By Rocky Mountain Voice Editorial Board
In this seventh chapter of COvid Chronicles, Contradictions defined the week. Rioters roamed, elites applauded and Denver’s institutions bent the knee. Officials called for systemic change—just not to their own hypocrisy. No, it’s not short. Neither was the damage—to downtown, to public trust or to the truth.
As a dark pall fell over what little of downtown Denver hadn’t been destroyed or defaced by the George Floyd riots, the reckoning intensified at the foot of the Rockies.
If the first week of June taught Coloradans anything, it was that COVID had become an afterthought. In its place came the fallout from the Floyd frenzy, which demanded real victims of harassment and havoc abandon the truth of their Orwellian ordeal, bow to the altar of social justice—and repent for their role in the “virus” of systemic racism.
Even more tragic, some of these sacrificial lambs—those who once called the streets around the state Capitol home—joined in celebrating their own suffering.
That was the case for downtown Denver’s arts community, who built soapboxes to preach social-justice sermons from the literal rubble of their ruined galleries.
That was the case for Denver’s sports teams, who, despite employing and enriching black men at far above national averages, rushed to signal remorse in the wake of Floyd’s death.
And that was the case for lawmakers, media and even medical professionals, who paused pandemic protocol to reinterpret Colorado’s history through the lens of a new religion: “racial and social justice.”
These are the COvid Chronicles for June 1-7, 2020…
COvid Chronicles catch-up
• Introducing The COvid Chronicles: How fear and force reshaped Colorado
• COvid Chronicles April 1-15, 2020: Fifteen days that changed Colorado forever
• COvid Chronicles April 16-30, 2020: From tattletales to tyranny
• The COvid Chronicles May 1–7, 2020: Seven days that set the stage for open rebellion
• The COvid Chronicles May 8–15, 2020: C&C made headlines. Polis made an example. Colorado made up its mind.
• The COvid Chronicles May 16–23, 2020: Deaths dipped—but the definition got slippery
• COvid Chronicles May 24-31, 2020: When ‘peaceful protests’ overruled pandemic policy — and unleashed chaos
June 1
As Denver reeled from a weekend of violent protests that saw 284 arrests in the capital city alone, Colorado’s COVID-19 situation kept improving. If anyone still cared about the metrics the public had obsessed over just weeks earlier, the data pointed to an ever-growing silver lining.
Hospitalizations? Down to 272, the lowest since March 26. Ventilator use? Just 318 of 1,093—barely 29%—occupied for COVID or anything else.
PPE or ICU shortages? None, according to hospitals surveyed by the state, as reported by The Denver Post.
“There is simply no public health emergency anymore; the only emergency here is the economic one created and perpetuated by the governor’s shut-down orders,” wrote Joshua Sharf of the Denver County Republicans in a guest column for The Denver Post, outlining how Gov. Jared Polis’ ongoing executive orders were unconstitutional.
But as the George Floyd riots bled into the workweek, it became clear the virus now being “contained” was Colorado’s alleged systemic racism.
And some said so outright.
Much like COVID in April, the Floyd riots prompted shutdowns, restrictions and obligatory virtue-signaling—from the Denver City Council to the Denver Nuggets.
Yes, the Nuggets—via their owner Kroenke Sports and Entertainment—issued a PR statement not on the riots around the Pepsi Center, but on “the persistent legacy of racism and racial inequality.”
“It is our deepest hope that these horrific events unite us and start honest and difficult discourse on eradicating hate,” the statement read.
The City Council, for its part, postponed its Monday meeting to Thursday to avoid placing “city officials and citizens in harm’s way,” said Capitol Hill Councilman Chris Hinds. “We’re getting gassed here every night,” he added. “It just makes no sense.”
That delay came as Mayor Michael Hancock extended Denver’s emergency curfew—9 p.m. to 5 a.m.—through Friday morning.
Under the golden dome, Democrat lawmakers and media allies moved quickly—not just to reframe Colorado’s narrative on race and policing, but to begin reshaping state law.
