Denver Communists

On Friday, we celebrated three years of monthly protests against Drip Café, the homophobic “café evangelist” project that has tried to smuggle their backward ideology into the art district under cover of an innocent coffeeshop. (See the slideshows pinned to our Instagram profile for more.)

We got *extra* love from the *extra* crowd since it’s Pride month.

Drip supporters amped up their sealioning tactic — diverting our attention with relentless bad-faith questions and feigned earnestness and curiosity. But after years of dealing with these fundamentalist numbskulls, we know they only talk to us to waste our time, convert us, or satisfy their humiliation fe**sh.

It seemed like we were the subject of a field trip for young adult protest-tourists fulfilling their religious duty to confront q***r people during Pride.

One Drip supporter claimed to be a transmasc le***an until she received conversion therapy directly from Jesus Himself during a near-death experience.

A couple of Drip supporters zeroed in on an intersex comrade of ours, alternating between lovebombing her and invalidating her gender. They used faux science to justify their transphobia, insisting that chromosomes are all that matters. Shocking that biblical literalists would spew bigoted pseudoscience, right?!

We turned away dozens of potential customers. A few that we missed exited before buying anything after hearing the bad Christian music and realizing the place was a weirdo cult-café. One gay couple didn’t catch the vibe until after they bought drinks — then came outside, got the scoop from us, and decided to pour their drinks out.

Notes of Dissent played “Bella Ciao,” Chappell Roan, Lady Gaga, and Rage Against the Machine to drown out Drip’s dreadful Christian rock.

Denver Police mostly kept their distance, but kept an eye on us. They were curious about our mystery guest dressed in black, but didn’t get too far in questioning us about them.

See you next month to KEEP THE ART WALK GAY!

Join us to show support for a drag queen story time with Zarah Misdemeanor, which is under threat from the vile reactionaries with Libs of TikTok.

Monday, June 8 at 9:45 am
Belmar Library
555 S. Allison Parkway, Lakewood

Once just a fringe ragebait twitter account, Libs of TikTok has metastasized into a powerful political force directly impacting legislation and encouraging threats, harassment, and terrorism against q***r people.

According to Ari Drennen, LGBTQ program director for Media Matters, the progressive media watchdog group, “Libs of TikTok is shaping our entire political conversation about the rights of LGBTQ people to participate in society. It feels like they’re single-handedly taking us back a decade in terms of the public discourse around LGBTQ rights.”

Those who oppose drag claim to be protecting kids, but they actually seek to criminalize and oppress trans and all q***r people — especially trans women, who are central to the right’s fear-mongering.

We will be lining up alongside our comrades in Parasol Patrol outside the library to visibly and vocally support drag, and to counter any right-wing opposition.

Join us! Drag defense is anti-fascism!

Join the Denver Communists for some IRL socializing!

📅 Saturday, June 20 at 2pm
📍Sunken Gardens Park

When you get there, look for our flags! We will have food, drinks, and politics ready to share.

When we committed to protesting against Drip Café every month at the First Friday Art Walk, we thought we could run these bigots out more easily.

Drip Café opened three years ago in the q***r-friendly Santa Fe Art District, as an extension of Recycle God’s Love, a homophobic church. The neighborhood has roundly rejected it. Drip has been unable to build an organic customer base thanks to their homophobia being exposed by our monthly protests, local reporting, and their very own words.

But because Drip Café is a political project, they managed to develop an unexpected revenue stream: ideologically-motivated donors and customers from outside the city and across the country. Thanks to aggressive fundraising and propaganda in fundamentalist Christian media, Drip has built a network of religious q***rphobes, anti-abortion activists, and literal fascists to rally around their project of spreading anti-LGBTQ+ ideology.

It was clear from the beginning that Drip Café was a grift, in addition to being a political project. Like any good “café evangelist,” pastor-owner Jamie Sanchez surely got into the game to funnel untaxed donations from his non-profit ministry to his for-profit business.

We knew about the $45,000+ Sanchez has collected by whining about “anti-Christian persecution” by scary q***r communists and anarchists. (3-year fundraiser total: $45,892)

But we underestimated the level of Sanchez’s grift until we looked at his church’s tax records. They seem to indicate he has moved over $190,000 of untaxed money from his non-profit ministry to his for-profit business in three years. (2023: $73,640, 2024: $88,810, 2025: $31,787)

Even if Drip can siphon money from their church indefinitely and remain open, we will continue to oppose their presence at least once a month at our beloved art walk. We’ve got plenty of time for bigots — to make sure they get no peace and can’t operate on their own terms.

Right-wing churches are key incubators of the homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny that underpin the current assault on LGBTQ+ rights. In such a backward and dangerous climate, we think it’s important to build resistance — even against a seemingly unimportant little hate-café — and show it to the wider public. Any effort to make q***rphobia more mainstream must be vigorously opposed. Any ground we cede to the far right will only come back to haunt us.

