It’s the hope that kills you.

As a Palestinian American, after Oct. 23 the city council meeting , I renewed my belief that Aurora would finally have a majority progressive city council. With chants of “vote them out” and an energized Muslim base in the city, this belief didn’t seem farfetched.

After the Nov. 7 election results, however, it became clear that Aurora is far from becoming the city I and many others want it to be, jolting me back to reality.

In the wake of the decision by the City Council not to include the Palestinian people in their resolution pledging support to the people of Israel, the Palestinian community in Aurora felt alienated. This was not because we didn’t want the city council to support the people of Israel, but because we, too, wanted support.

This was just the latest installment of the systemic alienation of minorities in Aurora carried out by the majority conservative city council, which has been in power for a few years now. Despite Aurora’s immense minority population, roughly 45%, it’s becoming more and more evident that we don’t belong. We will never be true Aurorans to some in our community.

Following the election results on Tuesday, we will now see a city council composed of eight conservatives – including the mayor – and only three progressives. The demographics of the city council do not match the demographics of Aurora, a city flourishing with immigrants, progressives and minority populations.

The City Council of Aurora includes a mayor who is to the right of Trump on immigration and has council members whose main priority is to “crack down on crime,” a known racist dog whistle. So, we must pose the question to ourselves, why has this happened? Particularly when many other states and cities in the country have swung the other way, becoming more progressive, even in places where it wasn’t expected.

I believe it has happened for a couple of reasons. One, the amount of money pumped into this most recent election has been tremendous and heavily skewed toward conservative candidates. This played a part in what happened on Election Day, but there’s another reason. The left has struggled with energizing voters or getting them to care enough to vote.

To get people involved in local politics, you must meet them where they’re at and explain to them the importance of why they need to vote, but unfortunately, there still hasn’t been any breakthrough in doing so here in Aurora. This brings us to the subsequent question: How is this problem fixed?

While the future looks bleak in Aurora, with an almost certainty regarding the passage of more conservative and harmful legislation to suppress and alienate at-risk communities in this city, there is still a way forward. Coalitions of BIPOC, working-class and minority populations need to begin taking a foothold in this city to ensure our interests are being put first. So, we need to organize and persuade these populations that their votes matter, and that their voices will make a difference. To do so, we must be brave and honest with our neighbors, show them why this legislation harms them, and persuade them to begin organizing with us.

All of our struggles are connected. My freedom is contingent on your freedom, just as yours is on mine. When there is no justice for Elijah McClain, there is no justice for the Palestinian people.

When police forces here in the United States are trained by the Israeli police and military, it becomes clear why we need to stand in solidarity with one another. When our human dignity is taken from us, whether it be by the forceful removal of the unhoused from their camps or the Palestinians from their motherland, it becomes clear why we need to stand in solidarity with one another. When our police budgets are massively inflated, yet most of us are struggling to make ends meet, it becomes clear why we need to stand in solidarity with one another.

Aurora is a city that I love and have cherished my whole life. I do not want to see this city become a conservative dwelling ground; I want Aurora to serve the diversity it always tokenizes, instead of harming it. I want Aurora to become a haven for immigrants, a protector of cultures, and a safe place for all children: white, Black and brown.

The direction we’re heading in is dangerous, but my hope for what our city can become hasn’t gone away. We can become a model city for America, a beacon of the future, because of our composition, because of our culture, and because of the collective kindness present in this city.

Khalid Mhareb is an Aurora resident.

21 replies on “GUEST COLUMN: Aurora’s red wave, and what it means for the rest of us”

  2. It is a sad state of affairs that in a city of 400,000 people, less than 80,000 votes were cast in this election. I agree that more must be done to encourage voting at the local level in order to more accurately reflect our diverse population. I’m not sure how that can be done, however. It is hard to get people motivated when they feel they won’t be heard.

    1. Aurora as well as the USA, cannot be obligated to be a refuse for all immigrants. There is a process. What about the undervalued citizens and their plight? To afford food on the table let alone medical/ dental?

  3. As you say, Aurora is rich with immigrants, Democrats, and minority populations. Where you fail is in the assumption that these people are de facto “progressives” or democratic socialists that you just need to get them out to vote. Let’s analyze the data: Registered Democrats far outnumber registered Republicans in Aurora. Check. Democrats cast more votes than Republicans this time as always. Whoops. Following your logic, that should mean decisive victories for Democrats. Yet here we are. Could it be that engaged, voting Aurora Democrats are more D-moderate than radical leftist? Given a choice between a “D” and “R” for mayor, a sizeable percentage chose the R. If you’d leave your bubble, you might find many Aurorans are here for opportunities, not handouts or empty platitudes. These people believe in America. And a bonus question: How is it that Aurora voters now have their MOST DIVERSE city council ever? (Majority female including an out-LGBTQ woman, a Jew, a foreign-born, 4 POC, 1/2 of a biracial marriage, representing ages ranging from early career to retirement.) And it took conservatives to do it.

    1. Wake Up, would you please provide the numbers and your source for your statement, “Democrats cast more votes than Republicans this time as always.”
      I’m curious as to the accuracy of this.

    3. Thank you, Wake Up, for sharing these voting statistics and for pointing out the resulting extremely diverse city council! Your words are a refreshing and corrective counter to tiresome divisive rhetoric.

