America's Hidden Gem: Northwest Aurora

Major funding for America's Hidden Gem Provided by; The Aurora Economic Opportunity Coalition, striving to promote long-term wealth building within the historically underserved Northwest Aurora community by providing professionals and businesses access to a comprehensive network of valuable resources.

Arts and Society Colorado Artist Grants Administered by Red Line Contemporary Arts Center.

The Aurora Office of International and Immigrant Affairs Foos in Communities.

And the Aurora History Museum.

With special thanks to; Aurora Library and Cultural Services Department And viewers like you, thank you.

(gentle music) (traffic droning) (gentle music continues) (sign buzzing) (gentle music continues) - It's hard being in this area, I'm not gonna lie.

The East Colfax era has a very bad reputation.

Being in this community feels like a double identity.

I wanna be a good person, I wanna give back to the community, but also making this a successful business, it's hard.

(gentle music continues) Like I don't know how to help anymore because we're in the middle of it.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) I like to be very optimistic of where East Colfax can get to.

But there are real issues here and those issues my team faces every day.

(gentle music continues) (door rattling) Hi, my name is Thoa and this is Banh and Butter.

This is my Bakery.

(gentle music continues) (electricity fizzing) (vehicle droning) (gentle music continues) - I am addicted to art, like anywhere I go I end up doing art stuff.

I bring art stuff to work.

I've brought it during deployment.

Everybody has their own addiction and that's mine.

So like it's, I guess it's like my religion (laughs).

(gentle music) (vehicle droning) But I feel like it can help a lot of people.

So like I do go outta my way for other artists.

My problem is you can be a horrible person, but if you do art, I'll be like, it's okay, we'll work through this, we'll fix this.

That's how I started my team is just trying to help other artists work together.

- Exactly, but.

- [Artist] That's like literally the boxes.

- It's really hard to get people to go to the East Colfax Gallery because it's on Colfax.

And so I remember we were going through the names and we were voting, I was the one who voted against the Colfax name 'cause I was afraid that if they had Colfax in it, nobody would wanna come because of the repetition Colfax has.

Do you wanna get the door for you?

(door squeaking) (gentle music continues) If you're already at the point where you've hit rock bottom, you're on drugs and you're like, "Oh, I wanna get better," then you're kind of SOL either way, 'cause a lot of those programs you can't be on drugs.

That's another reason why we were trying to do the free art classes.

It was kind of get a way for people to kind of like release.

So we had some people that came in, people were homeless who got to make pottery, like had a lot of fun and did it.

And that was really fun to watch.

I think some of us cried, but it's hard to get those programs to them.

(gentle music continues) (group chattering) - [Mateos] How are you doing, gentlemen, how are you?

Everybody good, yeah, how's your day?

What is in my mind is what I have experienced, and the help my family provided me to come to the U.S.

I still feel it in my heart, it has been a hard experience.

I still feel it in my heart.

(majestic music) During the trip to the U.S., we all struggled.

We joined other migrants and walked north, and crossed the border into the U.S.

The people that I came with, sometimes we rode bicycles, sometimes we rode in cars, and we also walked.

(majestic music continues) Mauritania is a repressive country.

Where black people are discriminated against and have no power.

(majestic music continues) My dream here in the U.S.

is to find a job that will provide me with a stable life and bring me a piece of mind.

Right now, I am not okay.

At any given time, I could be homeless and living on the streets, because I don't currently have a job.

The most important thing for me is to find a job.

When I find a job, I will be able to live.

- The Aurora Economic Opportunity Coalition, one of our programs is the Dayton Street Day Labor Center.

There's been this consistent stream of migrants coming to Northwest Aurora.

Those who have been coming to Dayton Street for a couple decades now, and those who continue to come looking for work with this pride and this dignity.

They don't come to ask for a handout, they come and ask for a job.

I must say that entrepreneurial spirit and that spirit to work, it's intense on Dayton and Colfax.

People want to work and people want opportunity, not more handouts, but we need everybody to come to the table because AEOC all by itself cannot do it.

(majestic music continues) - I am start at 7:30.

Everything is prepared in the morning, this morning, everything.

Turkey is 200 turkeys and chicken is 75 chickens.

We are Amigos de Mexico!

(group clapping) (gentle music) I believe this is the place were all the immigrants arrive, a place of arrival.

So, this is where everyone shares and gets stabilized.

This is where everyone lives, this is where they settle To start, this is a city people like to live in.

People feel very happy working here in Aurora, they feel comfortable.

And that is why Amigos de Mexico focuses on giving those tools to people so that they can start their own business.

