Running to Change
Photos and Story by Giles Clasen
Editor’s note: You also read this article in the November 2021 printed issue of the VOICE.
AFTER SPENDING YEARS FIGHTING FOR CHANGE as community organizers, and motivated by their desire to change the system from the inside, community organizers and advocates for social justice are running as city council candidates in Commerce City and Aurora.
Candice Bailey, who became known throughout Aurora and Colorado for her vocal criticism of the Aurora Police Department following Elijah McClain’s death, is running for an Aurora City Council At Large seat.
Photo: Giles Clasen
CANDICE BAILEY IS RUNNING FOR AN AT LARGE SEAT ON THE AURORA CITY COUNCIL.
“I think that as a Black woman, I’ve always stood up for what was right,” Bailey said. “When I organized protests, with respect to Elijah McClain, I didn’t do something unique; I did something that every one of us should have done – that we had the responsibility to do. Standing up for someone who is brutally murdered — that is the right thing to do.’
Bailey said she wants people to know that she will always fight for justice, but her work for police reform has included more than organizing protests to draw attention to the brutal tactics of Aurora police.
Without endorsing any one candidate, Colorado Congressman Jason Crow said there are many models of service that help prepare individuals for office.
“No one person or organization can solve all of the challenges we face,” Crow said. “We have never before in our country or community history faced as many and as different types of complicated and overlapping problems. We need lots of different perspectives and different people to come together and figure out how to address those challenges. That’s going to require diversity of thought, it’s going to require diversity of background and experience,” he added.
Representative Iman Jodeh, who represents Aurora House District 41 in the state house, agrees. “It’s important [for community organizers to run for office],” said Jodeh. “These are the folks that are in the trenches; these are the folks that have the lived experiences that I think the majority of [elected officials] haven’t had.”
Photo: Giles Clasen RRENEE MILLARD-CHACON SAID SHE IS FRUSTRATED THAT THE ECOLOGICAL HARM CAUSED BY SUNCOR AND FUTURE FRACKING SITES HAVE UNDULY IMPACT LOW-INCOME FAMILIES AND PEOPLE OF COLOR.
After years of advocacy for Indigenous and Chicano communities, Renee Millard-Chacon is running for a seat in Ward 3 for Commerce City Council and is campaigning for environmental justice within Commerce City.
“Commerce City’s [elected] leaders don’t look at the health and safety of the community as a priority,” Millard-Chacon said. “They focus development on economic benefits. But the economic benefits are only creating a future for a privileged few while harming current generations and future generations.”
The two environmental concerns Millard-Chacon has built her candidacy on are the Suncor refinery and potential for new fracking wells being approved in Commerce City.
“With the pollution from Suncor, and the future pollution from fracking, we’re getting hit double and adding to those systemic health disparities,” Millard-Chacon said.
The Commerce City Council passed Ordinance 2266 in March, which now requires all oil and gas permits be approved by the city council.
“This change makes the 2021 Commerce City election the most important election in a long time,” Millard-Chacon said, “because the city council will play a larger role in approving oil and gas drilling permits.”
A report released in 2019 by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment found individuals living within 2,000 feet of fracking wells are exposed to benzene and other chemicals that are health risks.
Both Bailey and Millard-Chacon have participated in community engagement through nonprofit work.
Millard-Chacon co-founded the nonprofit Womxn of the Mountain, an organization focusing on cultural education and inclusivity training. She also formerly worked at Spirit of the Sun, an organization that works with indigenous tribes to create new development opportunities and improve tribal economies.
Bailey has founded nonprofits and businesses that train officers on addressing trauma in the community. She also serves on the City of Aurora Community Police Task Force, as well as a half dozen other local and state boards and committees. Additionally, she has trained police officers throughout Colorado on trauma-informed policing as part of her nonprofit and small business ventures.
“I think that my track record of working inside of public safety, working on committees and boards at the state and local level, speaks more for who I am, and how I will lead, than the work that I do on corners with bullhorns,” Bailey said.
Trauma-informed practices involve recognizing and responding to the effects of trauma in behavior to a police presence. It is a policing practice interwoven with de-escalation tactics to prevent violence during police encounters.
Bailey believes that police have a difficult job and face damaging trauma within the job, and she wants police officers to understand they are valued within the community. Still, Bailey believes defunding the police is an important step forward.
Defunding the police is a movement to reallocate funds from police departments to other public safety and social support programs like social services, housing services, and other community services.
Bailey wants to see social workers and mental health providers respond to certain crisis calls that may not require a police presence. She believes this will help lessen the trauma to police officers and help keep the public safer.
