Editor’s Note: Press Releases are provided to Yellow Scene. In an effort to keep our community informed, we publish some press releases in whole.

Denver, CO – On the first day of Colorado’s Legislative Session, members of the Black Democratic Legislative Caucus of Colorado introduced their priority bill of the session, HB25-1013, sponsored by Representatives English and Assistant Majority Leader Bacon and Senate President Coleman. HB25-1013, the Right to Family and Community Connection bill, aims to protect the right of people in prison in Colorado to maintain connections with their families and loved ones.

“I’ve heard stories from families across our state. Parents driving hours to see their child, only to be turned away due to a harsh punishment. Children who light up when they hear their mom or dad’s voice on the phone, only to have that contact cut off due to minor infractions. These stories remind us of the resilience of families, but they also highlight a system that too often makes it harder for families to stay connected when they need each other the most. To my colleagues and our community, I say this: our justice system should be a tool for repair, not a weapon of division,” said Senate President James Coleman.

Members of the Caucus, along with community members, people who have left prison, and families with people who’ve been in prison, called for Colorado to adopt proven solutions that can decrease recidivism and improve mental health outcomes for those in prison and their families. HB25-1013 will ensure that families can maintain vital bonds and relationships that help people in prison have healthy lives.

Despite Colorado’s commitment to prioritizing rehabilitation, the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) defines visitation as a “privilege.” While people in prison are already struggling to provide for their families, Gov. Polis and Executive Director Stancil of CDOC have allowed prisons to use the removal of community and family connection as a coercive tactic to force people in prison to work for subminimum wages.

“Imagine being confined in a facility far from your loved ones, cut off from the very people who provide you with strength, connection, and hope. It’s a reality for thousands of people in our prison system, and it takes a devastating toll on their journey to rehabilitation,” said Assistant Majority Leader Jennifer Bacon.

The Right to Family and Community Connection bill will enshrine the right to in-person visits, video visits, and phone calls for people in DOC to better promote family contact and reduce recidivism. Studies have shown that experiencing prison visits with family and loved ones is connected to a reduction in recidivism, improved mental health, and stronger community bonds. On average, across security levels, experiencing prison visits is correlated with a 24.6% reduction in rearrests within 2 years of release. Receiving visits in prison results in a 26% decrease in post-release criminal activity as well as a 28% reduction in new convictions overall.

“This policy isn’t just about individual rehabilitation. It’s about keeping children connected to their parents, ensuring that families can heal and support one another, and creating a society where everyone has a chance to succeed,” said Representative Regina English.

“There are numerous reasons for the positive impact of visits and social contact. As individuals plan for their release, a higher frequency of visits can help reduce concerns over securing employment, finding housing, reducing debt, and other factors related to the risks of recidivism,” said Senator Tony Exum

The post Black Democratic Legislative Caucus of Colorado Sponsors Landmark Bill to Protect People in Prisons’s Right to Family Connection. appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Press Releases are provided to Yellow Scene. In an effort to keep our community informed, we publish some press releases in whole.

The 2023 Melanin Funk Festival will be a vibrant celebration of Black culture and community in the heart of downtown Boulder. All are welcome to enjoy an evening of fun on 13th Street, featuring renowned artists/local groups, food, drinks, and musical performances. This will be an event like no other!

Can’t miss musical performances include:
Annastezhaa of Ramakhandra
DJ Berry
The Reminders

Check out several amazing vendors/artists and community groups:
Adderly Art (Adderly Grant-Lord)
Radiate Creative
Earth Fragments
George’s Gourmet Pound Cakes

And many more!

[VOLUNTEER AT THIS EVENT]

The post Melanin Funk Festival 2023 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

[LOCAL]

• Mike Johnston wins the Denver mayoral race, although neither candidate was likely to bring about real change.
• Boulder Beat to close down at the end of this year, sadly ending one of the best voices for real, local Boulder journalism.
• Boulder Police Oversight Panel member Lisa Sweeney-Miran is removed by City Council, prompting the panel to pause their work.
• In yet another controversy, Aurora Police execute an armed teenage boy fleeing from officers after stealing vape cartridges.
• Governor Polis signs “Magic Mushroom” Bill into law, regulating newly approved psychedelic drug therapy.
• Dacono City Councilmembers Jackie Thomas and Jim Turini are recalled over their abrupt actions surrounding the removal of the City Manager.
• Louisville City Councilmember Maxine Most faces a recall election regarding her alleged lack of compassion following the Marshall Fire.
• With recent laws against transgender care, Colorado is offering itself as a safe haven for youths in need of gender affirming care.

[NATIONAL]

• Trump indicted a second time, this time 37 counts including for hiding confidential documents. His lawyers immediately quit.
• Wildfire smoke from Canada obscures views of NYC and creates mass health hazards across North America. Canada still burns.
• Private fishing trips, vacations, and other potentially corrupting events have come to light surrounding multiple conservative Supreme Court Justices bringing into question the ethics of judicial decision.
• Hollywood writers go on strike, stalling many major productions and delaying releases.
• Texas woman who traveled to Colorado for an abortion was shot and killed by her boyfriend when she returned home.
• George Santos turned himself in and pleaded not guilty to charges of financial crimes.

[INTERNATIONAL]

• Explosion rocks the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine with evidence pointing towards Russia as the culprit. This will disrupt water and power supply for tens of thousands of people.
• France erupts in protests when a minority teen boy was killed by the police. Don’t worry, you won’t need to cancel your summer trip to Paris.
• Charles III is crowned King of England, which we honestly still cannot believe is a thing in this day and age.

Small Talk:

“Today is the day that Black Americans really get to celebrate our freedom … And in that, it’s important to get the whole community involved and engaged in that so that we can uplift Black voices together as a community.” – Terryjosiah Sharpe, coordinator of Colorado Springs first widespread Juneteenth celebration

“It’s good. It’s good. The job is done. We can go home now.” – Nikola Jokic on his incredible performance winning the NBA Championship with the Denver Nuggets

“Her pleas for help were shrugged off, she said, and she was repeatedly sent home from the hospital. Doctors and nurses told her she was suffering from normal contractions, she said, even as her abdominal pain worsened and she began to vomit bile. Angelica said she wasn’t taken seriously until a searing pain rocketed throughout her body and her baby’s heart rate plummeted.” – Angelica Lyons on giving birth as a Black woman via AP News

“I can’t imagine how terrible this must be for the child’s family, and also our first responder community… Today has been heavy for the City of Boulder, and we are all thinking of the family who just lost their child.” – Boulder Police Chief Maris Harold on the accidental drowning of a 9-year old in Boulder Creek

“I was incredibly surprised given the fact that I’ve been happily married to a woman for the last 15 years.” – Said Stewart, the man named in the Supreme Court ruling that just set back gay rights

By the Numbers:

$107,500 – Amount a family of four need to earn to live comfortably in the BOCO region
63.01 Degrees – Hottest overall average temperature ever recorded for the globe this past July 4th
2018 – Year when Titanic submersible company OceanGate was warned their underwater vehicle was not safe
28.8 – Amount of points Ron DeSantis lags behind Trump in latest poll according to fivethirtyeight.com
$56,000 – Base pay for teachers in St. Vrain Valley School District after recent raise by the district

The post Month in Review | June/July 2023 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Then and now, how far we’ve come and where we need to go.

In the United States, there is a prolonged history of many groups trying to gain mobility and comfort to the same degree as land-owning, white men. This history is so long that the fight for humanization and equality started with the colonization of Africa, Asia, and the Americas in the late 15th century — long before the United States had been conceptualized.

It was not until 1954 with the beginning of the Civil Rights Era when the U.S. began to acknowledge and initiate steps towards dismantling the institutionalized harm dating back nearly 4 1/2 centuries. The social movements happening during the 13-year period from 1954-1967 were prolific. They inspired some of the most iconic visionaries in the United States to rally against racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment.

Nearly 60 years later, 2023 has been filled with setbacks for civil rights across the country. The Supreme Court overturned the critical precedents of Roe v. Wade and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke set precedent for race-conscious admissions programs known as affirmative action. The list continues for LGBTQ+ folks, immigrants, disabled people, and anyone facing economic pressure.

With so much to fear, it is easy to lose hope, but there are still people fighting to end institutionalized hate in our country. Today’s social movements are working toward the same overarching agenda since colonization: liberation. Technology has played a great role in unveiling the struggles of many groups.

Technology has also played a great role in undermining democracy and creating a polarized atmosphere filled with distrust. The intensity with which all social issues have been polarized has contributed to an unprecedented loss of community. To movement leaders, the lack of community separates today’s movements from the movements of the past.

Hasira “H-Soul” Ashemu is an Afro-Indigenous person from northeast Denver. His passions for healing have manifested in his work as an author, coach, and speaker. It is through healing and justice that the Righteous Rage Institute for healing and social justice was founded to guide members through his lifelong experiences.

To Ashemu, the movement is not tied to one specific time or period. Instead, it is linked to the 500-year history of enslavement and institutionalized racism of Black people in the United States. He recounts the term “Maafa,” a Swahili word meant to represent all those who have been lost since the beginning of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. “When we talk about movements, the history of resistance started at the very outset,” said Ashemu.

He went on to explain that the history of resistance can be traced back from the slave rebellions of the Caribbean and its influence on the fight for abolition in the Civil War. This continues through the Niagara Movement, the Reconstruction Era, the Civil Rights Era, the Black Power Era, and into current movements like Black Lives Matter.

“Many of those that are involved inside of movements today, like Black Lives Matter movement, failed to connect their movements first of all to other people of color movements, the LGBTQ movement, and the Chicano movement. Where in the ‘60s that was done very well. The Black Panther Party did an amazing job of connecting all these movements together. It’s become more fractured now. The further we move away from that time, the energy is still there, just the contextualization and understanding of how and what is needed in order to put forward a successful movement [is not].”

H-Soul elaborated, “The way I see it is in this point and history, at this juncture, is the need to make sure that we are heavily into coalition building. In order to coalition build, you have to contextualize. In order to contextualize, you have to tell the history.”

The coalition building Ashemu is referring to is often tied to grassroots organizing which focuses on local-level awareness efforts to build social, political, and economic power. Grassroots efforts are by the people and can exist independently or as a larger part of an organization, party, or governing body.

I have worked as an organizer on a variety of grassroots efforts. The process may sound easy, but coalition building is extremely difficult. It involves a lot of emotional and physical energy to have tough conversations with people of all different backgrounds, and that is if you even get someone to talk to you. The pressures associated with the work tear you down, but it remains an effective method to build political power by the people. Most importantly grassroots organizing gets people talking in the community to foster growth and learn through the experiences of our neighbors.

Colorado House District 27 Representative Brianna Titone broke down the importance of grassroots methods as a legislator. It is imperative she treats her votes as a real-world force affecting the lives of individuals residing not just in District 27 but around the state.

“For an elected official, I think it’s very important for someone to actually go out of their way to learn about someone who is different because they represent everyone who is different. They have a variety of people in their district. They don’t represent just one person who is like them. It is incumbent upon themselves to learn about who their constituents are,” Titone shared.

Representatives are the bridge between the people and government. Meeting constituents where they are paints a clear picture to address and advocate for the electors’ needs.

Representative Titone knows it is impossible to personally know everyone she represents but finds hearing the experiences of her constituents essential to building trust in her district consisting of 88,000 people. Trust comes from the actions of learning as community is built. For instance, being vulnerable and taking criticism if you get something wrong or accidentally offend someone.

It is not expected that a person knows everything, but if a mistake occurs, using the ability to correct your actions to prevent any similar issues from happening offers a route to an ongoing conversation. This is of particular importance to elected officials because a disenfranchised voter with little hope will not place their faith in the governmental institutions taking their needs into account.

“When I ran for office, I didn’t put my identity [forward] as something that I wanted people to vote for. What I was really trying to do was [build] trust, that willingness to listen, and to understand people’s point of view. It’s more important for me to understand why that person thinks that way. I can get them to understand what their position is and why they feel a certain way and get them to soften their understanding. There’s a path forward,” explained Titone.

She also points to the importance of media as an important tool to expose people to new identities that offers an alternative way to engage in conversations.

Inventions like the radio made the media more accessible and provided a faster means of communication. The television helped sway elections, and access to smartphones has spurred momentous mobilization of people. The emergence of both of these mass mediums coincided with the social movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Radio and television helped reveal the horrors of the Vietnam War as well as connect social movements across the nation.

Katrina Miller is the owner of Blackat Video Productions. She uses video and film to start conversations on social issues. In Miller’s 2022 documentary film “This is [Not] Who We Are,” she creates space for Boulderites to talk about the city’s history of anti-Black racism.

The documentary challenges the ideological expectations of Boulder by telling the city’s history and examining the story of Zayd Atkinson. Atkinson, a Naropa student, was profiled by a Boulder police pfficer outside his place of residence while at work. It led to a tense encounter where the officer pulled out his firearm.

Highlighting Atkinson’s story showcased the impact a lack of relationship building can have in communities. The hostile officer did not believe Atkinson belonged. He was seen as an outsider, and it resulted in a terrifying situation with the police all too common for many Black people.

The documentary contextualizes the relationship between local history, current residents’ realities, and the current state of the movement. It calls attention to the racism experienced by people of color in Boulder. Miller’s film acts as a gateway for a broader conversation to discuss these persisting issues.

Opening a path to have deeper conversation on oppression can be contentious for many people, but it remains true that Boulder has a racist history and present. Movements must navigate through a web of social expectations to make the conversations productive and appealing for engagement.

Miller stated, “Fostering that conversation. People have been trying to break the code on that for a very long time. We know of past leaders, like Dr. King — and even in my eye more modern people like Colin Kaepernick. When he did a protest that was more silent and just more of a demonstration, look how hard he was come down on. How are we supposed to do this? Maybe we need to make our voices louder. We need to march in the streets. Either way it was criminalized, no matter which way we try to express our trauma and our hurt from how we’ve been treated in police brutality in this country.”