I think the city of Aurora gives them many opportunities so that they can develop as entrepreneurs.

(gentle music continues) All the turkeys were given out.

You can see all the boxes are empty.

Thanks be to God.

Sometimes I ask myself, why do people have to try as hard as I tried before?

Then, to be able to give them the resources to be able to integrate into our community.

I think that when you help people, that process is not easy.

When you see all these families that come to our organization, it's ... it fills me with gratitude.

I know it is not easy.

This process is not easy to leave your country... and to arrive to a new country... and to have to adapt yourself.

I feel Aurora has grown very fast.

And I feel that the Aurora community, it is bigger and bigger.

This is one of the reasons that we have seen how the cost of living has gone up.

Because it has not been too many years where the cost of living has doubled and even tripled.

Even though Aurora is a beautiful city, full of resources, this has been a big barrier for our community.

And many are forced to find other places to live that are more affordable.

(gentle music continues) - I don't necessarily agree that there's just like a sudden influx of crime and homelessness that's suddenly the concern.

I think there's always been an element of unaddressed needs around homelessness and safety in that regard.

It's hitting a critical mass because you know, people are getting pushed out of other communities into Aurora.

I've never not felt safe in Aurora.

- As long as we're not coming from a place of hatred and we're coming from a place of love and understanding and expression, I think that that's where there's a lot of of beauty in that.

- The city of Aurora prides itself into being a welcoming city for everyone that calls it home to be a full participant in our community and to have a path to the American dream.

(gentle music continues) - And we're basically dry farming on this plot of land.

So it's a lot of experiments that we're running on.

What we are using is something called an oya, originated in Africa.

The Native Americans use the oyas for water retention.

I think total water brought in was, I wanna say 400 gallons all season.

We're trying to develop more farmers, right?

So this can also gonna be converted into space for aspiring farmers that want to come out and have a space to grow.

We're working on the economics of growing food.

We've been talking with a lot of urban farmers and the money just isn't there quite yet to do it full time for a lot of folks.

We should wanna have some clean food in our neighborhoods, we gotta do the work.

- We need a diversity of stores, we need full service grocery stores at the most affordable prices possible.

We need cultural and ethnic markets for different subpopulations within our community.

There's no one perfect way, one perfect solution that's gonna meet everyone's food needs.

If we think about food justice, it's really about many approaches to respond to the many different situations in our community.

- This is a food desert and now a lot of agriculture is happening in this community.

Food is very important to a community.

So agriculture is food culture by definition.

So without food you have no culture.

(upbeat music) It's very unique and it's very, it's a beautiful, vibrant, rich community, right?

But we do experience a lot of those, the safety issues.

Just yesterday morning there was a homeless guy sleeping in my car.

It's treating him with dignity.

I don't know where he coming from.

I don't know what his situation is.

It's like this is the nature of where we live.

(upbeat music continues) Very important to me that we build our own food system, at least within the neighborhoods.

It's not gonna solve all these issues.

However, it's still an avenue that we can use to supplement what we already have.

So the idea is to try to make us as sovereign, as independent as possible, not dependent.

So everything that we're doing, it is a reaction to solving problems that as along the journey that we solve.

- Some communities are designed to be diverse.

Northwest Aurora is definitely a homegrown organic one.

- Northwest is the heart of the immigrant refugee community.

- And the fact is that 20% of our residents are born outside the United States.

Living in a city with a lot of diversity of people will open the world to everyone because we meet so many people, so much culture.

- Well, I think it's hard to imagine a city anywhere inside or outside the United States more diverse than the city of Aurora and its diversity is growing.

- Now you have this incredible quilt of cultures and people are working together.

It's a whole bunch of people with completely differing views, colors, creeds, classes, you name it.

And they're coming together and they're living successfully together.

- I moved to Aurora because the big diversity here, I see people from different areas from all around the world, different cultures, different food, different you know, outfits.

So I love those things.

- It's like easy you could blend in with the people here since I think like most of them they're used to diversities.

You don't feel like you're different from others.

(placid music) - I love how diverse Aurora is, I'm black and I'm Muslim and I mean, I'm a hijabi so there's a billion hijabis that you see all the time.

You know, with those different identities, I feel like so many others share, you know, multiple identities and labels and because of that, I just feel at home, I don't feel judged, I don't feel stereotyped.

You know, I go out and I see people that look just like me and I see people that don't look like me because there's so much diversity.

It just feels like home.

- This Northwest Aurora region starts at Yosemite down the Colfax corridor over to 225 over by Anschutz and then over to 6th Avenue over by Lowry and then also then over to Stanley Marketplace, which is over there on 26th just on the other side of Montview Boulevard.