At the forefront was Denver Rep. Leslie Herod. After protesting the weekend prior, she announced plans to introduce a bill allowing police officers to be sued individually. A Denver Post investigation into police shootings had, in her words, “sparked conversations about the issue.”
According to reporter Saja Hindi, lawmakers were forming racial coalitions. Herod told the Post she was working “with the black and Latinx caucuses,” while Senate President Leroy Garcia, a Pueblo Democrat, backed her efforts.
(Sidenote: lest we forget the progressive rebranding campaign that told Colorado’s Hispanic community their own language—Spanish, with its masculine and feminine word endings—was too sexist to survive, and that “Latinx” was the enlightened replacement.)
“We need to ensure that law enforcement officers who act outside of their authority,” Herod said, “who harm and murder people, especially people of color, unlawfully, are held accountable.”
“This isn’t just about what’s going on in other states,” Garcia added. “This is about what’s happening in our own backyards.”
June 2
Much like politics is downstream of culture, the social shaming that followed was downstream of the riots—and no one felt that pressure more than the businesses and individuals most brutally hit by the destruction in Denver.
In a twist of Shakespearean tragedy, the heart of the city’s arts scene was left to reckon publicly with Floyd’s death and systemic racism while literally picking up pieces of their own pillaged properties—victims of “mostly peaceful protests” many in the community not only supported, but celebrated and funded.
Denver’s progressive causes, in effect, devoured their own. Denver’s cultural institutions took a beating—History Colorado, the Art Museum, the main library and the Civic Center Cultural Complex were all hit.
A defaced bronze statue at the Civic Center made headlines, but the damage ran deeper. Windows were shattered, buildings scorched, and places like the McNichols Building, Ellie Caulkins Opera House and Performing Arts Complex were tagged from top to bottom.
It got so bad the city called in the National Guard to help protect arts venues, including the Colorado Convention Center.
Requests for Guard support also went out for the Denver Performing Arts Complex, home to the Colorado Symphony, Colorado Ballet, Denver Center for the Performing Arts and Opera Colorado.
Private galleries didn’t fare much better. Sandra Phillips, who owns a gallery at 47 W. 11th Ave., a block from the Art Museum, told the Denver Post, “It looks like a war zone in the Golden Triangle neighborhood. I am trying to be strong for the artists, but it’s heartbreaking to see the damage everywhere.”
Phillips and fellow business owners Tiffany Meidenger and Sydney Ilg were so “sickened” by the wreckage they organized to send aid—not to their own recovery, but to the protest groups themselves.
“The pandemic has suddenly become secondary to the travesty of racism, still alive in our country,” Phillips said. “The gallery and artist Sandra Kaplan will donate 10% of any profits during this time to peaceful protests and the family of George Floyd.”
Speaking of Stockholm syndrome: over at History Colorado, staff collected debris—spray paint cans, projectiles and even a “Love is the only answer” placard—for review by curators adding items to the museum’s COVID-themed “History in the Making” exhibit.
Following the Nuggets’ virtue-signal the day before, the Denver Broncos joined in. Coach Vic Fangio read a prepared statement calling for Chauvin to be “punished to the fullest extent of the law… in addition to being charged with treason.”
The team also held meetings about Floyd’s death, and team president Joe Ellis said it was their “responsibility” to help players “use their platforms to speak out against racism and discrimination.”
As public-facing institutions rushed—or were pushed—into ideological lockstep, Colorado officials and experts were left scrambling to explain how the massive, shoulder-to-shoulder Floyd protests didn’t violate the very pandemic rules they’d aggressively enforced on lockdown protesters just weeks earlier.
Health policy professor Glen Mays from the Colorado School of Public Health had to walk both sides: yes, the protests posed a high COVID risk—especially with tear gas and pepper balls triggering coughing fits.
That’s called #science. And yes, that was another “problem” caused by the police. But also yes, Mays told the Denver Post, the protests were important. “It’s really unfortunate,” Mays said, “because both of the problems we are dealing with are rooted in discrimination and inequality.”
