People are calling Candi CdeBaca a Communist. She’d rather be called an anarchist.
An in-depth Q&A with the self-described radical leftist just elected to Denver's City Council
So when you say you’re
not a Communist, you mean that you’re not a Communist according to the
definition used by people who you think misunderstand communism? You’re
saying you’re comfortable with its ideals, but not how it’s seen?
Yes,
that the way we understand communism is the problem. Even the way we
understand anarchy — you could call me an anarchist. That would fit
better than any other label. Anarchy is about us not needing that
imposed structure from anyone, and just being cognizant and caring and
compassionate enough to take care of ourselves and our communities and
each other without anyone making it happen. It’d be like democratic
socialism, except without anyone calling it that and imposing a
structure. It’s more along the lines of a village model. When people
call that a primitive style of governance, that’s offensive to me. The
village model is probably the most effective model of taking care of
communities. That’s what I’m all about: giving power to communities to
take care of themselves and each other.
How will your beliefs be reflected in the municipal policies you push? What kind of governance can people expect from you?
I think people have seen it, they’ve seen the things I’ve fought for. The community land trust. I’d love to see more of that.
I
want to see us putting people over profit. I’ve said it time and time
again, that our local government is catering to developers and
multinational corporations. I don’t think that we as the residents, the
taxpayers of this city should be carrying the burden of growth so
disproportionately. I believe the corporations and the developers should
carry their fair share.
On a policy level, what does “people over profit” mean to you?
It
means community bills of rights. It’s front-ending community benefit
agreements and codifying them so that every single neighborhood isn’t
expected to have the same fight over and over and over again. It’s us
setting standards about what we need and what we want in this city. It’s
using developers to get that done, but not allowing them to drive this
conversation.
You’re going to be to
the left of everyone else on the council. There’s 13 of you, so how do
you take what you describe as your radical leftist agenda and try to
craft policy that your colleagues can get behind?
I
don’t think I’m as far away from other people as we’d think. I think a
lot of others are fearful to really talk about how left they are
socially. I’m fiscally conservative. So even though I have very liberal
or leftist values socially, I don’t want to see us throwing money at
problems, knowing money hasn’t solved the problems historically. I want
us to use our resources wisely. You’d think that in a time of growth
like this we’d have a surplus to allow us to do whatever we want in this
city, but we haven’t used our resources wisely. There’s a lot of
government waste.
So
the way I’ll be able to work with other council members is because of
how responsible I am when making decisions about money. I was raised on
public assistance. I was raised in a two-bedroom, 600-square-foot
household that I live in now, with between eight and 10 people living in
that space at times. I have no problem with sharing, with compromise,
with understanding both sides of the spectrum. I think it makes it
easier for me to connect with people who have different worldviews.
Your “land, labor,
resources” comment drew a lot of attention from the right. But what do
you make of the criticism you’ve gotten from the left?
There’s
that group of neoliberals or corporate democrats that really believe
that the economic system works and that there’s ways we can reform it to
work a little bit better. Those are the people that would probably not
approve of a full-on denouncement of capitalism. And I respect that. I’m
not asking them to. I know the context I’m working in. I know I’m not
going to get rid of capitalism as a city councilperson. I have no
control over weapons, over any larger structure. So for me, at the local
level, it’s about taking what we have, the context we’re in, and making
it as equitable as possible.
I
don’t have the ability to, with a broad brush, paint all of these
changes that people are thinking I’m going to make. But I’m going to
push the council to think about the voices that are forgotten, about the
people who don’t have the resources to even self-actualize to think
about these things.
You’ve been fighting
for a long time against the I-70 expansion. I heard you say recently
it’s not too late to change course on it. What do you have in mind, and
what change, realistically, do you expect you can affect there?
I mean, a lot of the highway projects that have been stopped historically have happened after construction had already begun. Jane Jacobs, the Manhattan Expressway.
Realistically,
I don’t expect things to stop. I don’t expect them to change course.
But the bridge (from Colorado Boulevard to Brighton Boulevard) hasn’t
come down yet. Until the bridge comes down, there’s an opportunity to do
something differently.
What’s your No. 1 policy goal in your first term?
You
know, for the first 100 days, I think we really need to decriminalize
homelessness. That’s something I didn’t come into the campaign thinking
would be my top goal, but it came up so much, it colored the entire
campaign — not just mine, but every single race in the city.
There are people on the council now who say they never supported the camping ban but that they didn’t support (Initiative) 300
either and they thought we could do better. The people who displaced
incumbents all said the same thing on the campaign trail. So I think
there is a middle ground there where you do decriminalize homelessness,
but you don’t take it as far as 300, which didn’t fully define public
space, which didn’t fully define curfews or ramifications for people if
people were in public space after hours. There’s that opportunity to
settle on something that’s more compassionate and humane. But we can’t
do that without investing in solutions at the same time. I really want
to see a 24-hour shelter become a reality.
