Denver was one of nine American cities to receive a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation last month as part of its Monuments Project, a five-year, $250 million initiative funding public art across the country that “more fully and accurately represents the multiplicity and complexity American Stories”. In the Mile-High City, the Parks and Recreation and Arts and Sites departments will dedicate the $2.3 million in grants to an audit of monuments currently on display and community engagement related to statues pulled down amid the 2020 national racial justice protests.
More concretely, it will support the design and construction of a new square commemorating the Demonstration of the gang of 19, a milestone for disability rights on July 5, 1978, when wheelchair activists protesting Denver’s inaccessibility of public transportation blocked buses at the busy intersection of Colfax Avenue and Broadway. For the next 24 hours, 19 activists remained on the streets and blocked buses from running. Eventually, officials from the Denver Regional Transportation District met with the activists and agreed to make one-third of the city’s bus fleet wheelchair accessible. “It was the start of something big for people with disabilities,” Barry Rosenberg, one of the activists, told the Historic Channel Last year.
