On Aug. 30, Denver residents as well as the Attorney General of Colorado, Phil Weiser, gathered around a bus stop pole that had just hosted racist signs targeting Vice President Kamala Harris and migrants a day before for a rally against intolerance.
According to the Denver Post, Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis posted a photo of the signs that had been screwed into the pole on the bus stop. The signs carried messages of racial hatred, one read, “Blacks must sit at the back of the bus. Kamala’s migrants sit in the front.”
Another warned of “Kamala’s illegals” and contained images of people running, presumably a representation of immigrants crossing the border illegally.
Attorney General Weiser spoke out at the rally, calling for Denver residents and Coloradans to remember that there is no place for hatred in a civil society.
“Out of many, we are one,” Weiser said. “We are one Denver, we are one Colorado, we are one America…There is no place for hate in Colorado.”
Denver resident MiDian Shofner told the Post that the signs were reprehensible. “The signs that were posted were absolutely atrocious,” The 43-year-old Shofner said. “It was full of racism, it was full of dehumanization, and I wanted to stand in a space where we could collectively and strongly say that we don’t accept this.”
Shofner continued, expressing that the vitriol the signs communicated was being normalized in her Denver community. “I say that it’s normalized because I wasn’t shocked,” Shofner said. “I wasn’t shocked that this happened, but I was disgusted…These bus stops are used by our children to get to school. There are children that saw those signs yesterday.”
Shofner also said that she wanted more from the elected officials than they gave at the rally, saying that there should be more the community can do than attend a rally.
“I’m not saying that this was not a beautiful showing of community, this was absolutely beautiful and amazing,” Shofner said. “Having the community come together and stand is right, and we have to be able to have something to do beyond that.”
Denver City Councilwomen Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez and Lewis worked with the Denver police and transportation officials to have the signs removed and organized the rally to give the community a voice and a space to push back on the racist ideology the signs promoted.
Lewis told the Post that the signs presented a challenge to Denver and the country at large. “History, unfortunately, continues to repeat itself,” Lewis said. “We need to take a serious pause as a nation and ask if this is who we are, if this is who we want to be, or if we are going to come together to do the necessary work to eradicate this kind of hatred.”
Colorado State Rep. Leslie Herod encouraged the crowd not to let the hateful acts of a few divide them, echoing Vice President Harris’s ‘We Will Not Go Back’ campaign tagline. “We will not go back,” Herod said. “We will not let them divide us. This is who we are — we stand together every single day, including today and moving forward.”
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