The defensive nature of people from a more-privileged social class — that instinct to recoil — is an obstacle and frustration for current members of diversity movements because it ignores the current realities of historically underserved communities. Allies are not exempt from this fragility and run the risk of falling into the “savior” mentality, perpetuating the idea of helplessness onto marginalized groups.

Even oppressed groups can engage in harm because of the intersectional identities of any given person. The term is often misused but was first conceptualized in 1989 by professor Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe the relationship between race, class, gender, and other individual characteristics.

Dr. Reiland Rabaka is a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and manages to break down what this looks like in practice for “liberal” cities like Boulder. According to critical race theory and African American studies, places with an overabundance of white people have the ability to hold liberal ideologies surrounding sex and gender while simultaneously holding more conservative views when evaluating race and class.

“We need to push people to define what they mean by their liberal positions if they’re not including race in a very culturally homogenous environment like Boulder. We learned from the Black women’s liberation movement when they pointed out that somebody could be a feminist and a racist. The fact of the matter is somebody could stand up for gender justice but be complacent or silent with racial justice.”

As the founder and director of CU’s Center for African & African American Studies, or CAAAS, Dr. Rabaka creates space to bridge the gap between the CU campus and Boulder’s community at large. Academic departments, like CAAAS, use university resources to access the untold or forgotten histories of Black Americans connecting all our lived experiences post the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. This remains true for other marginalized groups using education to build deeper understanding of their communities.

“This center grows out of my class on the Black Lives Matter movement. We garnered over 1,700 signatures. My students started a petition for this class, and I want to point out to you the fact that we got 1,700 signatures at that time, we only had 800 Black students. It shows you it’s not just a Black thing. Afro-American studies isn’t just for African Americans. It’s for anybody that wants to learn about the history of American culture. As an African-American Studies professor and as an American, it’s important for non-African-American folk to acknowledge that for 250 years, we lived in a society that said we were subhuman. When you acknowledge our humanity, that in and of itself helps begin repairing a particular kind of relation America has with African Americans,” Dr. Rabaka shared.

Fortunately, some local governments have used these conversation starters as opportunities to foster real conversation on the history and oppression of marginalized people. The town of Erie hired its first diversity, equity, and inclusion manager, Alberto De Los Rios.

De Los Rios took the position in 2021 with an interest in providing lasting change for the town as the area continues to grow in population. The department’s process of instituting change utilizes a three-tier approach to normalize, organize, and operationalize.

The process was created by Government Allies on Race and Equity, a community of civil servants dedicated to equity. Most of the population is still in the normalization stage of the process. For De Los Rios and his team, this is important because it is the stage to become aware and engage with the longevity of the work.

Through this framework, De Los Rios and his team have managed to start tackling equity issues in Erie’s Comprehensive Plan and Transportation Mobility Plan. Additionally, there is an ADA Self-Evaluation to undergo a multi-year effort making the whole town accessible. Unfortunately DEI work still received some pushback from local government officials however.

De Los Rios explains, “I just want to support people. I want people to really understand the importance of this and the passion of this, and I want to be there with resources. I want to be a team player.”

Being a team player is difficult in a society that highly values rugged individualism. The act of learning, educating, and connecting with people about their experiences is intentionally made difficult. Collectivism and unity are confronted with barriers in every direction for contemporary social movements. Education in any form can combat the narratives built to separate experiences of oppressed people.

Ultimately, since learning about Black, Brown, and Indigenous history often happens outside the classroom, it is white middle-class America that will suffer most from the removal and suppression of courses like AP African-American studies.

“When you start damaging those pieces of history, it’s going to impact middle-class white America more than any other group. It is more detrimental to that group because, as statistics will show you and tell you, most Afro-Indigenous people are not receiving — and haven’t been receiving — a proper education for years and years anyway. So who’s really being injured by this most? Black and Indigenous people who learn about their history don’t do so through the school system. We pick it up from our homes through the oral history that is still relevant in our community, whether it be through song and hip-hop or through art, etc., etc.”

H-Soul expanded on why banning the history of others only hurts yourself. “The highest number of users of the public education system are white middle-class Americans. So what’s at stake when white middle-class America is mis-educated about their own history? What are the implications? All it does is set them up for failure.”

“We can understand why is the system mis-educating and what’s at stake from mis-educating this group of people. It allows the fascist forces to reduce the middle class. From that perspective, that’s really a white issue. That’s not to say that Black and Indigenous people are not impacted by it, but our movements are where we’re educated,” voiced H-Soul.

The post Diversity Movements Through American History appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Photography by Dustin Doskocil

Seven professional leaders tell us how they pick their favorites.

Back in 2019 YS featured our DiverCity cover series, a stunning selection of black and white portraits that highlighted some of the incredible residents who live here. The origins for that series came from what we thought was an innocuous Facebook post calling for recommendations for featuring minority owned leaders, influencers, and businesses. That post spawned several ignorant comments and pushback against the need to feature diversity in our communities. Instead of giving in, we doubled down and highlighted 11 amazing people (including the governor). Each month featured another stunning portrait of the beauty that is founded in acceptance rather than ignorance.

The inspiration for this year’s fashion shoot actually came from one of the participants — Katrina Miller. While at an event, she suggested to our publisher that we put together a photoshoot featuring some of the inspiring voices in diverse communities. That thought quickly beat out our previous idea, so we shifted gears and put together a memorable day for everyone involved — in less than three weeks too.

Fashion can mean so much, especially when it comes to crafting your identity in a somewhat racially homogenous place such as Boulder. Choices can be limited with local Black designers few and far between. The pressure to conform to the casual outdoorsy chic that Boulder is known for is real. Boulder was once rated worst-dressed, but best looking naked by GQ. Asserting your own identity and choosing to present yourself with a meaningful fashion choice can say so much more than words.

Miller shared her thoughts with me: “I’m at home within myself and feel so much more beautiful when I am wearing my African pieces. There’s so much pride in that for me, especially knowing my story of how, when I came to Boulder, I thought that I had to wear Birkenstocks and ditch my makeup. It was really an amazing moment for me.”

Embracing that freedom of expression through fashion can be liberating. Miller expanded how it allowed her “to really connect with myself and love myself. Instead of walking into a room, kind of holding my head down, ‘I just want to blend in and have nobody notice me,’ now I walk into a room with my head held high exactly as I want to be seen.”

Local designer Lita Thompson brings influences from abroad and wants to share her designs with everyone. “It’s not just that African fabric represents Black [fashion] or the African diaspora, it’s a good way for other people to express themselves and the cultures that they appreciate without it coming across as cultural appropriation. That’s why I like to design [headpieces] because it’s a smaller piece that takes just a tiny piece of that broader cloak and gives them that little bit of self expression. It’s something that you don’t always see.”

Just as important is choosing where to buy your clothes and accessories. Supporting local businesses that help communities thrive is essential to Miller. She shared her favorite spot, HOPE’s Storehouse, with YS. “As you walk into Hope’s, you will see something you don’t expect — a free food pantry. This is when you realize they are more than just into selling secondhand items. HOPE’s Storehouse cares about the community. They also provide emergency supplies to single mothers and families in need.”

It’s not just local action. Just like fashion knows no borders, neither does HOPE’s. “Another thing you will notice when you walk in is a plethora of handmade beaded jewelry from Uganda. The funds from HOPE’s goes to help primary schools in Uganda and to help build international clinics and homes across the globe. They recently sent a shipment of donations to Haiti after the earthquake,” Miller shared.

Each participant was also asked to reflect on the outfit they chose for the photoshoot and what their fashion choices mean to them.

Dr. Reiland Rabaka, Photo by Dustin Doskocil

Dr. Reiland Rabaka

PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR AFRICAN & AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER

I am really into Afro-futurist fashion, clothes that hint at the past, present, and future of continental and diasporic African couture. I like contemporary fabrics from all over the African continent and from throughout the African diaspora. The majority of my suits are tailored in Tanzania, even though the fabrics may come from elsewhere in the African world.

Junie Joseph, Photo by Dustin Doskocil

Junie Joseph

ATTORNEY, BOULDER CITY COUNCIL, COLORADO STATE REPRESENTATIVE

I love this dress. It’s unique. I worked in Africa in 2016 doing development work. When I was leaving, my co-workers put money together and took me to a tailor and had this dress made for me as a departing gift. So I am proud and grateful every time I put on this dress. It’s also very beautiful, and the cape is a bonus, shall we say, superhero-like vibe. Between the history and the style, I can’t help but to feel confident when wearing this dress.

Dr. Patrick Kalenzi, Photo by Dustin Doskocil

Dr. Patrick Kalenzi

AUTHOR, PUBLIC SPEAKER, OWNER OF ROCK CREEK VETERINARY HOSPITAL

My medical scrubs represent my career as a professional veterinarian. My dress pants and shoes, white shirt and a tie, represent entrepreneurship and leadership in a multicultural area and being able to adjust to the society that I live in now.

Katrina Miller, Photo by Dustin Doskocil

Katrina Miller

OWNER OF BLACKAT VIDEO PRODUCTIONS LLC, FILMMAKER/ PRODUCER, DIRECTOR OF VIDEOGRAPHY AT RED ROCKS AMPHITHEATER, MOM

I describe my style today as eccentric elegance. There’s an emphasis on femininity and strength because fashion reflects our values. The dress I’m wearing in the shoot was handpicked by the [HOPE’s] manager. She knows I had this shoot and put this dress aside for me. That’s the kind of relationship they have with many in the community. The jewelry I am wearing is by Alchemy Stitches. Making pro Black fashion choices in this area is hard because there isn’t much supply here. Her designs give us an opportunity to shop local and reflect the love and connection with our African heritage and Blackness, creating this alignment with the natural rhythm of our lives.  We can create an expression of self that is truly beautiful and attractive.

Chalita Thompson, Photo by Dustin Doskocil

Chalita Thompson

CHEMIST AND CREATOR OF ALCHEMY STITCHES

The fabric for the pants was an interesting print I found that gives me this tribal sense. That’s very different from a lot of the clothing that I find here. You find a lot of things that are tribal from the Asian regions, and I wanted something that was a little bit different — that was Asian inspired — but maybe more African or Black fashion. As far as the top goes, it gave me an island feel. I was thinking of Jamaican and Caribbean vibes, that’s the direction I went with. I try to reach back to my African heritage by wearing the head wrap the way that I did. I really love to represent myself by wearing head wraps and head scarves and things like that. I visited Africa and that was one of the big things that I took away as far as fashion was that you could just wrap your hair, and it looks great.

Shiquita Yarbrough, Photo by Dustin Doskocil

Shiquita Yarbrough

DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND EQUITY, CEO OF VOICE OUR POWER, LONGMONT CITY COUNCIL

It was actually really difficult for me to think about what to wear. I think I was overthinking it. I’m a casual person. When I was in the dressing room I was like, you know, what represents me is just keeping it real. I’m a very casual person. I don’t even know how to be glamorous. I wore a pair of jeans, but what I really wanted to wear were leggings. I like to be ready to go anytime, ready to run at any time. Of course if it’s a gala or something like that, that’s different, but honestly every day, leggings are my thing. If I could wear them to city council meetings I would. I wore a fedora hat, and I said, ‘I’m gonna try to dress it up,’ and it’s still kind of casual. I’m not one that fits in a box. Every day for me is pretty casual. For me to represent myself and the work that I do in the community, it’s showing up as who I am and being comfortable.

Meosha Brooks, Photo by Dustin Doskocil

Meosha Brooks

AEROSPACE ENGINEER, MANAGEMENT, SVVSD SCHOOL BOARD

Purple, gold, and yellow — those colors together. I chose that to show strength and regalness. Purple represents rose royalty. I believe everybody that I met [at the photoshoot] represents a position of royalty, particularly in their area of influence. It was to show the growth … royalty and growth. The red blouse with a skirt that had the woman with shades on — it had some writing on it — for me, that represented fun, and it also represents personality. Most people think of engineers as these quirky, weird, kind of goofy types. I want to stress that that is not the norm. That is not what everybody is. It’s okay if that’s what you want to be, but engineers can have style. I want to take away the stereotype that you can’t be beautiful, you can’t be sexy, if you are in a STEM field. I wanted to show that I also can be sexy, I can be fun, I can be stylish.

Photo: Dustin Doskocil

The post Why Do You Wear What You Do? appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Press Releases are provided to Yellow Scene. In an effort to keep our community informed, we publish some press releases in whole.

“If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.”
– Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro, published in 1933

Did You Know?

Denver’s first official Juneteenth celebration began in 1966.

Otha P. Rice Sr. brought the celebration with him from Texas. He moved to Colorado in the 1950s and opened a bar, Rice’s Tap Room. He first gathered people to celebrate the moment when enslaved people in Galveston learned they had been freed.

In those early years it was a small and loosely organized event. But Rice, who became known as the “father of Juneteenth,” began to pull more and more people for the cerebration. Big Al, who ran a restaurant on 26th Avenue, threw in his support as Jim “Dr. Daddio” Walker helped spread the word through KDKO, his AM radio station. Then, the Five Points Business Association took Juneteenth to a new level as they attempted to drive dollars toward Welton Street. In 1983, an estimated 60,000 people showed up to the celebration. Notes provided by Terry Nelson.

The Jane Taylor Reenactors Guilt (JTRG)

The Black American West Museum & Heritage Center (BAWM & HC) was awarded funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Service (IMLS). For the Jane Taylor Reenactors Guilt (JTRG)

The reenactors help depict the often-untold stories of the brave and courageous African American men and women whose history contributed to the westward expansion. Without these individual’s success in the west, American history may not have been achieved.