And so not a very large area, but super diverse.

- [James] In northwest Aurora they had branded this neighborhood the opportunity triangle.

The development of Colfax is pretty important and you see sort of development kind of slowly moving that direction.

And so I worry about that a little bit with all the sort of multi-family developments around here is like, let's make sure that we don't lose a little bit of the charming character of what this place has been for a long time.

- The communities that we serve speaks over 50 different languages.

I know that within Aurora Public School there are easily over 120 languages spoken by the students.

- Based on our research, Mexicans and Mexican Americans are the number one.

Number two will be people from Ethiopia, Africa.

And number three will be people from El Salvador, Central America, number four people from South Korea.

So we are truly very diverse.

(upbeat music) - With that diversity, you have both amazing things that take place and also your challenges.

(majestic music) - So when you've created a pipeline, you don't necessarily get to control what goes through that pipeline.

And Colfax is a prime example of that.

It's great for the economy, but it's also good for removing people.

It's good for moving drugs, it's good for moving criminal activity to and fro.

And I think sometimes crime in these pockets are allowed to flourish because people are so afraid to stick their head out.

- If we're thinking really critically about equity and access and disinvestment in this area, I mean, people weren't allowed to own homes.

How do we rectify that?

How do we help influence and manage the growth and development in a smart way and in a way that is honoring where community is coming from?

- One of the stereotypes is if this is a safe neighborhood, and if you look at crime statistics, we are higher than some areas.

I hear all the time people saying, "You live where?

You know, your church is located there?"

- And so, what you'll find is a lot of the businesses on Colfax have been boarded up and I don't think they're coming back.

- We know as an arts district that there's a problem with poverty.

We know that people are experiencing homelessness.

But to really understand and paint the picture of the disparity so that people can kind of grasp what this area faces or the challenges and the poverty is to understand that we have a high school, right?

A public school with a graduating class of a thousand kids, there's three cars in that student parking lot.

(majestic music) - [Crystal] Even as an elected official, I almost got priced out of my own district.

I can tell you from my lived experience growing up, having to have moved eight different times, it's always been part of like the push and pull and the struggle.

The challenge is not being able to be included in those changes.

- There is absolutely an acute challenge facing our community.

We see community members that are struggling with locating affordable housing, responding to hate crimes.

We see an increase in mental health issues facing our community.

- I feel like that's where a lot of the struggles happens with the Colfax, just a bunch of crazy stuff (laughs).

(majestic music continues) - [James] How do you revitalize the neighborhood without gentrifying it?

- The greatest challenge in Northwest Aurora and in the Colfax corridor as we envision economic growth is going to be gentrification, and the fear is already there.

(majestic music continues) - The tension between gentrification and our immigrant communities is definitely real.

With more development and more commercials coming in, it means more opportunities for small business owners.

But at the same time the increase in property value and the increase in rent does drive out a lot of the members of our community.

And I do worry about what that means for the diversity and vibrancy of this neighborhood in the future.

- So we have two floors, 57 tenants, all local independent businesses.

This building's 137,000 square feet on 22 acres.

We have a creek that runs through our property.

We have a six acre park.

We have an all-inclusive playground for kids with special needs.

We have a one acre farm for refugees and immigrants.

One of the philosophies as we built this project was let the project breathe, don't overbuild it, let's understand what we're missing and we keep doing iterations and add on as the time goes on.

We drafted a document called The Stanifesto.

That's our accountability measure and it talks about how we're tearing down fences and building bridges and we believe in the collective.

We believe in working together.

It's very clear what our intentions are.

And one of the challenges with Northwest Aurora, when we first set foot on this project, their fences were up separating two cities.

This was a really tough area.

As we finished a tour, somebody comes to me and says, "Hey, what are you gonna do after you gentrify this whole neighborhood?"

I said, "You know, it's funny you ask that because you're asking the wrong person."

Because I think about that stuff all the time.

I'm a social worker, I call myself an accidental developer.

Gentrification is a very simple label for a complex dynamic.

There's a lot of things that go into neighborhood transformation.

Those neighbors say, "Please create some activity.

Please create something here that provides some more energy, that provides a place that we feel more safe on, that provides more lights, that provides more traffic."

The more we have of that, the less we're gonna have of some nefarious activities around here.

How do you do things that work for everybody?

- [Mike] And affordable housing is an economic development issue too because the cost of our housing is a deterrent for businesses with good paying jobs to come in here.

(majestic music continues) - I was born in Suffolk in the UK but I grew up in the US, kind of moved all over.