Just like that—voilà—the “experts” weren’t so sure how COVID even spread anymore. Denver Health’s Dr. Connie Savor Price said that protestors were “less likely to be infected based on the data that we have from our city and state.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Michelle Barron of UCHealth admitted, “we don’t really have a good sense of what that risk is.” She added, “It depends on the moment, because if they’re actively walking and moving, there’s less likely risk of exposure.”
Elsewhere, the Gazette was reporting—“COVID spike is expected in summer; Hospitals may be overwhelmed.”
So, to recap: on one page, Dr. Mays was defending the protests. On another, his own school warned that unless the public obeyed health officials—not merely state reopening guidelines—Colorado could see a late-summer spike worse than April’s peak.
So what’s a governor to do?
Well, according to Gov. Jared Polis, the real source of division wasn’t his shutdowns, National Guard deployments or support for mass protests—but President Trump’s consideration of using the military to quell national unrest.
“We can’t allow the bad actions of a few to overshadow the overwhelming and undeniable message that more action is needed to ensure that every American, including black Americans, can go to watch birds in the park,” Polis said. “Or go for a run. Or interact with our criminal justice system without fearing for their lives.… I’m ready, willing and eager to be your partner in that work.”
Coloradans would come to learn over the next five years that for Polis, it was always about racial and social justice—not actual justice.
Case in point? That same day, Denver police identified the man who days earlier had mowed through a sidewalk full of officers and protestors at 65 to 70 miles per hour.
Anthony Knapp was hit with 26 charges, including three counts of attempted first-degree murder with extreme indifference. He pleaded not guilty and walked free in December 2020 on $750,000 bail. By late 2022, according to NBC 9News, there was a warrant out for his arrest after he skipped multiple court dates.
Who knows? Maybe he was just taking a nap while birdwatching in the park.
June 3
Ready, set, go—the struggle sessions were officially underway.
Much like with COVID, Coloradans were quickly learning there were only certain opinions allowed when it came to George Floyd’s death and race in America.
Step out of line—even slightly—and the mob moved in.
Denver Broncos head coach Vic Fangio found himself under fire for this, not for actual misconduct, but for failing to hit the right notes on racism—specifically, in the NFL. This, despite the league employing a majority of black players and producing more black millionaires than just about any institution in the country.
Fangio’s sin? He said on a media call that he didn’t see racism or discrimination in the league “at all.” He added, “If society reflected an NFL team, we’d be all great.”
Wrong answer, Vic.
Naturally, the coach was soon forced to reflect and repent in a racial reeducation session that would’ve made Mao proud. “After reflecting on my comments yesterday and listening to the players this morning, I realize what I said regarding racism and discrimination in the NFL was wrong,” Fangio said.
“While I have never personally experienced those terrible things first-hand during my 33 years in the NFL, I understand that many players, coaches and staff have different perspectives.”
The struggle sessions weren’t just for sports. They were now squarely targeting the Denver Police Department. After a few journalists claimed they’d been hit by DPD munitions while “peacefully reporting,” local media framed themselves as martyrs of police brutality.
That same day, DPD hosted the first in a series of virtual “listening sessions” on how to improve the department.
Meanwhile, Denver City Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca called for an investigation into DPD’s actions.
“Protests against police abuse should not result in more police abuse,” she wrote in an email to Denver Public Safety Manager Murphy Robinson and Independent Monitor Nick Mitchell. “At the very least, the excessive police response has caused trauma to an already traumatized and grieving community.”
Some Denverites went further—arguing that the vandalism itself should be preserved as historical artwork.
Denver marketing professional Adam Rosen, in a guest column for the Denver Post, wrote, “Change is ugly, uncomfortable, loud, raucous, and painful. We need to understand that we are the authors of the history books, and we have the power to influence how this chapter is written.”
He added, “Sheath the walls with plexiglass. Let the spray painted boards covering windows tell their stories. Preservation will serve as a constant reminder to us who lived through it. Preservation will allow future generations to understand this fight. In every American city where protests are occurring, preserve it all.”
In that same spirit of forced reeducation, Denver Public Schools board member Tay Anderson led the charge to end the district’s agreement with the city regarding police in schools.
“Our schools,” said Anderson—who would later face serious allegations of improper contact with minors—“will no longer be ground zero for the school to prison pipeline!”
