When/How to Vote:

Ballots are due on November 7th. If you’re registered to vote here in the Springs, and haven’t already, ballots can be retrieved from the mail center! Ballots may be dropped off by 11/7 at 7 p.m. The closest ballot box is on 30 S. Nevada St. Check this website for other locations: https://batchgeo.com/map/3f94137bc5b621bbe8c6ac8be2da4dec

Voting Recommendations

  • Vote NO on 2A! See below.
  • As an anti-fascist group, we firmly reject the bigoted right-wing takeover of local school boards. As such, we endorse the following candidates for District 11 (D11) School Board: Kate Singh, Darleen Daniels, Shay Dabney, and Rachel Paul.
  • Lastly, we encourage readers to vote No on Proposition HH.

Prison Abolition Project Statement on Amendment 2A and Voter Guide

Content Warning: The following statement deals with violent themes such as police brutality, racialized oppression, and hate-based violence within the Colorado Springs community.

The members of Colorado College’s Prison Abolition Project firmly reject Ballot Initiative 2A. 2A asks voters to permit the City of Colorado Springs to withhold $4,750,000 in TABOR funds for “the purpose of acquiring property, planning, constructing, and equipping a training facility for the Colorado Springs Police Department.” Should 2A pass, the City of Colorado Springs will use the funds as seed money for a Cop City that is predicted to cost between 45-60 million dollars. We call on all voting members of the Colorado College community to vote NO on such an amendment for a plethora of reasons:

  1. CSPD has a history of racialized violence. Since CSPD murdered Devon Bailey in 2019, they have been sued fourteen times. In August of 2023, the ACLU sued the Colorado Springs Police Department and the FBI regarding CSPD’s surveillance and infiltration into local activist and housing advocacy groups. While CSPD officer April Rodgers disguised herself as a concerned community member, going so far as to falsify voting records, the neo-nazi Club Q perpetrator was able to spread hateful and violent rhetoric in online spheres for months. CSPD and the FBI were aware of this neo-nazi but were perhaps too occupied surveilling housing activists to take action.
  2. Colorado Springs faces a housing crisis – we find it reprehensible that the city would rather spend $45 million on police, who have a $125 million budget as of 2022, than housing its residents. Our group views houselessness not as coincidental but rather produced through policy that favors the development of inaffordable housing; The City’s decision to spend $45 million on a police academy amidst increasing housing prices and houselessness reflects the idea that unhoused status is produced through policy.
  3. Related to the ongoing housing crisis, we fear that this unprecedented “investment” in CSPD will embolden and enhance CSPD’s harassment of unhoused Colorado Springs community members. Out of any city in Colorado, Colorado Springs has the most city ordinances criminalizing the activity of unhoused folks (i.e. Sit, Stand, Lie ordinances). Such ordinances, enforced by CSPD, drastically expand the arm of mass incarceration through the dissemination of citations. Citations require that an individual appear in “Court,” which presupposes one has transportation, time off from employment, etc. As such, citations further produce unhoused individuals particularly vulnerable to incarceration and “violations” of parole. Furthermore, several members have heard directly from unhoused individuals regarding their unfair and inhumane treatment at the hands of CSPD’s Homeless Outreach Team (HOT). At the hands of CSPD’s HOT, unhoused community members have been subject to physical and verbal violence and the seizure of personal, sentimental, and/or practical belongings. With a $45 million investment from the City, we predict the repressive capacities of CSPD and HOT to increase.
  4. Many proponents of Amendment 2A falsely suggest that this facility will lead to better police retention and, in turn, a reduction in crime rates. Not only has “crime” been reducing since 2010 in Colorado Springs, the era of mass incarceration and policing in its totality has succinctly demonstrated that increased policing does not produce a reduction in “crime.” What we have seen, however, is a drastic expansion of the category of “crime” to produce an increasing number of individuals as “criminal.” Indeed, violent “crime” rates have been decreasing nationwide long before the inception of the mass incarceration in the 1970s. Instead, “criminality” has seen a drastic expansion of its parameters to increasingly include property “crimes,” or “crimes of desperation;” which may be understood as crimes produced through the violent socioeconomic conditions of racial capitalism. Perhaps instead of turning to a solution that has consistently been ineffective; the overfunding of policing, the City of Colorado Springs should reference approaches to conflict resolution that have shown clear positive results, such as the STAR Program in Denver, CO, or the CAHOOTS program in Eugene, OR.
  5. The City claims that this police training facility (cop city) will improve police-community relations through enhanced de-escalation training and trauma-informed methods. A plethora of research demonstrates that de-escalation training has little to no effect on incidences of police brutality. Furthermore, we reject the notion of police as “trauma-informed.” Police will never be “trauma-informed,” because police gain their authority through their state-mandated/sanctioned ability to use violence. Instead, policing is reified through the production of trauma because the tactic of policing itself is rooted in the threat, or enactment, of force; particularly against Black and Brown folks. When considering the intersections of policing and mass incarceration, we see how police function as trauma-producers, and how the production of trauma disproportionately rests on the infliction of harm against Black and Brown folks.
  6. The City of Colorado Springs plans to spend 45-60 million dollars on this facility by borrowing from its reserves. Such fiscal irresponsibility is incomprehensible given that Mayor Yemi Mobolade’s budget for the 2024 year requires all departments to reduce spending by 3.4%. As concerned residents, we must critique the dumbfounding decision to spend at least $45 million dollars at the expense of invaluable City departments such as the Department of Transportation, Parks, Jobs Assistance, etc.

Listed above are six of the many reasons that Prison Abolition Project opposes Amendment 2A. We encourage readers to oppose 2A for the aforementioned reasons, but also to critically consider their own commitments to community well-being in Colorado Springs, their relationship (or lack thereof) with policing, and their status as non-“locals” in Colorado Springs. Sources are available upon request, but we encourage students to research these phenomena themselves. If these ideas/data seem novel to our reader, we encourage them to critically examine their knowledge, or lack thereof, of Colorado Springs politics and policing at large, and to develop their own relationships with, and knowledge of, the Colorado Springs community. We call upon Colorado College Students, particularly those who seldom depart from the Colorado College “bubble,” to engage with Colorado Springs policy and community in meaningful and respectful ways. The reasoning outlined above has come through face-to-face conversations and organizing with Colorado Springs residents – a perspective not often considered by Colorado College Students during their academic careers. 

We know that the fight to Stop Cop City in Colorado Springs does not end with voting (regardless of whether or not 2A fails). As such, the work of Colorado College’s Prison Abolition Project will continue far beyond the election on 11/7. We call on Colorado College community members to pay close attention to the actions of the Colorado Springs City Government and CSPD following the 11/7 election and to join the broad coalition of community organizing groups including prison abolition project in fighting against a Colorado Springs Cop City.

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P.S. we think it’s kind of funny if Prop II fails, Big Tobacco gets refunded 24 million dollars.