Serving the community since 1926
WEEK OF MARCH 28, 2024
VOLUME 97 | ISSUE 17
$2
New bill could Denver’s Whittier Cafe: A vital hub for community, justice awareness and action help Colorado
transfer students retain college credits
BY KATIE SALE SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA
It’s 2 p.m. and you need a pickme-up. Denver’s Whittier Cafe, 1710 E. 25th Ave., can offer way more than an average cup of jo. Its African espresso bar is the only African-owned of its kind in Denver and provides purely African bean blends of coffee. These coffee beans come from many African nations such as Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda. “We only use African beans and that’s sort of our claim to fame,” said Millete Birhanemaskel, owner and founder of the Whittier Cafe who prefers to go by M. “We select beans as availability offers, but we only use African beans.” M added that coffee was first discovered in East Africa. It went from East Africa to South America, then through the Middle East, and eventually spread around the world. “Not everyone knows that coffee originated in East Africa, which is partly why I opened the coffee shop – to teach people about an amazing part of Africa,” M said. Though the coffee beans the shop carries come from many different African countries, it hasn’t been able to carry Ethiopian coffee beans because of the on-going genocide in Tigray, Ethiopia, M said. That is one reason why M came to the U.S. – she is Ethiopian.
BY JASON GONZALES CHALKBEAT COLORADO
More than coffee
Within the Whittier Cafe, there’s the activists’ cafe – the shop’s microcosmic, dynamic tight knit social community – and the messages, education and firepower impact that come from it.
All the coffee served at Denver’s Whittier Cafe is made from purely African beans.
SEE CAFE, P5
VOICES: 10 | LIFE: 12 | CALENDAR: 15
COURTESY PHOTO
Two years into college during the pandemic, Larry Blackshear wanted a little bit of normalcy. Hoping a move closer to home would help, he decided to transfer in 2022 from Colorado State University Pueblo to the University of Colorado Denver — a 15-minute drive from where he grew up in Aurora. But even though he wanted to pursue the same Spanish and political science degrees he studied in Pueblo, not all of his credits transferred with him. Of the 82 credits he had earned, only 64 were accepted at the Denver university. “If CU Denver had accepted my credits,” Blackshear, 23, said, “I’d be preparing to graduate at the end of this (school) year.” Instead, he’s likely a year and a half away from earning his degree. And, while he’s not sure of the exact amount, he estimates he’s spent thousands of dollars trying to catch up. Colorado was a pioneer in working to remove such obstacles with transfers, but students statewide still run into problems when they try to switch between public colleges, pointing to the need to update rules to reflect changes in the way students earn credits and progress through college. State leaders hope new legislation will provide that update, so that students like Blackshear don’t lose time, money and credits when they decide to change schools. SEE CREDITS, P3
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