The odor of cooking dog food hung over Elyria-Swansea as advocates and officials gathered on Thursday at The Green House Connection Center, an environmentally bent community space.
The smell from the nearby Purina plant has long been a symbol of heavy industry surrounding the north Denver neighborhood, a weight on residents that everyone came here to discuss.
The occasion: actress and activist Jane Fonda came to visit. Local stakeholders are hoping her presence will help elevate the issues they're working on, and back candidates to help push their agendas forward.
"I was asked to speak at Colorado State University by the president, who's launching a climate and democracy initiative on campus. And so I'm doing that tomorrow and I have a lot of friends here and they asked me to come and be a witness to what's happening here," Fonda told us. "I'm in a broader campaign to phase out of fossil fuels and to protect communities from air pollution by fossil fuels in the petrochemical industry, which is happening all over the United States and it's killing people. And I want it to end and trying to hold elected officials accountable for that."
Organizers and officials took turns telling Fonda about the environmental issues facing the neighborhood.
City Council member Shontel Lewis said Denver is already feeling the impacts of climate change as a whole, and pointed to the city's car-centric layout as a "compounding" factor to the problem. She also raised one of her favorite ideas, social housing, which she said could be a venue for ultra-sustainable building standards should Denver ever try to build affordable units like that.
Ana Varela and Alfonso Espino, with the GES Coalition, also spoke about housing, specifically how gentrifying pressures have pushed longtime residents out of the underserved area. They also discussed the nearby Suncor tar-sand refinery, which has logged over a dozen malfunctions in the last two months and ranks among the highest-risk polluters in the metro.
"Beyond the Suncors, the Purinas and all that stuff, I think the thing that's always been most impactful about growing up here was actually the tanks," Espino said.
"Tanks?" Fonda asked.
"The Humvees. The artillery that's often shipped through the Pacific Railroad lines, right? I think I didn't understand the consequences of the things being produced around me. The oil behind me just to the north of us," he responded. "Now that I'm older, I'm reminded that this little piece of the world that used to just be Elyria, this little neighborhood I grew up in, is actually intimately tied to the freedom struggles all around the world."
Former state Sen. Mike Foote spoke about his efforts to curb fossil fuel development in the state, particularly near communities that lack political sway to resist new wells on their own. Jessica Campbell-Swanson, an Arapahoe County commissioner, spoke about her efforts to resist that development in her area, creating 3,000-foot setbacks to keep new drilling away from homes.
"I'm very moved by your spirit," Fonda told the group when they finished. "I'm so grateful that you've taken the time to come together and to talk, to help me and my team understand what's happening here."
Fonda made clear that electing sympathetic politicians is crucial in addressing all of these issues, and she's already put her money where her mouth is.
In 2022, she founded the Jane Fonda Climate PAC, a political support organization that boasts supporting 27 environmentally minded candidates who won elections at the federal and local levels. Council members Shontel Lewis and Sarah Parady are on that list.
Former City Council member Candi CdeBaca also won Fonda's endorsement. Though she lost her reelection bid last year, she said the celebrity plug was welcomed.
"It absolutely helped for fundraising and really mobilizing people who understood and cared about environmental issues," she told us. "If someone has only watched TV and Hollywood and they're most familiar with someone like Jean Fonda, and she can compel them to be a part of our movement, then we'll do what it takes to meet people where they are."
As the discussion ended, Fonda plugged her interest in this arena.
"Please let us know if there are candidates that we can support, like Shontel," she told the group.
"Support me!" said Lucy Molina, a former candidate for Commerce City's council who says she plans to run again.
Once they left the Green House, the group would board a bus to see Suncor up close and then visit Molina's home nearby.
"Your governor, who is - he is a moderate Democrat. He's done some good things for the environment. Where is he on this?" Fonda asked before they departed.
"He is a billionaire. And that's where he is on this," someone yelled out.
"He's a friend of industry," someone else said.
"He's a libertarian," said a third.
Environmental advocates have often been at odds with Gov. Jared Polis, accusing him of siding with business over residents. While the governor's advisors say Polis is working towards a middle ground to effectively regulate industry without pushing companies out of state, people in this room had little praise for his strategy.
"Where are the pressure points in government here in Denver to deal with this?" Fonda asked them.
Harmony Cummings, who once worked in oil and gas before she left to open The Green House here, said that was precisely what the meeting with Fonda was about.
"It's a big reason of why I reached out to you to be here today. To help educate more people. To help amplify these stories. To tell the young people about what's really going on. Because there are absolutely people who put him up there as a climate champion and those sort of things that he is not," she said. "The people who really work on this issue know the truth. And we need that truth to be out there wider."
But Fonda also expressed there should be room for pragmatism when it comes to politics. Take, for example, President Joe Biden's reelection.
"Having him as president, with all of his faults and his tone-deafness, he provides a terrain on which we can organize and act and fight," she told the group. "We have to understand. Nobody is perfect. No candidate is perfect. We're not marrying him or sleeping with him. We have to hold our nose and vote for him."
