Right and Wrong: Grand Valley Activists Combat Racism in the Wake of George Floyd’s Murder

Originally published in the Fall 2020 issue of SPOKE+BLOSSOM

As a biracial child growing up in Denver and in western Colorado — where one side of her family resided for six generations — Shannon Robinson remembers a group of adults screaming at her while she was riding the school bus in a small Western Slope town. She says she quit taking the bus after an unknown woman came onto the bus and cut off her braids. 

While with her grandparents, Robinson remembers strangers coming up to her in the grocery store and rubbing their hands across her afro for “good luck.” Mostly, she says she just stayed home, because it was safer. 

Although those incidents happened in the 1970s, the 52-year-old Grand Junction resident continues to experience racist hostility. A motorist threw a full can of pop at her and yelled the n-word while she was crossing the street with her daughter a few years ago. Earlier this summer, while picking up a to-go order at a downtown restaurant, she overheard a group of men at a nearby table call her a derogatory name, questioning what she was doing there. 

HOPEFULLY, THE TIDE IS TURNING

The May 25, 2020 killing of an unarmed black man by a white Minneapolis police officer galvanized the nation — including western Colorado. Captured on video, the killing shows the police officer, with his hands nonchalantly in his pockets, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds while Floyd repeatedly cries, “I can’t breathe.” 

Since then, large protests around the world have called for racial justice and an end to the senseless, ongoing killings of Black men and women. Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Rayshard Brooks, and on and on. 

Photos by Jeff Steele

FROM CANDLELIGHT VIGIL TO RAW

Five days after Floyd’s killing, longtime social justice activists Jacob Richards and Laurel Carpenter called for a May 30 candlelight vigil on the steps of the Wayne N. Aspinall Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Grand Junction to honor Floyd and highlight how the city is a part of the systemic national problem. Five-hundred-sixty people attended — an astounding number for Grand Junction, given how quickly the event came together, explains Carpenter. Toward the end of the vigil, Jay Freeman took the stage asking bluntly for a sustained effort — not just a one-time show of solidarity – to combat racism locally. 

Immediately after the event, Black community members like Freeman and Anthony Clark joined vigil collaborators, including Western Colorado Alliance, Black Citizens and Friends, and Grand Junction Mutual Aid, to form Right & Wrong, RAW — Grand Junction’s first grassroots, direct-action, anti-racist organization. The fledgling RAW immediately began holding days-long events, including marches, teach-ins and meetings with people in power — like Grand Junction police chief Doug Shoemaker and Mesa County Valley School District 51 superintendent Diana Sirko. 

The sustained activism that emerged in Grand Junction is something Carpenter says she has never seen before in her 20 years as an activist. “The numbers are stunning — 300 people at the city council meeting; people of color filled the auditorium,” she recalls. “There were 590 people at the march and teach-in on June 7. There’s been concrete change.” 

Encouraged by the outpouring of support in Grand Junction for justice and equality, Robinson says this is the first time she has been able to be “unapologetically Black” in the Grand Valley. She calls the local activists who are peacefully protesting and meeting with public officials to address racial injustice her “shield crew.” 

“I have this group of people who love us and care about us,” she says. “Other folks are coming out, putting their lives on the line. 

Clark says RAW purposely chose to “brand” itself differently from the “Black Lives Matter” slogan, which he says has become divisive in some circles. “It’s not just a Black (rights) movement; It’s about all racial injustice,” Clark explains.

TEACH-INS

Clark moved from Denver to Grand Junction in 2012 to attend classes and play football at Colorado Mesa University. He said that first year he got into a dozen fights with other students who taunted him with the n-word. “At the time I didn’t have the composure,” to deal with it differently, he says. “Racism is alive and well here.” 

Some residents apparently don’t see it, however. Comments posted on local newspaper and television’s Facebook pages in response to media coverage of the spring protests show a lack of empathy for what Black community members experience. In June, a woman posted, “racism does not exist here,” while another female stated, “let’s not create an issue where there is none.” Incredibly, another person questioned whether the Floyd killing actually happened, stating that it was “more likely a staged execution by the Deep State.” 

Local counter-protesters have threatened to “crack some skulls,” and to come “locked and loaded” to RAW events. There have been individuals who have driven their vehicles toward the marchers and threatened to run them over, Carpenter adds. There have been at least 50 vehicle-ramming incidents since protests erupted nationwide in late May, according to a July 4 National Public Radio report. 

Following Grand Junction’s May candlelight vigil, a number of events have taken place on the CMU campus, at Lincoln Park, at the city police department, etc., to provide education regarding the city’s racial history. Teach-ins have included knowing your rights if detained by law enforcement, how to be an ongoing ally to people of color and how to stay committed to the cause, in other words, “keeping up the energy” — because this is a fight that will take a while, says Clark. 

A “Vote for Black Lives” event included voter registrations and presentations about mass incarcerations, voter suppression issues, the importance of voting and how the racial caste system known as Jim Crow is still alive today. 

On June 18, 800 people attended a Juneteenth celebration at Lincoln Park, where attendees perused a Black history pop-up museum created by RAW. Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, when Union soldiers came to Texas to announce that slaves were now free. 

RESULTS

Members of RAW have met with school superintendent Sirko and her assistant Brian Hill to demand changes in the schools. Clark says they have agreed to improve the African-American history curriculum and to appoint a Black instructor or other person of color to teach the subject. The district has also agreed to form a task force that includes a parent, student and school counselor to work on combatting institutional racism in the schools. 

And, it’s not just Black students who are affected by racism at schools. Hispanic students endure shouts of “Go back to Mexico,” and “Build the wall” from other students, says a middle-school staff person who didn’t want to be identified. 

RAW members have met with a receptive Chief Shoemaker to ask for bias training within the police department. Before the meeting, protesters laid down on the concrete in the parking lot for eight minutes and 46 seconds, face down with hands behind their back — Floyd’s position when he was killed. 

Following a July 6, “violin vigil,” RAW activists met with Gov. Jared Polis in Grand Junction, demanding justice for McClain, the 23-year-old Black man who was killed while Aurora police restrained him with a chokehold — a practice that has since been banned. McClain was walking in his neighborhood and had committed no crime. The autistic young man was known for playing his violin for kittens at an animal shelter. 

At a Grand Junction City Council meeting in June, RAW demanded an apology from CMU President Tim Foster who suspended three college football players a few seasons ago, after they kneeled during the national anthem as a protest against police brutality in the United States, similar to former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Foster has since called each suspended player individually and apologized, Clark says. 

The group also asked the city to establish a 15-member task force to fight injustice in the Grand Valley. The task force was successful at drafting a mission statement and framework for subcommittees at its first meeting on June 30. 

Thirty years ago, Grand Junction resident David Combs established Black Citizens and Friends of Mesa County, in part, to organize a Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration each year. He likens Floyd’s killing to a full can of pop being shaken up, opened and then exploding. “That’s what has happened here,” he explains. 

“I was at the June 3 city council meeting where people spoke up about their experiences in the valley,” Combs says. “Those comments had been negated for so long. A lot of people were uncomfortable — city council members and spectators.” 

As a veteran activist, and mother of three, Carpenter keeps coming back to the word “stunning” to describe what’s happening in Grand Junction; she cites the high numbers that have turned out to protest, the sustained activism and the changes that are starting to occur. 

“I think what is happening here is nationally significant,” she adds. “What we’re doing can happen in more places.”

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