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Kayvan for Denver: A Bold New Future for the Mile High City

Kayvan for Denver: A Bold New Future for the Mile High City

It was the night of April 12th, 2007, and then-mayor, current-governor John Hickenlooper was holding a community forum. Greeting attendees was a man holding a sign posing the question ‘What’s so scary about marijuana?’—with the goal of challenging Hickenlooper’s hypocritical stances on cannabis.

Denverites pointed and giggled at the man, but they didn’t mock his ideals. You see, this man was Kayvan Khalatbari, and he was dressed head-to-toe in a chicken costume.

Now, that same man who once wore a chicken costume in public is running for mayor. His steadfast political work and business savvy, have prepared him for this challenge.

Born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, Khalatbari was the child of an Iranian immigrant and a partial-Cherokee Native. “We grew up pretty poor,” he said. “Not because of what they did, but because of my dad’s gambling addiction; that put us in bankruptcy twice before I was ten years old.”

Khalatbari moved in with his mom at a young age after his parents’ divorce and saw her work ethic firsthand. Her indomitable spirit would inspire Khalatbari later on.

After being transferred to Denver by the engineering firm he’d been working for, he realized that a traditional “sterile, interior grey cubicle” kind of job wasn’t for him. Following his decision to leave the firm, he sank his savings, cash, and credit into buying a failing pizzeria in Capitol Hill.

Now known as Sexy Pizza, the restaurant has become a thriving business with three different locations throughout the city. The chain is known for being sex-positive and affirming in its advertising, as well as for getting involved with charity work. After tons of cannabis-decriminalization advocacy on numerous fronts (including the aforementioned ‘Chickenlooper’ stunt) Kayvan founded Denver Relief, one of the state’s first cannabis businesses.

He’s also the man behind Sexpot Comedy, a multi-platform media enterprise spreading its tenacious tentacles out from the Denver comedy scene and into the world at large, and birdy magazine, the city’s most popular collective arts and literary publication.

“The cannabis industry is just another business, you know, that’s what I’ve fought for since I’ve been in it for about a decade now,” he said.

Khalatbari is currently on the boards of numerous local and national marijuana advocacy groups, including Students for Sensible Drug Policy and the Minority Cannabis Business Association.

Although drug policy reform has always been a key aspect in his advocacy and a major part of his platform, he has also been on the frontline for issues like affordable housing and Denver’s homeless. In 2016, after Mayor Michael Hancock’s controversial urban camping ban, Khalatbari posted a video to Facebook showing DPD officers taking blankets from a freezing homeless veteran; after his video went viral with more than a million views, Hancock lifted the ban until April.

“We keep criminalizing public health issues, whether it be cannabis or other drugs, sex work, homelessness,” he said. “These are things that we throw people in jail for for trying to survive.”

As a principal member of the Alternative Solutions Advocacy Project, Khalatbari worked to get Beloved Community Village, a community of tiny homes for the city’s homeless, approved last March. He claims that although projects like these are by no means the “end-all be-all of homelessness,” they are a step forward for finding new, innovative ways of combating the city’s housing problems.

In terms of his goals as mayor, Khalatbari wants to include the voices of those who, according to him, have not been recognized properly by the current administration. This would include millennials, the poor, people of color, and the queer community.

To check out where Khalatbari stands on the other issues check out KayvanForDenver.com.

 

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