| This summer someone asked me how I feel about no longer being mayor and how things in the African American community were progressing.
I’m proud of what we accomplished in the 12 years I was mayor of Denver.
As I look around the community as a whole, I’m pleased that the voters approved the Justice Center on the location which I selected and purchased for the city.
I’m pleased that the beautification of Martin Luther King Boulevard, in the heart of the Park Hill neighborhood, is proceeding with the funding I put in place.
I’m pleased with the progress of the Colorado Convention Center hotel, which I negotiated; the opening of the Convention Center expansion in December, which voters approved on my watch; the 2,000 acres of new park space; and the new Boys & Girls Club in Montbello.
Mayor John Hickenlooper, to his credit, has always been gracious to me and understands the linear nature of being mayor. I finished some of Mayor Pena’s projects and he will finish some of mine.
But I am really disappointed in the economic disintegration I am observing taking place in the African American community, which is largely being ignored.
We have blinding examples in our own community.
The University of Denver sponsored a conference on affordable housing and didn’t have Black developers on the panel who are building affordable housing, which becomes a case of "out of sight, out of mind."
The Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce did a full-page advertisement promoting tourism and didn’t mention one Black business, which becomes a case of "out of sight, out of mind."
The Black credit union (Denver Community Developed Credit Union) has folded, the Juneteeth parade cancelled and the Black Arts Festival has gone from its hey day when it filled up the frontage of East High School to this summer taking place in a small area of Sonny Lawson ballpark.
Thank goodness for people like business leaders Carl Bourgeois and Shelia King who had a Fourth of July celebration in Five Points that one could be proud of.
No one is asking for a handout, but just an invitation to the bigger capitalism party and not the economic segregation we now face. Government agencies put out bids on public projects without even asking for minority participation. | | Community activists have become indentured servants to campaigns that they neither care about nor can they intellectually support under questioning. I will speak more to this at a later time.
The African American population is dispersed throughout the Denver metro area with Aurora becoming the fastest growing and ultimately will be home to more African Americans than Denver.
Attendance at the last Urban League dinner was less than 400 and NAACP events attract even few participants.
Communication tools are essential and we are fortunate to have the Denver Weekly News and the Urban Spectrum. The loss of KDKO radio was devastating and so will be the loss of community television. The faults with community television are correctable.
The so-called "Summer of Violence" of 1993 garnered headlines because we would not allow gangs to take over the city. Now gunfire is so rampant in the metro area that it’s being taken for granted as pop bottle rockets or firecrackers.
The silence was deafening when Crystal Martinez bravely lost her life trying to stop a fight between two men at the Aurora Mall. The same week an interracial couple, planning their future after graduating from Colorado State University, were cowardly gunned down while sitting in a car. It is heartbreaking to see the parents of those children hanging up leaflets on light poles in a desperate search to get help from the community. They deserve better.
A generations long problem of Black students at the University of Colorado suffering verbal abuse, physical abuse and psychological abuse can and must be addressed not by symbolism but in a substantive manner by interim President Hank Brown.
The Black community seems to be in a deep sleep.
Black elected officials can’t do it alone; they need the help of the community. I believe each of us can do more to support them.
We elected George Brown as the first Black lieutenant governor in Colorado since Civil War reconstruction. In 1991, I couldn’t have been elected Denver’s first Black mayor without the Black community’s support and others.
You cannot ask others to fight for what you are not willing to fight for. Otherwise, we will wake up and find we’ve lost our Black community institutions and landmarks.
Editor’s note: Wellington Webb was elected as Denver’s mayor from 1991-2003. He founded Webb Group International, a consulting firm, in 2003. |
