FACING RACE: Aurora Defies National Trends In Confronting Racial Tensions

PROMISED LAND | TALKING THE TALK | THE FACE OF A CITY

PROMISED LAND

By Quincy Snowdon, Photography by Gabriel Christus

Aurora has weathered storms of racial discord in ways that few U.S. cities ever could, and the relative harmony has won out over hate thanks to decades of work toward the proverbial mountaintop

Not a picture was hung nor a tchotchke displayed in Nick Metz’ second-floor office at Aurora police headquarters when he got the call on March 6.

Having served as the city’s top cop for just two days, Metz was still learning names, setting up voicemail and thumbing through hundreds of pages of local policy in order to familiarize himself with a city he admittedly barely knew — he had to Google “Aurora” when a recruiter first told him about the job months earlier. There had not yet been time to adorn his new post in Aurora Police headquarters with pennants of his beloved Seahawks or framed pictures of family. And he didn’t know it then, but there wouldn’t be time for much of anything in the coming weeks — anything but damage control. Shortly after 1 p.m. on that cloudless March day — Metz’ third on the job — members of the Aurora SWAT Team confronted a man walking along the 16200 block of East 12th Avenue in north Aurora. The man, Naeschylus Vinzant, was wanted by the state Department of Corrections for removing an ankle monitor, and APD had been asked for routine help to apprehend him. At press time, it was still unknown to the public what occurred next, but something over the course of the brief interaction led Aurora police officer Paul Jerothe to fire a single, fatal shot at the 37-year-old parolee walking down a road flecked with smudges of gray, spring snow.

What happened next, and more importantly what didn’t, is what has defined the city for nearly a quarter century.

No Stranger to Controversy

The history of racial tension between Aurora and its police department is one pockmarked with challenging intricacies. Looking through news archives and police reports from the past decade can paint a grim picture of how the city and its peacekeepers have clashed with one another.

There’s the fatal shooting of 39-year Aaron Davis, a black man killed over a parking dispute in a Blockbuster parking lot in 2005. The white shooter, 52-year-old Glenn Eichstedt, claimed self-defense and was not charged by an Arapahoe County grand jury.

Then there’s the case of Loree McCormick- Rice, a black woman who was beaten by an off-duty Aurora police officer in a King Soopers parking lot in 2006. Though the offenses were later dropped, McCormick- Rice was charged with obstructing a peace officer, failure to obey an order and resisting arrest. Aurora Police later promoted Sgt. Charles DeShazer, one of the officers involved in the controversy.

Flashpoints like these are tragic signposts along the city’s rocky path of community and police relations. Digging deeper yields dozens more instances of cops shooting residents and residents shooting back. But there’s something missing from the countless reports detailing the city’s long-standing racial testiness. It’s something that communities across the country have struggled to yoke since thousands of people marched on Selma, Alabama, in 1965. And it’s something that has seen new life through hashtags and hell raising over the past 13 months.

The Outcry

In the days following the Vinzant shooting, details began to emerge that were primed to tap into Aurora’s sleepy racial fault lines. Vinzant, a black man, was unarmed at the time of his death. He was on parole and wanted in connection to a March 2 incident involving robbery, assault, domestic violence and kidnapping. He was a father.

For the first time in several years, Aurora had a formidable recipe for legitimate community backlash directed at its police department. And that potentially potent cocktail had the recently laid volcanic bedrock of Ferguson, Missouri, to stand on.

Hundreds of local activists, clergymen and government officials attended protests at the Aurora Municipal Center the week after the shooting, demanding justice and accountability. At a gathering March 12, protestors bore signs that read messages such as “Vinzant was lynched” and “A badge is not a license to kill.” With tears flowing down cheeks and the dark silhouettes of police officers dotting the rooftops surrounding the Municipal Center’s Great Lawn, the scene was rife with grief and pressure.

Some people swore. Others pointed fingers at cops. One man loudly cursed a former Aurora mayor who has been out of office for more than a decade.

