More than 200 people gathered in Denver on Thursday night to unite in stamping out slavery in Colorado.
We must put “an end to something that supposedly ended years ago,” said the Rev. Timothy E. Tyler of the Shorter Community African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Tyler spoke to the multiracial, multifaith gathering at Shorter in support of “No Slavery No Exceptions.”
The group, sponsored in part by Together Colorado, aims to strike language in the Colorado Constitution.
Article II, Section 26; prohibits slavery, “except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”
Those assembled at Shorter on Thursday, including many faith and community leaders from around the state, will petition the state legislature to strike that exception.
The program included music and choir, singing gospel and freedom songs. The congregation joined in, clapping hands and swaying.
“We come tonight to say to the world we want to be free,” Tyler said. “We are not asking for it, we are demanding it.”
Speakers said the movement goes beyond language. They view it as a starting place to discuss and eventually reform issues such as economic inequity, racism, sexism, systematic oppression and police brutality.
“These things are still relevant, we still need to make things happen,” said the Rev. Tawana Davis, of Shorter. “We can not rest, we will not rest.”
The movement’s manifesto is a “Moral Document for Racial Justice From Faith Leaders of the State of Colorado” and those at the meeting embraced and supported the call of “Black Lives Matter.”
There is no freedom until “unarmed black men and women won’t be shot dead in the street,” Tyler said.
Tyler criticized the current criminal justice system as a “sham,” and the exception language in the state constitution as a way “to keep slavery alive.”
Tyler and other speakers decried the disproportionate number of blacks incarcerated in American jails and prisons.
He said the same faces we saw on the plantation are the same faces we see in prison today.
“We’ve got to do something about it,” he said.
“We will not have this anymore.”
Current state legislative supporters, according to the movement, include: Sen. Jessie Ulibarri, D-Adams; Rep. Joe Salazar, D-Thornton; and Rep. Jovan Melton, D-Aurora.
Organizational co-sponsors include the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition and the American Friends Service Committee.
The Rev. Jann Halloran, of the Prairie Unitarian Universalist Church, Parker, challenged the white community to be part of the conversation and an ultimate solution.
Halloran said: “Real slavery continues to this day in our prisons.”