Anderson and anti-police activists succeeded in removing officers from DPS schools. But they failed to keep students safe.
That failure became tragically clear in February 2023, when a 17-year-old East High student—previously expelled from Overland High for trying to sell guns and ammo—shot and injured two administrators before fleeing and eventually dying by suicide in Park County.
According to NBC 9News, the student, Austin Lyle, had only been required to do “verbal check-ins” with staff at East. No weapons checks. No pat-downs.
That changed in March 2023 when a student reported seeing Lyle with a gun in class. Though East modified his safety plan, a later DPD report revealed that in the 12 days prior to the shooting, no searches were conducted.
With no officers on campus, the safety check fell to two staff members: Eric Sinclair, the school’s dean of culture, and Jerald Mason, a restorative practices coordinator. The shooting came just a month after 16-year-old Luis Garcia was gunned down outside East High.
By June 2023, the board reversed course and voted to bring police back.
Anderson, along with board members Scott Esserman and Michelle Quattlebaum, voted no. Anderson insisted policing was “an oppressive system.” Esserman agreed, stating, “The police system in America is designed to oppress.”
June 4
A Denver Post column by Sean Keeler may have captured the absurd COVID-era contradictions better than any other post-Floyd opinion piece to date.
Reporting from the ground, Keeler spotlighted how Denver’s pandemic-era priorities had flipped.
Just weeks earlier, pulling frontline health workers off COVID duty would’ve sparked outrage. Now? Seventy-five volunteers from Denver Health and Hospital Authority were doing “debris duty” to clean up riot damage near the Capitol.
Denver Health Chief Experience Officer Amy Friedman joined the cleanup and told Keeler the trash they were picking up—including Denver Health CEO Robin Wittenstein—was “the culmination of so many things, of a lot of tragedies over the past year.”
She continued, “But seeing everyone come together has been fantastic. This is why I love living in Denver. There’s just a sense of community here.”
Keeler waxed poetic about the scene, writing, “We show our duty to humanity, to reform, after dark. We show our duty to service at dawn, when the slate is wiped clean, the easel pure, and the blank page awaits.”
Meanwhile, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock was stumbling through his own struggle session. Days earlier, 9News anchor Kyle Clark asked him whether he believed Marvin Booker, Jessica Hernandez and Michael Marshall were murdered by police.
Hancock responded, “Those individuals were, yes, murdered by police officers.”
But after the mayor’s team walked the comment back—claiming he meant “killed”—social media erupted.
Even Denver Nuggets player Michael Porter Jr. caught heat for tweeting a call to compassion. “Pray (for the officers) instead of hate them … pray that God changes their hearts.”
The then-21-year-old rookie was rebuked by former Nugget Fat Lever, who told the Denver Post he hoped Porter would seek “a better understanding of the past” by consulting older teammates on how to “advance the cause.”
Porter’s mild, faith-based appeal became the latest casualty in the policing of religious expression—first under COVID, now post-Floyd.
At the same time, Gov. Jared Polis increased limits on in-person worship to just 50% capacity or 50 people, whichever was fewer, while authorizing businesses to deny service to customers without masks.
“Our masks are our passport to the Colorado we love,” Polis said, before singling out men who resisted masks for fear of looking “weak” or “uncool.”
He added, “A mask-wearing culture is our ticket to reopening sooner. The more people wear masks in public, the less social distancing is required.”
How’s that for patriarchal dogma and state-mandated dress code?
Polis’ pastoral decree came just as High Plains Harvest Church in Weld County sued the state for violating the Constitution and causing “irreparable and undue hardship.”
“It is a religious liberties issue,” Pastor Mark Hotaling told CBS4. “You can go to Lowe’s or Home Depot, and hundreds of people are buying lumber and gardening supplies. It is time for the church to have the same freedom that a big box store has.”
June 5
As protests and riots continued, news coverage across Colorado shifted even further away from COVID and toward revisiting past officer-involved deaths—now reinterpreted through a post-Floyd lens.
Case in point: the June 5 front-page story in the Gazette, where reporter Lance Benzel covered the lawsuit filed by the family of De’Von Bailey, a 19-year-old black man shot by Colorado Springs police the previous August.