But then I started foster care when I was 11.

I have severe dyslexia and I have ADHD.

When I was little, to kind of like communicate, I would draw instead of talk 'cause I didn't start talking until I was like three.

So I always kind of like used art as a way as communicating.

And then when I started foster care, the person who picked me up, I think she was my caseworker, she gave me back, she told me to pack all my important stuff.

I just packed paper and a couple writing utensils and that was it.

I think I've just always been that way, just used art as a form of communication and kind of way of venting and kind of maintaining my sanity.

I think that's why I'm so involved with the community and trying to use art as like a way of like using that as a way of like healing.

Because that's what I did growing up and it worked for me.

So just, if I can get it to work for everybody else, it'd be the way to do it.

(gentle music) I went in the army in 2015 and then I got out in 2021.

I was deployed in Iraq and my ex left me while I was in Iraq and moved here.

So I was actually stationed in Louisiana.

So I actually came back homeless.

When we first joined, we had to write a letter to the drill sergeant, and I just wrote that I joined for art and then I ended up painting the mural there, the stairs.

I designed our shirts, I did two walls in Iraq, and then I have one at Jackson Barracks and then I have the one wall at Fort Leonard Wood.

(gentle music) Colfax, having the bad reputation of having a lot of crime, having a lot of drug users, having issues with the public transportation, people don't wanna just go shop there, which is unfortunate 'cause there is a lot of really good restaurants over there.

We have the gallery over there.

- We're always looking for artists who have that passion, who have been doing the work by themselves for a period of time.

Hobo Smutt is somebody who has been doing that for way before I've ever known her.

There's a lot of duality with her work.

She's got a background in the military, she's also a Korean American and Hobo Smutt on the face, like Hobo, homeless, Smutt, sultry, sexy, but her whole life is like a duality.

Taking things that are other people's trash and really turning them into a treasure.

It frames things in a way of like, are you really disgusted or are you really intrigued?

And what she's had to go through in the military as a mom, as an artist, as a, you know, a biracial individual, she is the definition of somebody who puts her heart and soul into her work.

And even when she has nothing to give is still giving more.

She's one of the first people who will volunteer, who will bring other people and we just love her in the arts district and I have no doubt with the amount of time and effort that at some point, she'll break into the larger art world and then her pieces will probably be less attainable for most of us.

(gentle music continues) - [Tex] But she's a really good artist too.

- I was born in Denver, born and raised here, left for the military at 18.

I was Air Force, I worked on helicopters and F-16s.

Did F-16 work for 10 years out in Buckley and then got out in 2021 so I can do the work that I'm doing right now full time.

(gentle music) In 2015, we started Rebels In The Garden.

And so I came back from Korea and to try to connect with my kids and things like that, we started gardening and all that stuff.

Never gardened in my life, never did any of that.

But I got bit by a bug or something, something happened and I just cannot not do it anymore.

(gentle music continues) When we started Rebels in The Garden, the children needed a place to sell their produce.

So we started Rebel Marketplace on the premise that we want to do mainly gardens and urban farming in that marketplace.

But we found out that there really wasn't a whole lot of intentional growing going on in the neighborhood.

So we created Urban Symbiosis to help foster the growth of urban agriculture in the neighborhood, to help supply the needs that we need for the neighborhood.

But it was never on like, oh, we're gonna solve food problems or nothing like that.

It was just an activity for us to do that was positive and engaging.

(gentle music continues) So the market right now is evolving.

On average now, we started off with seven vendors at the very beginning of 2020, now we're averaging about 30 vendors.

I would say at least 90% of our vendors are women.

I would say our BIPOC, black and brown vendors, we have about 80% of those.

We are working on bringing in more farmers.

That's why Urban Symbiosis is there.

We're really trying to expand so we can be a staple for the community.

- James, he comes from a background and a life experience that many of the rest of us working in food justice don't, he's a veteran.

Sometimes we take for granted that people have a certain mentality or philosophy, and James really helps us ground ourselves in recognizing that there are many different perspectives, many different affiliations, many different alignments, and they're not fundamentally in contradiction to one another.

This is a community member who's leading something innovative, who is a grower himself, who's bringing people together, who's creating economic opportunity all around a community based farmer's market.

- These are my children right here.

So that's Isaiah, that's Isaac and that's my daughter, Raquel.

My daughter is the soul and the essence of the whole garden and everything else, so her energy is definitely needed.

My two boys are great, I'm getting older, my back is, you know, jacked up with my two strong boys.

So they help me do all the heavy lifting at the market.