Then, as if a director had called “cut,” it was over. The crowd calmly and casually trickled out onto Alameda Avenue and people went home to their husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters.

There were no flames. There was no fury.

But that’s not how these happenings are supposed to go in 2015, according to the incendiary images broadcast on 24-hour cable news networks. There are supposed to be shattered panes and pretense, epithets and entropy.

Not in Aurora.

Despite a constant peppering of events poised to incite violence in recent years, the city has remained a bastion of tolerance and civil civic discourse. But why? And how? How has a city that has mushroomed in size, scope and color over the past 30 years managed to avoid the municipal tumult that has seized so many similar streets around the country, and even here in the metro area?

Part of that answer starts with the country’s first viral video.

Planting the Seeds

In the spring of 1992, Los Angeles was on fire. The worldwide dissemination of George Holliday’s shaky home recording of LAPD officers mercilessly beating Rodney King spawned a week of riots. The tensions temporarily cut a fresh wound into America’s deep and troubled racial scars — a slash that extended all the way to Aurora.

In the days after the beatings, a band of local high school students took siege of Buckingham Square Mall, tipping over racks of clothing and damaging thousands of dollars worth of merchandise. The raid blindsided city officials, who were at that time so preoccupied with quelling the metro area’s ballooning issues with gang violence, they had little time, money or disobedience-abating resources to combat such incidents. But after watching Los Angeles be systematically dismantled, Aurora City Manager John Pazour instructed then Human Relations Commission Chairwoman Barbara Shannon-Banister to create a mechanism that could extinguish future episodes before harmless sparks turned into uncontrollable flames.

Today, Shannon-Banister — known by many in Aurora simply as “the BSB” — continues to make good on that request.

In the more than two decades since Pazour asked her for a solution, Shannon- Banister has continuously acted as the city’s quiet puppeteer of peace, inconspicuously guiding citizens toward order and cordial dissent. She’s presided over countless protests and perturbations, silently watching as the community has evolved.

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“People from Denver used to say, ‘Don’t get caught out in Aurora after dark,’” Shannon- Banister says, slowly blinking her solemn, rust-colored eyes. While the hyperbole was naive, it spoke to a growing reputation of gangs, racism and trouble during the early 1980s. “But I think we’ve been an example of how that flower opened up and how that flower is full of all kinds of people, things and experiences. We are a hidden treasure.”

After Buckingham Square, Shannon-Banister formed the Key Community Response Team, a loose coalition of about 12 entities meant to enhance citizen communication and prevent violent responses to racially contentious events. Like Adam Smith’s invisible hand, KCRT is little seen but often felt.

The team, now composed of about 30 to 60 regular members who hail from roughly 12 city entities, uses phone trees to cool people down following police shootings, grand jury verdicts or other circumstances that could lead to racial controversies. And despite having a largely invisible presence, KCRT’s résumé of implementation runs long. In the early 1990s, members helped defuse activists and protestors after a troop of neo-Nazis rallied at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Marade. They’ve placated flaring tempers following grand jury decisions in Adams and Arapahoe counties, where KCRT has an agreement with both district attorneys to make sure the group is notified of decisions before the news media. When Vinzant was killed in March, KCRT members met with Chief Metz and his staff in the days after the shooting so that they could relay as much accurate information as possible back to their constituencies.

In many ways, Shannon-Banister’s experiment has discreetly made Aurora an exemplar for how to handle controversy. It allowed the city to capitalize on its built-in social networks and circulate vital information decades before tweets became the country’s instant messengers. Even before Shannon-Banister, longtime city leaders John and Edna Mosely as well as activist Gwen Thomas established a preliminary atmosphere of tolerance by founding Citizens Concerned About Minorities in Aurora. Though largely inactive today, CCAMA was a doorway to discriminatory discourse that acted in much the same way as would a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — 20 years before an Aurora NAACP chapter opened in the city.

