In The NoCo

The cash bail system continues to face scrutiny in the U.S. Activists say it subverts the long-held American ideal that a person is innocent until proven guilty. In other words, under the cash bail system, if you can’t afford to post bail, you could end up sitting in jail for days, weeks or months waiting for a trial regardless of your innocence. 

In Colorado, like other states, people of color are overrepresented in jails and prisons, making this a huge equity issue. State Rep. Elisabeth Epps recently won a seat in the statehouse in part because of her activism on this issue. She has been fighting to reform the justice system and eradicate cash bail in Colorado for several years and the documentary How We Get Free tells that story.  

"It is incredibly challenging when you talk about folks who have been incarcerated, or even unjustly incarcerated, to get people to sit up and pay attention,” said co-director Geeta Gandbhir.  “But it's just the nature of the way that in our country, folks who are economically more vulnerable have been vilified.”

Ahead of the film’s screening at the ACT Human Rights Film Festival in Fort Collins, In The NoCo’s Erin O’Toole sat down with Gandbhir to learn why she made Epps’ grassroots efforts the subject of her documentary. 

How We Get Free screens during the festival's opening night, Wednesday, April 3, at Colorado State University's Lory Student Center theater.

The need to screen students for learning disabilities is on the rise in Northern Colorado and mental health providers are having trouble meeting the demand. Marybeth Rigali-Oiler, a child and adolescent psychologist with the Health District of Northern Larimer County, says finding answers isn’t always straightforward, either.

“You also have to kind of throw a broad net to see, well, is it actually ADHD? Is it actually anxiety? Is it because this child fell behind during Covid and just hasn't had the intervention to catch up? Or is there an underlying learning disability?” Rigali-Oiler said. “And it could be a combination of all of those things. And so testing really should have a broad net that's looking at social-emotional factors, cognitive ability and achievement in order to really see where the puzzle pieces land.”

When kids don’t get the screenings they need, questions about why they are struggling to achieve persist. Parents are also left to wonder when, say, kids are anxious about going to class, known as “school refusal,” Rigali-Oiler said. Is it a learning disability, mental health, or something else? In The NoCo’s Erin O’Toole sat down with Rigali-Oiler to learn about the factors fueling this problem. 

Water – and how to manage it – is a perennial topic in the parched American West. So today on  World Water Day, we are looking at some of the most pressing water issues of the moment and how we in Northern Colorado can better appreciate and conserve this precious resource. 

"I just wish people would realize the foresight it took to build some of these water systems that we take for granted now,” said Jennifer Gimbel, a water scholar at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center. “Over 100 years old, many of them are, and just the engineering that was involved to get it here. And so – appreciate when you turn on that water, and clean water comes out, we are blessed. There are people in the United States, people on the Navajo Nation who can't say that. They have to haul their water. So we are blessed."

In The NoCo’s Erin O’Toole sat down with Gimbel to tap into what is happening with water in our state. 

Many of us have been told that our twenties are the best time in our lives. But some data suggests otherwise. At least one new report says 20-somethings in the U.S. are some of the most unhappy in the world. 

"I have yet to meet someone who's like, ‘Gosh, I wish I could be in my 20s again,’” said Meg Jay, a clinical psychologist who specializes in this formative decade of life. “You know, your 20s are not going to be the best years of your life. Thank God, right? I mean, what if they were -- and then it was all terrible from there?”

Jay discusses her new book, The Twentysomething Treatment: A Revolutionary Remedy for an Uncertain Age, at Colorado State University on Tuesday, March 26. Ahead of her talk, In The NoCo’s Erin O’Toole sat down with her to discuss the unique stressors 20-somethings face today and what she has learned about these pivotal years. 

Prisons in Colorado are severely understaffed and that is hitting workers especially hard. But the effects of this shortage stretch far past the staff.

“You have not only the stress on the staff from the vacancy, you have the disruption of normal functionality for the department as a whole and, then of course, this incredible negative impact on the people who are incarcerated,” said Christie Donner, executive director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, which wants to see more money invested in community initiatives and less spent on the prison system.

Donner and her colleagues recently released a report surveying hundreds of incarcerated Coloradans about their living conditions amid the staffing shortage. She sat down with In The NoCo’s Erin O’Toole to discuss what incarcerated people said about their experience. 

In many communities across Colorado, teens say there are few things for them to do after school. In Summit County, as local leaders work on a long-term plan for the future, young people are asking for more affordable indoor spaces. KUNC senior editor and reporter Leigh Paterson sat down with local students to discuss why these hangout spots are so important to them and their well-being. She joined In The NoCo’s Erin O’Toole to explain what young people had to say. 

The launch of a passenger rail line in Northern Colorado felt a smidge closer to reality last week at Union Station. That’s when the first passenger train in decades departed from Denver to Longmont. The passengers included state lawmakers, transportation pros and Governor Jared Polis, who did the honors of calling passengers aboard.

We have been dreaming about a Front Range passenger rail since plans were released several months ago. And hearing about this demonstration trip fueled those dreams even more. So today we are indulging that obsession by listening back to a conversation with Andy Karsian, general manager for the Front Range Passenger Rail District. In The NoCo’s Erin O’Toole sat down with him shortly after he and his team unveiled their plans last December.

Imagine keeping your cool with 10 crying babies in a classroom. Yes, childcare is hard work and it is crucial to our fast-growing community. 

“We're not just babysitters, we just don't show up in a warehouse and play with kids all day. The work that we do is essential so that children are ready for school. To enter kindergarten, they're ready at third grade reading levels, and they're ready to graduate high school,” said Anne Lance with Teaching Tree Early Childhood Learning Center, a Larimer County nonprofit that serves low- and middle-income families. 

It is among the childcare providers navigating a nationwide childcare shortage that is hitting Colorado hard. In The NoCo’s Erin O’Toole visited her at the newly opened Loveland Youth Campus to learn more about how the landscape of care has changed and how the organization is hoping to make a dent in the rising need.

Author and activist St. Clair Detrick-Jules uses words and images to capture personal stories that celebrate and center Black liberation, the immigrant experience, and women's rights. 

“Historically in this country, Black people haven't been able to really control the narrative of our own stories, of our own lives and experiences,” she said. “And so I think that for us being able to share our first-person experiences and actually have a platform to be heard and to have our stories valued and appreciated is really empowering.”

On Thursday at CU Boulder’s art museum, Detrick-Jules discusses her book My Beautiful Black Hair: 101 Natural Hair Stories. 

Ahead of her talk, Detrick-Jules sat down with In The NoCo’s Erin O’Toole. She began by discussing a moment that inspired the book, when her 4-year-old sister, Khloe, was in tears after her white classmates bullied her about her afro.

When KUNC senior managing editor Stephanie Daniel journeyed into the mountains to work on her podcast The Colorado Dream, she met Javier Pineda, a snowboard instructor and Mexican immigrant. She was reporting on the housing crisis in Summit County, which has had a major impact on Pineda’s life. But as is often the case with journalism, telling one story led to the discovery of another. 

Daniel learned that Pineda had launched a new program called Oso Outdoors where he provides free snowboarding lessons to Hispanic and Latino residents, many of whom are immigrants. 

“Oso Outdoors is unique in that Javier is bilingual and bi-cultural and he can teach his snowboarding classes in Spanish. When we talk about diversity, oftentimes it's just around race and ethnicity. But language is also a barrier,” Daniel said.

She sat down with In The NoCo’s Robyn Vincent to discuss her reporting that looks at how Oso Outdoors is helping to change the makeup of the slopes.