Colorado — Families whose loved ones have been killed, harmed, or devastated by systemic injustice across Colorado will gather for a press conference on Monday, November 17th at 5:00 PM at Aurora City Hall (15151 E Alameda Pkwy, Aurora, CO). This press conference will take place immediately before the Aurora City Council meeting. This meeting marks the first in-person meeting since public access was restricted in June.

The location is intentional. Aurora remains one of the most egregious examples of state violence and systemic harm in Colorado’s recent history. From police brutality to institutional failures that have left families without answers and without justice, Aurora stands as ground zero for the crisis we are naming. This moment demands public presence, public accountability, and public truth.

At the press conference, families will stand in solidarity and speak at their discretion to offer a lived reality of the ongoing injustices that have plagued this state, reminding Colorado that behind every case is a stolen life, a grieving family, and a community still fighting for justice that has yet to be lived out.

Joining them will be the legal counsel representing these families, some of the nation’s most respected in civil rights litigation. Their unified stance underscores a powerful truth: the top legal minds in the country recognize the depth of this crisis and are committed to challenging the systems that are failing Colorado’s communities.

Community advocates and organizers will also speak, outlining urgent demands and a path forward:

1. Demand for Meaningful Enforcement of the Aurora Consent Decree
Speakers will call on Attorney General Phil Weiser and his team to convene an immediate strategic session with the City of Aurora to formally acknowledge what communities already know: the consent decree has not produced improved outcomes for Aurora residents.

2. Call for Preventive State Legislation on Police Violence
The press conference will urge the Colorado Legislature to proactively adopt a legislative package focused on preventing police violence and not merely responding to it after harm occurs.

3. Message to the Newly Elected Aurora City Council
Speakers will remind new council members that they were not elected to return Aurora to the past or maintain the current broken conditions. They were elected to usher in a new era of leadership that is grounded in community wisdom, transparency, and a commitment to transformative change.

Colorado is at a critical crossroads. Families, legal experts, and community activists are coming together to declare that justice has been delayed far too long. This press conference unites the community to stand for change that Colorado can no longer postpone.

For media inquiries, interviews, or additional information, please contact:

MiDian Shofner, CEO (303) 525-6461

The post Press Conference Aurora: An Epidemic – Colorado’s Crisis of Injustice appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

By Regan Byrd

It is Black History Month, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. This is usually a time for self-reflection on our nation’s deep history of anti-Black racism and hostility towards one of the demographics who built the country as it exists today. This is usually a time for the Black community to celebrate the ingenuity, resolve, beauty, and spirit of our ancestors. Sometimes, it is even a time to reflect on the future of the Black community in the United States, and where we see ourselves hundreds of years from now in, hopefully, a more liberated future. But I have seen precious few of those conversations happening today. Or yesterday. Or the day before.  What do I see instead?

Fear. Panic. Dejectedness. Sadness. More sadness. A lot of sadness. In short, a torrent of emotions that ironically, speak very deeply to the Black communities of the U.S. and beyond, especially during this month.

So many of us right now feel…lost.

Most of these emotions can be attributed to the election and inauguration of Donald Trump for the second time. January 20th, inauguration day,  was only the 3rd time in our nation’s history that an inauguration took place on Martin Luther King Jr Day. This federal holiday has only existed since 1983 (and has only been recognized in all 50 states since 2000), so maybe it isn’t that unusual. For it to happen now though, during this Presidency, during this time, feels like a cosmic joke to me.

Donald Trump, by any objective standard, has not been a friend to the Black community, other communities of color, or really, any community besides his own family for his entire adult life, I would argue. In 1973, he and his father were sued by the Justice Department (which he now controls) for their alleged refusal to rent apartments to Black tenants in buildings predominantly occupied by White tenants, even illegally labelling Black applicants as (C) for colored on applications.  In 1989, he called for New York State to reinstate the death penalty against the Exonerated Five, formerly known as the Central Park Five, five young Black and Mestizo teenagers who were dehumanized as animals and predators on a national scale, and wrongly convicted of rape with coerced confessions and dubious evidence. In the 1990s, he questioned the indigenous ancestry of tribes looking to build casinos that would compete with his. He claimed our first Black President can’t have been born in the United States and demanded to see a birth certificate, which was produced and promptly ignored. His former chief of staff quoted him as saying “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had” and “Hitler did a lot of good things” during his last term.