Please go to the bawmhc.org website and click on the heading LEARN; click on Jane Taylor Reenactors Guilt; scroll to the box: “Meet The Characters.” You can view monologues about these courageous and compelling stories of African American Heroes.

Please make a donate to the museum that has over 52 years promoting an understanding of the role African Americans played in the settlement, and development of the western United States through its exhibits, programs, and collections.

https://www.bawmhc.org

How to schedule your visit to the Museum

Go to bawmhc.org the museum’s home page/website click on Visit and follow the prompts.

It is the museum’s goal to keep in the forefront the health and safety of its visitors and volunteers CDC guidelines.

Please wait to be notified that your reservation has been reserved.

Masks are optional.

The museum is unable at this time to accommodate Walk-in visitors.

Look for the Museum’s up coming event!
August 25th, 2023

Your Action Supports Culture and History

The museum is not publicly funded. It operates through donations, grants and memberships. Through these contributions the museum is able to continue its mission of preserving culture and history during these unprecedented times.

Thank You, for supporting this cultural icon, dedicated to African American history 365 days a year.

For more information, please call, go online or visit the website:
Phone: 720-242-7428 | Email: bawmhc@gmail.com
Website: www.bawmhc.org

The post Black American West Museum: Celebrating Juneteenth and Father’s Day appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Press Releases are provided to Yellow Scene. In an effort to keep our community informed, we publish some press releases in whole.

A Celebration of Black Joy and Excellence: Juneteenth 2023 Boulder County

The NAACP Boulder County and ECAACE (Executive Committee, African American Cultural Events, BoCo) are thrilled to announce the return of the highly anticipated 3rd Annual Boulder County Juneteenth Celebration! This year’s event promises to be even more exciting and meaningful, showcasing a range of engaging activities and inspiring performances. From June 17, 2023, through June 19, 2023, Boulder County will come alive with the spirit of Juneteenth, commemorating the historic emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the United States. The celebration will kick off with uplifting flag-raising ceremonies held in collaboration with various municipalities across Boulder County. One of the highlights of the event will be a young writers’ master class, led by acclaimed author Nyasha Williams. Young aspiring writers will have the unique opportunity to learn from and be inspired by Williams, as she shares her insights and guides them on their creative journeys. This master class promises to be a transformative experience for all participants, fostering the next generation of talented storytellers.

Culminating the celebrations is a spectacular performance by NAACP Image Award Nominee and renowned author, Alice Faye Duncan. Duncan’s captivating Juneteenth Celebration performance will leave the audience spellbound, as she eloquently weaves together history, culture, and storytelling into a mesmerizing experience. Through her powerful words and enchanting presence, Duncan will remind us of the importance of commemorating Juneteenth and the ongoing fight for equality and justice.

The 3rd Annual Boulder County Juneteenth Celebration promises to be a vibrant and unforgettable experience for all attendees. Events are free and open to the entire community, fostering a sense of togetherness and solidarity. Join us in honoring this significant milestone in African American history and celebrating the richness of our diverse culture.

For more information and updates on the 3rd Annual Boulder County Juneteenth Celebration, please visit Juneteenth Boulder County 2023 Events

Email: ecaacebouldercounty@gmail.com

The post NAACP and ECAACE Announce 3rd Annual Boulder County Juneteenth 2023 Celebration! appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Press Releases are provided to Yellow Scene. In an effort to keep our community informed, we publish some press releases in whole.

June 2023

Announcements

TRAVEL AND LODGING INFO – CLICK HERE
REGISTRATION – CLICK HERE

Did You Know?

Born 11/26/1939 in Brownsville. TN; Died 4/24/2023 In Switzerland
Tina Turner, who was born Anna Mae Bullock, was an American Born Singer.

• Tina was the first African American and Female to appear as an Artist on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine.
• She began singing in the Church Choir in Brownsville, Tennessee while being raised by her strict religious grandparents who were officers in the Baptist Church.
• Tina joined Ike Turner’s band known as the Kings of Rhythm Band in East St. Louis, Illinois as a featured performer where they were later married.
• Tina Turner rose to prominence as the Lead Singer in the Ike and Tina Turner Revue.
• After her breakup with Ike, Tina launched a career as a sole performer where she is noted as one of the greatest performers of all time.
• During the Civil Rights Movement, Tina Turner encouraged Black Empowerment in the ownership of “Proud Mary,” thereby encouraging ownership of one’s own story.  She expressed that “Proud Mary” could be described in one word, “Freedom!”
• While experiencing many indescribable highs and unimaginable lows, Tina Turner sold 100 million records, earned 12 Grammys, was inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame and earned many other honors and awards throughout her incredible life.  She exclaimed recently that she was finally happy with her life.

GLENDA S. ROBINSON, HISTORIAN
NAACP BOULDER COUNTY BRANCH

Civic Engagement Committee

The Civic Engagement Committee has a new chair person in Dr. Stuart Lord.

For questions and how to become more involved, please contact Dr. Lord at: action.naacpboco@gmail.com

Coloradans for the Common Good  (CCG)

The post NAACP Boulder County – From the Committees appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Editor’s Note: Press Releases are provided to Yellow Scene. In an effort to keep our community informed, we publish some press releases in whole.

Happy Hour: Oskar Blues Brewery

May 26 | 5pm – 7pm

This event will include:

• A beer flight tasting provided by Oskar Blues Brewery
• Light appetizers
• Information from Oskar Blues on their brewery with on-site representatives
• Access to the Beer Here! exhibit at the Museum of Boulder

[BUY YOUR TICKET HERE]

Morning Yoga at the Museum

May 28 | 10am – 11am

Join us for a series of morning yoga classes at the Museum of Boulder! Each class will be held on Sunday morning and will be taught by either Zayd Atkinson or Soul Lorain. Ticket price includes access to all exhibits.

[BUY YOUR TICKET HERE]

Rooftop Concert featuring Anna Cutler

July 8 | 6pm – 8pm

Anna Cutler is a singer/songwriter and keyboardist based out of Boulder, Colorado. She started playing the keyboard at the age of six, by 13 she had booked her first gig, and by 18 she had performed to a crowd of 3,000 people.

Drinks and snacks will be available for purchase onsite.

[BUY YOUR TICKET HERE]

Proclaiming Colorado’s Black History through Song on the Broomfield Library Field

June 21 | 7pm

This program is presented in collaboration with Music in Common and the City and County of Broomfield.

Held at the Broomfield Library

This is a multi-modal performance and historical tour de force featuring James Beard award winner Adrian Miller. Discover the roots of contemporary Black music from spirituals and Dixieland jazz through contemporary R & B and hip hop. The small ensemble musical pieces—some rarely heard and others more familiar—will be interspersed with short historical vignettes to set the context for the music and inspiration of Colorado’s Black musicians and composers.

[MORE INFORMATION]

The post Upcoming Events at the Museum of Boulder appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Boulder and North Metro need to build for their future while addressing environmental concerns, confronting racism, and alleviating homelessness.

The suburban dream paints a rosy picture of America, but underneath that green lawn is a whole host of environmental problems and a dark story of discrimination. The low density development that a sea of single family homes creates also reinforces structural racism, environmental issues, and even mental health aspects of daily life.

That white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and a Golden Retriever have been the aspirations for so many families since the end of World War II. Yet that simple — and not so achievable anymore — dream has only been realized by excluding non-whites and focusing on car-centric models of development.

Suburban living is so ingrained in the American experience that few of us ever take time to question and examine its origins and impacts. It is in some way a continuation of Manifest Destiny, the racist idea that white Americans are meant to occupy the so-called “empty” continent, right through Jim Crow era policies meant to prevent African Americans from attaining equality, into our modern reality. Equal segregation, an oxymoron, was the law of the land as suburbs first were constructed in the 1950s. 

Urban sprawl in the United States has its origins in the end of World War II when millions of military members serving overseas in Europe and Asia returned back home. However, the entire concept of “home” was altered by this. Congress recognized that soldiers needed support for their transition back to civilian life. The Bonus March of WWI veterans who were never paid their full monetary compensation from the Great War loomed on the minds of policymakers and politicians alike when crafting a solution.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

The G.I. Bill was Congress’ answer to compensating returning service members this time around. It provided cheap loans for returning service members and, on paper, was a policy to help reintegrate military members into civilian life. Military considerations also spawned the creation of the interstate freeway system as a way to quickly transport heavy equipment, like tanks, in case of an invasion by an adversary, namely the U.S.S.R. 

This model of development also explains why European cities tend to have more vibrant downtown areas, more walkability, and less visible poverty. Massive freeways do not typically cut through major European urban centers the way they do in the U.S. These multi-lane freeways create a physical divide through established cities, and the long stretches of road throughout the nation also allow towns and suburbs to spring up in areas that would previously not be suitable for development.

Moving forward, low density development needs to be planned with the acknowledgement that so many have been systematically excluded from these areas and also address the environmental impacts that suburban sprawl presents, while touching on the healthy aspects of more walkable and interconnected cities.

During the 1950s, several University of Colorado professors formed PLAN Boulder, an organization that advocates for planned city growth. Even today PLAN Boulder receives criticism from affordable housing and homeless advocates for not considering the needs of our most vulnerable members of society. Concerned Boulder citizens also created the blue line boundary in 1959, which meant that city water lines could not be extended to elevations above 5,750 feet. Property owners in these areas could still develop their lands, but they would have to use their own sewage systems rather than the city’s, which purposely limited their growth. These founding organizations and principles have shaped the way BOCO has developed over the years.

City of Boulder housing, NoBo

Those in favor of the Open Space program argued that the proposed green areas near the Rockies would benefit everyone because it would provide all the city dwellers with space to breathe. The end result was that the citizens of BOCO eventually became responsible for over 60,000 acres of land. These properties are currently managed by the Boulder Valley Open Spaces program, an organization that has every intention of expanding their horizons in the future. 

However, the Greenbelt Amendment was not the last ruling that was passed to protect Boulder Valley residents from the harmful effects of urban sprawl. By the 1970s Boulder residents had already become worried about the pace of growth in their community. Plans to limit development and population increases were passed, including one known today as the “Danish Plan.” 

A 2% cap was ultimately placed on housing expansion. However, this limit on growth steadily increased the cost of living. A service boundary was likewise implemented in 1970. This line clearly delineates portions of the county that are to be considered rural or urban for planning purposes and public services residents of these areas can expect. The boundary protects rural land by reducing the population and preventing urban sprawl.

The Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan (BVCP) was eventually created in 1977. This lengthy document governs the basic infrastructures and land use in Boulder Valley and is still referenced frequently today when planning new development. The ongoing fight that has historically pitted growth advocates against environmental concerns continues.

Growth

Kristan Pritz, the director of Open Space and Trails for the city of Broomfield said it best: “The entire Front Range area has become a very popular place to live and work. It’s a beautiful area. There are some exciting jobs for people and so on. That means growth, not just for the Boulder area, but for other parts of Colorado.”

Peter Mayer, the co-chair of PLAN Boulder, suggests that urban sprawl has not been an issue in the area, mostly due to the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan and similar programs, all of which concentrate growth in urban areas and help preserve the rural outskirts. The growth in the North Metro area is undeniable, with populations and development spreading quite rapidly over the past few decades. 

Overflow from Boulder itself has ended up increasing the size of other nearby towns like Longmont, Broomfield, and Erie. Erie for example has grown from just over 6,000 residents in 2000 to over 60,000 residents in the last two decades. Even if specific plans limit growth within the city of Boulder, the desire for more people to live here has created a sprawl of suburbs in the surrounding areas that were once small towns housing miners and farmers. 

When asked if the current policies were helping or hurting development in the area, Mayer said, “It’s all about what you value.”

But the question remains: How can the citizens preserve the beauty of BOCO and North Metro without pricing potential residents out of the area? Affordable housing is a growing issue, particularly since housing prices continue to skyrocket around the country and the zoning in Boulder County Greenbelt policies restrict development in certain areas.

Loop Net235, E.South Boulder Rd, Lafayette, CO

Many Boulder residents are against higher density neighborhoods that could reduce sprawl. The argument is that creating more places to live could cause housing costs to go down. Lower cost housing allows a more diverse group of residents to have the option of owning a home here. The average Black family has accumulated 1/6th the wealth of the average white family. This disparity traces its insidious roots back to the lack of reparations after slavery, continued to grow into the Jim Crow era, and has borne fruit today in the inability for many non-whites to afford the high-cost suburban lifestyle that urban sprawl encourages. 

Locating affordable residences near transportation hubs would have a positive environmental effect as well. Car-centric models of development have been the standard in the U.S. with developers of suburban areas expecting everyone who lives there to have access to individual vehicular transportation. Low density discourages bus routes and other mass transit options from being implemented. It creates a dependency on cars that increases air pollution and environmental degradation. Currently about 60,000 people commute to Boulder from outlying areas.

“The only solution to affordable housing is government intervention,” Mayer said. He points out that this may require the creation of programs to help middle income buyers make down payments on homes. “The market is not the solution though. The only hope is to require homes to be constructed to be affordable.” He continued, “More important is preserving the affordable housing we have and not allowing it to be replaced.”

To that end, a series of land use codes passed in 2022, creating more mixed use areas in East Boulder. One-fourth of the housing units built there must now be considered affordable. The plan also creates parking maximums to encourage alternative transportation. There are nonetheless some significant safety concerns for residents who end up living near old industrial sites like the planned affordable housing in East Boulder. Less wealthy residents can end up living on formerly polluted land and near industrial operations that can lead to a whole host of health problems like cancer clusters. Even affordable development can lead to reinforced power structures where the wealthy are healthier than those with fewer resources.

“The only solution to affordable housing is government intervention.”

Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) are another option to consider that will create more living spaces without creating separate zones for affordable housing, but that option was not enthusiastically welcomed in Boulder. The city government has placed limits on these buildings. Boulder County citizens have also fought against the current occupancy rules. 

Another idea is to convert unused retail spaces, like old shopping malls, into housing, in what is called “mixed-use development.” This type of zoning is popular in Europe, with apartments often located above ground-level shops that line the boulevards, but it has yet to take off nation-wide in the U.S. This would also increase walkability, decrease traffic, and create a stronger sense of community where people can work and live in the same neighborhood.

Affordable housing and easy access to job opportunities would also directly help address the homelessness crisis. We as a society cannot continue to allow individuals to live on the streets in such high numbers. There are numerous causes for homelessness, from unaddressed mental health issues to addiction causing financial hardship to the simple fact that the cost of living has increased so much that it now takes four minimum wage workers to afford a two-bedroom apartment, with homeownership absolutely out of the question. 

The American Dream with the white picket fence that has driven development for the last 70 years or so needs to be re-envisioned. What is becoming a waking nightmare for so many can be alleviated by just increasing the amount of affordable housing. There are several avenues that developers, residents, and city officials can take, from ADUs to rezoning to mandating more affordable housing. Something needs to be done. 

Instead of wading through a sea of homes, the vision for a more environmentally sustainable future could be focused on creating spaces that are walkable, affordable, and diverse. Mixed-use developments would give more reason for city officials to plan public transit routes. Re-zoned empty retail spaces could be converted into desperately needed housing. The border between “downtown” and “suburb” may need to be blurred to accommodate growth and potentially reduce the feeling of alienation and loneliness that many people feel. 

Urban sprawl and the associated high housing costs in Boulder and surrounding areas affect so many of the most pressing issues society faces today. From environmental concerns of car-focused development to the systemic racism built into the creation of suburbs and home ownership to the obesity epidemic that can be partially helped by creating more walkable areas to homelessness that springs from a lack of affordable spaces to live to the mental health of individuals who feel alienated, alone, and lacking community, envisioning a new American Dream could help solve the nightmares we face today.

SOURCES

• https://www.colorado.edu/center/west/sites/default/files/attached-files/firstunderacademicnonfictbelfordopenspace.pdf
• https://boulderreportinglab.org/2022/10/07/boulder-city-council-approves-plan-to-bring-5000-new-homes-and-apartments-to-east-boulder/
• https://www.city-journal.org/boulder-colorado-affordable-living?wallit_nosession=1
• https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/articles/controlling-sprawl-boulder
• https://bouldercolorado.gov/projects/boulder-valley-comprehensive-plan
• https://bouldercounty.gov/departments/parks-and-open-space/
• https://planboulder.org/
• https://www.yahoo.com/news/a-holy-war-on-sprawl-states-seek-to-shape-new-housing-development-by-limiting-local-control-090100263.html
• https://bouldercounty.gov/open-space/management/acres/
• https://www.dailycamera.com/2019/12/21/upcoming-fee-hikes-on-boulder-commercial-construction-latest-headwind-facing-developers/

The post Drowning in a Sea of Homes appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

It’s just a word
But what if it’s a word born of hate?
What if it’s a word filled with contempt?
What if it’s a word that denigrates?
What if it’s a slur or crude?
What if it’s an insult?

It’s just a word
So is racist… bigot…. Antisemite
You don’t like being called those do you?
So there are words you find offensive
What if I called you a pedophile?
Isn’t that also ‘just a word” ?

It’s just a word
But it has the power to cut the soul
It can draw tears, it can draw blood
It can enrage, it can discourage
Sure it’s just another word
But words have power

It’s just a word
Do you know its meaning?
Do you know its origins?
The weight of its history?
Words are so much more
Than they seem on the surface

It’s just a word
Like any other we use to communicate
Ahh… but what are we communicating?
Even if you didn’t know its meaning
Once it’s made clear to you
Why do you keep using it?

It’s just a word
No… it’s a concept actually
No… it’s a message
No… it’s an emotion
No… it’s history
No… it’s a word

It’s just a word
Or… it’s a weapon

The post It’s just a word… or is it? | The Soul in the Sun appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The reason we speak up

It never occurred to you
That sending us to a school
Named after a confederate
Might make us uncomfortable

It never occurred to you
That wearing our skin as make up
To ridicule or mock our identity
Might make us uncomfortable

It never occurred to you
That singing an anthem
Written by a racist
Might be inappropriate

It never occurred to you
That not having representation
In even such things as romance novels
Might make us feel undesirable

Until we pointed it out
You never noticed
That we were missing
In our American culture

Unless we raised the issue
It never occurred to you
That we might feel
Left out

We speak out
We raise our voices
Because you need to see us
You need to include us

For we too are
Americans

The post Why we speak… | The Soul in the Sun appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

No one ever worried
That learning the horrors of our history
Might make us sad and uncomfortable
From the auctions to the lynchings
No one ever cared about that

No one ever worried
As they taught us everyday
That our constitution called us
¾ of a human being and savages too
No one ever cared about that

No one ever worried
About teaching us of the civil war
The deeds of the confederacy
To keep us shacked and enslaved
No one ever cared about that

What they worried about
The things that were hidden from us
We the accomplishments of our people
The inventors and the creators
Those they felt would be too much

We barely started learning
About our heroes and our heroines
People that we could look up too
A history we could be proud of
But that was another short lived dream

Cause now they’re worried
Worried about their children
Learning that Blacks had heroes too
That Blacks had great deeds too
They decided this simply won’t do

They said it makes them uncomfortable
To learn of America’s racists past
That their children might feel guilty
Of the things done by some of their ancestors
Well shouldn’t they?

Doesn’t everyone feel a little shame
Experiences a little guilt
For bad things committed by their own?
Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?
For history not to be repeated?

Aren’t we taught to learn from our mistakes?
Well? Aren’t we?

The post No one cared… | The Soul in the Sun appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

In The Blue is a project of the Sentinel Colorado Investigative Reporting Lab. The Lab’s mission is to engage with readers, journalists, decision makers and residents around impactful accountability reporting that serves all communities of Aurora. The series is an extended look at local police reform and related issues.

By BRIAN HOWEY, Sentinel Colorado Investigative Lab Reporter in Residence (AP Storyshare)

Screen grab from a video taken by bystander Jennifer Wurtz depicting Aurora police wrongfully arresting a family with children.The incident resulted in nationwide outrage at how the Black children and women were treated, drawing attention to what critics say is a lack of officers of color on the Aurora police force. Courtesy of The Sentinel.

AURORA | In its attempts to hire more police officers, Aurora is settling for candidates who scored poorly on their entrance exams.

The Sentinel’s analysis of the police applicant review process found that, since 2019, the Aurora Civil Service Commission voted to hire at least three Aurora Police Department officers who earned Ds on their overall entrance exam scores and another 17 officers who scored either a D or a C.

The commission has also considered at least 14 prospective officers who scored as low as 57.5 percent on their entrance exams — the academic equivalent of an F — eligible to advance through the application process, city records show. Though none of those candidates were ultimately hired, the commission’s vetting practices have alarmed some experts.

“That’s really scraping the bottom of the barrel,” said Wayne Cascio, an industrial psychologist and economist at the University of Colorado Denver, who pioneered the test-scoring system used by the department today. “They’re barely qualified to be able to get approved…You’re really handcuffing the department in so many ways.”

These low-scoring recruits comprise a significant portion of the tiny percentage of police recruits who are ultimately offered jobs.

Prospective officers’ individual scores are not public record under Colorado law, and the commission only produced records showing the overall score range for applicants, making it difficult to determine the specific scores of the 17 officers who got either a D or a C on their overall exam scores.

The low test scores come to light as the city struggles to comply with a consent decree that, among other requirements, mandates the 748-officer department improve the quality and diversity of its officers.

Aurora voters established the civil service commission in 1967 to ensure fair hiring and disciplinary practices at the police and fire departments. The typically five-person board, which currently has four members, is appointed by the city council.

Since late 2021, the commission has invited police department officials to vote on whether to hire specific applicants for police positions.

Last year, Aurora entered into a consent decree after an investigation by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office found the department had engaged in racially discriminatory policing practices, used inadequate use of force policies and was overwhelmingly white and male despite policing a racially diverse city.

The consent decree requires some of the commission’s responsibilities, including the final say on who is hired, be given to or shared with the department. Police brass said the commission’s low testing standards are one of many reasons why police need more control over the hiring process.

“I find it very concerning, and I think that the good men and women of the Aurora Police Department would share that concern,” Aurora Police Chief Art Acevedo said about the Sentinel’s findings. “I’d rather do more with less. I’d rather do more with quality individuals than to scrape any barrel.”

Former Civil Service Commissioner Jim Weeks echoed other commissioners in acknowledging that overlooking low test scores could allow “minimally qualified” applicants to become officers. But those commissioners say they’re responsible for filling police academies from a shallow applicant pool provided by department recruiters.

“We don’t [recruit], but we get blamed like we do,” Commission Chair Desmond McNeal said, adding that recent excessive force cases and other controversies have likely kept some qualified and diverse candidates from applying.

“The reputation of this agency is probably what’s harming it right now,” he said.

Screenshot of a practice police test given to Aurora Police applications. SENTINEL SCREEN GRAB

>>>>Lowered standards

Applicants’ overall exam scores are calculated by averaging candidates’ scores on a multiple-choice video test and a personal assessment.

The personal assessment measures applicants’ work attitudes, integrity, biases, commitment to equality and how they would use force, test creators say. The video exam tests candidates’ judgment, and aptitude for public relations and teamwork by presenting applicants with hypothetical law enforcement situations and asking how they would respond.

Several applicants who recently took the test say one question presented a scenario in which a man attempts to stab a woman in front of responding officers. Applicants had just seconds to decide whether the officers shoot the man in order to protect the woman. The exam also tests candidates’ report-writing skills.

Other large Colorado cities have higher standards for prospective officers to advance in the application process. Ft. Collins and Lakewood police departments use a different entrance exam and require a minimum score of 70% to qualify for consideration. The minimum score on Colorado Springs Police Department’s applicant exam is 69%.

Denver’s Civil Service Commission, which uses the same testing company as Aurora and calculates overall exam scores similarly, does not allow applicants who scored below 65% on their overall exam score to become officers.

Aurora’s commission does not have a minimum overall exam score, McNeal said.

Using the testing company’s formula for determining overall exam scores, the Sentinel found that Aurora officers have been allowed to advance in the application process with scores as low as 57.5% — nearly 10% lower than Denver’s overall minimum score.

McNeal confirmed the Sentinel’s calculation.

In October 2021, the commission lowered the minimum score for the video exam from 65% to 63% after the National Testing Network, the company that developed the test, recommended the commission do so. Company representatives did not respond to requests for comment about the test.

With the department under scrutiny because of the consent decree, experts said, the city is putting itself at risk of hiring sub-par officers by allowing such low-scoring candidates to patrol the city’s streets.

“It doesn’t make any sense at all,” said Rick Myers, a retired police chief who has worked at departments in Colorado and other states, and former president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. “Given the history of conflict and inappropriate conduct with arrestees or members of the public that some of the officers in Aurora have been held accountable for, why would you accept people with a low performance in those critical areas?”

All 20 Aurora officers who may have scored poorly on their exams since 2019 currently interact directly with the public on patrol, department records show. Department officials and outside experts agreed candidates who score a C or better are not a concern.

A photo of former APD officers is seen in the lobby of the City of Aurora Public Safety Training Center. Photo by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado

>>>>>Minimally qualified officers

Entrance exams aren’t a catch-all filter for unqualified candidates, policing experts said. Chris Magnus, a former police chief and senior advisor at New York University’s Policing Project, stressed the importance of psychological exams, background checks and oral interviews in determining whether an officer is qualified. Aurora’s Civil Service Commission uses all of these vetting processes for police candidates. Still, Magnus said, the entrance exams are an important early indicator of basic competence.

“I would not feel comfortable as a chief being expected to bring candidates on board, even for further evaluation, that had clearly failed an initial test,” Magnus said. “You’ve gotta have a cutoff.”

City records show only three applicants from 2017 and 2018 whose names match officers on the department roster and scored between a D and a C on their final exam scores. But in 2019 and 2020, Aurora’s recruiting pool began to shrink and the commission began considering lower-scoring applicants for department positions in order to fill Aurora’s police academies, current and former commissioners said.

While commissioners said they were generally aware the commission had begun allowing lower-scoring candidates to advance, they said they never reviewed test scores when voting whether to hire officers. This is because commissioners use a blinded application review process that anonymizes applications to reduce bias in the hiring process, McNeal said, and seeing test scores could negatively influence commissioners’ decisions.

“We don’t know anything about their score at this point,” McNeal said, adding that commission administrators conducted test score reviews, not commissioners. “I have no idea who that person is until I interview them.”

The commission’s administrators compile prospective employment lists of candidates who scored high enough on the exam to continue the application process, McNeal said, adding that, until now, he thought he and his fellow commissioners only reviewed applicants from the “top-tiers” of exam scores.

“Why are we using a test if basically you can fail it and we still move forward?,” he asked. “It seems weird.”

Commission administrators said they are barred from speaking on behalf of the commission and declined to comment for this story.

Potential recruits participate in various fitness tests, similar to those administered during new recruit training, March 15 at the City of Aurora Public Safety Training Center. Photo by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado

>>>>>Court-ordered diversity

Aurora’s 2022 consent decree followed a long history of scandalous incidents between the department and the public that made national headlines after the fatal stop of Elijah McClain by Aurora police officers in 2019.

Jeff Schlanger, founder of IntegrAssure, the company contracted by the city to monitor compliance with the consent decree, said his company is reviewing the city’s police hiring process, including the entrance exam.

