1901 Arapahoe St

Click here map: 1901 Arapahoe St / lat 39.75158323537535 lon -104.99230309399309

Call 720-845-5413 extension 16 to hear this dream.

A demonstration fills the streets. Thousands of people with covered faces march in slow procession. They hold signs over their heads. The signs display the names of victims of police violence. One sign reads George Floyd. Another reads Breonna Taylor. Signs read Elijah McClain. Another Sandra Bland. Another Paul Castaway. And Michael Brown. And Tamir Rice. And Eric Garner. And Alexis Mendez-Perez. And Kendra James. And Daniel Covarrubias. And Rekia Boyd. And Abner Louima. And Carl Cooper. And Aubrey Pollard. And Fred Temple. And so many more. And people hold signs that speak the names of people killed when there were no cameras present, people whose deaths went unremarked in the news, whose deaths went unreported, whose names were maybe only known to loved ones, held dear in private, names from decades past, from centuries ago. Each person carries a sign with a unique name, & each person carries a sign. The crowd, in unison, shouts the name of each victim once. But so many people march with the demonstration that the voices range all over the city & by the time the people at one point of the march are shouting a name, the people at another are shouting another name & the people in back yet another name, & all the voices shouting all these names bounce off the mirrored windows of skyscrapers & echo back & the voices & echoes intermingle, merging, tens of thousands of voices & tens of thousands of echoes merging so many names together until the merging voices becomes a kind of wailing, a kind of song, becomes all songs at once, songs of grief & loss & songs of devotion & songs of finding joy, & songs of deserving joy, & songs of demanding joy from a world that so often ransoms joy; you hear all the songs that ever helped you make it through the day & the songs your loved ones sang when you were young, & even songs sung when the singers thought no one was listening. And as the people’s joined voices & wailing & song reverberate off walls & windows, the sounds layer over one another, twisting together, weaving sound itself into standing waves, into physical structures in the airs. And beside you, someone reaches up a hand & grips the standing sound wave. She pulls herself up, as if climbing a ladder, reaching up to another sound wave as she stands on the first, lifting herself up on the combined voices of the people. All around you, others reach into the voice-filled air & pull themselves up, until the entire march, thousands of people, are rising into the air as they shout, lifting themselves up on the noise they have made. And you too reach up & hold onto the noise & lift yourself & climb into the air. You climb higher & higher, over the old buildings & blocky towers, & up, up, until finally you have climbed past the tops of these surrounding skyscrapers, wind whipping your clothes. And here, where the city no longer blocks the view of the surrounding land & mountains, you all begin to build a new city, a city built on the foundations of the collective voices, a city that relies on all to speak & keep speaking.