East Y Visioning Process

10/31/2024

Beware of the Winged Lions of the Whittier Pancake This Halloween.

10/26/2024

Museum of Memory - Whittier Neighborhood

History Colorado Museum of Memory - Whittier Neighborhood invites community members to share their stories. We will scan photographs into our collection and schedule oral history recordings to be added into our collection. We will also discuss plans for conducting a future walking or bus tour through the neighborhood so we can review the history of the parks, churches, schools, and other buildings. The date for the walking or bus tour has not been decided yet, but we ask for your input and thoughts about sharing this history.

Saturday, November 2, 2024 1:30pm - 4:00pm

Ford-Warren Branch Library, 2825 N. High St., Denver, CO 80205

General ticket price: Free

Wheelchair accessible: Yes

10/25/2024

It was a great joy to gather at Clara Brown Commons last Friday in celebration of peacemaking—and four beloved Denver peacemakers in particular. We were so inspired, challenged, and encouraged! Afterward, among many appreciations, I received one practical word of advice for next year: each table needs a box of tissues. Tears flowed freely amid authentic stories not only of the beauty of peacemaking, but the cost. Each awardee has suffered much in life, both in the course of their calling and in the journey of humanity we all share. Each has allowed their wounds to become wombs of transformation within themselves and the many lives they touch.
Eddie Mae Woolfolk was presented with the Legacy Award. Eddie is executive director of the Community Outreach Service Center, founder and president of Faith Management & Realty, and founder of Charity’s House Ministry in Denver’s Five Points Neighborhood. She also serves as Administrative Assistant and Program Director at Agape Christian Church. Her groundbreaking work over five decades in Denver includes starting a transitional house to house men of color that are being released from the justice system. Eddie has created and managed many supportive services such as counseling, mental health education and treatment, peer mentoring and navigation.
Robert Woolfolk (“Pastor Bob”) was presented with the Legacy Award. Pastor Bob is mentioned as a City Father in many circles in Denver. He is Pastor Emeritus at Agape Christian Church, where he has served since 1976. Pastor Bob holds numerous degrees including from Denver seminary, where he is an instructor and director of multiple initiatives, and a field supervisor for Iliff School of Theology. He helped establish numerous Denver ministries including The Sky’s The Limit Summer Day Camp, Whiz Kids, and Inner City Christian School. With his wife Eddie, Pastor Bob parents six adult children and 35 grand- and great-grandchildren.

09/28/2024

“I think we’re just hurt because we weren’t involved in the project and after reaching out to them they said that there was community involvement. I was excited that they were going to bring safety to the streets, I think everyone in this community wants that for all modalities: pedestrians, motorists and cyclists,” said Alicia Wilkinson, a 29th Avenue neighbor.

The lanes are set to span two to three blocks in their area. On top of the impact on businesses, neighbors worry about safety with some driveways facing the street.

Kokanee salmon spawn returns to Colorado
“I’m really stuck on a bike lane for two and a half blocks that starts and stops so abruptly, that just doesn’t seem safe for bikers or vehicles merging back into traffic. We have a son who bikes to school every day. That’s not a bike lane that I would want him utilizing. It just doesn’t make sense,” Wilkinson said.

The City of Denver is getting ready to place a protected bike lane in a neighborhood near Sloans Lake.

09/26/2024

If you live in a house that was built in the 1950s or earlier (like me), you may have a piece of Denver history in your backyard. It's probably a concrete basin, no taller than three or four feet, and it probably hasn't been used in 70 years. It's a trash incinerator -- and no, you definitely shouldn't use it to burn anything these days.

Reader Michael Barthelmes wrote in to ask what the deal is with these relics, so let's take a trip down Denver history road.
According to the folks behind Waste Recycling Workers Week, which is dedicated to the people who help keep our trash out of sight and mind, humanity has been dumping, burning and reusing refuse at least as far back as 3,000 B.C., when residents of Crete dug one of the planet's first landfills.

People buried and burned their garbage for thousands of years, but it wasn't until more modern times that incineration took root on an industrial scale. In the late 1800s, New York City's Governor's Island became home to the nation's first incinerator, necessitated in part by America's burgeoning industrial revolution. By 1914, there were 300 large-scale incinerators active in the U.S. and Canada.

American landfills didn't really appear until the '30s and '40s, after a 1934 Supreme Court ruling banned garbage dumping into the ocean. It would be a few more decades before cities like Denver began to develop systems for dealing with solid waste. The South Platte River, for example, was a regular dumping spot until its trash-filled banks overflowed into city streets during the city's historic 1965 flood. That forced a change in how we used and viewed the waterway.

Don't use them to burn anything.

09/24/2024

Regional Engagement Meeting 2 (Central): Wednesday, Sept. 25, 6-7 p.m. at Manual High School

Denver Public Schools is expected to see 6,000 fewer students by 2028, which is a drop of more than 8%.

06/21/2024

Whittier Youth Visioning Thursday, June 20, 10:30am - 12:30pm
2-day short program with youth from Community Outreach Service Center Denver Youth Employment Program that includes walking the neighborhood and taking pictures of housing, businesses, parks, and streets (contrast differences between 23rd and 25th Avenues).
Sidewalks/Streets
(our sidewalk) I don’t like how old and broken the sidewalks look.
Kendreia T.

(22nd & Vine sidewalk) I believe they use the sidewalk fees to get people to sell their house. Kendreia T.

(22nd Ave) I like how wide the street is.
Kendreia T.

(23rd Ave) Street is too busy. Kendreia T.

(25th Ave) Too narrow. There’s not much parking.
Kendreia T.

06/14/2024

" When the administration is noninvasive,
the people are pure and simple.
When the administration is intrusive,
the people are lacking and wanting.
Disaster rests on fortune,
fortune is concealed in disaster.
Who knows the end? Is there nothing normal?
When the normal has become exceptional,
the good also becomes bad;
people's confusion is sure longstanding!
So be correct without cutting,
be pure without being critical,
be straightforward without being oppressive,
be enlightened without being dazzling."
Courses in Effectiveness and Guidance

06/14/2024

Denver-based nonprofit Re:Vision is expanding its urban farm with a second location. The expansion means the organization will continue to grow its production and food distribution. The team currently produces 20,000 pounds of food every year.

The non-profit mainly serves families and individuals in the Westwood neighborhood where 80% of residents self-identify as Latino and 33% are at or below the poverty line.

The Westwood-based organization will expand its efforts in a neighborhood with a disproportionate poverty rate and limited access to fresh food.

06/14/2024

WOULD YOU TAKE A LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT?
A report published this week by a Native American-led nonprofit examines in detail the dispossession of $1.7 trillion worth of Indigenous homelands in Colorado by the state and the U.S. and the more than $546 million the state has reaped in mineral extraction from them.

The report, shared first with The Associated Press, identifies 10 tribal nations that have "aboriginal title, congressional title, and treaty title to lands within Colorado" and details the ways the land was legally and illegally taken. It determined that many of the transactions were in direct violation of treaty rights or in some cases lacked title for a legal transfer.

The report also recommends actions that can be taken by the state, the federal government and Congress, including honoring treaty rights by resolving illegal land transfers; compensating the tribal nations affected; restoring hunting and fishing rights; and levying a 0.1% fee on real estate deals in Colorado to "mitigate the lasting effects of forced displacement, genocide, and other historical injustices'"

"If acknowledgment is the first step, then what is the second step?" Mayberry said. "That's where some of the treaties come in. They guaranteed us health and welfare and education, and we just simply want them to live up to those promises."

The 771-page report also calls on Colorado State University to return 19,000 acres of land that was taken from several tribal nations.