This document is the January 2015 issue of the Denver Urban Spectrum magazine. It includes an editor's letter highlighting stories in the issue about a local event planner who lost 193 pounds, an organization teaching kids about science and the environment, and discussions between police and the African American community. It also notes an article providing historical context about Martin Luther King Jr. The editor's letter is preceded by letters to the editor about recent grand jury decisions not to indict police officers in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and the need for continued dialogue on issues of race and policing.

2. MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR
Denver Urban Spectrum — www.denverurbanspectrum.com – July 2014
3
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension.
We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This month we mark the birthday of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a time when citizens across the
country are checking the progress or lack thereof when it comes to race relations in America. The death of Eric Garner
and Michael Brown at the hands of police officers in 2014 brought underlying tensions regarding race to the surface. As
2014 came to an end, emotions could not help but to flow. Riots, die-ins, student walkouts, marches and discussions
spread like wildfire. “I Can’t Breathe” and “Black Lives Matter” became the catch phrase to capsulize what appears to
be the start of a new civil rights movement.
This movement does not negate the fact that we all have individual challenges that we must meet to make it to the next
level of our lives. In that vein, our cover story by Charles Emmons reveals how one of Denver’s most popular and suc-
cessful event planners lost 193 pounds over a 15-month period in the fight for his life. Through his experiences, Duane
Taylor has committed to helping others be healthy. Chandra Thomas Whitfield shines the light on Environmental Learning
for Kids (ELK), a nonprofit organization that focuses on teaching kids of color and at-risk youth about science, nature and
social justice through hands-on fun activities such as fishing, hiking and camping. We also highlight one of the many dis-
cussions held in the city to address tensions between the police and the African American community, but this time from
the voice of attorneys. This issue also provides perspective on the crisis surrounding actor and comedian Bill Cosby.
On a final note, we like to believe we know all there is to know about Dr. King, but historian Charles Guy provides us
some known and little-known facts in this issue. Please take a moment to review the milestones that formed the man we
celebrate today.
Angelia D. McGowan
Managing Editor
In memory Emmett Till... Amadou-Diallo...Trayvon Martin...Michael Brown...Tamir Rice...Eric Garner...
I Can’t Breathe
Editor:
Recent grand jury
decisions in Missouri
and New York have
raised troubling ques-
tions. It is time to
have a serious conversation to address
the mistrust felt by communities of
color towards police departments, not
just in other states, but right here in
Colorado.
The decision by a grand jury in
Ferguson, Mo. not to indict Officer
Darren Wilson in the death of
unarmed black teenager Michael
Brown was controversial. While I
understand there was conflicting testi-
mony, I was disappointed with the
decision and sympathize with those
who feel justice was not served. I
wonder what policies local authorities
can put in place or change so that ter-
rible tragedies like this can be avoided
in the future.
More recently the decision by a
New York grand jury to not indict
Officer Daniel Pantaleo for his choke-
hold of Eric Garner that resulted in
Mr. Garner’s death has caused univer-
sal outrage. Rightly so in my opinion--
the incident was caught on video and
you can clearly hear Mr. Garner, who
was being arrested for selling single,
individual cigarettes, saying he cannot
breathe.
How can an infraction as minor as
selling loose cigarettes result in the
unnecessary use of a chokehold that
killed a citizen the police are meant to
protect? Even in a case where the
event was captured on camera and the
excessive use of force seems clear, jus-
tice was still not served.
While these events are tragic, they
offer us a chance to re-evaluate our
laws and policies and to begin to
restore trust between police officers
and citizens. I am planning to host
town halls in the greater metro area to
continue this dialogue after the begin-
ning of the year. It’s critical that we
have a conversation to ensure our jus-
tice system protects all people includ-
ing communities of color.
State Rep. Rhonda Fields
House District 42 in North Aurora
Editor’s note: On Dec. 29, 2014 Rep. Fields
held a round table discussion at the State
Capitol with other community leaders. For
information about that community conver-
sation, visit www.rhondafields.com.