(inspirational music) You know, gardening is just kind of what I do, and if I stopped doing it, it would mess with me, right?

It'd feel like something's missing.

It's a purpose, right?

It's kind of one of those like, it's a duty in a way, but I feel like I wouldn't be doing service to myself and to my spirit, right, if I didn't do it.

Because you get a lot of life principles by doing all of that stuff of failure, overcoming, grit, you know, ambition, crying, tears, happiness, the whole nine, the garden teaches you everything that you need and not a word is spoken, it's the church.

(inspirational music continues) - Colorado's always been in the front range crossroads, not only for, I think, you know, people living here now, but in the past.

When I think about the history of Aurora, Northwest Aurora, to me, that's the seed of Aurora.

In 1918, there was a medical base in the city of Aurora.

So that brought in a lot of, not only Army, but also at that point kind of the beginnings of the Air Corps as well, the beginnings of what would become Fitzsimons Hospital, that brought in a huge influx of families.

What they really wanted was somewhere to deal with lung diseases.

During World War I, there's not only chemical weapons that are affecting people's lungs, but tuberculosis is a big problem.

And then when you put a bunch of young men together in barracks, that tuberculosis spreads like wildfire.

At one time, Colfax was the main road into Denver.

What is now Colfax was in Denver, the southern border of the congressional allotment for the city.

If you were west of Denver on Colfax, they called it the Golden Road because that's where it went.

If you were east of Denver, they called it Kansas City Road because that's ultimately where you would go if you followed it.

The name Colfax comes from Schuyler Colfax, who was the vice president under Ulysses S. Grant.

I like original Aurora, sometimes you'll hear it called Old Aurora or ACAD, which is the Aurora Cultural Arts District.

- You had soldiers that were stationed here that would come back.

We have some stories of that during Korean War, the Vietnam War, I think that there's an influx from just around the country and I think that there's a demographic there that it wasn't just white Caucasian people, it was people from, you know, all over the world that actually were stationed back in Aurora and that brought different diverse communities.

- The first wave of diversity in the city occurred kind of in the latter 1970s, early 1980s with a wave of Vietnamese refugees.

And then it became more diverse after that with other immigrant groups coming in to Aurora.

(gentle music) - My parents came as refugees to the US.

They escaped Vietnam on a boat.

My mom worked as a chef at New Saigon Restaurant before she even owned it.

And then the owner ended up selling it to my parents and that kind of started their whole legacy.

(gentle music continues) It's a double identity is what I always call it.

Growing up Vietnamese, we always stuck to the culture and my parents were quite strict, but when it comes to my career, my dad is always like, "You go do what you need to do for your career, for you to succeed, for you to be the best."

And I left to France for a whole year.

(gentle music continues) After I came back from France, my parents pretty much surprised me with New Saigon Bakery and Deli, which they had built this Vietnamese bakery cafe for me.

February of 2012, New Saigon Bakery and Deli opened.

I believe by 2018 I decided to leave the family business.

I wanted to make them proud and it wasn't for me anymore.

I started to lose in baking and pastry arts, like something that I put my heart into.

(gentle music continues) It's the hardest decision to make when you disappoint your parents who sacrifice so much for you.

It's heartbreaking for you just as much as it is for them.

And I think the hardest part was walking away from that and starting to hate what I did.

And so when I left the family business, I was trying to find that passion again.

(gentle music continues) France kind of created this independence in me, this fight in me that I never knew I had.

My parents always said, "Thoa, you've changed since you came back from France."

I took myself away from my family business, which actually helped me grow as an individual and now I've learned to embrace that double identity.

It took a while, but maybe until my 30s, and I'm only 33, but it's like it took me till my 30s to really embrace that double identity.

Even my landlord knows my parents' history.

And to hear my mom say, "Trust her," my landlord was just like, "As soon as your mom said, 'Trust her,' I knew I wanted to sign you."

It almost felt like people are believing in you, you know?

And that you might be making the right decision.

And so when my mom supported this decision, I knew that she supported wherever I was gonna go.

And my dad, he says, "I'm proud of you," more often than ever.

(gentle music continues) - This community that had really been built based on people in cars driving through and advertising to those people with neon signs, weird shaped buildings.

Those were ways to grab people's attention when they're driving by at 40 miles an hour in their car.

(placid synth music) Colfax that had run right through the middle of Denver, and as we know it runs right past the state capital.

When I-70 was built in the early 1960s, I-70 goes, as we know, north of Colfax in the Aurora area.

If you're not intending to go to Aurora, you kind of miss it.

So that's the beginning of a downturn in Colfax.

