WRAPP Volunteers
Jacqueline Weller
Jacqueline Weller began her spiritual search in her teens and still loves studying comparative religions and the cultures that create them. She has been practicing Wicca for over 25 years and has been a professional psychic almost that long. She worked as a psychotherapist for a dozen years, has over a 1000 hours training as a hypnotherapist, is an Alchemical Hypnotherapist, a NLP Master Practitioner, an energy healer, teacher, writer and community organizer. She is working on several spiritual and self-help books. A High Priestess of the Wicca, she ran Dragonfhain (coven) and the High Plains Church of Wicca for many years with her ex-husband, George. She was a founder of DAWN -- the Denver Area Wiccan Network -- back in the 1980s, and has been working on communication, cooperation and community-building among followers of the Earth Religions ever since.
A founder of WRAPP, and presently the Chairperson of the Board of Directors, she has been saying for years that someone should create a place where folks can go to find out what is going on in the Front Range Pagan Community. She is excited to be working with her colleague, Cynthia, and two leaders in the community from a younger generation, to create and compile just such a resource.
Cynthia LeFevre
Cynthia LeFevre found her way to the path of Wicca about eight years ago after a long struggle to find the religion that would allow her to express the magic that has always been in her heart. She practices Kabbalistic Wicca (with a strong leaning towards the Hindu pantheon), Shamanism, Herbology and spell-crafting. As a High Priestess of the Wicca she has lead many rituals, including the Witches Ball ritual, and offers Full Moon observance at her home in Brighton. She has a varied career background including: firing rocket motors, technical writing, legal secretary, insurance and nutritional supplement sales, women's fitness trainer and Ayurvedic health coach. Her lifelong passion though, is music. She has been playing piano for 40 years and has been teaching piano for the past ten years. Cynthia has an A.A.S. in electronics, a B.A. in piano performance, and a M.M. in piano pedagogy. She is a trained Ayurvedic coach, life coach and public speaker - leading small seminars for Landmark Education.
Also a founder of WRAPP, and presently the Secretary of the Board of Directors, she is delighted that this project is finally manifesting an exciting, new community resource and a welcome injection of vital energy for the organization.
Joy Burton
Joy Schalders-Burton has been an eclectic Wiccan priestess for over 15 years. She leads the Highlands Ranch Pagan Meetup. She is passionate about being a community organizer, scientist, seamstress, teacher, baker, mother, nature lover, world traveler, and artist. One of her current goals is to see the Front Range pagan community come together in a sharing of information, resources, and events. WRAPP's community calendar and Purple Pages is an important part of that vision.
Rozaylia Panofsky
Rozaylia spent the four years she lived in Colorado networking within the pagan community, keeping in mind her long-time vision of a community that focuses on its similarities rather than its differences. Pagan for many years, Rozaylia has worked with communities across the country teaching, organizing, networking, and experiencing the wonders that the pagan world has to offer. She works most closely with the Reclaiming Tradition with a Gardnerian background.
Although Rozaylia has stepped back from a lot of her activities with WRAPP and the community at large to focus on her career and home life, she is still very excited to provide web services to any and all who seek her creativity. She lives in the wild Willits hills of Northern California in a wonderful place called "Red Rose Ridge" with her partner Gregor and 11 pet rats; and is excited about moving soon to Eugene, Oregon!
Part One
by Jacqueline Weller
Copyright 2008
WRAPP was formed in 2003 to fight the new Wheat Ridge city ordinance requiring psychics, and stores with psychic readers, to file for a Special Use Permit in order to practice in non-industrial sections of the city. At the time the law was first passed, Wheat Ridge officials estimated that it might take up to eight months for each decision on granting such a permit.
The effect of the law was to force most psychic readers and metaphysical stores out of Wheat Ridge. This article begins with an account of repealing a similar law in Denver three years before, and discusses some of the Constitutional rights denied by the passage of such laws.
Part 2 of the History of WRAPP will discuss what efforts were taken in the attempt to get the law changed, how this effort failed, and how WRAPP broadened its focus to work more generally for Earth Religion Civil, Constitutional and religious rights, and for religious tolerance in the state of Colorado.
The Fight to Repeal Anti-Fortune Telling Ordinances
Section 38-100 of the Denver Municipal Code stated: “Fortune telling. It shall be unlawful for any person to ask or receive any compensation, gratuity or reward for practicing fortune telling, palmistry or clairvoyance; provided, however, that the provisions of this section as it relates to clairvoyance shall not be applicable to bona fide participation in religious worship of any legally constituted religious body which has been exempted by the United States Treasury Department under the Internal Revenue Code from paying federal income tax.”
This ordinance, enacted in 1950, was part of anti-Gypsy laws passed in many cities of the Midwest in the 1950s. It was written to prevent séances, card reading, crystal ball gazing and such being used to defraud people. For many years the law had been mostly ignored and only sporadically enforced in Denver. In 1999, Denver Assistant City Attorney John Poley attempted to get the city council to scrap the law, fearful of legal action based on legal precedents established by constitutionally based lawsuits in cities like Lincoln, Nebraska; Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Independence, Missouri. However, at the recommendation of the police department, the city council kept the ordinance.