  4. Another neo-Maoist, question-begging, Current Year buzzword salad of glittering generalities, using a unity-criticism-unity dialectic that needs to stay in the campus coffeehouse where it belongs, as it provides no capability whatsoever for running a high-trust, functional society.

    Funny how these rad-left dingdongs are all parroting the same lines: “Oh, it was all the money that went into the races”; “Oh, we can’t figure out how to get young people out to vote.”

    1) Younger people have traditionally not voted at the same rate as older people. Doesn’t matter the year. Doesn’t matter the decade. Doesn’t matter who’s in office. In fact, it raises the question as to whether the 26th Amendment was even necessary, considering 18-20 year olds can barely be bothered to actually vote.
    2) If money and not getting everyone out to vote was a factor, what happened in 2017 and 2019, when the Emerge grads and DSA members were voted into office? The number of voters wasn’t any different in those years than it was in 2021 or 2023. Maybe the people who actually care enough about the city to vote, don’t like seeing how the rad-left members of turned the historically staid proceedings of the city council into a bully pulpit for marxist-flavored fantasias, nor the social degradation of the city as it became an even bigger magnet for gang members, criminals, and drug addicts than it was in the 1990s.

    And as the city continues to balkanize like Denver, contrary to what Mhareb believes, that social dysfunction is going to increase, not decrease–especially when his political faction has frogmouths like Tim Hernandez, who openly despises white people, acting as its spokespeople. Mhareb certainly gives that game away by claiming out of the one side of his mouth that he wants Aurora to be “a safe place for all children: white, Black, and brown,” while arguing out of the other that only the interests of two of those should be given consideration.

  5. Khalid Mhareb’s column is a must read for the eight stalwarts on Aurora City Council. Their objective is to control not govern.
    I’m an avid viewer of the Monday Council meetings. I cringe viewing the upcoming 2024 meetings.
    Also, the voter turnout was abysmal, as usual, for these municipal elections.
    They’re a grassroots voice.

    1. “Their objective is to control not govern.”

      Typical hippie neuroticism on display in that statement.

      “Also, the voter turnout was abysmal, as usual, for these municipal elections.”

      Voter turnout was the same as it was when your side won in 2017 and 2019. Stop consuming that vineyard’s worth of sour grapes and admit that the city isn’t dominated by your fellow neo-marxists.

      1. Never was a hippie; never was a Marxist.
        Worked hard; never took charity.
        I share when I can.
        Self-centered people make the world worse; so do people who are ignorant.

    2. If you mean controlling homelessness, violence, drug use, and all kinds of criminal behavior enabled by far-leftist policy at the state level, then I’d say, yes, this council will try to control that which is out of control. I can’t wait for the newly fortified council to get down to work on the mandates of Aurora voters.

    3. His column is only a must read for those that do not want to problem solve for Aurora’s future but just to advance a particular narrative. Apparently, not enough of these voters live in Aurora to advance the narrative any further.

  6. It seems that the diverse voting population of Aurora is not as concerned as Mr. Mhareb is with the demographics of the new Aurora City Council. In fact, it appears that they want, much to the dismay of Mr. Mhareb, more of the same and have increased the red component of Council.

    Maybe the diverse Aurora voting population is more concerned with results, than with the race and ideological bating arguments that Mr. Mhareb advocates.

  7. Khalid, thank you for your great column. Aurora is lucky to have your passionate concern.

    So what happened with the election? I have been thinking about that myself. These are some of my thoughts.

    1. Aurora is a big city but it doesn’t necessarily act like one. It was a rural area in the not so distant past, with farmland and little development. Its government is still playing catch-up to the expectations of a big city.

    2. What can be learned from other progressive success stories in the area? Lisa Calderon almost made the run-off for mayor of Denver. She was a close 3rd to Kelly Brough. How did she energize her progressive voters?

    3. There were mailings during the Aurora campaign that smeared Juan Marcano and Alison Coombs, with photos that made them look dangerous and strange. It didn’t seem to affect Alison’s results but maybe it made a difference for Juan, who knows. But what a disgrace.

    Juan Marcano seems like a genuinely nice and well-intentioned young man who would have been thrilled to serve as mayor. He’s full of ideas and energy, just what we want our young people to be, and just what we should have wanted for our community.

    1. “Aurora is a big city but it doesn’t necessarily act like one. It was a rural area in the not so distant past, with farmland and little development. Its government is still playing catch-up to the expectations of a big city.”

      Aurora’s acted like a big city for decades. That “not so distant past” was about 80 years ago, which is hardly relevant to how it’s functioned in the post-World War II era.

      ” What can be learned from other progressive success stories in the area?”

      Nothing. Four years ago, your side thought it had found the “secret sauce” in getting rad-left Emerge and DSA members on the council, and fell prey to your own historic determinism.

      “There were mailings during the Aurora campaign that smeared Juan Marcano and Alison Coombs, with photos that made them look dangerous and strange. ”

      No one other than the very elderly pay attention to these mailings. 98% of them go straight into the trash.

      “Juan Marcano seems like a genuinely nice and well-intentioned young man”

      He’s a marxist whose personal traits and intentions are irrelevant to actually running a complex society, rather than unachievable dreams of a leftist utopia. “Ideas” are for navel-gazers, not a functioning community.

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