In April, community members gathered in Elyria Swansea to declare that working-class people in Denver had a champion.
It was a celebration of a new partnership between the GES Coalition and el Centro de los Trabajadores, nonprofits that have worked separately in Globeville and Elyria Swansea (GES) to keep people housed and employed.
“Denver loves to romanticize its gritty roots,” said Candi CdeBaca, longtime neighborhood activist and former Denver City Council member, to the crowd. “But when the working class demands a seat at the table, they call us anti-growth. When we fight to stay in homes our families have held for generations, they call it nostalgia.”
The meeting was a symbolic flag-planting in a time of enormous change for the neighborhoods, as the city of Denver spends over $1 billion on projects in the area…