Generation Next

A few days before we shipped this issue to the printer, I attended a virtual panel discussion in which the moderator made reference to the “twin pandemics” the United States is facing: COVID-19 and the reckoning we’re having about our inequitable and unequal society with regard to race. As I was watching, I couldn’t help but think about senior staff writer Robert Sanchez’s story, “How Twin Pandemics Transformed Denver’s Black Leadership”, which uses the same exact phrase. Sanchez started reporting the piece while covering the protests that arose after George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, but it soon became clear his article would not just be a chronicle of the social unrest that overtook the nation this past summer. Instead, Sanchez would document how these twin pandemics set the scene for a burgeoning group of politicians and organizers to assert their leadership in Denver. “Nearly every young Black leader I talked to said he or she needed to move quickly, that this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to introduce systemic changes into our community,” Sanchez says. “There was a real sense that—as much as they appreciated the earlier work of Black men and women who came before them—they thought this was their opportunity to push the movement forward.” It wasn’t a takeover, though, Sanchez says. It was a passing of the baton. His report details the how and why of this generational revolution and the immediate impacts of these leaders’ efforts—but, as they make clear, there is still much work to be done.