With the recent reforms Colorado has spearheaded, we thought it pertinent to sit down with Black Lives Matter 5280 member Dr. Apryl Alexander to talk about what have been doing right, and where we need to pick up the slack.
Anthony Cross: What is the state of the progress that’s been made so far? And what are you seeing on the ground?
Apryl Alexander: I think here in Denver, things really kicked off around May 28. May 28, was kind of the time where someone in our chapter wanted to put together a rally/protest the following day.
So, we quickly got together and organized that for Thursday, May 29, one of the first kind of rallies and protests in downtown Denver, and again, our goals are to once again highlight what some are calling the epidemic or public health crisis of police shootings— that we were really mindful that we will not only honoring George Floyd and Breonna Taylor but so many other lives that have been lost to police violence, including those that have happened in Colorado.
A lot of our work that we’ve been doing these last few weeks is a continuation of what we have been doing. Black Lives Matter 5280 just celebrated its fifth anniversary in May. And we started as a chapter by raising awareness of police brutality. So we are really realigning ourselves and thinking about what are additional steps that we can take at this moment to address this problem.
We have been thinking about all sorts of things related to direct action. We connected with all the other Black Lives Matter chapters throughout the country. And last week was the Black Lives Matter, or a Movement for Black Lives, “Week Of Action”. Different chapters handled this differently, but during that week, there were guidelines for each of the days of the week [and] different actions that we wanted to promote and take.
One focused on police divestment, one focused on creating safer schools. And for us, as a chapter, we were doing a lot of that work already, but wanting to kind of promote it a little bit more in the current context and climate.
AC: After that week of action, what are some of the other reforms that we’re starting to see movement on?
AA: Two weeks ago, the Law Enforcement Integrity and Accountability Act was entered into the legislator formally. Again, these were kind of issues that we’ve been discussing for quite some time. But [now are] really getting some momentum and push behind them.
I think in this heightened awareness, for the issue of police brutality, and more importantly, police accountability and eliminating qualified immunity, we watched the events of the last two weeks, just to make sure that the rights of protesters are respected.
Because again, there was violence inflicted on protesters by police via tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper spray, just a few weeks ago in Denver. In wanting to protect people’s first amendment rights to protest, we want to make sure that we’re protecting the rights of protesters. We saw some change there as well—
Another one of our missions, that we have been dedicated to for the last several years, is the “counselors not cops” movement that us and Padres & Jóvenes Unidos, another activist group here in Colorado has been doing work around this for the longest— that school resource officers aren’t necessarily making our schools safer. As a lot of people [would] expect when we have school resource officers we often see the criminalization of black and brown youth as well as LGBTQ+ youth in our schools.
So, what you’re seeing last week with Tay Anderson really amping up that movement of counselors, not cops, let’s get these school resource officers out of schools, and actually get schools the resources they need. What they actually need is school nurses, mental health practitioners, and social workers to help with all the things that our students are going through from trauma to bullying, and other kinds of problems that are happening in their communities.
Another main one for us is abolishing ICE. Again, recognizing there are a lot of black and brown people in these ICE detention facilities. So you may have seen that one of our acts of direct action was the car rally. Recognizing that a lot of people weren’t safe to go out and protest— COVID-19 is still real. And that’s something that we had to consider that some of our members didn’t go out and protest at this time because we had to be mindful of the disproportionate rates of COVID among black and brown people at this time.
We haven’t been out there protesting as much as people would think we are, because we want to make sure that everybody’s safe. So we held a car rally and a lot of people commented, “Thank you for doing this. I wanted to get out there and protest, but I knew it wasn’t safe for me and my family and loved ones.”
We had a car rally and our first stop was the GEO facility in Aurora— supporting immigrants, refugees, black and brown people who are currently incarcerated unjustly a lot of the time and then again probably being exposed to the Coronavirus at this time. After that, our next stop was at the mayor’s house, outlining a list of demands that we’ve had for quite some time with regards to police accountability.
A lot of our actions have been a thing that we’ve been considering as a chapter for the longest, but we know now is probably the time that stakeholders have our ears, and that we needed to communicate this even further and push our platform more.
AC: I find that really interesting/disappointing that these are demands that are that you’ve had for a while. The only new addition is the phrase “defund the police” or some of the other nomenclature— but ultimately these are demands you have had for a while.