“I have concerns about the test itself, and whether or not the testing is appropriate,” Schlanger said. “We need to make sure that, in fact, the exam is predictive of how one will do on the job as a police officer.”

Schlanger said he’s interested in analyzing the correlation between exam scores and candidate performance.

Requirements of the consent decree include improvements to the department’s transparency and accountability measures, revamping the city’s police recruitment and hiring processes, and increasing the number of non-white and women officers on the force.

Recent studies have found that Black, Hispanic and women officers are less likely to use force on civilians while on patrol — especially in predominantly non-white neighborhoods — with only minor reductions in violent crime arrests.

A study published in Science found that Black officers used force 32% less frequently and stopped 39% fewer Black civilians than their white counterparts. Most of those differences, the study found, related to discretionary stops and responses to minor violations.

While there are notable exceptions to these findings, including the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols by five Black Memphis police officers earlier this year, experts and reform advocates have long stressed the importance of diversifying police departments as a way to help establish and maintain trust between non-white communities and police.

After a U.S. Department of Justice investigation in 2009 found the Aurora Civil Service Commission’s hiring practices discriminated against Black and women police and fire applicants, the commission adopted a video-based entrance exam paired with a system of grouping test scores, called banding. Video exams imitate the visual learning style officers experience on the job, while banding treats statistically similar exam scores as equal.

In the early 1990s, the San Francisco Fire Department contracted Wayne Cascio, the industrial psychologist, and his colleagues to implement a new testing system for its candidates after Black and women applicants sued the department for its racially biased and sexist hiring practices.

By using the video test and banding, the fire department significantly increased its share of Black and women firefighters, Cascio said. Subsequent studies have found banding reduces racial and gender disparities historically found in standardized testing outcomes, especially among Black and women applicants.

Despite its use of this system, Aurora’s attempts to diversify its police force continue to lag. The proportion of Black officers on the force has barely changed since 2009, when the U.S. Department of Justice reported that Black officers made up just 4.1 percent of the department’s sworn staff.

According to a September demographic report, 4.2 percent of sworn department employees are Black, despite Black residents comprising 16.6 percent of the city’s population. Less than 11% of sworn officers are women.

A recent IntegrAssure report on the city’s civil service commission hiring practices found poor communication between the department and the commission about recruitment and hiring outcomes. According to the report, neither agency collects enough data on recruitment results or why candidates drop out of the application process or quit the police academy.

The report recommended numerous changes to the city’s civil service hiring practices, including consistent follow-up with police applicants, data collection on candidate drop-outs, and reassessment of minimum requirements for police and fire recruits.

On March 13, the Aurora City Council voted 9-1 to give responsibility for overseeing background checks of police and firefighter candidates to the city’s Department of Human Resources, cutting some of the commission’s oversight over the hiring process.

In December, the civil service commission relaxed some of the automatic disqualifiers in its officer hiring process, including allowing applicants who report recent drug use, certain honesty and integrity issues and deferred DUI judgments on their applications.

Policing experts and local stakeholders believe addressing inherent biases in previous disqualifiers could make jobs more accessible to people of color, who have historically experienced disproportionate exposure to the criminal justice system.

Potential recruits participate in various fitness tests, similar to those administered during new recruit training, March 15 at the City of Aurora Public Safety Training Center. Photo by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado

>>>>>>A history of recruitment woes

Aurora’s recruitment struggles date back nearly 20 years.

In 2007, former Chief Dan Oates appointed Sgt. Paul Poole to head the department’s recruitment efforts. Poole, who is Black, said he was reluctant to take the position because he had been unimpressed with the department’s ability to recruit people of color and women.

“There just didn’t appear to be the financial commitment to improve the recruiting at that time,” Poole said in an interview.

But under his direction, Poole said, the team began implementing more aggressive recruitment strategies, visiting church groups with predominantly non-white congregations and LGBTQ+ events, competing with corporations at career fairs and announcing at out-of-state recruitment events that the department wanted people of color and women to apply.

Meanwhile, Poole said, he persuaded his supervisors to fund his new initiatives, even as the 2008 recession forced many departments to scale back recruitment efforts.

Poole said he was transferred to patrol in 2009 after his recruiting tactics irked a supervisor. That year, the department cut recruitment funding in half, the U.S. Department of Justice investigation found. Poole said many of his team’s recruiting initiatives were scuttled after he left.

Even when the department is flush with applicants, only a tiny fraction of police candidates pass the application process. Last year, less than three percent of applicants were offered jobs, civil service commission hiring data show. More than 72 percent of candidates were disqualified for issues that included recent drug use, DUI convictions and failing background checks. Another quarter of applicants left partway through the process.

Due to the lack of follow-up and data collection related to applicant attrition, neither the commission nor the department knows why so many candidates drop out of the application process, and the department’s applicant pools have continued to shrink.

The commission received more than 1,500 applications for entry-level police officer positions in 2017, commission records show. Though its applicant pool briefly ballooned in 2021, the department drew only 1,018 applicants last year. Commissioners said this made it difficult to fill police academies at all, much less with a diverse candidate pool.

“That’s a recruitment problem,” McNeal said. “When you bring that to the commission, you’re blaming us for something that we don’t do.”

The commission did not hire any Black officers in 2019, city data shows, compared to three multi-racial officers, eight Hispanic officers and 20 white officers. In 2021, the commission hired four Black officers, five Hispanic officers,10 multiracial officers and 41 white officers. The city does not report what races multi-racial officers identify as.

Of the three current and upcoming police academy classes, seven cadets are Black, one is Asian, one is multiracial and eight are white, a department representative said. Five officers chose not to share their demographic information. About 18 percent of cadets are women, and one cadet did not disclose their gender.

In its January report, IntegrAssure found that Aurora had fallen behind on two mandates of the consent decree related to recruitment and hiring, including that the city transform its hiring practices to create a more diverse workforce at the police and fire departments.

IntegrAssure also noted shortcomings regarding mandates that were on-track to meet the deadlines of the consent decree. One requires the department develop a written outreach plan for contacting community leaders and stakeholders in order to diversify recruitment and find qualified new officers that are “committed to community-oriented policing.”

“There has not been significant progress” on this mandate, the monitor found, because the department was focused on a national recruitment campaign and out-of-state recruiting trips. The monitor expects a completed recruitment plan in time for the next report in April, the report said.

If the monitor or the court determine the department hasn’t complied with the requirements of the decree, the decree could be extended. Other cities under similar consent decrees, such as Oakland, Calif., have spent decades struggling to comply with requirements.

The department has also begun funneling more resources into luring officers from other departments, Acevedo said, a strategy that has become increasingly popular as police agencies struggle to hire civilians. Last year, the city spent at least $56,000 to send recruiters to New York City, Albuquerque and Atlanta to coax officers at those police departments to leave for Aurora.

Fifteen NYPD officers have applied for police jobs in Aurora, a department spokesperson said. Three of those officers were hired, and four more are in the background check process for an upcoming academy class.

The department received one application from an Atlanta officer. It has not received any applications from its trip to Albuquerque. A department representative said recruitment is a “long game,” and recruiters don’t expect immediate results from these trips.

“The whole country struggles with recruiting,” Cmdr. Sam McGhee of the department’s professional standards bureau said. “You gotta be competitive today.”

The pandemic and shifting attitudes toward policing have added extra challenges for recruiters, experts and department representatives said. Recruiters were unable to host in-person events for much of the the pandemic, and increased scrutiny of policing nationwide has made becoming a police officer a less desirable career path for some.

The department is at a competitive disadvantage compared to other police agencies, Acevedeo said, because Aurora doesn’t have defined retirement benefits for officers. These conditions have created a “perfect storm” of recruiting challenges, he said.

Aurora PD’s reputation is also a factor.

Multiple high-profile incidents, including racist comments made by officers toward Black residents, controversial detainments and uses of force against Black children and fatal police shootings have dominated headlines in recent years. Recruiters sometimes have to grapple with this notoriety when speaking to potential recruits, McGhee said.

“We want to be very pragmatic about that and own up to and cop to the issues that we’re facing,” McGhee said. “It serves nobody to water that down or sidestep those issues.”

McGhee’s team is reinventing its recruitment strategies, he said, by visiting military bases and colleges and planning more out-of-state recruitment trips. The department has also committed to hiring more women, with the goal of achieving a 30% female workforce by 2030, joining a national “30X30” initiative.

According to a recent press release, the department plans to include more women in recruiting ads and at public events, highlight the achievements of women officers, and recruit at events geared toward women.

After listing his plans to revamp the department’s recruiting strategy, Acevedo pushed back against assertions by commissioners and experts that the commission’s lowered standards are related to the department’s recruitment efforts.

“You can’t criticize us for who we put in the assessment stream,” he said. “We don’t have a magic eight ball to say, ‘Hi, are you gonna be a D?’”

The post IN THE BLUE: Bar none — Dearth of Aurora cop recruits prompts city to advance, hire applicants who test poorly appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

We’ve have watched you
Come after us and our rights
Time and time again
Every single generation
Every time we start to shine
Every single time!
Slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, Selma, Segregation
And so many other instances and places
Where you’ve shed our blood and burnt our houses
Every time “progress” stats to mean results for us
You come out of hiding to slam the lid down on our dreams
And you have the unmitigated gall to stand here today
And say YOU’re being oppressed?
You’re the victim?
Or worse that you’re fighting for me
For my own good!
For my kids future
You have the unmitigated gall to tell me today
That you feel uncomfortable?
That your way of life is being threatened
You have the unmitigated gall to say
The reason for our lack of riches is that we’re lazy?
Even as we work 3 jobs to keep our children fed
You have the unmitigated gall to say
We’re being “anti-white”!
We’re being ungrateful
And though we’d have every reason
To be “anti-white we are NOT

We are anti-white supremacy
We are anti-Racism
We are anti-Sexism
We are anti-greediness
We are anti-Intolerance
We are anti-fascism

We are ANTIFA!

The post Unmitigated gall! | The Soul in the Sun appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

[WORLD]

• Earthquake strikes Turkey killing over 20,000 people. President Erdogan has been heavily criticized for his response to the disaster and has arrested over 100 contractors despite himself being caught on camera bragging about relaxing building codes.
• February 24th marks the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion and occupation of Ukraine. Slava Ukraini!
• President Biden makes a surprise visit to war-torn Kyiv in a demonstration of support to the Ukrainian resistance.

[NATIONAL]

• The U.S. military shot down multiple objects attempting to enter North American airspace in wake of a high-profile Chinese balloon making its way across the continent. It probably wasn’t aliens.
• Train that likely should have been labeled as Highly Hazardous derails in East Palestine, Ohio leaking toxic chemicals into the environment killing wildlife and farm animals – with deep concerns for human health as well.
• SNAP benefits to help provide food for those in need during the COVID pandemic have ended on February 28th, many food banks are anticipating increased demand.
• Harvey Weinstein is sentenced to 16 years in prison for his sex crimes.
• Marjorie Taylor Greene calls for a “national divorce” to separate the Red and Blue states, essentially calling for the dissolution of the United States.

[LOCAL]

• Multiple local schools across the state, including Boulder High, were evacuated after an elaborate fake gun threat.
• Members of Dacono City Council oust long term City Manager A.J. Euckert in a surprise vote during the February 13th meeting. 
• Black farmers in Aurora County have been stalked and harassed by their neighbors in what is believed to be a racially motivated community effort to drive them off their land.
• Pueblo County Sheriff’s sued for the wrongful death of Richard Ward, who was killed while he was with family picking up his little brother from middle school.
• Boulder County law enforcement used money from opioid settlements to purchase controversial surveillance equipment.
• CBS News report reveals a New York-based hedge fund has been buying Colorado River water rights over the last five years, sparking debate over who should have access to limited river resources.
• Adam Frisch announces he will run to unseat Lauren Boebert, Colorado’s national embarrassment, in 2024.

Small Talk

“The time is now for Democrats to take the lead when it comes to fulfilling our promise to create safer communities and pass real solutions that will cut down on gun violence in our communities today.” – Colorado Senate President Steve Fenberg (D-Boulder) affirmed while introducing four new gun safety bills

“The physics of the air in our buildings and the climate in which we live affect things that can make us sick and how long they persist. Now we have conservative indications of how long coronaviruses like the one that causes COVID-19 can stick around in the air and be an infectious disease threat.” – Professor of Engineering Mark Hernandez said about CU Boulder’s research on airborne diseases

“The commissioners’ decision to approve these new positions is a first step in building the capacity required to advance our wildfire mitigation efforts.” – Boulder County Commissioner Claire Levy on adding twelve new wildfire mitigation staff positions

“[We need] more flexible zoning to allow more housing, streamlined regulations that cut through red tape, expedited approval processes for projects like modular housing, sustainable development, and more building in transit-oriented communities.” – Governor Polis on Colorado’s efforts to create more walkable cities

By the Numbers:

The post Month in Review | March 2023 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Overland High School is one of 60 schools in the nation — and the only one in Colorado — participating in the pilot program for AP African American Studies.

By Carina Julig, Sentinel Colorado Staff Writer (AP Storyshare)

In late January, the 30 students in Overland High School teacher Nathan Umetsu’s first-period class arranged themselves in a circle to hold a debate about Reconstruction, the period of U.S. history just after the Civil War.

Despite that it was early in the morning, and the students were all in their second semester of senior year, they eagerly engaged in the teacher’s prompt for the debate — had Reconstruction succeeded or failed in its goal of enfranchising newly freed African Americans?

“We’re not debating slavery, we’re not debating injustice, we’re debating whether Reconstruction was a success or a failure,” said Umetsu, who asked the students to change seats in the classroom based on whether their views changed throughout the debate and gently prompted a return to the initial question when answers veered further afield.

