Denver City Wire

A video recorded by Denver City Council member Candi CdeBaca in which she says white business owners should be taxed to pay reparations to black and brown business owners, has gone viral.

"There is a way to change that structure and put black and brown people in ownership over our basic needs," CdeBaca said, who is up for reelection on the June ballot. "I also really want to point out that the basic income project could be, if it were focused, an important way to return a check to an individual in an ongoing fashion, but in its current format is not reparations or close to reparations."

The video was posted on CdeBaca’s social media but was also posted on the conservative TikTok account LibsofTikTok. 

CdeBaca was speaking at the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance Forum on May 4. She starts out talking about why many of Denver’s black- and brown-owned businesses have been failing: the Five Points Business Improvement District (BID). It is a business development tax district effort in which the city of Denver collects increased taxes from the businesses within the district and uses those additional funds for revitalization and improvement of the area, Denverite reported.

CdeBaca said that the best way to start making adequate reparations for “generations of stolen wealth” is to start collecting “extra taxes from white-led businesses all over the city and redistributing them to black- and brown-owned businesses who are not part of the BID, but are simply black- or brown-owned, and that’s one way to give back.” 

She also talks about the importance of consumer- and municipal-owned utilities and necessities, like water and electric. “We are locked out of owning or control over our basic needs,” and there are ways to change the structure to allow black and brown people to have that ownership.  

CdeBaca is running against Kwan Atlas and Darrell Watson for the District 9 council seat. CdeBaca has served one term so far, reaching four years after winning her seat from incumbent Albus Brooks. She is reported as the first queer Latina and Democratic Socialist to sit on the dais. On her campaign site, she recounts how being raised by a single mom and grandparents in Swansea helped her learn “the importance of putting people and the planet at the center of city policy. I became a community organizer, social worker and policy expert.”