AA: Yeah, these are demands that we’ve had as a chapter for a long time, and demands that other activists and abolitionists have had for decades. I think that’s a part of this that is a bit interesting— I guess is the word— is that these concepts have been around for so long.
But I think now is the time where people are wanting to hear it. Access to affordable housing, food deserts, gentrification, educational inequities, all of these things that have been around for a long while that contribute to institutional oppression and institutional racism.
I think what happened this year is COVID. COVID exacerbated all of these systemic problems. We had a complete system meltdown with COVID, even for people who are not in these minority groups or racial-ethnic groups. They lost their jobs, we have- what- 40 million people on unemployment right now?
Then you have this: we got George Floyd’s video in the media. Again, another act of injustice. We heard about Breonna Taylor, a woman at home, in bed, who again was killed by police. And I think why we see so much marching, and why we see nationwide protests is [that] people have had enough. All our systems are failing us right now.
People are demanding action. People are demanding accountability. So yes, we’ve had these demands for a while, but I think people are willing to revisit them at this time because they’re seeing that our systems are not working.
AC: I was wondering if you can talk about decommodifying the police a little bit. We talked about it in schools, but as a larger concept, the idea that cops right now are kind of doing way too much. And we could drive that apart with different programs tailored for specific needs of people—
AA: Yeah, so we have a lot of money in law enforcement, a lot of money.
AC: I looked this up actually for you! Last year it was $588 million out of the city’s [Denver’s] budget, which is an annual budget of 1.5 billion —
AA: Yes. So that’s a lot of money. And again, what I’m cautioning people to think about is wanting to know what the purpose of our different systems are. So I had a conversation with a legislator this week, “What’s the goal of education?” and again, it was centered on this topic, about school resource officers. Our educational system isn’t supposed to be managing or criminalizing youth. That’s not the goal of our educational system.
So, I want us to also look at that with law enforcement. “What is the goal of [the police]” here, we often call them peace officers or public safety officers even. So when we’re seeing some of these injustices, I think we’re questioning ourselves: “are those goals being fulfilled?” So when we’re looking at different models of divestment from police or defunding police, there’s a spectrum of opinions on this— There are abolitionists who say “yes, let’s completely defund police” and “do we need police officers?” Can we go to other models like restorative practices or restorative justice that can handle some of this in the community?
When we’ve looked at pilot programs of restorative justice, they’re actually really effective in bringing up reconciliation – peace to the victims of different crimes. And they [victims] actually feel that they often get better results and outcomes, if they have a say in accountability. Also, if we’re looking at defunding the police, what does that mean? We’re taking some of that $500 million said dollars? What if we were to take some of that and put it towards other things?
What if we were able to invest some of that money into education? What if we were able to invest some of that money in social services? Again, if we’re talking about this school-to-prison pipeline, are we addressing the underlying issues of it? The trauma that some of our kids are experiencing; are we getting them help and support? Are we doing prevention programs for bullying in our schools?
I saw a nice quote earlier today— “We work quick to defund everything else.” We were quick to defund Planned Parenthood, we defund education, we’re quick to defund mental health. Why? When all of those things are the necessary things that we need in order to thrive, in order for our communities to thrive. So some of the models of defunding the police are looking at exactly that. What if we were to take a chunk of this money and put it to these other resources?
If people are getting their needs met, we see less crime, we see less negative interactions. Again, that’s not entirely solving the issue of police brutality. That’s a little bit more that we need to be talking about— systemic racism and implicit and explicit bias. But it’s one alternative approach to tackling some of the systemic inequalities and injustices that are happening in our communities.
AC: What are some of the views that you have on the other groups that are coming into this protest, into the fold of these gatherings like “We Are Love Denver” who’s received a lot of flack recently and sort of how it relates to the broader message and Black Lives Matter 5280?
AA: We’re looking at what happened over the course of the few weeks. What we’re seeing is people are getting engaged for the first time. Again, the issue of police violence isn’t new. That’s one of the things that’s personally disturbing me, is that we’ve been talking about this for the longest and that the media said that we’re marching for Minneapolis right now. And I was like “that’s not entirely true.” We’re also marching for our own communities.