I could continue down this pathway, describing other incidents of racism, describing how shocking it is, yet still not surprising it is, that a man who has made repeated sexual comments about his own daughter, has been photographed with child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on multiple occasions, has been found liable for sexual abuse and assault in civil court, has incited an insurrection against the peaceful transition of power on January 6, 2021, has been convicted of felony falsification of business documents to hide an extramarital affair, has repeatedly personally profiteered off the office of the Presidency, including releasing a “meme coin” crypto scam to rob his supporters and the naive of millions of dollars immediately after beginning his second term, is our President.

Again.

And he won this Presidency, twice, against the only two women who have ever been in contention for the Presidency; two women who, to many of us, had every seeming advantage to earn the plurality of the votes, in terms of intellect, poise, and experience.

I could keep talking about that, but everyone already knows all of this. To many, it didn’t matter enough not to vote for him. To many others, they appreciate him for all or most of these facts.

I could keep talking about this, but I don’t want to anymore. And I don’t think we, those who oppose this administration, should anymore either.

adrienne marie brown, author of Emergent Strategy, says “what we pay attention to grows.” This administration thrives on attention, chaos, and dominating the news cycle at every turn. Donald Trump, the former reality TV star, has mastered media manipulation and getting free coverage from the 24 hour for-profit press and the social media moguls that love to make money on our fear, outrage, and frustration. Media that at the same time cowers before this new administration and seeks favor for company gains and government funds. You watched news articles and commentators lie directly to your face and refuse to call a Nazi salute a Nazi salute at this President’s inauguration. By continuing to feed into this media cycle, we grow and empower this administration, as well as profit-driven news and social media. Sadly, our anger and fear makes a lot of people a lot of money.

I ask instead: What is it we want to grow?

That is all easier said than done. The fact is, we have to pay attention, at least some of the time. Many communities are living in fear of ICE raids, stolen data from federal agencies, legislation dismantling fundamental rights, and the destruction of social safety nets. All these efforts must be tracked, opposed, defunded, organized against, and stopped. But still…

What world are we trying to create? What future are we trying to build? And what has gone wrong in that building process?

These are in fact the harder, much more profound questions we must ask ourselves in this moment. The “we” on the left are quite adept at examining, critiquing, deconstructing, and dismantling. We are much less practiced at envisioning, collaborating, building, and constructing. We speak far more about what needs to be stopped, torn down, and eliminated, and far less about what should exist, what we have yet to create, and who we need to partner with to create it.

I know what future I am trying to build with my fellow community, what future I want to live in.

I want more people, as many as possible, to live out their entire lives as they would see fit, without being murdered, enslaved, raped, or robbed of their time, resources, sanity, health, peace, or hope.

I want more people to have their basic needs met, like good food, clean water, reliable housing, and safe medicine, so they have more time and energy to build relationships, contribute to the collective community and collective good, and find their purpose and meaning in life.

I want to reduce harm as much as possible. I want to reduce suffering as much as possible.

I want to increase joy as much as possible. I want to increase love, community, and belonging, as much as possible.

I want to enjoy my time here, on this planet, as much as I can, before the next phase of my existence or non-existence, whatever that may be. I want others to have the same opportunity.

I don’t want to hate you. I don’t want you to hate me.

I want you to thrive. I want you to want me to thrive.

What is it we long for, for this world and each other?

These are the principles I always come back to, partially because they ground me, keep me centered in my own work and purpose, but also because I truly believe these principles are nearly universal. I think these ideas at least give us a starting point to discuss what it means to be human, what our vision for the future is or could be, and what common understanding and collective purpose as a species might look like.

Before us is not just a question of one administration, but an existential question about how long this is going to continue. How long are we going to kill each other, steal from each other, ignore crisis after crisis, including the ultimate crisis of catastrophic climate change, and keep making the same mistakes regarding how our societies are run?

The reason I became an anti-oppression trainer, consultant, activist and a proponent of diversity, equity and inclusion, is because I wanted to work on these problems. I want individuals and organizations to learn from the past, of previous individuals and organizations who perpetuated oppression, harm, and death. I want individuals and organizations to truly commit to harm reduction, not just lawsuit avoidance and performative activism. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is a subset of anti-oppression work, and it was always meant to be an organizational toolset to support more proactive harm reduction in workplaces, beyond bare minimum legal requirements that in practice permit a great deal of harmful actions and biased behavior. DEI is about what organizations and workplaces need to examine, create, and anticipate, in policy and practice, in order to prevent discrimination based on identity, and to enable the best work environment and employee support.

