Denver Communists

05/31/2026

🧟‍♂️ 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.”

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...

05/31/2026

🧟‍♂️ 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

05/20/2026

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

05/05/2026

🚢 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

05/04/2026

🌯 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.

05/03/2026

STUDY GROUP

State & Revolution by VI Lenin
Mondays at 6 pm MT (8 pm ET)
May 11 - June 15
On Zoom at: bit.ly/dencomzoom

To correct the reformism that came to dominate the socialist movement in the early 1900s, Lenin’s classic work revives a revolutionary Marxist approach to the state. Lenin synthesizes decades of Marxist theory to reaffirm the conclusion that the working class must seize and smash the bourgeois state in order to begin the transition to a classless society.

📖 “The state is a product and manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms.”

📆 Schedule
May 11: Introduction
May 18: Chapters 1 & 2
May 25: Chapter 3
June 1: Chapter 4
June 8: Chapter 5
June 15: Chapter 6

Download ebook at bit.ly/state-and-revolution

05/02/2026

Yesterday on May Day — International Workers’ Day — we split up to address international workers’ issues at two places at once: immigrant justice at the Federal Theatre and q***r liberation at the First Friday Art Walk.

At the Federal Theatre, we joined a variety of activists and vendors to support a concert featuring Chicano funk, cumbiadélica, and indie rock music by Los Mocochetes, Ritmo Cascabel, and Manny. We ate tamales, reminisced with comrades about years of fighting for immigrant rights, and distributed our favorite books on the subject, including Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition by Silky Shah.

At the Art Walk, we posted up in front of Drip Café to inform the crowd about the coffee shop run by a homophobic church, while our comrades in the protest band Notes of Dissent provided a lively soundtrack.

As we approach three years of this campaign to raise awareness, disrupt their business, and drive them out of the neighborhood, it remains clear that the community is overwhelmingly on our side. The weather was perfect and the Art Walk was packed with people who stopped by to express gratitude for our ongoing presence and disgust that the hate-café was still operating.

As usual, Drip’s supporters made our job easier by putting their bigotry and idiocy on full display to passersby. A few of them had to come out to express their “Christian love” by expressing support for conversion therapy, yelling in our faces, and pouring water onto our chalk art.

One particularly annoying guy complained about how we are so mean, while the Drip people are so nice and love everyone. There’s no hate like (fundamentalist) Christian love, of course! We chased him off with the intolerant left’s trademark meanness, chanting “mus-tache, go away!” Another exclaimed, “I’m a red-blooded American patriot! I bet you’ve never even lived in a communist country!” clearly alienating the passersby he was trying to appeal to.

Next month marks three years of protesting Drip on First Friday, and we will continue to be there every month until they close!

04/28/2026

Protest Drip Café
Friday, May 1, 6 - 9 pm
869 Santa Fe Dr, Denver

Concert + Activist Fair
Friday, May 1, 8 pm
Federal Theatre, 3830 N Federal Blvd, Denver

May Day is for q***r liberation and immigrant justice! We will be at two places at once on this International Workers’ Day doing outreach about workers’ issues — like homophobia, transphobia, and racist opposition to immigration.

At the First Friday Art Walk, join us, 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.)

At the Federal Theatre, join us, Jeanette Vizguerra, and a host of activist groups at a concert featuring Los Mocochetes 🤧, Ritmo Cascabel 🪗, and Manny 🎸. We’ll be there to talk about what it will take to abolish ICE, borders, the police, and prisons — and to distribute books on those subjects. Also on offer: food, jewelry, Chinga La Migra t-shirts, know your rights and labor rights materials, and more.

04/06/2026

On Friday, we met up at the art walk once again for our monthly protest against Drip Café, the coffee shop run by a bigoted church called Recycle God’s Love.

To our surprise and delight, they were closed for Good Friday! Their closure gave us ample opportunity to chat with passersby about the importance of continuing to stand against incubators of q***rphobia like Drip.

With the recent Supreme Court decision that anti-gay conversion therapy is protected speech (on a case brought by a Christian minister from Colorado), it is more evident than ever that these types of views need to be confronted, and these types of people need to be driven out of our communities.

Our table was busy all night with people stopping to talk and offer support. It was nice to be completely among friends at the art walk, with no hostile presence or open bigotry from Drip’s staff or supporters. Just good vibes up, with music from Notes of Dissent, and great conversations with the art walk crowd.

03/30/2026

Fundamentalists, G**O!
Transphobia is not welcome here!

Protest Drip Café
Friday, April 3 from 6 - 9 pm MT
869 Santa Fe Dr, Denver

🌈 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.)

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.