Cole LeFavour/Nicole LeFavour Papers, 1978-2020

Cole LeFavour (they/them) is a writer, activist and former State Senator who, in 2004, was elected as Idaho first openly gay member of the Idaho legislature. After eight years serving in government on committees ranging from Budget and Taxation to the Judiciary, Environment, Health and Welfare, LeFavour became a founder of Idaho's Add the Words movement and left elected office in 2012 to organize peaceful acts of civil disobedience in the Senate in an attempt to advance human and civil rights for gay and transgender people. Raised on Robinson Bar Ranch in rural Central Idaho, LeFavour earned a bachelors in cognitive science from U.C. Berkeley and a Master of Fine arts in writing from the University of Montana. LeFavour's 2016 TEDx Talk on fear and anger has nearly 100K views on YouTube. Cole is one of Idaho's many gender pioneers and identifies as "non-binary" meaning as neither male nor female and often as a little of both.

LeFavour's work in Boise prior to 2004 includes writing for, editing and publishing the Boise Green Reader Magazine 1993-1994, writing for the Boise Weekly, activism with the Idaho Community Action Network, Idaho Center on Budget & Tax Policy, United Vision for Idaho, Idaho Women's Network, Your Family Friends & Neighbors and its Speak Out, Pride, and Women's Night projects. LeFavour worked as staff for the Snake River Alliance in 1993, lobbying with other community activists on nuclear waste and weapons issues in Washington D.C., opposing the Owhyee Canyonlands Bombing Range and helping to form the nuclear train watch network, tracking secret shipments of nuclear waste from navy ports to the Idaho National Lab. In 1992, Cole was arrested with hundreds of others at the Nevada Test Site as part of the Healing Global Wounds protests opposing nuclear weapons testing. In 1994, LeFavour was hired as Volunteer Coordinator for the successful No On One Campaign opposing Idaho's Anti-Gay Initiative.

In 1996 LeFavour began training LGBTQ Idahoans and allies for annual lobby days in the state Capitol, organizing rallies, education events, letter writing, phone calls all in hopes of educating members of the legislature about the lives of gay and transgender people and to push for inclusion in Idaho's human rights act, civil rights act, anti-bullying and malicious harassment laws. In late 2011, as a sitting Senator, LeFavour quietly led efforts to form Add the Words, Idaho which held rallies, lobbied and posted sticky note messages from nearly every town in the state inside the capitol. LeFavour with Judy Cross, James Blazor, Ty Carson Eisenman others formed Add the Four Words in 2014 specifically for the purpose of organizing civil disobedience in response to Senate ProTem Brent Hill's refusal to allow any hearing on a bill to "Add the Words."

Throughout their life, LeFavour worked as an educator, teaching at Fort Boise Jr. High Alternative School, in public and private classrooms at all levels, with the Writers at Harriman program and as part of The Cabin's Writers in the schools program in Boise and for many years with the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes at Fort Hall.

Prior to 1990, while attending U.C. Berkeley, Cole participated in protests and rallies that included a December 10 arrest with 37 others for "willfully and maliciously blocking a street and sidewalk," the first of hundreds of arrests as part of Berkeley's 1984-1985 Anti-Apartheid divestment movement. In summers at that time, Cole worked in Idaho in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness and from 1986-1988 was stationed as a fire lookout on Pinyon Peak and Little Soldier Mountain. Hired as the Challis National Forest's first wilderness ranger in 1989, from 1988 to 1992 Cole gathered acid-lake baseline data, logged trail conditions, monitored outfitter camps, fought fire, collected data and took photographs for use by the Yankee Fork and Middle Fork Ranger districts.