Activist Anthony Grimes and the Ground Game

Anthony Grimes is a Denver native with a lot of passion surrounding his home town. More specifically, he’s passionate about the neighborhood he grew up in and is willing to fight for its survival — and for the survival of his neighbors. Grimes is an activist, and has one very important mission: redeeming the soul of America.

A pastor, writer, and community animator, Grimes spends a lot of time connecting people and ideas. He founded the Park Hill Parish that serves the residents of Park Hill, a mostly black, now gentrifying community in Denver. He also founded the Denver Freedom Riders, which bussed Coloradans to the protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

Grimes’ activism stems from a tragedy in his childhood where his sister and cousin were killed by a street driver. The driver walked away with nothing — not even a ticket. After his mom challenged him in court, he was allegedly released due to police negligence.

“I watched my mom say she was going to be committed to loving all people, including the man who did this,” Grimes recalls. “I grew up with the need for justice and the need to love all people. Both are still realities in my soul.”

Tell us about what you’re doing as an activist today.

I currently work for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and we are one of the world’s oldest and largest interfaith, peace political organization. We were founded on the eve of World War I, and we focus on campaigns around nonviolence. Recently, what has looked like has been non violence, direct-action trainings in Ferguson, Baltimore, and across the nation.

We’ve had a wide array of members; people like Dr. Martin Luther King have been a part of this organization. We started the ACLU, and the Congress of Racial Equality.

What is the Fellowship doing since the nation elected Donald Trump as our next president?

I can’t speak directly for our organization yet, because our plans are in the works. What I <do> know is that we are very much involved in helping to spread sanctuaries. We just began a petition around encouraging churches and institutions to be sanctuaries for people that are affected by violence. That’s one thing.

Beyond that, I am on the ground in DC with two afro-Colombian activists around the country and making connections between their experience in their small port city in Colombia and the black experience here in the United States.

Along the way, Trump has been a very big issue and concern for people so we are formulating conversations and groups around how we can respond during this time in light of a Trump presidency.

Those are a few things that we are doing on the ground, every single day.

[We spoke to Anthony before the Army Corps of Engineers announced that they would not grant the permit for the Dakota Access pipeline to drill under the Missouri River.]

You’re not as involved in Denver as you once were, but a lot of people in the Mile High City are asking what they can do to help, to get involved. What would you say to those people?

Join a group that is known for organizing around issues of this kind, and get together with people and have dialogues.

Prepare yourself for what will be —most certainly — four years of needing to defend human rights in the most tangible ways. Prepare yourself with training. Pay attention to the news. Pay attention to current events that affect all of us. Call your state representatives, question them about what the community is demanding, and you can only demand and lobby congress with issues that you are knowledgeable on. Find your one focus — the thing that you are passionate about or directly affects your livelihood — and engage that issue area. Not one person can do it all.

One very easy access point for every citizen is kindness. The one thing every human needs to do on a pure human level is to be compassionate and neighbor really well. We are going to see funding stripped from education and aid programs and services that the state used to provide through government services, so when that is stripped we need to rely on neighborhood organizations to really step up their game and to care for their neighbors.

We are all going to be called to the forefront to make a more passionate society.

Is there anything else you want to say to our readers?

I think that we all need to realize what happened before we jump so quickly to the next thing we need to do. Take a moment and reflect and see where they are.

When Trump got elected, it was almost as if we were thrown into a cold pool without being ready. Take a minute and let the shock set in that our nation is not as progressive as we thought it was. If we have not taken a moment to process that, then we will end up doing more harm than good.

What we need to do is stop, meditate, and realize. Then after all that we need to organize. The Trump presidency doesn’t change what we need to do any more than a Hillary presidency would. It just gives it a lot more urgency.

So, like I said, I encourage dialogue between family, friends, and strangers. I encourage joining some coup that is promoting justice. Train yourself in new ways to make change. With training with can change the world. Then get to work and start fighting.