It's really the late '70s and into the '80s that Colfax starts to be seen as a bad place.

It really picks up the reputation for being seedy, for being criminal and for having a lot of sex work.

(placid synth music continues) Growing up here, there was a while where both in Denver and in Aurora, the police de-emphasized crime on Colfax.

There was a idea that if we push too hard on the crime that's on Colfax, it's gonna move into other parts of the city and into neighborhoods.

That was 50 years ago.

(placid synth music continues) - How do we pull all that together and you know, recognize that history, but also work together to create the next 10, 20 years together in a way that benefits us all in a positive way?

- We're starting to come into a time where the good is far out shining the bad, but we have to compete with 25 years, 30 years of negative narrative about an area.

(placid synth music continues) Well, I am originally from Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

and I just came to visit some family members and i just loved the city of Aurora so much that I started to make friends.

I started going to places, and that was in 2001.

(gentle music) Actually, my two older kids are in college right now.

One goes to School of Mines, and the other to Regis.

I am very happy because even though we are immigrants they have been able to accomplish going to college.

And well, my other daughter is in high school.

My kids are trilingual where they, well at home they learned Spanish, and English because of where we live.

And they went to a language charter school where they learned Chinese, Mandirin.

They have been attending that school since pre-school.

(gentle music continues) I saw that there was not as much diversity and the culture of different people here.

Little by little, I've seen it's gone up.

The immigrant community here in Aurora it's a lot of people from Mexico.

But the beautiful thing is that we can find people from every place in the world.

Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and right now, we are having an increment of people from Colombia and Venezuela.

As a result, Amigos de Mexico has become a more diverse organization in this moment.

Amigos de Mexico started with a group of women.

We graduated from the Natural Helpers workshops, and that is where we met each other.

The only thing we had in common was that we wanted to help.

And number two is that we all live here in Aurora, In the Natural Helpers program, we were able to learn, and we saw the needs that the community of Aurora had.

At the end of this project, we got together, a group of women again, and we decided to form this organization with everything that we have learned in this workshop, such an important workshop that we took together.

(volunteer speaks in foreign language) In Aurora, there is a very high concentration of Latinos, Hispanic people.

And there were no organizations that represented this group of Latin American people.

We needed to address these needs and barriers that this community had.

Who else but ourselves who live in Aurora, who are immigrants, and who know what the barriers are.

(gentle music continues) The work that we're doing here as Amigos de Mexico, especially for me, it's a way to be able to help.

It makes me feel happy to be able to make this transition a little bit easier.

But this motivates me, that this same community is united.

And has this need to help each other.

(gentle music continues) - Me being from a Latino background, it makes me very proud that a lot of Latino families have called Northwest Aurora home, live here, don't plan on leaving and have invested in this community.

- Anytime there's a conflict happening, whether it's in Africa or Asia or Central Asia, I can guarantee you will see refugee and immigrants coming here to seek a safe place.

- We have over 19,000 cities in America and only maybe 20 have a immigrant integration plan.

So we are very unique.

We are the only city actually in Colorado who have a language access plan and we are the only city in Colorado who have a immigrant integration plan.

80% of the refugees in Colorado are living in Aurora.

This is a community who embrace them and provide with opportunities so they can raise their families, they can success in life.

For us, economics is critical.

It's the foundation of the whole plan.

Try to create economic opportunities for everyone across the city.

After spending almost 10 years in the city, I can tell you that immigrants, refugees are raising their families everywhere across the city.

Our immigrants, refugees are opening business.

We try to promote truly full integration to the mainstream community.

- I spent a week homeless once to see what it was like during the height of the pandemic when I can get away with it.

It is a of mental health and drug addiction.

But I can tell you this, they are not immigrants out there.

The entrepreneurial energy that they bring to this city and the value of that integration plan is to maximize their entrepreneurial energy in lifting our entire economy.

I'm amazed at how many business openings I go to, but immigrants bring that work ethic that was I think once so characteristic of most Americans.

They're here to work, to make a difference in their lives, even in the country.

(upbeat music) - Very diverse here in Aurora, so you're in a good place.

So it's my brother from Mauritania.

- Oh, Mauritania.

- He's only been here about three months now.

- Okay.

- How has it been in terms of work, getting work day after day?

(interpreter speaks in foreign language) - He say he's coming here because he's asking you to help him, you know, to find a job.

It's not easy for him to get a job here.

(group speaks in foreign language) - [Mateos] So this is a video of the persecution.

So it's tough over there, yeah, yep.

No, thanks for sharing.

(contemplative music) I was born in Mauritania, Noukchott, but I lived for thirteen years in Senegal.