“CCAMA gave the African-American community in Aurora a sense of identity,” says Thomas, who was also a founding member of the English department at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. “It was something that gave them a sense that there were friends they could call on. It was a comforting sort of feeling.”

It was important, and effective, when run-ins between police and black youth at places like Skate City made regional headlines. Rather than let the simmering problems boil over, Aurora started even then to calm tempers, find common ground and actually make real changes. The city made substantive adjustments to the police department in the early 1980s, slowly but greatly improving relations between blacks and cops.

But the efficacy of connected communicators such as Shannon-Banister, Thomas and the Mosleys is only a piece of how Aurora has remained distanced from the infamous cluster of cities tethered to a reputation for racial trauma. A greater explanation can be found in the city’s relentless stigma of suburban sprawl. Because though often mocked for their lack of inspiration, the city’s rows of manicured lawns and middle-class homes have in many ways been its salvation.

The Virtue of Diversity

The series of pie charts reflecting Aurora’s racial makeup over the past 30 years looks a bit like a diagram of the lunar cycle. Slices representing the white majority have regularly waned since 1980, so much so that Aurora became a majority-minority city in 2010, meaning that no racial group composes more than half of the city’s population of about 351,000 people, according to the most recent U.S. Census data.

But it doesn’t take a conversation with a surveyor to see the complexity of the city’s cultural quilt first hand. Moseying down a street just about anywhere north of East Yale Avenue and west of South Buckley Road can feel like a trip to the United Nations. Fashions, languages and customs have arrived to the city from around the globe and become quietly woven into the community fabric with little fanfare or commentary. And though the trend of suburban immigration certainly isn’t new to established city observers, the progression has shot forward in the past 15 years with startling speed.

Between 2000 and 2010, census statistics report that the city’s black and Asian populations each grew by about 30 percent and the Hispanic contingent grew slightly more than seven fold. Within those numbers, the state’s department of human services estimates that the city has annually added somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 asylees and refugees. Overall, the Aurora populace has swollen by about 20 percent since 2000 despite losing nearly 10,000 white/non-Hispanic residents over the same period.

The thesis is big and bold: Aurora is diverse. In the past 30 years, neighborhoods once known as W.A.S.P.y bulwarks have blossomed into cultural bazaars with shockingly equal racial compositions.

It could be the lack of an established ghetto, like Five Points in Denver. It could be consistently affordable housing — the median home value in the city was about $70,000 less than the state average in 2013, according to city-data.com. Or it could be Aurora’s dearth of a true downtown, a lingering notion that has plagued city planners for decades, but one that has allowed for huge tracts of land to be suffused with wildly diverse incomes.

“We don’t have a place where all black folks live together or where all the Anglos live together, even though they’re the major population in Aurora,” Shannon-Banister says. “We have a real mixture all over our city and that’s a good thing.”

That confluence of factors along with many others has resulted in Aurora becoming the 10th-most integrated city in the country, according to data from Brown University’s American Communities Project. Based largely on the statistic of the neighborhood diversity index, the project found that about 59 percent of Aurora residents are likely to be of a different race than their neighbors. By that measure, Aurora ranked more than 10 percentage points higher than cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Denver.

Even so, Aurora’s road to harmony still winds long.

The Road Ahead

Nick Metz’ desk has become slightly more crowded since March — even just five months spent policing a city that spans 154 square miles will do that. During that time, Metz has been taking stock of a department and a community in much the same way they’ve been taking stock of him. And both parties are coming back with positive reviews.

After the Vinzant protests, Metz led an all-out community blitz in an effort to squash anxiety. And by and large, it worked. Metz met with the Vinzant family in his office following the protest to let them know as much as he could about the situation. It wasn’t part of procedure, but it was something he had done in his 31 years with the Seattle Police Department and something he says just felt like the right thing to do. He met with clergy over late-night meals at restaurants to get a sense of how the community was feeling. He spoke at a forum at Potter’s House Church in Denver with several other Front Range law enforcement officials. Months later, he and the department issued a joint press release with the Vinzant family.