Now Is The Time
Editor:
We have all, by
now have either read
or heard that a Grand
Jury declined to indict
Ferguson Police
Officer Darren Wilson in the death of
Michael Brown. A Grand Jury of 9
white and 3 African Americans came
to the conclusion that not enough evi-
dence was presented to indict the offi-
Continued on page 30
PUBLISHER
Rosalind J. Harris
GENERAL MANAGER
Lawrence A. James
MANAGING EDITOR
Angelia D. McGowan
CONTRIBUTING COPY EDITOR
Tanya Ishikawa
COLUMNISTS
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Wanda James
Cleo Manago
K. Gerald Torrence
FILM CRITIC
BlackFlix.Com
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Charles Emmons
Ann Marie Figueroa
Charles Guy
Angelia D. McGowan
Chandra Thomas Whitfield
ART DIRECTOR
Bee Harris
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT
Cecile Perrin
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
Lorenzo Dawkins
Lens of Ansar
ADVERTISING SALES CONSULTANT
Robin James
Byron T. Robinson
DISTRIBUTION
Glen Barnes
Lawrence A. James
Ed Lynch
Volume 28 Number 10 January 2015
The Denver Urban Spectrum is a
monthly publication dedicated to
spreading the news about people of
color. Contents of the Denver Urban
Spectrum are copyright 2015 by Bizzy
Bee Enterprise. No portion may be
reproduced without written permission
of the publisher.
The Denver Urban Spectrum circu-
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www.denverurbanspectrum.com.

3. It’s resolution time. Get off the
couch! Usually the New Year is a time
of reflection. More often than not we
focus on what we could have done
better, and what we are going to do
about it in the coming year. We
resolve to make our lives better.
Resolutions are goals for our imme-
diate future. We use them as guide-
posts to move us along as we progress
throughout the year. As we go along,
we are happy when we reach a goal,
and perhaps indifferent when we do
not.
But 2014 woke us up. The tragic
shootings in Ferguson, New York and
Cleveland were a stark reminder that
life is precious and can be snatched
away at any moment. For most, there
are no second chances. When they
come along, we must maximize them
to the fullest.
Duane Taylor believes in second
chances. Just over a year ago on New
Year’s Eve, Taylor went to a doctor’s
office and was told he would be able
to lighten his burden, and no longer
needed the wound vac medical appa-
ratus that had been keeping him alive.
It was the best New Year’s present he
could have imagined, and from that
point forward he resolved to live and
to help others live.
Taylor is well known in the com-
munity, mostly for Duane Taylor
Entertainment. He told me he
has close to 8,000 connections
online. Since moving to Denver
from Atlanta to manage the call
center for the security company
ADT, he has been living the
dream, sometimes by choice,
other times having to adapt.
Two years after his relocation,
the company downsized and he
lost his job, and it was then that
he started Duane Taylor
Entertainment, a successful pro-
motions company. He subse-
quently started a business as a
corporate recruiter.
“Who is Duane Taylor?
From a professional standpoint,
I am a corporate employment
recruiter by day, a professional
event planner by night and a
dynamic motivational speaker
by nature,” he says.
He became aware of his God-given
gifts and talents 20 years ago, but it
took a life-changing event to urge him
into full commitment to use them.
Despite his success, his lifestyle was
not perfect as he struggled with obesi-
ty even as a child. After deciding to
have elective bariatric surgery and
changing his nutrition and mindset,
Taylor has shed 193 pounds in the
past 15 months. Growing up in
Philadelphia as an only child, he was
the fat kid who was teased and picked
on, as well as the focal point of his
parents’ love.
“I think that contributed to my obe-
sity as well,” says Taylor. His father
would pick him up at the bus stop
and they would go to the corner drug-
store for what Taylor referred to as
one junk, a candy bar or potato chips.
“And of course, me being an only
child and being the focal point of my
parents’ love, sometimes that one junk
became two junks, because I would
ask for two. And he would say, alright
son, you’ve made good grades today –
go ahead and get two things.”
Taylor’s football playing weight in
high school was 255 pounds. In his
freshman year at the University of
Florida, he put on another 100
pounds. He was unfortunately placed
in Hume Hall, the dorm that housed
the only all-you-can-eat cafeteria. With
his meal plan, he took full advantage.