In many ways, it was a typical day in a high school history class. But it was also part of a nationwide experiment in teaching Black history. The students were in Overland’s AP African American Studies class, which is currently in its first year of implementation.

“It’s one of my favorite classes to go to,” said Gloria Ansah. “It’s a great way to start my day, learning about Black history.”

Overland is one of 60 schools in the nation — and the only one in Colorado — participating in the pilot program for AP African American Studies. Designed by College Board, the organization responsible for the implementation of all AP curricula and tests, the class has been in development for a decade.

Based on feedback from the pilot program, College Board is making adjustments to the curriculum and plans to roll the course out to more students in the coming school year. But in a political climate where the teaching of ideas about race and injustice has become a culture war flashpoint, the course has come under fire by some on the political right.

A stack of African-American History books lay in wait to be used by Nathan Umetsu’s senior AP African American Studies class. This class at Overland High School is the only one of its kind in the state of Colorado. Photo by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado

In the Overland community, however, the course has been met with excitement. Students the Sentinel spoke to over the course of several school days in January and February said that the class has taught them things about Black history that they hadn’t learned in their other history courses and that they hope it will eventually become available to students across the country.

“I hope that every school can have AP African American Studies, because it’s a great opportunity for students to learn about Black history,” student Razan Mohamed said.

Senior Isaac Montoya heard about the class last year in his AP U.S. history class, when the school was encouraging interested students to sign up for the new class. Montoya said he’s always enjoyed history, and the idea of participating in a brand new course appealed to him.

“I’ve always been a history buff, but I learn something new in this class every day,” he said.

A number of students said they were particularly encouraged to take the class by Umetsu, who is a popular teacher on campus and taught many of the seniors in previous years.

“He makes teaching fun,” Montoya said.

Umetsu has been with the district for 10 years, and this is his third year at Overland, where he teaches U.S. history and government. Umetsu has a master’s degree in American history, and said that he jumped when he was offered the opportunity to teach the new African American Studies course.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I regret saying yes to this opportunity,” he said.

Umetsu said that students know about the major figures in Black history — Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., etc. — but many are less familiar with other people he talks about in the class, such as journalist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett. He said that students are excited for the opportunity to go deeper into Black history in the course, which has four main units: early African empires, the transatlantic slave trade, Civil War and Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement.

Nathan Umetsu goes over the instructions for the breakout group discussion that the students will be taking a part in, discussing the successes and failures of the Reconstruction era following the Civil War, Jan. 30 at Overland High School during an AP African American Studies class. Photo by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado

The course is described by College Board as interdisciplinary, and along with history also discusses Black people’s contributions to the U.S. through the lens of arts, literature and political science.

In the debate about Reconstruction, a number of students drew parallels between the discrimination Black people faced after the Civil War and current events, including the police killing of Tyre Nichols which had happened earlier that month. Umetsu said he tries to make the course relatable to students’ lives while still focusing on the source material and not becoming biased towards any one particular interpretation.

“Having your own personal connection is great, but how can you draw from the history?” he said. “It’s a balance.”

College Board has asked that all students take the AP test in the spring and to complete a five-page paper on a topic related to the class as a final project, Umetsu said. Because it’s a pilot, students will be able to take the test for free but will not be able to count a passing grade toward college credit. However, they can use the weighted course to count towards their GPA.

Every three months, Umetsu said College Board solicits feedback from him and all the other teachers in the pilot on how the course is going and ways it could be changed or improved. The pilot will continue next school year with the course being offered in more than 500 schools, according to College Board, and is scheduled to become widely available in the fall of 2024.

Overland was asked to participate in the program because of the demographics of its student body, which is majority Black and Hispanic. According to data provided by the school district, of the 30 students enrolled in the class, 22 are Black and four are Hispanic.

Lamarana Balde, center left, a senior at Overland High School, presents a counterargument during a group breakout session discussing the Reconstruction era in the United States following the Civil War, Jan. 30 during an AP African American Studies class. Photo by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado

Natassja Campbell was in Umetsu’s American history class last year, where he noticed she had a clear affinity for learning about Black history.

“Every time I’d do assignments it was always about Black identity or anything that had to do with my ethnicity,” she said. He encouraged her to sign up for AP African American Studies, and she said she appreciates that the class teaches her more about Black history.

“Considering that I am African American, there are certain things I didn’t know about my history” before taking the class, she said, noting that at the beginning of the year she hadn’t been familiar with noted scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois.

In early February, the students read a section of Du Bois’ book “The Souls of Black Folk” in class, where they analyzed it and compared it to other readings from Booker T. Washington, a contemporary of Du Bois’ who frequently clashed with him on the best ways for Black people to improve their standing in the nation.

In class, Umetsu talked about how the differences in the two men’s backgrounds (Washington was born enslaved, Du Bois was not) may have influenced their outlooks on life. He also guided students through a reading of Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s famous poem “We Wear the Mask” and how it related to the concept of double consciousness — an idea first coined by Du Bois about the psychological effects of racism on Black people post-slavery.

Even more so than other history classes, AP African American Studies is focused on primary sources from the time periods it covers because it doesn’t have a textbook that students use. Umetsu said he appreciates the focus on primary sources — which were specifically selected by College Board with the help of historians and experts — because it exposes students to numerous points of view and encourages them to think critically.

Taliyah Claiborne speaks with her teacher Nathan Umetsu during and AP African American Studies class, Jan. 30 at Overland High School. Mr. Umetsu teaches the only AP African American History class in Colorado. Photo by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado

“This gives multiple points of view, students can come in every day with an open mindset,” he said of the primary sources. “It’s not just here’s what one person is saying, we can look at multiple viewpoints and challenge those.”

After analyzing the readings, Umetsu had the students pivot to a more interactive activity, where they each had to research one of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and design their own pennant for the school they selected.

Several students in the class said they plan to go to an HBCU after graduation or to pursue a minor in African American studies in college. Taliyah Claiborne said that the class inspired her to apply to Clark Atlanta University, where she hopes to study business. She’s also encouraging her younger sister, currently a junior, to take the class.

Claiborne said she felt like the class was important because Black history is “such a big part” of U.S. history. Her U.S. history class went over the basics of Black history “but in this class you’re taking a deeper dive into it, you’re learning more about what happened behind the scenes rather than just what’s on the top layer.”

The opportunity to go deeper into facets of Black and African history that don’t otherwise get covered is something that students said they valued.

“In my other history classes we talk about (Black history) but we touch on it briefly, and in this class it’s every day,” Ansah said. “We go more specific in this class, which I appreciate. It’s not like we’re feeling rushed to get past a unit.”

Next year, Umetsu said Overland plans to offer the class again to seniors. In the district community, he said there’s been a lot of support for the class.

Taliyah Claiborne presents her arguments during a break out group discussion regarding the failures of Reconstruction in the United States following the Civil War, Jan. 30 at Overland High School. . The AP African American Studies class is the only of its kind in Colorado.

“We had eighth grade parent night at Overland the other night and there was a round of applause from the parents who were like ‘hey, when can we sign our students up?’” he said.

In other places, the reception hasn’t been as positive. Last month, Florida governor Ron DeSantis said that the course violated state law and pushes a political agenda on students, and that it “lacks educational value.” As governor, DeSantis has worked to restrict the topics that can be taught in the state’s public schools, particularly around race and LGBTQ identity.

Officials in Virginia, North Dakota, Arkansas and Mississippi are also currently reviewing the curriculum, according to reporting from the Washington Post.

College Board announced revisions to the course’s curriculum shortly after DeSantis’ announcement, the timing of which drew suspicion that the changes were politically motivated. In an FAQ College Board sent to school districts shared with the Sentinel, the organization disputes this.

“The updates took nearly a year and were based on two factors: what we gathered from the comments of over 300 professors and returning to principles of AP that have served us well in other courses,” the FAQ said. “This course offers an unflinching encounter with the facts and evidence of African American history and culture. No states or districts saw the official framework before its release on February 1, much less provided feedback on it.”

In a document shared with the Sentinel, College Board said that the required reading list will now be exclusively focused on primary sources and will no longer include some contemporary scholarship, which had included works by scholars including Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Kimberlé Crenshaw. The document said this was due in part to the cost of copyright permissions and the difficulty of choosing which contemporary scholars to highlight.

Nathan Umetsu sits with students in his AP African American Studies class, Jan. 30 at Overland High School during a break out session in which the class discussed the successes and failures of the Reconstruction era of American history. Photo by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado

“…we began receiving questions from contemporary scholars about why their peers’ articles were included but not their own – highlighting for us the chilling effect that a mandated list of contemporary articles would have on the tremendous scope and vitality of scholarship in the discipline today,” the document said. “While the inclusion of secondary sources remains a course requirement, teachers are now required to select their own secondary sources, as they do in all other AP courses.”

Some new topics are also being added to address gaps in the pilot version, including “more connections to the African Diaspora, such as a comparison to slavery and emancipation in Brazil,” “collaborations between African and white Americans during the long civil rights movement” and “the landmark contributions of queer Black Americans like Bayard Rustin and Pauli Murray to the civil rights movement,” the document said.

Claiborne said that some of the backlash to the course reminds her of some of the things that they study.

“It just makes me think how some people would rather go back to how it was in the 1960s where we’re more segregated than integrated,” she said.

Umetsu emphasized the course’s focus on viewpoint diversity and historical sources. He believes that buzzwords like “critical race theory” and “queer studies” that some critics have used to describe the course are designed more to provoke people than to accurately describe what’s being taught.

Nathan Umetsu stands for a portrait in his classroom where he teaches AP African American History at Overland High School. Overland is the only school in Colorado that teaches this curriculum at an advanced level solely covering African American History. Portrait by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado

“We don’t teach theory at all in the classroom,” he said. “We use primary sources, we engage multiple points of view, there is no CRT in here. We’re not leaning towards a certain point of view, students have to come in with that open mind ready to go.”

In a statement provided to the Sentinel by district spokesperson Lauren Snell, Cherry Creek Schools said that it values its partnership with College Board to provide students with a wide array of AP courses.

“We are proud to be among the first 60 high schools across the country piloting an AP African American course during the 2022-23 school year as it aligns with our core values,” the statement said.

Despite the controversy, Umetsu said he hopes that ultimately the course will be widely available to students.

“This is a course that everyone should have the chance and opportunity to take,” he said. As an elective it isn’t a requirement for students, “but I know a lot of them would jump at the chance to take this course.”

At Cherry Creek’s February board of education meeting, board member Angela Garland echoed the views of many of Umetsu’s students when she spoke about the importance of recognizing Black History Month.

“Remember, Black history is American history,” she said.

The post MAKING HISTORY: Colorado students laud pilot Black history class caught in culture wars appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

By Ellis Arnold, Colorado Community Media (AP Storyshare)

In 1967, Black Americans were mired in “the long, hot summer.” Frustrations over poverty, unemployment, discrimination and myriad other issues spilled into the streets, leading to clashes with police and arrests in many places, including Denver. The widespread tensions over race left President Lyndon B. Johnson searching for answers.

So, he issued an executive order for a report that would detail what caused the chaos. He wanted it to answer a crucial question: How can the country prevent more unrest in the future?

When the report arrived seven months later, it laid out hundreds of pages of analysis and recommendations for improving race relations in America.

But its message was best summed up in a sentence: “To continue present policies is to make permanent the division of our country into two societies: one, largely Negro and poor, located in the central cities: the other, predominantly White and affluent, located in the suburbs and in outlying areas.”

In other words, the issue of where people can live was at the heart of the report. It all ties into the American dream, the idea of a family owning a home, building wealth as that home increases in value over time and being able to live in whatever neighborhood a family can afford without fear of discrimination.

Yet more than half a century later, that divide between Black and White residents continues to complicate the dream in many parts of America, including the suburban towns and cities that surround Denver.

The divide is less stark and less known than it was in 1967, but its legacy is still alive in the metro area, where the Black population tends to live in Denver or Aurora, numbering in the tens of thousands in each city.

Homes sit in an upscale neighborhood in the south Denver metro area. Photo courtesy of Colorado Community Media

Elsewhere, Black residents number in the hundreds or just a few thousand while White residents make up strong majorities. White residents are 78% of the population in Arvada and 1% are Black. White residents are 80% of the population in Littleton and 2% are Black. White residents are 82% of the population in Castle Rock and less than 1% are Black.

So, why do the metro area’s communities look the way they do? The answer isn’t completely clear, but two map experts have delved into local property records, uncovering data that could help start to answer that question.

They’re trying to discover what many have either forgotten or swept under the rug about parts of the metro area — or simply never knew. They’re digging in at the neighborhood level, looking for words in property documents — called “racially restrictive covenants” — that excluded people from housing by race. They’re looking to discern the legacies that still echo in communities today.

Christopher Thiry, a map librarian at Colorado School of Mines in Golden, is one of the diggers. Discovering the covenants in Jefferson County shocked him.

“That blew me away that this rural county at the time would have them,” Thiry said. “As I tell people, ‘Yeah, the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama, sure. But Jefferson County? Come on.’”

‘Only persons of the Caucasian race’

Thiry, a longtime resident of Golden, took inspiration from the “Mapping Prejudice” project, an effort at the University of Minnesota to identify and map racial covenants.

He jumped into his work after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. The mapping is a tedious task of sifting through mostly mundane, uncontroversial rules, like how many feet a house must sit away from the road or bans on billboards in front of homes.

Thiry has examined about 1,000 Jefferson County documents and found nearly 200 had some kind of race-based stipulation. He looked at documents from the 1860s to 1950, though most of them were from the 1910s to 1950.

Specifically, he has pored over “plats,” or plans for new neighborhoods. The plat for one neighborhood — Cole Village, located along Colfax Avenue near Kipling Street in what’s now Lakewood — had this to say:

“Only persons of the Caucasian race shall use or occupy any building or any lot. This covenant shall not prevent use or occupancy by domestic servants of a different race.”