For those unaware, the origins of diversity, equity, and inclusion go all the way back to the concept of affirmative action, stemming from Executive Order 10925 from then President Kennedy in 1961. The term affirmative action comes directly from the executive order mandating that government contractors “will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin. The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.”  This order and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 led to the creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce anti-discrimination laws.

Many organizations then and now continue to make the mistake of thinking that if they merely don’t actively discriminate, then fairness and equality naturally and neatly fall into place without any action on their part. This is simultaneously naive, incorrect, and harmful. Our organizations do not exist in a vacuum. They exist in a country and in a society that was and remains rampant with oppressive, unjust polices that have denied political, economic, social, and environmental resources to many historically marginalized groups, including communities of color, people with disabilities, women and people targeted by sexism, the queer community, and both documented and undocumented immigrants. Marginalized applicants and employees face barriers inside and outside the workplace that impact how they engage with employment and how they are perceived and treated by employers.

For example, according to a comprehensive study by the Economic Policy Institute in 2016, women at every single wage level and every single educational level earn less than their male counterparts. Women stand to lose between $500,000 to over $1 million during the course of their lifetime earnings due to the gender wage gap, and this is especially true for women of color. A significant portion of this gap can only be explained by gender discrimination. Meanwhile, my alma-mater, the University of Denver, was sued by the EEOC in 2016 for paying female law professors less than male law professors. It settled in 2018 for $2.66 million dollars being paid to the plaintiffs.

Like affirmative action, diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives advise the proactive and intentional removal of bias, discriminatory practices, and harmful policies in areas like hiring, promotions, leadership structure, retirement, parental leave, etc. This is to ensure harm is not being caused to anyone based on their identity, and that employers are avoiding putting the extreme burden of suing for discrimination on employees seeking remedy, an already difficult, exhaustive, and fraught process.

Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are about the duty of organizations to do and be better. These basic principles and practices of fairness and justice have taken the U.S. hundreds of years to achieve. It has taken decades upon decades of constitutional amendments, legislation, story-telling, activism, relationship building, movement building, and resistance to oppression paid in real blood, sweat and tears to make even the smallest strides in the fight for human dignity, autonomy, and opportunity.

And now, here I sit, during Black History Month, watching the small progress we have made erode and erode, progress has been much smaller than many want to admit.

As we know, slavery in the U.S. didn’t actually end with the 13th amendment. It has merely warped and shifted into our for-profit prison industrial complex, where people can be compelled to work with no pay and under threat of punishment. People with disabilities and medical needs still die because health insurance companies deny care and treat all of us like an expense to avoid, not lives to be protected. Every day, working people are still destroying their bodies and spirits, losing nearly all their time for joy and connection, drowning in debt and doubt for the future, all for crumbs we call wages that barely meet basic needs.

Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) efforts weren’t going to address all that. But they were and are a step towards better institutions, and a component of hundreds of years of justice and liberation work. It felt like the conversation was just beginning, just starting to shift the tides in a way not seen since the last Civil Rights movements of the 60s and 70s. And now this.

This past year, DEIA has been outlawed or banned across the country. This week, this administration directed the Department of Justice to target private sector DEIA initiatives for potential criminal investigation. Matt Walsh, the right wing anti-intellectual whom I had the misfortune of meeting during his pseudo-documentary style attack on DEI work (a story I will share more about in the coming months and that you can read more about here https://www.washingtoninformer.com/far-right-campaign-against-anti-racism/), said on X “We must also punish the people who imposed [DEI] on our country and our children. They must be humiliated, financially ruined, and left destitution…Destroy them. No mercy.”

I don’t think doing this work makes me worthy of being destroyed. In fact, I don’t think any human is deserving of destruction, even those who cause harm. I think treating people as monsters, as subhuman, as irredeemable, as garbage, as valueless, is always a lie, always a mistake, and always oppressive. I fear that these types of sentiments will only grow and expand in the present day, as more and more of us are intentionally painted as monsters to serve those that benefit from such a narrative.

I cannot say what is to come or what this administration will truly do. What I can say is that we have the benefit of all the knowledge and work of our ancestors. What I can say is that we have all the lessons learned from our past liberation movements. What I can say is that we must do the hard work of building real relationships and a base that cares about justice and liberation for all. What I can say is that if we don’t learn how to be in conflict with one another without destroying one another, we will be lost. What I can say is that if we do not learn to heal ourselves, our minds, our bodies, and our trauma, we will be lost. What I can say is that if we don’t strive for what we long for, what we really desire, we will be lost.

