemia Institute, and Faith Wins/Chad Connelly.

    

Truth & Liberty Objective: To control communities through the church, ultimately (re)establishing a theocracy.

OOB:

Unit	Task	Leader
Faith Wins	Register church congregations to vote, targeting all “early states”	Chad Connelly
First Liberty	File religious liberty lawsuits to roll back previous Supreme Court decisions on religious displays in public spaces/government buildings, and schools	Unk (attorneys)
Wallbuilders	Draft “pro-family” legislation & review education standards for legislators & lobbyists	David Barton
Pacific Justice	School board policy templates, in 31 states	unk
National School Board Coalition	School board candidates, propaganda about sexualizing kids	Ted Mische
Christian Home Educators of Colorado	Homeschooling, bible-based education, parental rights, propaganda about original theocracy	Carolyn Martin
Family Policy Alliance	Defund public education, religious liberty lawsuits	Autumn Leva
The Life Network	Anti-abortion actions	Rich Bennet
Turning Point USA Faith	Protests	Lance Williams
American Pastor Project	Train pastors to organize churches	Lucas Miles

 

 

Strategies:

·       Elect leaders with a “biblical worldview”—congress, state legislatures, school boards, etc.

·       Defund public education, replace it with home-schooling and bible-based education

·       Engage government/teachers/school board in lengthy, expensive court processes

·       Disorient the public with disinformation and protests across all operations and campaigns

Operations:

·       Christian voter registration drives in churches--Chad Connelly, Faith Wins

·       File lawsuits demanding religious liberty—First Liberty

·       Lobby legislators and monitor education legislation in all 50 states—David Barton, Wallbuilders’ ProFamily Legislative Network; Pacific Justice; First Liberty

·       Recruit, train, and vet school board candidates—Ted Mische, National School Board Coalition

·       Privatize education--Carolyn Martin, Christian Home Educators of Colorado; Autumn Leva, Family Policy Alliance attorney; Nehemiah Institute

·       Close all abortion service provider locations—Pueblo pastor Quinn Fryberg; Rich Bennet, The Life Network

·       Kingdom to the Capitol marches--Lance Williams, Turning Point USA Faith and Shawn Foit; Book bans, school board action--John Amanchukwu

·       Provide resources and networking for pastors to organize churches--American Pastor Project, Lucas Miles   

Tactics:

·       Collaborate with pastors in churches to register their congregations to vote, prioritize all of the early states

·       Use poll watchers to target voter turnout and challenge validity of every ballot cast in real time, but charm election staff with offers to help and to pray for them so they collaborate willingly

·       Harass school boards with fear messaging (“they’re coming for your kids” “they’re coming for your churches”), book bans, and oppose sex education

·       Lobby for parental rights, pathway to homeschooling and defunding public education

·       Collaborate with a legislator to challenge education standards that do not comply with “biblical worldview”

·       Spread gospel in Muslim nations

·       Broadcast alternative facts about a time when America had common values and a common faith

·       Recruit school board candidates through face-to-face interaction in the community, churches, and both political parties

·       Frame unwilling candidates as “imperfect people” but with righteous intent

·       Recruit through propaganda about RFID chips in student IDs so predators can track your kids, lies about kids being taught to make illicit drugs in chemistry class and satanic temples teaching in school classrooms

·       Establish homeschooling as an alternative to public schools, pathway to privatizing public education

·       Repeat message that America was established on one religion, taught in the home, the school, and the church

·       Advocate for parental rights as opposed to public education, religious liberty as opposed to secular/inclusive education, and home schooling as opposed to public education

·       Organize anti-abortion protests, file lawsuits against abortion providers, force closure of women’s health clinics that provide abortions

·       Promote ideation that life begins at inception

·       Advocate for Heartbeat legislation across the country in collaboration with Janet Porter the election denier

·       Train pastors to respond to social issues using Charis as a model to gaslight authorities, meaning government and police, with prayers for their souls instead of protesting their order-following behavior

·       Oppose globalism and one-world doctrines with sovereign nation doctrine, specifically the sovereignty of the U.S. and of Israel    

 

Summary of The Propaganda Team (platforms range from Fox News to Truth & Liberty radio and their followers’ blogs and podcasts):

Lucas Miles, American Pastor Project—pastor at Influence Church, and propagandist for epic times church and church boys podcast

Alex McFarland—propagandist Truth and Liberty radio

David Barton, Wallbuilders—propagandist on early American colonies and bible-based education

Jeff Anderson—Cong. Lamborn’s Senior Adviser for Community Outreach, pro-Israel propagandist and political insider

Elizabeth Muren—propagandist and screenwriter on banning abortion

Janet Porter—legislative activist/organizer for abortion ban, election-denier

Mohamad Faridi, Destination USA—propagandist for one-world Christian religion, anti-Islam

Richard Harris—propagandist in chief of Truth and Liberty radio

My Conclusion

None of this is about a radical right concerned about crime. It is an attack on democracy. What are your thoughts? More importantly, what are you doing about it beyond street protests or pre-emptively complying? We have an election coming up. Consider making a plan to get voters to the polls in person, in case that turns out to be our only option.  

Renters Deserve Safe Homes—Our City Can Make That Happen

We have been in a housing crisis for some time. While much of the conversation focuses on building new units, we’re quietly losing the most affordable housing we already have: existing rental homes that are falling into disrepair. As a policy researcher and a renter, I see this disconnect every day—between what our community needs and what our housing system delivers.

That’s why it’s time for our city to adopt a rental housing licensing program with habitability inspections. This is not a radical idea. It’s a practical, proven policy that protects tenants, ensures safe homes, and prevents neglect before it turns into displacement.

Here’s how it works: landlords register their rental units with the city, and those units are subject to periodic habitability inspections. If a home isn’t up to basic health and safety standards—mold, broken heaters, faulty wiring—the city can require repairs before the next tenant moves in. It’s simple, effective, and fair.

Right now, responsible landlords who maintain their properties are playing by the rules. But those who ignore basic maintenance face little to no consequences—and renters pay the price. Licensing and inspections level the playing field and promote fairness across the board.

This policy is already working in cities across the country. In Minneapolis, housing inspections led to major drops in severe violations. In Sacramento, over 70% of inspected units needed repairs, and those repairs got done. The results speak for themselves.

But this is more than just policy. It’s about dignity. Renters are often treated as invisible in local politics, even though we make up a significant portion of the population. We are workers, voters, parents, and neighbors. We deserve the same baseline protections as homeowners.

Safe housing shouldn’t be a privilege. It should be a standard.

This licensing program is how we get there.

#Housingcrisis

#housingcrisis

#housing-justice