People are ready to get involved. They’re ready to be engaged. We’re getting hundreds of messages, emails, everything from people in the community, wanting to know How they can do more. Having 10,000 people show up at the Capitol, who are new faces that weren’t around just a few months ago during local police-involved shootings. So what we have is the momentum of people who are wanting to organize, wanting to get involved, and do this work. One of the issues I see is that I don’t think people entirely realize what goes into organizing. Another reason why we haven’t held as many protests or rallies, in addition to the COVID concerns, is that it is a lot of work.
One of the things that I was wary of, going out in subsequent days, was that I don’t feel safe. So you know, a lot of [the] things that go into organizing is making sure that we create a climate of safety. So, do we have street medics there? Do we have legal reporters who are going to document what’s going on? Just in case our civil rights are violated?
There’s a lot of planning and prep that goes into organizing an event. I was so glad that a few reporters remarked on our car rally saying, “Wow, it was so put together!” — you didn’t see the behind the scenes stuff. To pull that off? Hundreds, we’re even estimating maybe 1000 cars showing up? There’s a lot that goes into that. When people are getting together very suddenly, I don’t think they’re considering all of that.
We have a lot of young people in this movement. They’re new to it, they’re organizing pretty quickly. We at Black Lives Matter 5280 are very collaborative. So we work with a lot of different other organizers, a lot of different groups, as we’re trying to carry out our own goals and missions. So what I’m hoping is that for the up and coming organizers, let’s not duplicate efforts.
We’re hearing feedback from the community. “Wait, is this an event put on by you all? Have you talked to this person?” And unfortunately, sometimes the answer is no. We would love to collaborate and help out, but we’re not hearing that and we’re not connecting together to have a unified front.
What I’m hoping to see, going forward, is to embrace all these people who are coming into the movement now. But let’s pay respect for the people who’ve been doing it for some time, in that’s not even including me and my peers at Black Lives Matter 5280, it’s also our elders.
AC: What message would you have for allies? The people who are protesting in towns like Fort Collins, or Boulder. What’s a message that you would want to leave them with?
AA: Yeah, there’s a lot of people who are wanting to get together and do a lot at this time. Somebody recently said “Hey, there are these fancy direct action trainings in another state. We should do these here in Denver!” and I replied back, a little flippantly, “There were two in Denver yesterday.”
AC: [Laughs] Yeah…
AA: There are a lot of people who are doing this work, showing up for racial justice. They have chapters all throughout the country, they have a chapter in Denver and Boulder. They have a lot of great resources for white allies who are wanting to stay involved or get involved in this movement for the first time— along with things to be mindful of; are you censoring marginalized voices at your events? We saw some examples of that. We’ve seen events where there was harm caused because that intersectionality is not paid respect to— so you know, thinking about, “Who are the voices that I should be listening to at this time?” and finding those in your community. It can be so unique, but I bet you there’s someone there.
As people are organizing, just paying respects, and also watching the labor that you’re trying to put on black people and communities at this time. We’re getting a lot of questions about resources and books— and “What should I read?”
We love to help you, but we’re doing a lot of emergency work [right now]. We’re helping individuals who were incarcerated because of protesting. We’re helping people with medical funds at this time. So questions and things that you can easily look up, there are so many guides out there—
AC: Here you go — watch 13th on Netflix. Go get educated.
AA: Yeah, that’s my part. All of this stuff exists — I’m a professor of Forensic Psychology. In our second quarter, our students here [University of Denver] watch 13th. That’s in our curriculum.
AC: Oh, wow. That’s amazing. I didn’t know that. Yeah, that’s actually brilliant.
AA: You can’t go through a Forensic Psychology program and not know that history.
AC: God, that’d be horrible. If you did…
AA: Yeah. And prior to that documentary, we were hearing all sorts of misinformation from our students. And now we have this lovely documentary that puts it all together for us and it’s coming from the outside and our students respond well to it. You know, there is a bestselling book right now “How To Be An Anti-Racist”— that book has been out for over a year.
AC: Now it’s that there’s a certain level of urgency almost, but that’s a good thing I suppose— time to get with the program.
AA: There are so many resources out there, you can’t get away with it. In my era, when I was growing up, there weren’t any books, right. But in the last 5-10 years, so many people have been publishing these guides. So, yeah, making sure that you’re doing some of the research on your own and not putting extra labor on black communities. Because again, that’s oppression in itself.
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