This month, I will be looking to the legacy of my ancestors, to the wisdom of Black scholars, philosophers, and writers, to the creations of Black storytellers and artists, and to the power of activism and resistance the Black community of this country pioneered and has baked into our very bones. Perhaps this month, with renewed vigor and values, with renewed connection and commitment, we may be found.

The post Black History Month appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

By Ansen Gray

It was 11:30 p.m., I was cold, wet, tired, and in handcuffs. One officer was searching my car, the other one was in the driver’s seat of the police cruiser checking my ID. I had been sitting on the curb for 20 minutes wearing my Old Spaghetti Factory uniform, fighting back anger. My house was two blocks away, but I knew any sudden movements would get me shot. What did I do wrong, I wondered? I was driving down the street and the cruiser made a sudden U-Turn and flashed their lights and I pulled over. I just complied with the Officers; I knew from living under the shadow of the LAPD Foothill Division that you never, ever question a cop. The officer completed searching my car and asked me where I was an hour earlier. There had been an armed robbery on the North end of town and I fit the description of the suspect. I calmly explained that an hour earlier I was still about to clock out at work. The response from the officer was, “Yeah right, we got you.”

Occasionally, I think back to that moment. Other moments as well, like getting followed in stores, people clutching their purses, only being able to look at one ring in a jewelry store at a time. This has been my life in California. I don’t blame white people. I blame American culture.

Living with racism in California has always been a harrowing experience; it is never explicit like I found it in Alabama, nor is it brutal like I found in Georgia. Racism in California is like a slow pressure always at the back of your mind that no pain killer will solve, and no stress relief can eliminate. Knowing that all of my childhood friends except one are either dead or still in jail, is disturbing. The lucky one that made it out, well, he’s an MD at Johns Hopkins. To this day, I get a burst of adrenaline when I see a police officer. Are they going to pull me over? Try not to make eye contact. Turn the radio down. Keep both hands on the steering wheel.

Police contact with Black people is currently the topic of the day across blogs, social media, and the news media. This is nothing new, and it will not go away anytime soon. The one thing I can’t change about my appearance is my skin color. For some reason, I always seem to fit the description.

Fitting the description does not always have to involve police contact. When I attended high school in San Jose, CA, I had a guidance counselor who calmly explained to me that college was not for me. That I was more suited to a labor intensive career like construction, or warehouse work. After showing him the letters of recommendation I received from two United States Senators, he reluctantly wrote me the required recommendation for the NROTC program. Several weeks later, I received a call from the Navy informing me that I was to return to the counselor to get a new letter of recommendation. The counselor had written a rude and spiteful letter to the Navy and a Naval Officer would be having a phone conversation with the counselor before I arrived. When I saw the counselor later that week, he was visibly upset, but had written a letter that was far more balanced.

I could only wish this was an isolated incident. My turbines instructor in College informed me that I would never ever have the ability to run a turbine in my life. I took a fair amount of glee in informing him that I was currently in charge of 1,500MW of power generation using steam and gas turbines.

I learned to adjust to how people view me, but it was not easy. Many others don’t have the family support, the determination, or the educational background to fight through the constant barriers placed in front of Black males today. Today, not the 1960s or 1950s – I’m talking about today. Racism today is so ingrained in American culture and it has become nearly invisible. It is no longer a matter of placing blame for the past, we must work together to improve the present.

The best description I have been able to come up with has been a foot race. The 500 meter dash.

The first runner has technical shoes, a high-tech running suit, and a straight path to victory. The second runner has no shoes, no running suit, but is full of determination, and also has a straight path to victory. As the race begins, both runners get off to a good start, but the clay track turns into dirt for the second runner somewhere around 100 meters. At 150 meters, hurdles appear for the second runner. At 200 meters, walls begin to appear that the second runner has to climb. At 300 meters, the second runner has to dodge people shooting at him. At 400 meters, a minefield appears. At 500 meters, victory.

Both runners are capable of finishing the race, but it is far easier to finish as the first runner. Many spectators point to the people who finished as the second runner, and seriously question why more people don’t finish the second race. Both lengths are 500 meters, right?

I ran the second race. Once completed, I have spent my time trying to clear all the obstacles the second runner has to overcome.