The vote on 300 was so decisive — about 4 to 1. What did it tell you about the people in this city, the politics of the city?
It
didn’t surprise me. I had the expectation that money would drive the
decisions. Most voters aren’t going to dig in and do the research. Look
at the clerk and recorder race — 20,000 undervotes. People aren’t taught
to go further than what you’re giving them, and when you have the money
to put something in someone’s mail every single day, you’re giving them
enough information to make a decision, even though it’s uninformed.
When you have an ad popping up on their phone every single day, you can
shift the conversation. Without the money to fight back, that’s a
one-sided narrative.
The mayor’s race
attracted a lot of big money, too. When I ran into you on Welton Street
after the May 7 election, you said you were staying the hell away from
the mayor’s race and the “unity” ticket (Jamie Giellis plus Penfield Tate and Lisa Calderón). Who’d you end up voting for in that race?
Who I voted for for mayor doesn’t matter.
But why did you want to keep your distance from the race?
Because
of the optics. Everyone involved in that race, they were political
newbies. Even though I know we would have ended up in a better position
with Jamie, I don’t think Jamie had the ability to articulate why. The
people who jumped in with that, with Penfield and Lisa — when they
jumped in, I think that it made perfect sense for them to jump in.
Jamie’s camp did not listen to Penfield and Lisa about how they should
be crafting the message, about what they should be doing. Jamie’s
funders dumped in money
to Lisa’s race before the race was even over, and even though that’s
pretty standard, the optics were bad. All of it was just a burning
dumpster fire.
I
knew that, for me, I had to run a perfect race to unseat an incumbent
like Albus. I had to run a race without mistakes. That was my strength
in the end. We didn’t make mistakes. Jamie made a lot of mistakes in
critical points of the race, and I don’t think that the unity ticket was
put out to the public in the way that it should have been.
Have you been in touch with Albus Brooks since you won?
I
saw him last night. We were at a community meeting for I-70. He called
me the day after the election to concede. It wasn’t a long call. It was
just, “You ran a good race,” “You did, too,” and “Let’s meet up and
transition.” We’re trying to pin down a date to meet.
We
had a race that was really divisive in our community. I’m trying to
figure out how do we repair the harm that was caused. It turned into an
all-out, generational, black-brown war. And to me that was painful,
because my ties in this community go back generations, and to have had
to fight the way that we fought, and break up votes in families, it
sucked. It wasn’t fun to see families fighting internally because the
older generation wanted to go with Albus because of (former Mayor
Wellington) Webb and the younger generation wanted to go with me because
of reality. We’ve got to find a way to repair that harm. That’s even
more a higher priority to me than the policy.
We started off talking about you being labeled as a Communist and criticized for it. But in some media there are others comparing you
to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Your campaign flyer looks a lot like hers
did. How’d you come up with it, and how do you think you compare to her?
What
I loved about her logo is that she actually built her logo off of
political propaganda from the 50s and 60s, with Rosie the Riveter and Si Se Puede.
When she used it, to me, it was a legacy of a struggle for justice.
When I saw it, I thought it would be the perfect way for people to
recognize that this is part of a movement and not just a small race in
Denver. It was absolutely inspired by her. But to a lot of people, the
thing that was most similar was the exclamation points around my name.
But that’s just punctuation in Spanish, and I wanted to really cue in
voters to the fact that I am a Latina, and I think that was the most
visible way to do it.
I’m
honored to be in the same sentence as her. I think she’s activated a
lot of the same people I have. Younger people, different racial and
ethnic groups that have been left behind historically. I think that this
is a movement, and I hope to be able to create some of the impact that
she’s had on the federal level, locally.
Do you aspire to higher office?
No, I don’t. As hard as my race was, I can’t even imagine what it would be like trying to represent an even more diverse population.
Anything you want to add?
I do want to say that people painting the “by any means necessary” line as dangerous — that’s rooted in racism. (CdeBaca was referring to her April 7 comment: “I
believe in community ownership of land, labor, resources, and
distribution of those resources. And so, whatever that morphs into, I
think is what will serve community the best, and I’m excited to usher it
in by any means necessary.”)
People
say “by any means necessary” all the time. It never has this meaning
attached to it, unless it’s a black or brown person that says it.
Everything
you can possibly do to affect change, that’s what I’ve been doing.
That’s what I’m going to do. And that’s all I was referring to.
Colorado GOP calls for Candi Cdebaca’s resignation over coronavirus tweet
- Updated
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