Mayor panel attracts protest

Cabinet in the Community ends up being about more than gentrification.

As protesters shouted down Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s Cabinet in the Community event on gentrification and displacement Saturday morning, Stapleton resident Tina Lin stroked her young daughter’s hair in the audience.

Lin was attending the event, held quarterly for the past seven years, with her family for the first time after reading about it on Facebook and wanting to get involved. Hancock, along with four panelists representing housing experts and stakeholders across the community, briefly talked about the negative impacts of gentrification and the city’s efforts to mitigate displacement like a $36 million investment toward affordable housing efforts.

The space at Exdo Event Center was a combination of city staff and related civic programs manning booths, unaffiliated community members, and protesters who listened and occasionally shouted from the back of the room as police and security milled about — a microcosm of a community during divisive times.

Throughout the event, protesters outside and inside the building chanted about recent sexual harassment allegations against the mayor, calling for him to resign.

Sometimes Hancock responded, assuring the crowd he heard their concerns. Other times, a different panelist took the microphone to share their roles in addressing gentrification. During a planned Q&A, protesters stood in front of the panel with tape over their mouths, which they said represented Hancock’s silencing of women. The Q&A was canceled when protesters didn’t back down. Audience members were encouraged to approach panelists one-onone afterward if they wanted to talk further.

Lin and her family watched the tension play out from their seats.

“It was a teaching moment,” Lin said. “I’m not for either side here. I’m all for speaking your mind, and it’s OK to be angry, but this didn’t allow for conversation. I was OK with the tension and with the kids seeing that. Unfortunately, that’s just the climate we’re in.”

Flavio Rael, born in Denver and now living in the southwest corner of the city, said he showed up to critique what the city was doing to its poor.

“All the poor people are trying to survive, and what happens? They’re pushed out,” Rael said. While Rael’s beef with the mayor stemmed from his anger about the city’s response to gentrification, he thought maybe the text-message scandal unfolding around Hancock would hold the mayor accountable.

Rael was referring to Hancock’s text-message interactions with Detective Leslie Branch-wise, who was on his security detail during his first year in office.

Branch-wise spoke out in an interview with Denver7 about several suggestive text messages she received from Hancock in 2012.