The document was registered with the county in 1945. That type of race-based language is now unenforceable but remains on official plats, property deeds and other documents, according to Thiry.

It wasn’t just developers who pushed such language, Thiry said.

Local elected and appointed officials of the government of Jefferson County signed the documents, Thiry added.

He singled out some other examples:

• “Ownership in this subdivision shall be restricted to members of the Caucasian race,” says a planning document for Sunshine Park in Golden at Sunshine and High parkways, dated 1944.
• “Stipulate that no lot at any time shall be occupied or owned by any person or persons not of the Caucasian races. However, this provision shall not prohibit the employment of persons of other races by the occupants,” says the plan for Green Acres along 6th Avenue in what’s now Lakewood, dated 1939.
• “No (area) shall at any time be occupied or owned by any person or persons of other than the Caucasian race, however, this shall not prohibit the employment of persons of other races on the premises by the occupants,” says the plan for Happy Valley Acres in the Golden area at South Golden Road and Orion Street, dated 1939.
• “The said (land) shall (be) used for no other purpose than for the building and maintaining thereon and the occupancy thereof of private residences by Caucasians, and the erection of necessary outbuildings,” says a planning document for part of the Indian Hills area, dated 1923.

Thiry has used his findings to make a map of the parts of Jefferson County where race-based rules were baked into the original plans of the housing developments.

Many are concentrated in what are now the Wheat Ridge and Lakewood areas, with a handful dotting the Golden and Arvada region. Others sit in the Evergreen and Indian Hills areas.

It’s not yet a complete picture. Thiry is wary that he may have missed pieces. Though the map is a work in progress, it already has him wondering how the covenants still influence lives today.

Beyond that, what can be done to right past wrongs.

His work has made one measurable impact. It has inspired the work of another mapper, Craig Haggit, a map librarian at Denver Public Library.

Haggit, who is looking into where racist restrictions lurked in the paperwork for housing in Denver, also wants to shed light on “the way forward” for communities.

“I feel like we can’t know where we’re going until we know where we’ve been and how we got there,” Haggit said. “Otherwise, you’re just (in) the dark.”

It could take years to look through all the documents. But so far, Haggit’s work has revealed racial restrictions in Denver that targeted people in “a mix” of ways.

“Sometimes, it’s excluding ‘Negro’ or ‘Asian’ or ‘Mongoloid’ or whatever terms they used. And sometimes it just says only White people” can live in a certain house, Haggit said.

His team at first zeroed in on the 1930s because the Ku Klux Klan was so active in the 1920s in the metro area. Since he’s in the early stages of the research, Haggit is unsure which neighborhoods were home to large concentrations of racially restricted housing.

One clue could be redlining, a term that refers to marking areas red on color-coded federal maps in the 1930s, reflecting the practice of restricting access to home loans in certain areas, partly based on race. That disparity stood in the way of homeownership for majority-Black areas and other groups in urban cities.

Though he doesn’t know yet, Haggit expects that the neighborhoods that were not redlined — the ones deemed higher class — would have the- restrictive deeds because they were trying to keep certain people out.

In Denver, redlining zeroed in on predominantly Black neighborhoods, but it also covered neighborhoods where other ethnic or religious groups were present, according to the Denver redline map as displayed by the “Mapping Inequality” project from the University of Richmond and other university teams.

Denver’s redlined areas at the time included some western parts of the city and areas that surrounded downtown. But the map also redlined a small part of Aurora along Colfax Avenue — and parts of west and central Englewood. (A sliver of Jefferson County in the Edgewater area landed on the map too, though it was rated slightly higher in yellow.)

The map reflected the view that people of certain backgrounds negatively affected the values of homes.

In Englewood, for example, an “encroachment of Negroes” in an area near what appear to be railroad tracks was listed under “detrimental influences” in comments that accompany the map.

And for the Five Points area near downtown Denver, comments mention “Negroes, Mexicans and a transient class of workers.”

Just to the east, comments called the neighborhoods “a better Negro section of Denver” and “one of the best colored districts in the United States.”

“Were it not for the heavy colored population much of it could be rated” higher, the comments say, appearing to use the term “colored” to refer to residents who were not White.

Effects linger ‘to this day’

Though the picture isn’t entirely clear yet, what experts already know suggests that policies that deepened racial disparities influenced the makeup of today’s suburbs.

One driver of suburban growth that was especially visible was the American GI Bill — or the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 — that provided World War II veterans funding for college tuition and low-interest mortgages. But not everyone reaped the same rewards because of the covenants that the mappers at the local libraries are looking into, along with unequal access to GI Bill benefits for White veterans compared with Black veterans.

The disparities played into how largely White the demographics in the suburbs turned out to be, said Christy Rogers, a teaching assistant professor in the program for environmental design at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“That has consequences for intergenerational wealth,” Rogers said.

In other words, though the descendants of White military veterans saw their homes rise in value over the decades, essentially becoming investments, many Black families encountered barriers and that had a ripple effect as they could not pass down as much wealth to their children and grandchildren.

Rogers, who is White, knows this firsthand.

“My dad got the GI Bill, and he went to college and bought a house,” Rogers said. “So, our family could draw on our home value to send me to college.”

It took decades for federal lawmakers to ban the practice of racially restrictive covenants. They were banned in the months after the “long, hot summer” of 1967 — through the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which bars discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, color, national origin, religion or sex. The act also prohibited redlining.

What’s left today is a puzzle in places like Jefferson County, made even harder to discern after booming growth since the mid-1900s. It is difficult to tell how much past covenants shaped the suburbs, said Thiry, the Colorado School of Mines librarian.

“With that said, you cannot discard the fact that these covenants did exist,” Thiry said.

The prevailing attitudes of racism at the time still may have made Black families feel unwelcome in certain neighborhoods, Thiry said.

There is evidence that the researchers are onto something. In Minnesota, researchers looking into Minneapolis and its suburbs discovered a “bonus value” persists today among White homeowners who benefited from restrictive covenants.

“We document that houses that were covenanted have on average 3.4% higher present-day house values compared to houses that were not covenanted,” according to a 2021 University of Minnesota study entitled, “Long Shadow of Racial Discrimination: Evidence from Housing Racial Covenants.” “We also find that census blocks with a larger share of covenanted lots have smaller Black population and lower Black homeownership rates.”

The study also noted, “the racial makeup of neighborhoods determined in preceding decades persisted, where the region was highly segregated with White families primarily residing in suburban areas and Black families within select neighborhoods (in) parts of Minneapolis.”

“This segregation has continued for more than fifty years, suggesting the highly long-lasting effect that covenants had on the racial distribution of the region,” according to the study.

Rogers at CU added that moving to the suburbs could be more difficult for residents in redlined areas who may not have the money to move.

“Redlined areas to this day (sometimes) have lower appraisal values compared to a house across the street that’s not in a redlined area,” Rogers said.

The path forward

Many Denver-area suburbs have large White majorities today. About 20 cities, towns or rural counties have a larger proportion of White residents than the national rate and the Colorado rate — many by a large margin, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

In Cherry Hills Village, a wealthy suburb that borders Denver, the number of Black Americans amounts to 0% of the population. Just a few miles away, the population is 17% Black and 44% White in Aurora, one of Denver’s most diverse suburbs.

Aurora is an exception, not the rule. Many of Denver’s other older suburbs are much less diverse.

Several Adams County cities have large Latino populations, but even though they’re suburban, the cities still tend to have lower-income neighborhoods closer to Denver and more expensive housing farther north.

Still, the suburbs don’t entirely look like they used to, according to Yonah Freemark, senior research associate at the nonprofit Urban Institute, based in Washington, D.C.

“Overall, the suburban parts of the nation have transformed dramatically and have become more diverse over time,” Freemark said.

That’s in terms of age, ethnicity and race, and income, Freemark added.

In the future, some suburbs will likely undergo a “steady transformation” toward increased mobility, such as having more public transportation, Freemark said. Other changes could include more efforts to get people walking and biking, with the transition of suburban storefronts and strip malls into more walkable neighborhoods, he added.

The path forward for the suburbs may involve a continued increase in diversity of residents, Freemark said.

But that depends on whether states and the federal government will expand support and requirements related to affordable housing, Freemark said.

“We’re going to need significant public investment and changes to public law to support those outcomes,” Freemark said. “Otherwise, little is going to change.”

The affordability issue transcends race, with many people simply priced out of the housing market and those who are in it struggling to afford what they need for their families. In 2010, the median single-family home price in metro Denver was about $200,000. It was roughly triple that as of 2022.

Coupled with affordability is an availability issue that local rules play a role in exacerbating. Large-lot zoning — planning for houses to be built on large portions of land — is one major issue. In other words, there are too many large homes being built and too few starter homes, leaving prospective first-time homebuyers with few options, perhaps even relegated forever to renting.

“If you have a very expensive large-lot neighborhood, you don’t get young families,” Rogers said. “You don’t want your community to box out young families or new Americans. Or, you end up with, in a sense, a retirement community, and there’s nothing wrong with a retirement community, but you don’t want your entire community (to be that). You want kids to be in your schools.”

The long-term trend of rising housing prices plays a role, too, as wages fail to keep pace with housing costs.

That “has the potential to continue to widen inequality and even perhaps embed it,” Rogers said.

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Editor’s Note: Press Releases are provided to Yellow Scene. In an effort to keep our community informed, we publish some press releases in whole.

Dear Community,

We are writing to invite you to support the Colorado Black Caucus of School Board Directors 2nd annual Black History Month Awards. This event will take place on February 18th, 2023, at the Jurisdiction of Colorado Church of God in Christ Headquarters, 750 Chambers Rd. Aurora, CO 80011 at 6:00 PM will be an opportunity for the caucus to honor and award individuals for their contributions to education in the Black community.

We are a Colorado Non-Profit, and we are not a 501c3 organization at this time, so any donations made to this event are not tax deductible. However, we believe that supporting this event is still an important way to recognize and celebrate the contributions of African Americans in education. The school board members who are a part of the caucus work hard to ensure that this event is a success, and we are grateful for any support you can offer.

We are offering several sponsorship levels for this event:

• Friends of the Black Caucus – $100.00
• Lovers of Education – $250.00: This sponsorship level will get your name in our program.
• Education Champion – $500.00: This sponsorship level will get your logo in the program and a mention during the program.
• Education Trailblazer: $1,000.00 This sponsorship level will get your logo in the program, a mention during the program, and we will allow you to table at this event.

Our overall goal is to raise $10,000.00 to support the important work of the Colorado Black Caucus of School Board Directors. You can also donate an amount under $100.00. The money raised will cover the expenses of the event, like space rental, fees for musicians and guest speakers, awards ceremony, launching our website, and the remaining funds will go towards our general fund for the upcoming events for the Colorado Black Caucus of School Board Directors.

Please use this link to donate to the Colorado Black Caucus of School Board Directors: https://donorbox.org/colorado-black-caucus-black-history-month-celebration

The Colorado Black Caucus of School Board Directors is dedicated to advocating for policies and practices that support the educational success of African American students. We believe that honoring and celebrating the achievements of those who have made a positive impact in this area is an important way to recognize the important role that African Americans play in education.

We hope that you will consider supporting this event as a way to show your appreciation for the hard work and dedication of these individuals. If you have any questions or would like more information about this event, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely,
Auon’tai M. Anderson, President of the Colorado Black Caucus of School Board Directors

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Presented by the NAACP Boulder County Branch in partnership with the Executive Committee, African American Cultural Events, Boulder County

Boulder County Black History Month 2023 Celebration
January 15 — March 4, 2023, Various Locations and Times

Theme: The Evidence of Who We Are: Uplifting & Celebrating Our Youth & Community through Artistic Expression

The NAACP Boulder County and Executive Committee, African American Cultural Events, Boulder County, invite you to participate in their 2023 Black History Month Celebrations. In February, the world acknowledges and celebrates Black History, and we will do the same in Boulder County. Our 2023 Black History Month Celebration will feature two events that are comprised of various dates.

Black Futures in Art: We’re Not Just History- Six exhibitions featuring the works of Black artists in Boulder County

• First Congregational Church Gallery, Boulder, CO, Jan. 15, 2023, 12:00 pm – 2:30 pm
• Off Broadway Gallery at Pine Street Church, Boulder, CO, Feb.2, 2023, 5:00 pm – 9:00 pm, Panel Discussion- 6:30 pm
• The Gallery @ Bus Stop Apartments, Boulder, CO, Feb. 3, 2023, 5:00 pm – 9:00 pm
• Dairy Arts Center-Performing Arts, Boulder, CO, Jan. 28 – Mar. 4, 2023, 5:00 pm – 8:00 pm
• East Window Gallery, Boulder, CO, Now through 29, 2023, By Appointment – info@eastwindow.org
• East Simpson Coffee, Lafayette, CO, Jan. 20 – Mar. 4, 2023
• Stone Sculpting Classes with Satoro Tafura, Kuumba Arts Space, Longmont, Saturdays, Feb.4-25, 2023, 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm. Call 303-856-6738

Youth Storytelling featuring youth author Nyibol Bior and her book “My Beautiful Colors.” Bior is a K-12 teacher and former refugee born in South Sudan. “My Beautiful Colors” is a story about how colors have multiple and opposite meanings and how colors taught Bior to treat herself and others with respect and dignity.