After threatening a few individual psychics with prosecution, both uniformed and plainclothed police (the latter from the vice squad) showed up in the summer of 2000 at four Capitol Hill metaphysical stores: Isis Metaphysical Bookstore, Spiritways, Herbs and Arts and Quantum Alchemy. They asked if anyone was doing psychic readings, threatening arrests if they discovered such activity. Metaphysical stores in other parts of Denver were not contacted, which raised the issue of selective enforcement.
The renewed enforcement was prompted by complaints to the police by persons unknown. Was it the Christian right wing, militant atheists, or was the amount of fraudulent activity up?
In an article in the Denver Post on August 22nd 2000, Poley said the ordinance was not an enforcement priority, likening it being caught urinating in public. In an August 24th article in the Denver Post, Denver’s new police chief, Gerry Whitman, was quoted as saying: “We need to see what connection there is with these services and other crimes. If (my officers) can prove to me it is a threshold crime, we might oppose it.”
Michael West, then a part-owner/manager of Spirit Ways, got angry. West began a campaign of speaking out on talk radio and in newspaper articles, and began a petition drive to repeal the law. Meanwhile Chrystal Moon, a house reader at Isis Metaphysical Bookstore, Jacqueline Weller and others also began tracking the situation. They spread the news through phone calls, e-mail, word-of-mouth, and special events.
The producer of two of the largest Denver metaphysical fairs, Shanti Toll, of Celebration Productions in Colorado Springs, held a special meeting about the campaign to repeal the ordinance at his Labor Day Metaphysical Fair. Moon and Weller both went, bringing information and petitions to psychics at the fair. Even though Toll was not directly affected by the Denver ordinance (he holds his fairs at the Denver Merchandise Mart which is -- ironically -- two blocks outside of the Denver city limits), he is a supporter of civil liberties and freedom of religion and supported the right of consumer choice without government intervention.
At about the same time Manitou Springs -- a mountain town just a few miles outside of Colorado Springs -- had a similar political campaign arise over the desire to repeal a similar ordinance.
Denver citizens were encouraged to call and write letters to the mayor, city council members, the city attorney, and the chief of police requesting the repeal of the offending ordinance. It was suggested that they remind their representatives that they were voters and taxpayers. Non-Denver residents were requested to call or write if they had purchased metaphysical wares or services in Denver, pointing out that their sales taxes help pay the city’s operating budget. The political issues included:
1) The consumer’s right to freedom of choice in the marketplace -- “let the buyer beware”.
2) Small businesses should be supported, not harassed by the city.
3) Don’t legislate against victimless crimes.
4) Don’t waste tax dollars on enforcement of outdated laws.
5) The violation of first amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and religion leaves the city of Denver open to a constitutional lawsuit.
The public was encouraged to attend a meeting on September 13th of the Safety and Personnel Committee of the Denver City Council. At that meeting the Denver City Attorney recommended repeal of the anti-fortune telling ordinance. The organizers of the fight to appeal the ordinance were willing to continue the fight, gearing up letter writing, publicity, fundraising and the pursuit of a lawsuit. However, as only one city council member and the Chief of Police supported keeping the ordinance, it was voted down.
The Denver repeal campaign was easy compared to the experience of Bob Isaac in Independence, Missouri, in 1987. “God, I hope it’s easier for you guys,” said Isaac in Denver in September, 2000. According to Isaac, a couple years after he opened his metaphysical store, Merlin’s New Age Crystals and Jewelry, in the middle of the Bible belt, his city decided to put him out of business. His store was raided by three squad cars carrying fifteen law enforcement personnel, including members of the drug task force. He was charged with five counts of being an accessory to crime, one for each of five psychics arrested at his store. He faced a $10,000.00 fine per count, and two to four years of jail time.
Said Isaac: “They made me mad”. He hired a civil rights attorney to fight the city on constitutional grounds. News of his arrest hit the wire services. He started a legal fund - the “Spiritual Freedom Fund” - that attracted donations from across the country.
His fight had a heavy emotional price, however. At one point the city offered each of the defendants a settlement. They offered to drop all the charges if the defendants waived the city’s liability, as well. Of 9 people arrested in the raid, 6 agreed to the settlement. Isaac wanted the law off the books, however, and kept fighting. He says his local Pagan and psychic communities “turned against him for stirring the pot”, telling him to settle, as did his wife. Isaac says the protracted trial was one of the things that cost him his marriage.
After 10 months of court proceedings, which cost $10,000.00, he won. The city court judge ruled that the law was unconstitutional on two points of Missouri law and on two points of federal law. The court case was settled in November of 1987. In December he threw a psychic fair to celebrate.
Isaac is one of the people disseminating information about this issue nationally. He said the continuing process of repealing these anti-fortune telling laws was also being fought in 2000 in St Louis, Missouri. People like Bob Isaac and the others who have fought this issue before, have set valuable legal precedents that should make any future fights much easier.
When Wheat Ridge City Council decided to add psychics and spiritual advisors to their list of zoning-restricted businesses in January of 2003, it was but the latest in a series of ongoing politico-legal fights. Wheat Ridge City Council members, their attorneys, planning and zoning officials did not seem to realize the Constitutional implications of their zoning ordinance. WRAPP believes that this ordinance raises right-to-earn-a-living and freedom of trade issues in addition to the usual freedom of speech and freedom of religion issues. All the previously-mentioned strategies, and more, will be relevant to the repeal of this law.