Aurora has already created two different programs designed to provide help to individuals experiencing mental health crises as an alternative to police intervention.
The Crisis Response Team is a partnership between the Aurora PD and the Aurora Mental Health Center to help individuals experiencing mental illness to avoid incarceration, while introducing them to and helping them navigate the Aurora behavioral health programs.
The Aurora Mobile Team is similar to Denver’s STAR program and utilizes mental health workers and a paramedic to deescalate crisis situations. It is currently in a six-month trial program and only active in Northeast Aurora.
“The programs exist,” Bailey said. “Now we need to tighten them up, and we need to strengthen them. We need to make sure that they’re being utilized properly by our police department.”
According to Representative Jodeh, candidates who have worked in the trenches to change their community may be better suited to create new laws and ordinances that are more equitable to individuals who aren’t always recognized by politicians.
“When you come from a [Black and Indigenous People of Color] community, this gives you a different lens on advocacy,” Jodeh said. “When you take that into elected office, it also gives a different lens to policymaking. That gives the people a voice that oftentimes is overlooked, misheard, and misunderstood.”
Millard-Chacon said she is frustrated that the ecological harm caused by Suncor disproportionally impacts low-income families and People of Color, including undocumented individuals who aren’t able to vote.
“Suncor’s pollution causes harm to our disproportionately impacted communities, starting with Indigenous and Chicano communities,” Millard-Chacon said. “When we ask for equity and protection, Commerce City [elected] leaders act as if health and safety is some form of charity.
Suncor and so many emitters have been able to secrete a damaging amount of pollution onto Commerce City,” Millard-Chacon said. “They have never been restorative to heal what they’ve done. Commerce City has never provided an enforceable protection and they don’t pursue it either.”
Suncor experienced malfunctions in 2017, 2019, and 2020 which caused excessive emissions and a release of catalyst, a clay like emission, to cascade across Commerce City. It is among the largest polluters in the state of Colorado and was penalized by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) for exceeding permit emission levels of hydrogen-cyanide, a cancer causing chemical, in 2019.
As recently as August 2021, CDPHE air monitoring found elevated levels of pollutants near the Suncor plant.
Suncor released an independent report, just before public hearings in 2021, exploring the state’s renewal of Suncor’s permit. The report, which was funded by Suncor, recommended new actions for the plant to protect the community from future malfunctions. The recommendations were accepted by CDPHE in May of 2021, and Suncor is in the process of implementing them. Suncor’s permit has not yet been renewed by the state.
Photo: Giles Clasen RENEE MILLARD-CHACON (CENTER) SPEAKS AT AN EMERGE COLORADO EVENT.
Millard-Chacon said that Suncor wasn’t the only environmental risk facing Commerce City. Commerce City could also be the site of new fracking wells.
The Denver-based company, Extraction Oil & Gas, currently has applications for six different permits in varying phases of approval submitted to the city.
“I’m not a politician,” Millard-Chacon said. “I am not here to be a celebrity. I have suffered and have seen my whole family suffer from systemic violence. I do not want my children to have to endure this or have to fight these same fights for equity just to be able to live and thrive in their spaces.”
Photo: Giles Clasen CANDICE BAILEY IS RUNNING FOR AN AT LARGE SEAT ON THE AURORA CITY COUNCIL. “…WORKING ON COMMITTEES AND BOARDS AT THE STATE AND LOCAL LEVEL SPEAKS MORE FOR WHO I AM, AND HOW I WILL LEAD, THAN THE WORK THAT I DO ON CORNERS WITH BULLHORNS.”
For Candice Bailey, it was a fight just to get on the ballot, as the Aurora City Charter prohibited felons from running for office. Bailey pled guilty to a second-degree assault charge in 1999 and attributes her actions to being young and dumb. She said she learned from the experience and believes it gave her valuable insight into how the legal system has a very real and life-long individuals. With help from the ACLU, arguing the charter violated the state constitution, Bailey sued the City of Aurora. The Aurora City Council voted 7-2 to change the charter in an August meeting allowing Bailey to run.
Bailey sees the charter as an element of the Jim Crow past and believes it was designed to disenfranchise People of Color and prohibit them from representation.
“It is the responsibility of our council members, of our legislators, and of our senators to come in and look at the laws and policies that exist and to have those Jim Crow laws removed,” Bailey said.
Bailey believes much of the system needs changing and that her work as an advocate for police reform can help lead Aurora in a new direction.
“I’m not here to provoke a fight; I’m here to provoke a change.