Fluffy snowflakes hurtled through the air like BB pellets, but the two teenage girls didn’t mind the sting as they stood for photos in front of the Martin Luther King Jr. statue in Denver’s City Park.
This was, after all, their first Marade.
“It unifies us,” one of the girls, 17-year-old Meron Worku, said as they hustled to catch up with a march that had begun without them. “It brings us together as a community and reminds us that we are one.”
Despite temperatures dipping toward the teens, the — a combination march for social justice and parade celebrating King’s life — drew thousands to City Park on Monday morning, including an enthusiastic group from the black student alliance at Worku’s school. Though city officials no longer provide crowd estimates, the event has historically been one of the nation’s largest marches in honor of King.
By tradition, there were songs and speeches and poems read aloud, each one applauded with a muffled rumble of gloved hands. Then, the great mass of community flowed down Colfax Avenue and into downtown’s Civic Center park.
“The weather didn’t stop us,” said Pat Palk, who was walking in her 20th consecutive Marade, many of which have occurred in the same kind of three-layers-of-underpants cold as Monday’s. It’s something Palk said she’s always tried to support because King stood for “love, peace and respect for all mankind.”
There were similar calls for unity throughout the event, and, unlike in recent years, there were no disruptions during the speeches.
, a Republican, used his speech to praise the diversity of his hometown of Aurora and encourage Coloradans not to fear speaking to people different from them. Democratic invoked former Republican President Ronald Reagan in his speech.
“Anyone from any corner of the earth can come to live in America and become American,” Hickenlooper said.
But with the nation divided by fiery arguments over race and immigration — many stoked by , himself — a number of speakers and marchers argued that King’s fight for equality is unfinished and must be waged anew.
, who as a state lawmaker helped lead the charge to make King’s birthday a holiday in Colorado, made reference to President Donald Trump’s reported use of the term “shithole” during a meeting to describe certain poor countries from which the United States accepts immigrants. Trump has denied using that term, and lawmakers in the room with him at the meeting have argued over whether he used that term .
“We’re here to say that we’re not going back,” Webb told the crowd Monday in Denver. “… We’re not going to allow our presidency to be the pulpit to say these kinds of things. We are not going back.”
Webb’s husband, former , did not refer to Trump by name, instead calling him “that white nationalist in the White House.” He said the nation’s African-American families have a long history of resilience in the face of oppression.
“If we can survive slavery, we can survive this man in the White House,” he said.
And current Denver invoked King’s uncompromising belief in equality, famously illustrated by a King speech in which he argued that, if the fight for equality is wrong, then the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Constitution and God are all wrong.
“I think your presence here today indicates that in no way in hell were we wrong,” Hancock told the crowd.
Along the parade route, signs held aloft by marchers colorfully expressed the political divide.
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor,” read one sign. “Wake up to the dream,” read another.
Or, more directly: “Flush Trump.”
Veronica Hayden, a recent transplant to Denver with her husband, said the divisive political climate of the past year was a big reason she stepped out into the cold Monday to join in the Marade.
“Before all the Trump stuff happened, I had my rose-colored glasses on,” she said, as final speakers addressed a crowd at Civic Center park shortly after noon. “It was getting really toxic.”
A number of more specific issues were represented within the march’s boundaries..
Some marchers carried signs arguing against police brutality. Others held signs fighting against wage theft from workers. Some of the loudest cheers of the morning were reserved for speakers — such as , a Denver Democrat, who argued in favor of passing federal legislation to protect so-called Dreamers, immigrants brought without documentation into the country when they were young.
But, ultimately, marchers said their goals were the same: to remind a nation that it can work together to form a more perfect union.
“Thank you for keeping up the faith,” Wellington Webb told the crowd in concluding his remarks. “Thank you for keeping up the dream. Thank you for keeping the light alive.”