“In those days before the protests, we were hitting the community hard, meeting with leaders in the African-American community, with clergy both from Aurora and Denver, and folks who are pretty well known to be critical of the police department,” Metz says. “And to some degree I think that helped. I think it gave people a sense of confidence that we were going to do what we said we were going to do.”

Many in the community, like longtime community activist Shareef Aleem, were in impressed with Metz’ outreach efforts. But Aleem and others want to see how Metz does with time. Time to further prove himself, time to ingrain himself and time to enact change.

“I’m just going to give him time, and that’s all the community can do, too,” Aleem says. “With an African-American chief, and the Vinzant case now on the table, I feel a little bit of optimism. But history tells me that they will provide a Band-Aid for the moment, but the cancer is still there. Unless you view the people in Aurora Hills the same way as those on Colfax and Quentin, and give them the same service, then this is just going to continue like it’s been.”

That attitude is one Metz knows still pervades the city, and it’s acted as the basis for many of the initial changes he’s imposed. And in his nearly half-year as chief, Metz has not held back in making adjustments. He’s presided over a total reorganization of APD, which resulted in the department’s first-ever female division chief and its second Hispanic division commander. He’s supervising the implementation of a new, $217,000 body camera program. He’s helping to rework and rewrite the department’s rules, trainings and punishments regarding the use of force. And he’s doubling down on recruitment efforts, hoping to diversify a force that’s about 85 percent white.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” Metz says. “There are a lot of people who don’t have that trust or confidence in the department, and the onus is on us to change that.”

Aurora isn’t perfect. Metz, Shannon-Banister and more than 350,000 neighbors unanimously agree that there’s still plenty of progress to be made, bridges to be built and olive branches to be dispensed. But the city’s trying, and succeeding, in setting an example.

“Aurora could potentially be the model,” says Aurora poet Jovan Mays. “It could be the, ‘Hey, this is how you do it. In case you were confused, this is how you harmonize.’”

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PROMISED LAND | TALKING THE TALK | THE FACE OF A CITY

Talking the Talk

By Brandon Johansson, Photography by Gabriel Christus

Aurora schools move away from trying to get kids to be colorblind and instead embrace debate on heady subject of race

It’s a common scene in an elementary school classroom: Students pass a totem from classmate to classmate. Whoever has the totem gets to speak.

In Aurora, where the schools are among the most diverse in the state, you could probably see a young girl in a hijab pass the totem to a friend from Mexico, who passes it to a Caucasian boy, who hands it off to a recent immigrant from Nepal.

On one particular day in a second-grade class at Arrowhead Elementary School last school year, the totem landed with a black boy. When it was his turn to speak, the boy announced to the class: “I only pass to black people.”

It’s a moment that could make a teacher freeze. Racial tension between 7-year-olds? Let’s just change the subject. Who wants to paint?

But that didn’t happen this day. Instead, the teacher encouraged discussion and the elementary schoolers started talking about it. Is it fair for this student only to pass to one race? Even if that race has historically been held back and this bit of discrimination is merely a reaction to that much harsher and much longer discrimination? It’s heavy stuff for anyone, let alone students two years removed from kindergarten. But they kept talking. Eventually, the boy with the totem changed his mind.

“I have a white friend, and that was years ago,” he said.

Yemi Stembridge recounted that story from a teacher at Arrowhead last spring on his blog, Fairness in Education. Stembridge works with teachers in both Cherry Creek Schools and Aurora Public Schools to help them better understand the role race plays in education and how their classes can be more equitable to students from all cultures and races.

Moments like that one at Arrowhead are always difficult for teachers, Stembridge says. Race is a taboo topic in our culture. People — and this includes teachers — are taught from a young age that talking about race is impolite, that ducking racial conversation is actually a kind thing to do.

And it’s not just a matter of being polite or impolite. Stembridge says there is an unceasing fear in American society of being branded a racist, of saying something controversial, having it hit social media and being branded a “race villain.” That fear means many people — be they students, teachers or others — simply clam up when it comes to talking about race.