• Feb. 5, 2023, 2:00 pm Longmont Library. Exhibit Highlighting Black Authors
• Feb. 18, 2023, 10:00 am. Longmont Museum. Youth author Nyibol Bior: “Changing Your Blues to Blue Skies” followed by an art activity
• Feb. 18, 2023, 3:00 pm Lafayette Library. Youth author Nyibol Bior: “Changing Your Blues to Blue Skies” followed by an art activity

All events are FREE! Claim tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2023-boulder-county-black-historycelebrationthe-evidence-of-who-we-are-tickets-515389212007

For questions or further information or schedule interviews, please contact Program Director Dr. DeAndre Taylor via email at ecaacebouldercounty@gmail.com

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We welcome you to attend our 18th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulder County Community Celebrations 2023 themed, “The Dream…Keep Hope at The Center.”

Together, we will celebrate the life, vision, and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in two separate events in Boulder County.

Our first event will take place at the Boulder Jewish Community Center on Sunday, January 15, 2023, at 4 pm at 6007 Oreg Avenue Boulder, CO 80303. Featuring:

• Keynote Speaker-Dr. Reiland Rabaka, Founder & Director of The Center for African & African-American Studies at CU Boulder
• The Spirituals Project of The University of Denver
• A tribute to African and African-American dance facilitated by Nii Armah Sowah, Associate Teaching Professor & Co-Director of Graduate Studies in Dance
• Special presentations, and much more.

Please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2023-mlk-jr-day-community-celebrations-JCC

Our second event will celebrate the life, vision, and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Silver Creek High School on Monday, January 16, 2023 at, 4901 Nelson Road Longmont, CO 80503. Our MLK Jr. Youth Art Workshop, facilitated by the Silver Creek Leadership Academy, begins at 9 am. The general program begins at 10 am. Featuring:

• Keynote address by Dr. Reiland Rabaka, Founder & Director of The Center for African & African-American Studies at CU Boulder
• A tribute to African and African-American dance facilitated by Nii Armah Sowah, Associate Teaching Professor & Co-Director of Graduate Studies in Dance
• The Colorado Heritage Community Choir
• Special presentations, and more!

Please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2023-mlk-day-at-silver-creek-high-school

All events are FREE and OPEN to the public; however, registration is required.

About NAACP Boulder County
Chartered in 2017, the Boulder County Branch of the NAACP works with advocates and agencies throughout the county on issues that affect our greater community. Our mission is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.

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Editor’s Note: Press Releases are provided to Yellow Scene. In an effort to keep our community informed, we publish some press releases in whole.

It’s a new year and Black Talk is taking up a long-standing crisis: racialized healthcare. Our guest, Dayna Bowen Matthew, JD, Ph.D., will talk to us about the racial, ethnic, economic, and social determinants and disparities in America’s healthcare system. Dean Matthew is currently the Dean and Harold H. Greene Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School in the nation’s capital. Dean Matthew was a CU law school professor and vice dean, a member of the Center for Bioethics Humanities on the Anschutz Medical Center campus, and held a joint appointment at the Colorado School of Public Health and co-founded the Colorado Health Equity Project. We will learn how Dean Matthew’s intersectional approach to tackling racial inequalities in health, housing, and education, conspire and inspired the content of her two books, Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Healthcare (2018 and Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America (2022). Dean Matthew will be in Colorado on 21 January 2023, as the featured guest of Sister-to-Sister, an international network of professional African American women.

Please be sure to tune into the next edition of Black Talk on KGNU 88.5 FM, Thursday, 12 January 2023 at 8:32 am.

If you’ve missed any shows, look for them at, Black Talk on KGNU.  Remember: Black Talk airs on KGNU 88.5FM the second Thursday of every month at 8:32am – 9:30 am.

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The post The Million Man March and the January 6, 2021 Attack on the Capitol: A nation’s glaring hypocrisy exposed to the world appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Editor’s Note: Press Releases are provided to Yellow Scene. In an effort to keep our community informed, we publish some press releases in whole.

Vision Statement

The Vision of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure a society in which all individuals have equal rights and there is no racial hatred or racial discrimination.

Congratulations!

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Tribute Concert and Humanitarian Awards

Humanitarian recipients have come from all walks of life, but each has been driven, as Dr. King was, by the desire to help and make the world a better place.

Our very own Minister Glenda Strong Robinson has been selected by the 2023 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Colorado Holiday Commission to receive The Honorable Menola Upshaw Lifetime Achievement Award for 2023 for living out the purposes of the Commission and dedicating her life’s work to keeping Dr. King’s Dream Alive.  This Award is presented to those who actively desire to help and make the world a better place.  She believes that we do this by “using our differences to make a difference!”

This honor and celebration will take place on Tuesday, January 10, 2023, at Boettcher Concert Hall at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts Complex in downtown Denver. There will be a concert by the Denver Symphony and a meal beginning around 5:30 p.m. that is free and open to the public on a first come first served basis.  Check for definite by visiting the website at drmartinlkingjrchc.org.

Since the early 90s, Minister Robinson has been providing Dr. MLK, Jr. programs throughout the Boulder Valley to educate the communities on the price that has been paid for the freedoms we enjoy and what folks can do to become that “beloved community” that Dr. King fervently described. He said, “Our lives begin to end the moment we become silent about things that matter.”

The purpose of the Statewide Dr. MLK, Jr. Colorado Holiday Commission is to unify and educate communities within the State of Colorado and encourage appropriate observations, ceremonies, and activities in commemoration of the federal holiday and state legal holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. throughout all the towns, cities, school districts, counties, and local governments within Colorado.  Please tune in to all the Festivities of the Week Sponsored by the 2023 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Colorado Holiday Commission.

Announcements

Towards Health Equity:  Saving Lives of Black Mothers & Infants

Maternal morbidity and mortality rates are rising in the United States (“U.S.”), and the U.S. has one of the largest. Sister-to-Sister:  International Network of Professional African American Women, Inc. (“Sister-to-Sister, Inc.“), a Colorado incorporated, tax-exempt public charity, strives to raise Coloradoans’ consciousness concerning morbidity and mortality among Black women, as they experience the highest disproportionality of deaths, chronic complications post-pregnancy, and early death. Reliable data conclusively evidence that, across all income spectrums, education levels, and employment levels, pregnant Black women are three times more likely than their non-Hispanic white counterparts to die in childbirth. They further reflect that Black newborns are twice as likely as white newborns, to die during their first year.

On January 21, 2023, Sister-to-Sister, Inc. is hosting a private screening of Aftershock, an award-winning documentary that highlights the public health crisis presented by toll on African American women’s lives based on inequitable healthcare. This event is free and open to the public. Register at Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/aftershock-free-screening-of-the-documentary-tickets-494011009227.

On February 25, 2023, Sister-to-Sister, Inc.“, will host the “Towards Health Equity:  Saving Lives of Black Mothers and Infants” Inaugural Educational Fundraising Gala. Ms. Dayna Bowen Matthew, J.D., Ph.D., the first African American and female dean of The George Washington School of Law, a Senior Fellow at the Brooking Institute, a recognized scholar in the field of racial and ethnic disparities in health and healthcare, and the author of two authoritative treatises, “Just Medicine:  A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care,” “Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America”, will deliver the keynote address.

Did You Know?

January 2023

Pele, by name of Edson Arantes do Nascimento, born October 23, 1940—died December 29, 2022 in Brazil. The Brazilian-born soccer legend and National Treasure became a worldwide phenomenon. Pele passed away on 12/29/2022. The combination of Pele’s incomparable soccer skills and his radiant, gentle smile made him an international star and champion for peace. Pele is defined today as the greatest soccer player in the history of the game. Pele played soccer in the US for the New York Cosmos during the 1975 NASL Season. He was acknowledged as one of the biggest sports figures of this past century.

Glenda S. Robinson
Branch Historian
NAACP Boulder County Branch

Civic Engagement Committee

The Civic Engagement Committee is in need of a chair person.

For question and how to become more involved, contact Cherry-Rose Anderson: cherry.boulder.naacp@gmail.com

Coloradans for the Common Good  (CCG)

CCG Delegates’ Assembly

When: Thu Jan 26, 2023 6:30pm – 8pm (MST)
Where: TBD

Please hold this date and time for CCG”s first delegates’ assembly of 2023. The Delegates’ Assembly is a gathering of the leadership of the organization (members from your institution that are engaged in CCG’s work) to reflect on the status of the organization, make commitments to one another regarding membership dues and other activities for the year, and approve the organization’s budget. It is important to have representative delegation from all member institutions at this gathering. I will be attending this assembly and will be driving down.  Anyone interested in attending this assembly, too, can ride with me.  It is requested that we have at least 2 representatives attending.  Please contact me at: louisamatthias@gmail.com if you would like to attend.

Communications Committee

It’s a new year and Black Talk is taking up a long-standing crisis: racialized healthcare. Our guest, Dayna Bowen Matthew, JD, Ph.D., will talk to us about the racial, ethnic, economic, and social determinants and disparities in America’s healthcare system. Dean Matthew is currently the Dean and Harold H. Greene Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School in the nation’s capital. Dean Matthew was a CU law school professor and vice dean, a member of the Center for Bioethics Humanities on the Anschutz Medical Center campus, and held a joint appointment at the Colorado School of Public Health and co-founded the Colorado Health Equity Project. We will learn how Dean Matthew’s intersectional approach to tackling racial inequalities in health, housing, and education, conspire and inspired the content of her two books, Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Healthcare (2018 and Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America (2022). Dean Matthew will be in Colorado on 21 January 2023, as the featured guest of Sister-to-Sister, an international network of professional African American women.

Please be sure to tune into the next edition of Black Talk on KGNU 88.5 FM, Thursday, 12 January 2023 at 8:32 am.

If you’ve missed any shows, look for them at, Black Talk on KGNU.  Remember: Black Talk airs on KGNU 88.5FM the second Thursday of every month at 8:32am – 9:30 am.

Join the Communications Committee! We need people who are interested in flexing their creativity muscles to create videos and podcasts, photography, writing, and graphics. Contact me if you are interested in joining this great team.

Sandra B. Daniel
media.naacpbouldercounty@gmail.com

Criminal Justice Committee

Anyone interested in joining the criminal justice committee should reach out to Darren O’Connor, the chair, at constanciodarren@gmail.com. The committee meets the third Wednesday of the month at 5:30 PM via Zoom.

Economic Opportunity Committee

This quarter brings Sonoma Pharma, City of Boulder Department of Economic Vitality and Parlando School of Music as new corporate members of NAACP Boulder County. Welcome!

NAACP Boulder County’s Economic Opportunity Committee will be starting off 2023 by conducting an in-depth survey of Black owned businesses/professionals in the area.  Please contact Jude at econopps.naacpbouldercounty@gmail.com about Black owned businesses and/or professionals in the area that would like to participate. Our goal is to gather a comprehensive and in-depth directory of the county’s Black owned businesses and professionals.  The NAACP BC survey is looking to determine what the most pressing needs of local Black owned businesses and professionals are to accurately access priorities and determine the most effective outcomes.  We want to be of practical service to ensure success of Black owned businesses and support of Black professionals in our local communities.

Economic Opportunity is asking for an interested NAACP Boulder County member to be our representative for Boulder Chamber events and opportunities.  It’s a job for someone interested in business and well-able to represent the needs and values of our organization to Boulder Chamber members.

We are working on the first quarter Black Talk:  Race in the Workplace networking event.  These events are geared for the business community and highlight common race in the workplace issues. Topics focus on workplace culture, hiring and retention for businesses and non-profit organizations.  NAACP is able to tackle these issues forthrightly, with candor as well as providing practical tools for increasing success with DEI goals.  We are intent on building our community with diversity and increasing the cultural competency of our community.

Economic Opportunity is soliciting sponsorships from the business community for our annual Freedom Fund event at Macky Auditorium, on February 19^th, presenting the Nashville African American Wind Symphony.  Sponsorship provides an opportunity for businesses to be recognized for their support of our Branch and our mission.

Economic Opportunity meets on the 2^nd Wednesday of the month at 12:30 pm via zoom.  NAACP members are welcome to attend any of our meetings.  Contact Jude at econopps.naacpbouldercounty@gmail.com for a zoom link.

Education Committee

Due to the holidays, there is no December meeting of the Education Committee. The next meeting will be Monday, January 16, 2023 at 6:30 p.m. We encourage you to join us even if you are not a member of the committee. Please contact the Education Committee, for the Zoom link or for information about upcoming events: boco.naacp.ed@gmail.com.

Environmental & Climate Justice Committee

All NAACP Boulder branch members with an interest in environmental justice are invited to participate in a free webinar series on environmental justice hosted by the Black Parents United Foundation of Aurora. Please reach out to Sheila Davis (vp.naacpbouldercounty@gmail.com) for details.

The Environmental Justice Committee will participate in activities hosted by the RMNAACP State Environmental Justice Chair. Details will be shared soon.

Freedom Fund Committee

2023 Freedom Fund and Black History Planning:

• Theme: Celebrating Black History- Uplifting the Community Through Artistic Expression
• The 2023 Freedom Fund will feature the Nashville African American Wind Symphony. The concert will occur on February 19, 2023, at 3:00 pm in the Macky Auditorium. Reception immediately follows.
• Additional events to celebrate Black History Month 2023 will feature a celebration of six spectacular African American artists who will showcase their art in various locations throughout Boulder, Longmont, Lafayette, and Lyons.

Please contact the chair,  Madelyn Woodley at woodleymadelyn@gmail.com for any questions.

Post-Secondary Education Task Force

The Center for African & African American Studies (CAAAS)

We are on target with our chapter fundraising commitment.  Following the close of the CU Fall 2022 semester the Task Force and CU Advancement will review our chapter’s strategy to raise and hopefully exceed our $500,000 five-year goal.

Please click on the following  link for the latest CAAAS Newsletter.

Save the date:  February 1, 2023.  The CAAAS’ grand opening is scheduled for February 1, 2023, 4-6pm in the Macky Auditorium Gallery.

For additional CAAAS upcoming events please consult your CAAAS Newsletter.

Religious Affairs Committee

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