His weight began to take its toll. One
roommate moved out after one semes-
ter because of Taylor’s excessive snor-
ing, a consequence of his obesity.
After graduating from college with
a bachelor’s in communications,
Taylor lived in Florida for several
years before moving to Atlanta where
he met his wife Zena. “I thought I
would be in Atlanta all my life. But
apparently that wasn’t God’s plan,” he
says.
“I have struggled with obesity all
my life,” says Taylor. “I have done
what I call the Oprah and Luther
Vandross syndrome, where you have
seen them gain weight…lose
weight…gain weight…lose
weight…gain weight… lose weight. “
Taylor has been a living statistic. Data
from the Health, United States, 2013
report from the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention
National Center for Health Statistics
report shows that 38 percent of
African American men are obese, with
a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or
higher. The rate for African American
women is even higher at 57 percent.
Obesity has been classified as a pre-
ventable disease, but according to the
personalhealthinsurance.com website
it is exempt as a pre-existing condition
under the Affordable Care Act.
Economic status and education have
some but little impact. Obesity rates
among African Americans who have
college degrees and higher incomes
still hover around 25 percent. It’s for-
tunate to be able to address it with
bariatric surgery, but Taylor is quick
to comment that this is by no means a
silver bullet.
We seem to be enamored with quick
fixes. Taylor had developed many of the
ailments associated with obesity – short-
ness of breath, knee pain, and hyperten-
sion, and he struggled to get out of his
car because of his weight. It took break-
ing the driver seat in his crossover vehi-
cle to get him to consider doing some-
thing different. It was common to con-
sume 30 chicken wings in a sitting while
watching a football game and he drank
a 2-liter bottle of diet soda a day. By the
time he started considering bariatric sur-
gery, he tipped the scale at nearly 400
pounds. That was about three years ago.
Taylor had the bariatric sleeve sur-
gery in 2013. “But what I didn’t antici-
pate was that nine days after my sur
Continued on page 6
Denver Urban Spectrum — www.denverurbanspectrum.com – January 2015
4
Duane Taylor, Saved For The Next Level
By Charles Emmons
Photos by Lorenzo Dawkins

4. Duane Taylor
Continued from page 4
gery, I was sitting on that couch and I
became sick,” he says. “Now it is yet to
be determined whether or not my sub-
sequent illness was the result of my
weight loss surgery or not. I ended up
in the hospital for two months.” Those
two months were the most challenging
days of his life. Two additional surgeries
were performed. In the eight weeks
spent in the hospital between September
and November, he was in intensive care
for three of them. Taylor recalls little
about the whole experience, but pictures
his wife took show he was hooked up to
every type of medical machine imagina-
ble. He is emotional and often tearful
when he talks about it. “But she would-
n’t share those with me until she knew
that I was ready to see them, and I
appreciate her for that,” he says. After
being discharged from SkyRidge
Hospital, he checked into a specialty
hospital where after an initial assess-
ment, doctors determined that he was
too sick to be there and he was sent to
another acute care hospital. There the
prognosis was for additional surgeries.
But Taylor’s wife and mother knew
he would not be up for further time
under the knife. “I had already had
three surgeries within a week. I had
my weight loss surgery on Sept. 10,
another surgery around the 20, two sur-
geries, so if I had been taken under that
knife again, I may not have lived. So I
had what is called internal wound ther-
apy. I had a hole in my stomach the size
of a football and as deep as…probably
three inches deep,” he says. The therapy
worked, and Taylor was discharged on
Nov. 14, but relegated to carrying the
eight-pound wound vac until he got the
word on New Year’s Eve that he no
longer needed it. “The only time I could
disconnect it was when I took a shower.
I would disconnect it take a shower and
then reconnect it and it was a mess. But
I thank God for the wound vac, because
it helped me to not have to have another
surgery,” he tearfully says.