That teacher at Arrowhead didn’t do that. She did the opposite and prodded her students to talk, to confront the issue head on. Still, it spooked her. Stembridge says the teacher came to a professional development meeting that day worried about how she handled it.

“She was rattled, and I think understandably so,” Stembridge says. “Because this issue of race is something we are generally socialized not to talk about in polite American society. These recent events all over the country are forcing us to deal with it differently now, but for most people it makes us uncomfortable to have to deal with these topics.”

But as that black second-grader showed when he made the initial comment, whether teachers and students discuss race or not, it’s still an issue in schools. When that student spoke, his words came from a concern that he carried into school everyday.

“This kid is trying to figure out, ‘What is my responsibility in being authentically black, and participating in this world of school,” Stembridge says.

That intersection between a child’s racial or cultural identity and their academic identity is at the center of “equity in education” efforts in Aurora’s two school districts and around the country.

“It’s about pulling in ideas and history around race, history around opportunity, all of those things that have traditionally marginalized some groups relative to others.”

For Cherry Creek and APS, Stembridge is aiming to craft professional development programs for teachers that do that, but do it in a way focused on the local community. The goal, he says, is to frame a conversation in each individual school that can help close the achievement gaps that bedevil urban districts.

Aurora’s schools have long been known for their uncommon diversity.

In APS, students come from more than 130 countries and speak more than 130 languages. More than a third of the students are learning English and more than four out of five of those speak Spanish. Most of the students in APS — about 85 percent last year — were minorities, with Caucasian students making up just 16 percent of the population.

Because of their proximity, the two districts are always compared to each other. The easy line is to say that Cherry Creek is the successful district in the whiter, wealthier end of town, and APS is the scuffling district with poorer, minority students.

While CCSD does perform better than APS on state tests — and on average fewer CCSD students receive a free or reduced lunch, one of the primary indicators of poverty — when it comes to diversity, the districts have more in common than most people realize.

While CCSD’s student body is 55 percent white, it still ranks as the state’s fifth-most diverse district, according to k12.niche.com, a website that ranks schools on a variety of factors. APS ranks No. 2 on that list.

And CCSD’s diversity is especially pronounced in schools located on the Aurora end of the district.

Overland High School is a prime example of that. About a third of the school are white, a third are black, a fourth are Hispanic and remaining 10 percent are students from a variety of ethnicities.

That uncommon level of diversity doesn’t necessarily make talking about race in the classroom easier or more difficult than in a school where most students share an ethnicity, Stembridge says. But it does make those conversations especially important.

“If the kids pick up on the unwillingness of adults to engage in conversation around race, then we risk sending them signals that there are parts of their identity that are not welcome in the school,” he says.

That’s a dangerous message to send students who you want engaged in their education because it forces them to choose. It pits their racial, ethnic or social identity against their academic identity, Stembridge says.

For starters, that’s unfair because only some students are forced to make those choices, only some are asked scrap part of their identity, and it’s usually minorities.

Stembridge says it’s also dangerous because education tends to lose out in that balancing act.

“It’s going to be a choice where most children are going to honor the identity of their home,” he says.

But if schools can embrace their students’ identities, Stembridge says they can leverage that to not only keep students engaged, but mold them into better students.

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PROMISED LAND | TALKING THE TALK | THE FACE OF A CITY

THE FACE OF A CITY

By Rachel Sapin, Photography by Gabriel Christus

An all-white council governs the most-diverse city in Colorado. It hasn’t always been that way, and a vote this fall may introduce a new hue to Council Chambers

Aurora’s entire City Council is white, despite that the city itself is the most diverse in the state.

That’s not to say Aurora has not had some black and Hispanic politicians over the years. The most well-known is Edna Mosley, who served as the first black city council representative and was a longtime community activist.