When we returned to Mauritania, I also wanted to investigate what happened to my father.

My uncle warned me not to investigate my father's situation until I became an adult.

If the government found out that I was investigating my father's beating and disappearance I would be in danger.

(contemplative music continues) What I was wearing on the trip was a sports suit and tennis shoes, and the trip was very difficult.

We encountered many problems.

In Tapachula, Mexico we started walking from 8:00 a.m.

to midnight, but I don't know what jungle we walked through.

In my backpack, I had my money that I used to buy water and food.

I was worried because we came across strange individuals that dressed like police officers and demanded money.

(contemplative music continues) Sometimes we find work and only make 60 to 100 dollars, that only covers basic food expenses that we must contribute toward.

We also share the cost of public transportation so we can go out and look for work.

Our sponsors who provided their addresses in the US, allow us to sleep in their living rooms, while they sleep in the bedrooms.

I don't have a mattress or pillow.

– Interpreter: You don't have a Mattress?

– Aziz: I sleep on the floor.

It's hard.

It's hard, If I am being honest (contemplative music continues) Our living situation is hard because we don't have jobs and we cannot cover our expenses, but we must deal with it.

When I do get a job, I will be in a better place.

I would like to be active because I like sports, but when you don't have a job, it is tough to think about those luxuries.

When one has job, one can think about other extracurricular activities.

Where I am right now, I would like to get a job that is in alignment with my work experience.

There is nothing else that I know or that I studied (sic.

Welding).

The most important thing in my life right now is getting a job.

If I get a job.

(energetic music) - I want to remind you all that when you go out and you do the work, just make sure that you're being aware because there are those employers who will have you do the work and then won't pay you.

I know that's already happened as well.

If that happens, you all come and talk to me, okay?

'Cause instead of getting physical with people, we need to come and we need to follow the laws, okay?

AEOC has become a convener of the many nonprofits that exist in Northwest Aurora.

We can be stronger together, we can think strategically together to address these concerns.

We're making headway to making, you know, some positive change in Northwest Aurora.

We think that, you know, combining and bringing many cultures together, you know, it gets people excited.

We're creating partnerships with the city of Aurora and our small businesses in Northwest Aurora to do some creative things where we can engage some of the local residents, the new migrants who have arrived.

I believe in same philosophy, and so we're stronger in numbers.

- As far as the city, we gotta figure out a way, economic development in this area.

We see a lot of, obviously the changes that are happening.

You see the Denver side coming up from Yosemite and we also have from the Anschutz campus coming, so we're kind of squeezing this community.

So right now with Mateos and a lot of different nonprofits, we're trying to create a economic zone here, figure out some kind of way to be able to utilize all the people that are here and create an opportunity zone for people to have new businesses, co-ops and things of that nature.

(bright music) - I'm kind of fixated with Colfax between Peoria and Yosemite because that was really the central business district for the city when I first came here in the 1960s.

So my vision is to restore it back to its glory days, to its greatness and that will influence the rest of Northwest Aurora.

(bright music continues) - This is Global Fest and we are all enjoying the celebration of culture.

(inspirational music) - Global Fest is an annual celebration.

It has been going on for about 10 years now in Aurora.

It's a way for us to come together and celebrate the diversity of the community.

That's a great way for people to see that there is more to Aurora than just the sister city of Denver.

(inspirational music continues) - [Ricardo] I am from Peru, South America, so I get very emotional with the Peruvian nations.

It's like the Olympics, different delegations from different countries and everybody's so proud with their own national flags.

I mean, so it's a very unique experience that send a very strong message that we welcome you, that we embrace you.

- They don't know what Africans look like, they don't know what Africans eat.

But when you get together like this, you see they are doing great things.

I worked for airlines for so many years and I have been to many countries and I love to see the different cultures.

I like meeting anybody from different world.

This is why I like it, the Global Fest.

(energetic music) - Now in my case, as a first generation immigrant, it's working in the space of immigrant integration.

I have been on the other side.

So I think it's possible, you can make it, you can be part of this community if you want it.

The integration plan is our master plan.

It's in our best interest to integrate and assimilate newcomers so we can diversify our labor force.

We have been able to secure funding for many, many immigrants and refugees to be able to open their business.

60% of those business has been opened by refugees, 40% by immigrants, 60% for female, 40% by males.

So business, economic development are top priorities.

- Think about our parade of nation.

- Well, my parents met in Shanghai, China during that time of the Civil War and were married there.

I grew up with an incredible respect for immigrants because my late mother, she never took anything in this country for granted because she knew what it was like not to have freedom.