Few of us have such a transforma-
tional experience that slaps us in the
face. Taylor is determined to turn this
dark period into a lighting path for
others faced with obesity. He elected
to have the bariatric procedure, but he
knows even with this physical fix,
there is the danger of reverting to old
habits. “I try to let people know that
bariatric surgery is a choice. And that
it is not just the solution. Your change
has to come really from your mental
adjustment. Biblically, we call it the
renewing of the mind. You have to
have a renewed mind and make the
decision that you are going to think
differently, be differently, and eat dif-
ferently. One of the things I plan to do
is write a book, and one of the chap-
ters is going to be ‘All I do is think
about food.’
The biggest challenge has been to
shed the old Duane. “It is kind of iron-
ic because when I was morbidly obese,
all I would do was think about food.
And that meant where was I going to
go? What was I going to eat?” He met
his goal of shedding at least 140
pounds with the surgery. But when he
looked in the mirror, he still saw the
old Duane. He had lived so long as an
obese man, that he had difficulty see-
ing himself as slim. Could he embrace
this new person?
Following his surgeries, Taylor was
fed intravenously and took nothing
through his mouth for weeks. When
he was encouraged to start eating, he
found it difficult to wrap his mind
around eating food again. The old
Duane loomed in the back of his
mind. But his mental fortitude got him
through the pain and anguish. “Babe,
I’m tired,” he told his wife one
evening over the phone. “We need
you,” she tearfully replied. He decided
that night in his hospital bed he was
going to fight to live his life to the
fullest.
Today, Taylor exercises in the gym
working out six days a week. He fer-
vently works with a dietician and is
focused on constantly improving his
nutrition. He is coming into his own,
comfortable in his own skin as an
“agent of encouragement.”
“I would say that my escalated
level of success with this bariatric sur-
gery is because of my mindset change
and my rigorous exercise, which is
one thing that I will tell people all over
the world as I go out and help people
change their mindset. If you have the
surgery, that is a choice. But even if
you don’t have the surgery, you’ve
got to implement exercise into your
daily lifestyle. You‘ve got to change
the way you look at food. You can’t let
food control you.”
A year ago, Taylor wore size 56
pants. Today, he wears a size 34. But
there is more to life than looking good
in your clothes. People who knew the
old 390-pound Duane look at the new
and improved 197-pound Duane
sometimes say, “You’re getting too
skinny.” He looks them dead in the
eye and tells them “Is there any such
thing as too healthy? When we are
healthy, we feel good and have ener-
gy. If we truly want to live our
dreams, we are in a better position to
accomplish our goals when we are
healthy.
“You have to make a decision and
really be serious about it. You can’t go
at it half-heartedly. And that has per-
meated every other aspects of my life.
In my business, if I can’t put on a
grand, epic and signature event, I am
not going to bother. No more
mediocre. I wasn’t saved and given a
second chance at life to do stuff on a
mediocre level.”
As is the case with many, Taylor’s
new outlook is borne of adversity;
nevertheless it is prudent to borrow a
page from his playbook. He reached a
plateau after his surgery and was
somewhat dismayed. We reach
plateaus in all areas of our lives, so
focused on results, we think we have
faltered, ignoring the lessons in the
process. Taylor has developed an
aversion to the past tense in relation to
his fitness and health. For him being
healthy is an ongoing process. And
the process must always be progress-
ing. He emphasizes the ‘ing’ as in
being and doing.
“It’s not time to replay the first part
of my life over again and play it the
same way as the first part. It’s time for
the next level. A much higher level, a
much more fulfilling level on all levels
physically, emotionally, financially,
spiritually. It’s time to go to the next
level. And that is one thing I ask when
I try to encourage people – friends and
strangers – what are you doing to take
yourself to the next level?”
Taylor’s next level is telling his
story from Morbid to Model, his new
personal brand. Knowing that people
are more receptive to those who have
been there and done that, he plans on
a documentary, a book, more press,
social media and perhaps talk show
appearances in modeling for others
struggling with obesity. He recently
received more than 800 “Likes” on
Facebook when posting about his
experience and he currently gives
weekly lectures to bariatric patients.
Editor’s note: For more information on
Duane Taylor, visit
www.facebook.com/duane.taylor.712.
Denver Urban Spectrum — www.denverurbanspectrum.com – January 2015
6
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