🪧
Protest Drip Café
at the First Friday Art Walk
6 - 9 pm, Every first Friday
until they close down for good
869 Santa Fe Dr, Denver

Celebrate three years of opposition to Drip Café’s bigotry!

🌈 Join the Denver Communists 🚩 Notes of Dissent 🎺 and Bread & Roses Legal Center 🏴 for our monthly protest against the Drip Café, a coffeeshop run by a fundamentalist Christian, anti-LGTBQ+ church. (For more info, check out the anti-Drip slideshows pinned to our Instagram page.)

This will be our 37th protest against Drip at the First Friday Art Walk. For three years now, we’ve ruined every single one of what would otherwise be their best days of the month. Because they have come to depend on ideologically-motivated donations and sales, we have not been able to drive out the homophobic hate-café, but we’ve given them no peace and no ability to operate on their own terms.

Our monthly protests have evolved into a mix of a picket, an anti-fascist counter-demonstration, and a street party. We always have a good time, whether we are informing people about Drip’s homophobia and transphobia, exchanging sharp words with self-identified bigots, or shooting the s**t with each other and the First Friday Art Walk crowd.

Come through! Every first Friday until Drip closes down for good.

Protest Drip Café
Friday, June 5 from 6 - 9 pm MT
869 Santa Fe Dr, Denver

🧟‍♂️ Though Stalinist ideas remain influential on the left, their theoretical tradition is built on lies and bad history. In Stalin’s Shadow, a new book by Marxist historian and regular Firebrand contributor Doug Enaa Greene, confronts the writers who’ve defended their hero’s counterrevolution. As Greene argues, apologetics for Stalinism inevitably lead to idealist distortions and irrational conspiracy theories.

📖 “Historical support for the USSR has metastasized into contemporary campism: left-wing support for states that posture as anti-imperialist while maintaining their own imperialist aspirations built on the exploitation and oppression of workers, national minorities, women, and LGBTQ+ people.”

Debunking Stalin’s Zombie Apologists - Firebrand Influential on the left, their theoretical tradition is built on lies and bad history. In Stalin’s Shadow, a new book by Marxist historian and regular Firebrand contributor Doug Enaa Greene, confronts the writers who’ve defended their hero’s counterrevolution. As Greene argues, apologetics for...

🧟‍♂️ Debunking Stalin’s Zombie Apologists

Though Stalinist ideas remain influential on the left, their theoretical tradition is built on lies and bad history. In Stalin’s Shadow, a new book by Marxist historian and regular Firebrand contributor Doug Enaa Greene, confronts the writers who’ve defended their hero’s counterrevolution. As Greene argues, apologetics for Stalinism inevitably lead to idealist distortions and irrational conspiracy theories.

📖 “Historical support for the USSR has metastasized into contemporary campism: left-wing support for states that posture as anti-imperialist while maintaining their own imperialist aspirations built on the exploitation and oppression of workers, national minorities, women, and LGBTQ+ people.”

Read more at firebrand.red

STUDY GROUP
🌎 An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Sundays at 10am MT / 12pm, ET
June 7 - July 19
On zoom at bit.ly/dencomzoom

📖 “This book attempts to tell the story of the United States as a colonial settler-state, one that, like colonialist European states, crushed and subjugated the original civilizations in the territories it now rules. Indigenous peoples, now in a colonial relationship with the United States, inhabited and thrived for millennia before they were displaced to fragmented reservations and economically decimated.”

Dunbar-Ortiz argues that the reality of the history of US policies and actions toward Native peoples is a reality of settler-colonial imperialism, and that this reality is inherent in the Manifest Destiny origin myth of the United States. She describes how the system of settler colonialism depends on force, violence, and genocide, and concludes that US history cannot be understood without addressing that fact.

🗓️ Schedule:
June 7: Introduction
June 14: Ch. 1 & 2
June 21: Ch. 3 & 4
June 28: Ch. 5 & 6
July 5: Ch. 7 & 8
July 12: Ch. 9 & 10
July 19: Ch. 11 & Conclusion

⬇️ Download the ebook: bit.ly/indigenous-peoples-history

🚢 Trump, Iran, and the Limits of Empire

The US’s most recent imperialist exploit in Iran has been as catastrophic as it has been bloody. Trump’s inability to bully, bluster, and bomb Iran into submission, while suffering humiliating military setbacks, has exposed the empire’s vulnerabilities. This is a contradictory new era of imperialism, in which the US and allies including Israel become more dangerous as they lose their grip on soft power.

📖 “The communist position on Iran must therefore be for the defeat of the US and Israel, for the military victory of Iran in its defense against imperial aggression, and for the victory of Iran’s exploited and oppressed in their struggle against the Iranian regime.”

Read more at firebrand.red

🌯 Join the Denver Communists for some IRL socializing!

📅 Sunday, May 10 at 2pm
📍Sunken Gardens Park

When you get there, look for our flags! We will have food, drinks, and politics ready to share.