Americans that unfortunately, that are here for a very long time, oftentimes lose that, that sense of awe about everything that is America, that appreciation for freedom that is America.

And so I see that in the eyes of our immigrants today and it certainly reminds me of her.

(energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) - My hope for Northwest Aurora is that we can create a part of Aurora that is thriving, that is welcoming to everyone.

It really gives people the opportunity that they seek.

Everyone deserves a level of ability to thrive.

Infusing a community wealth building approach is the direction I hope we go in.

- I do have high hopes for the future of Northwest Aurora in that original Aurora neighborhood.

Once we can get past being uncomfortable around people who are different from us, we're all human and we're all dealing with a lot of the same things.

And some of us have different levels of privilege than others.

I do hope that we can find a way to really incorporate everybody into our neighborhood and into our community.

The reason I am here is to find a job and become self-reliant so that I can bring my three younger siblings and my mother to live with me and provide for them, since I am the oldest.

(dramatic music) - What I believe will be my legacy is Northwest Aurora.

Intellectual capital is attracted to, you know, places that are seen as welcoming, diverse, vibrant, where the arts play a principal role.

(energetic music) (dancer ululating) - [Crystal] I don't think there's anything to revitalize.

Like this has always been a vibrant community.

It's been disinvested in.

- Northwest Aurora is special to me in a lot of ways and it doesn't necessarily have a ton of money for maybe lots of historic reasons, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't have a lot of pride.

And there's something about a neighborhood that has a strong sense of itself and sort of where it wants to go if only people would listen.

- One thing that I hope for Northwest Aurora is that people don't just see Aurora for the food on the plate, but for the people who put that food on the plate, that they're really seen for being the lifeblood of the Northwest Aurora community.

And what amazing human stories and amazing humans period we have here.

(bright music) - You're afraid of what you don't know.

The more you become educated, the more you go to events like Aurora's Global Fest and you see the diversity firsthand and you see the celebration of life, you see dancing, you see music and you see food, if you get to know people and if you get to immerse yourself into a community and find time to understand and celebrate diversity, celebrate community.

It's those that aren't willing to dip their toe in the water that are scared.

And it's not hard to find ways to engage with people that are different with you.

(bright music continues) - We're more than a business and that's what we've created is this culture where people can trust us.

How do we continue that outside and we just create this economy that all just gives and support rather than just take?

I think it all starts with one person.

As small as it is, it starts with one person who believes for everyone to believe with them.

- The hope is just to keep it going.

I got three different businesses, three different kids.

So having them having the capacity to come and work in a business or own some of these things, at least having those options available to 'em, so that's kind of my hope.

- There's no reason to be fearful.

There's no reason to have any hesitation, but it's our city.

- So now you're seeing the influx of people that look different from you.

You see in stores that have different names that sometimes are in Spanish, are in other languages and you're like, "This is not what I grew up in."

For me, it's not what we lose, it's what we gain.

My message, as an immigrant is that I'm very happy to see the unity that there is in this community.

That even though we're going through hard times, everybody's looking for a way to contribute, to work with each other to make life easier to other immigrants that are arriving.

Even though I know they do not have much to give either, to see everybody living as one in a community, and if you're fine, the community's fine.

- I know I've been trying to use art as like a way of healing for most people and trying to like build a community with it.

But I think a lot of it gets disregarded 'cause I don't know how to tell people to just do art for art's sake from the very beginning.

I think that would open a lot more doors.

- I think that with communication being the key to kind of pausing gentrification, monocultural pockets end up being stabilized longer or can have revitalization without gentrification.

And that comes from community coming together, communicating with each other and working together.

- What the American dream is is hard 'cause I think it's different things to different people.

In talking to refugees and talking to immigrants, I think that they've thought more about why they wanna be American, why they wanna be living in America than a lot of people who grew up here have.

- We have such a tight knit community.

If somebody wants to start a business, they can go to their neighbors or their friends.

It really is a community that prides themself on helping each other.

It's such a great example of the beauty and strength of diversity and how much diversity makes the community so much more vibrant.

It's one of my favorite neighborhood in the whole state and I hope that we can maintain the character.

- Some of the answers will be on economics, investment, the opening of new business.

We have a great cultural art district, you know, in the heart community.

We have to come together in unity and celebrate the diversity that we have in our city.

There is a lot of potential in that area.

(dramatic music) - Art and diversity and culture can bring more opportunities if we work together.

- If I want to be able to be embraced who I am authentically and be able to see myself as part of the city, I come to the city of Aurora.

I hear people say, "This is the best city in the world to live in."

(contemplative music)