Which race did you run? Will you help clear the field for the second runner?

The post You Fit The Description appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Thirteen or so years ago, Yellow Scene published numerous articles speaking out against the invasion of Iraq. We received angry emails and phone calls telling us we were anti-American, and that we “didn’t support the troops” (and a few other choice words). I am hoping that my visit to Ferguson creates more awareness than it does angry letters.

Ferguson is not an inner-city slum, it is a family-rich community. It reminded me more of Thornton than it did a ghetto. The protesters were family members, not thugs. The thugs and the looters that you’ve been hearing about were outsiders taking advantage of a horrible situation. Yet these families told me that they were peacefully protesting when rubber bullets started to fly (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO1SKC6dK7o).  Yes, Ferguson saw violence but by all accounts, it appears the police fired first.

The protest was triggered by the shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson officer after stopping Brown for jaywalking on a small street winding through a residential apartment development. We don’t yet know exactly what happened but the evidence suggests that we are not hearing the whole truth– a suspicion encouraged by the fact that Officer Darren Wilson has refused to fill out an incident report.

When I was there a week-and-a-half later, I didn’t see rioters. I saw a police department so heavily armed that it frightened me, and was told by one officer that I was “lucky he was there to protect me”, though I had to wonder “from what?” as I did not see anyone acting violently.

All of the protestors I saw and met were peaceful and were there objecting to the unnecessary use of police force. I was told story after story of their 14-year-old boys being stopped by the police, put on the ground, and threatened with arrest, for nothing more than being outside.

Living in Erie, Colorado, I have never had to worry about my son being told to “get off the street”, nor have I ever had to watch police cars to make sure one is not circling around for me, but I have watched the police in neighboring communities arrest teenagers for riding a bike in the crosswalk as well as issuing tickets for traffic violations so petty one can only believe it is a revenue stream.

Using the military for law enforcement almost always end with bad results, which is in effect what we are doing by militarizing our police domestically. Soldiers and police have two different jobs. Soldiers go to war, police are supposed to help keep the peace. If the military themselves are alarmed by what they are seeing by the police (and they are) we need to stop and question what we have our police doing. A “community” approach to policing has shown to decrease crime, whereas a police department showing up for “war” and expecting violence has been proven to actually provoke and increase violence.

This isn’t just a Ferguson issue; our local police departments are also taking part in the militarization and privatization that is spreading throughout our police and judicial system.

Recently Lafayette received 40 military-grade M16’s. I am not sure what is going on in Lafayette that requires the police department to possess these firearms (especially when you consider these guys receive about 6 weeks of training to be an officer) but it does not make me feel safer.

Why? Several factors seems to be in play. Petty infractions are becoming the new tax base and towns are being funded by their municipal courts. Combine low-level infractions as a revenue source with an overarmed police department and we are looking at a model of policing that is not for the safety of the community but rather puts it at risk. And new laws are being passed every day, that turns someone into a felon with two or more minor infractions.

America’s black population, especially black males, bear the brunt of the consequences. Something people of color face is their kids start getting stopped and charged at 14, often for very small petty infractions such as jaywalking, racking up charges against them before they even turn 18.  Do we as a country really believe all blacks are “up to no good”? When people like Cliven Bundy are free to point guns at police and we have case after case of blacks and Hispanics in this country being arrested for the smallest of incidents, to those being shot because they talked back to the police or reached for their phone, we have to stop and admit to ourselves that we have not moved as far forward as we would like to believe. Coupled with drug laws designed to fuel profit for prisons, we are not a nation of laws with justice as the end result.

Why do young, black, males seem to experience far more stops by police than their white counterparts? Blacks face being stopped almost twice as much as whites. People of color make up 60 percent of the prison population while only making up 13 percent of the population overall. Black men are 6.5x more likely to be incarcerated than whites (for the same exact crime) and over 70 percent of people in jail are non-violent offenders. The US is the only nation in the country whose prison population has increased 700 percent over 40 years (resulting in over 2.2 million behind bars). At the federal level, prisoners incarcerated on a drug conviction make up half the prison population, while the number of drug offenders in state prisons has increased eleven-fold since 1980. Most of these people are not high-level players in the drug trade. Most have no prior offenses.

To even begin to deal with this we must admit that racism still exists, even here in Boulder County. We must insist our police departments are working from a Community Police approach first, and we must recognize the drug war is a huge waste of effort.

The post Injustice in Ferguson appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.