THE CHALLENGE

Last year, law enforcement killed more than 1,200 people in the United States during encounters that most often begin as something as routine as a traffic stop. The risk of losing your life during this type of interaction is not distributed equally. Black men are killed by police at nearly three times the rate of white men, and people with disabilities and transgender people experience disproportionate harm in encounters with law enforcement, often facing greater risk of escalation, misidentification, and violence.

Most of Denver Justice Project’s work responds to harm after it has already happened — supporting a family through a court process, organizing after a killing, pushing for accountability once damage is done. But by the time DJP is called upon, someone has often already been hurt. Know Your Rights training exists to intervene earlier: to put information directly into people’s hands before an encounter with law enforcement or ICE ever begins, so that a routine interaction has a better chance of staying routine.

As immigration enforcement has escalated and threats to Denver’s communities have evolved, the cost of this gap in knowledge have only grown. Vulnerable community members, specifically undocumented folks, Black and Brown people, disabled people, trans people, and youth, are often the least likely to have reliable, accessible information about their rights, and the most likely to face harm when they don’t.

OUR APPROACH

Know Your Rights training is foundational to Denver Justice Project’s preventative work. These trainings equip community members with clear, accessible information about their legal rights and how to safely navigate interactions with law enforcement — knowledge that can make the difference between a routine encounter and one that escalates into harm. We work with vulnerable and directly impacted populations, as well as allies who want to show up for their neighbors, ensuring rights education reaches both the people who need it most and the people who can help protect them.

As threats to our communities evolve, so does this training. We’ve expanded our curriculum to include guidance on interactions with ICE, giving immigrant families and their allies the tools to understand their rights and protect themselves and their loved ones in an increasingly hostile immigration enforcement landscape. Alongside our community partners, we’ve added specialized modules covering how to be a safe bystander, what to do if you witness an ICE raid or arrest, and civil disobedience training — and our materials are now available in both English and Spanish.

We tailor this training to the communities we’re in. In partnership with Street Frat on the East Colfax corridor, we work directly with youth to help them understand the seriousness of interactions with law enforcement and how to navigate them with confidence — how to assert their rights and protect themselves from potential harm. In February 2026, in collaboration with longtime immigrant rights leader Jeanette Vizguerra, we hosted a Community Organizing and Know Your Rights training at First Unitarian Society of Denver that drew more than 70 community members for an evening of political education alongside practical skill-building — including how to navigate ICE encounters, what to do if ICE comes to your home or workplace, your rights while protesting, and how to safely and legally document law enforcement and ICE activity. Participants left with Know Your Rights zines and booklets, whistle kits, and were connected directly to hyper-local rapid-response networks so that knowledge translated into organized, collective protection.

As of August 15th 2026, DJP has facilitated eight Know Your Rights trainings, one train-the-trainer session, and two specialized trainings focused on ICE preparedness and civil disobedience — reaching more than 600 participants. This work has been made possible through partnership with Street Frat, First Unitarian Society of Denver, Aurora Unidos, American Friends, WellPower, Denver Women’s Activist Group, and other community organizations who help us bring this training into the spaces where it’s needed most.

THE IMPACT

Know Your Rights training puts resources directly into the hands of the community, not as an abstract civics lesson, but as tools people can use in the moment an encounter with law enforcement or ICE actually happens. More than 600 participants in the first half of 2026 alone now carry clearer knowledge of their rights, sharper instincts for how to de-escalate and protect themselves, and, in many cases, direct connections to rapid-response and mutual aid networks built to support them and their neighbors in real time.

This is prevention work, and its impact is difficult to measure in the way a case outcome or a policy win can be measured — success looks like an encounter that stays routine, a raid that a bystander safely documents instead of escalates, a young person on East Colfax who knows exactly what to say and what not to say. But that is the point. Denver Justice Project believes safety comes from organized community: from relationships, from rapid-response networks, from political clarity, and from the courage to show up for one another. Every training we hold is another link in that network — another neighbor equipped not just to protect themselves, but to protect the people around them.