Mosley was elected to the Aurora City Council at-large in 1991 and served three, four-year terms. During her tenure, she was influential in anti-gang programs, local gun control legislation and issues effecting racial equality.

But the path to a city council seat has not been easy for others.

Alfonso Nuñez, who has owned La Cueva Mexican Restaurant on East Colfax Avenue in north Aurora for 41 years, has ran several failed bids for a seat.

“It’s just a really strange animal to crack. You’ve got some folks that are leaving but it seems that they just recycle them,” he says of the Aurora City Council makeup. “They just go leave for a few years, play golf and get reappointed again. I don’t get it.”

One answer could be that city elections are less partisan than statewide and national elections, and Aurora’s attract fewer voters than what is seen on a national scale because they occur on non-presidential election years.

“Both parties seems to skate local elections” says Nuñez. “But they’re so important because you can get things done on the local level so much faster. There are a couple dozen people in each ward who are very active and go to everything and they have a big voice. But the other folks need to wake up, if they want to have a voice they need to vote.”

Norman Provizer, a political science professor with Metropolitan State University of Denver, says the fact the Aurora City Council elections are non-partisan and occur in odd years draws only a small number of voters to the municipal elections.

“People who generally tend to turn out the most are older white,” he says. “They tend to have a stronger, more significant voice.”

But the issue is complicated.

Nuñez says he doesn’t think council members who aren’t the same ethnicity as the community they represent are doing a poor job. He points to Sally Mounier, a white Aurora councilwoman who serves Ward I in Original Aurora, a largely Hispanic community, as an example. 

Mounier herself admits that she was intimidated when she was first appointed to the seat in 2012 to replace a council member and later won the seat in 2013.

“When I took over this job, I determined very early on as a council member that I was going to represent everybody,” she says. “I don’t care if you’re black, white, or  purple polka dots. If you’re walking in my ward and need help, I’m going to help you.”

During her tenure as a council member, Mounier has advocated for issues such as providing a safe space for mostly Spanish-speaking day laborers on the corner of Colfax where they congregate. She has proposed that the city purchase the empty parking lot as one way to clean up the area and provide temporary amenities such as a construction trailer and porta-potties for the workers.

But a few years into her tenure as a councilwoman, Mounier says she has trouble attracting immigrant and refugee residents to her town hall meetings. She says is trying to reach out to these residents in her ward, but that it is ultimately up to the voters as to who gets onto Aurora City Council.

“There is no place in an elected position for affirmative action,” she says. “It will take care of itself based on the qualifications, on how hard somebody works to get themselves elected. It cannot be based on a person’s race or a person’s gender. It’s an abridgment of our electoral process.”

Nuñez disagrees. He says he still thinks the city’s Hispanic residents aren’t getting full representation on city council, and that city council has not been as considerate as it should be in appointing council members when it has the chance.

“They had a chance to appoint someone like me, who’s tied to the community, speaks a couple other languages,” he says. “When they have the chance to appoint somebody, it’s not can they make a difference? No, it’s they’re a Republican, they’re a Democrat, and we know how they vote.”

Mounier and other incumbent council members contend the city council has embraced Aurora’s diversity in recent years.

“I think everyone on council from the mayor on down, understands we are an extremely diverse population. We don’t shun that,” she says.

Barb Cleland, who serves as an Aurora City Councilwoman at large, says the city council’s “embracing” of Aurora’s diversity stemmed from the Key Community Response Team’s formation in the 1990s. She says the mentality KCRT brought to Aurora government ultimately trickled into the policy discussions happening in study and regular council sessions.

“We have accepted that we are diverse,” says Cleland. “That we are one of the most culturally diverse cities. Years and years ago we didn’t look at it that way. It’s been in the last five years that we’ve had that discussion.”

Cleland said even though Aurora council members are white, they are sensitive to issues affecting all residents.

“If you do serve on city council and you’re not aware of the diversity, I would be surprised,” she says. “Yes I am white. I know I’m white. Can I say that I totally understand what it’s like for a black person who has been discriminated against? No, but I have empathy for anybody who has been discriminated against no matter who they are.”

Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan says the city’s emphasis on Aurora’s international population has also helped the city with race relations.

He points to events that were created during his tenure such as Globalfest, an annual celebration of the city’s robust and growing international community.

“That started three years ago,” he says. “When I came in, I said that’s what I want to do. We’re going to recognize the international nature of this city. The decision to do Globalfest, to put (international) flags in the lobby of the city building, those kinds of things white Aurora may not think are that important. But they are important to people who come here from somewhere else. It’s a symbol, it’s a recognition that they too have a history, and the history didn’t start the day they settled in Aurora, Colorado.”

Hogan says he doesn’t think an all-white city council impacts how the city is governed, but it does seem odd given that Aurora is now a majority-minority city, and he says he’s hopeful that things will change in the coming years.

Hogan says part of that not only has to do with Aurora’s diverse residents, but with Aurora’s transformation from a bedroom suburb near Denver to the third largest city in state.

“What I do think is going to happen in the future, I think we will see more minority candidates. I think we will see them better-funded, and there will be more people who want to run for public office,” he says. 

Maya Wheeler, who ran a failed bid for an at-large seat in 2013, is also running for an at-large seat this fall.  Wheeler is biracial, but says she identifies as black.

She thinks this year will be better than the last campaign. 

“Last time when I ran, I went from knowing 250 people to 14,000 in the end,” she says. “I’ve had the opportunity since then to learn more about the city. I’m chair of the Aurora Human Relations Commission. I’m a mentor and advisor to the Aurora Immigrant and Refugee Taskforce.”

She says she believes the city council is doing a good job, even though it is all-white.

“They’ve made an effort to reach out to the communities and try to get their input,” she says of the incumbent city council members.

But she says an all-white city council inevitably keeps everyone in the Aurora from having a voice during policy discussions.

“You can only represent what you experience. Our city needs to be a reflection of our community, to work most effectively,” she says.

Angela Lawson, who also ran a failed bid for an at-large seat in 2013 and is running again for that seat this year, has similar feelings. Lawson is also biracial, but says she identifies as black.

“My experience in the city may be different than other council members. That is something I can bring to the table,” she says. “I think you need more diverse opinions. I grew up in a community like some that exist along Colfax that my parent still live in on the southeast side of Colorado Springs. It’s very diverse and working class where my parents live. Those are experiences I can bring to the table.”

Some white city council members do think there needs to be more diversity on Council as well. Debi Hunter Holen, councilwoman at large, agrees with Lawson and Wheeler.

“When Maya says there is not that voice, she’s right,” Hunter Holen says. “We can be supportive, we can try to fight that fight, but we can only go so far. People of color need to be represented on the city council. Our city is not all white.”

At the state level, Aurora is represented by African Americans such as Rhonda Fields and Jovan Melton.

Melton, who represents Aurora’s House District 41, says there is one major reason driving that divide.

“Unlike in the state legislature, city council elections are non-partisan. Most people of color vote for Democrats. Without knowing what party each candidate belongs to, our city council elections lead to apathy and extremely low voter turnout. It is an obstacle seen by potential candidates thinking of running for office,” he says.

Eric Nelson, who is African American and running for the Aurora House District Seat being vacated by Fields, agrees.

Nelson serves on the Aurora Public Schools Board, and says he has felt discouraged from running for Aurora City Council because he does feel the support system is lacking at that level.

He also thinks he has a better chance in a statewide election.

“It’s a numbers game,” he says.  “It’s a wider spectrum, you have more voters.”

Nelson says he believes Aurora City Council needs to advocate for more minority candidates to see something change.

“If local elected officials said, ‘We want more people of color to be on this council with us so we can reflect what our city looks like,’ you would have that support,” he says.  “Otherwise, people will vote the way they have always voted.”

PROMISED LAND | TALKING THE TALK | THE FACE OF A CITY