The Bailey family’s federal suit accused the city of wrongful death and racially biased policing.
According to the Gazette, police stopped Bailey and his cousin on August 3, 2019, just minutes after an armed robbery nearby. When officers told Bailey to put his hands up, he ran. They said they believed he was reaching for a weapon.
A pistol was recovered from his shorts pocket.
But the Gazette prominently quoted from the lawsuit: “Mr. Bailey did not threaten any police officer or citizen in any way prior to Sergeant (Alan) Van’t Land and Officer (Blake) Evenson’s decision to shoot him. He simply ran away, fast.”
The piece emphasized that a jury later acquitted Bailey’s cousin of the robbery, framing the acquittal as evidence—again, from the lawsuit—that police could have cleared Bailey too, if they had done “even the most basic of investigations.”
What the Gazette didn’t include in its retelling? Quite a lot.
Bodycam footage, released back in August 2019, shows Bailey reaching into his pocket—where the gun was—before officers told him not to. It also shows police calmly questioning him and his cousin about a possible assault.
When Sgt. Van’t Land tells the two they match the description of armed suspects and asks, “We’re gonna just check and make sure that you don’t have a weapon, alright?” Bailey suddenly bolts.
As Van’t Land yells for Bailey to put his hands up, Bailey instead reaches for his waistband while fleeing. Officers shoot. A gun is recovered from his pocket. They radio for medics and attempt to treat Bailey with a field med kit on the street.
If you’re still struggling to locate the racism in this tragic incident, you’re not alone—so is every reasonable reader presented with the full set of facts.
Also missing from the Gazette report: Bailey’s criminal record. Prior reporting from FOX21 showed Bailey had multiple run-ins with police. Most disturbing, at the time of his death, he was facing charges for sexually assaulting a child under 15 in a position of trust.
Two underage girls accused him of repeated assaults—one as young as 7—and feared he might hurt other children.
“One of the more disturbing lines in the document,” FOX21 noted, “read that one victim felt threatened and forced to comply, in order to protect other children from being hurt.”
Bailey had pleaded not guilty just a month before his death and was featured on Pikes Peak’s Most Wanted “Fugitive List” in April 2019.
Despite a grand jury unanimously ruling the shooting justified in November 2019, the City of Colorado Springs settled the wrongful death lawsuit in February 2022 for $2.975 million and agreed to two years of anti-bias training—training which the police department said was already in place.
Councilmen Dave Donelson and Mike O’Malley were the only votes against the settlement.
“The federal government doesn’t pay hostage money,” O’Malley said. “They don’t do it. … I think we should stand up and do the right thing for our community.”
Meanwhile, Denver’s struggle sessions were in full swing in the pages of the Denver Post—not just among its columnists, but from the editorial board itself.
That day’s edition featured a guest column from Bishop Jerry Demmer of the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance and Scott Levin of the ADL, calling on Coloradans to “join the fight against racism and every other form of hate.”
But it’s unclear if their fellow guest columnist that Friday—University of Northern Colorado senior Torrence Brown-Smith—got the memo.
In his own piece, Brown-Smith wrote, “Racist Whiteness responds excessively to Blackness… calls us rioters when we are rebelling against structural racism… calls Patrick Henry a hero, and Malcolm X a terrorist (and) calls cops peaceful, and us thugs.”
He went on to describe how he got a “THUG LIFE” tattoo after the death of Michael Brown.
“I figured, if they see us as thugs, why not embrace it?” he wrote. “When I show my tattoo, which sits on my left hip like a pistol ready to be drawn, friends laugh and say ‘you no thug!’ I smirk and let it rock. But little do they know we’re all thugs. We’re all filled with animus. We’re all filled with despair.”
Brown-Smith added, “There are thugs who do the work of reconstructing a just society by their very actions; influenced by society’s hatred to be better, to rebel in organized resistance. I call this The Hatred U Give Little Infants Frees Everyone. And then there are thugs who are influenced by hate, and f— everyone. Especially Black people.”
So perhaps it was no surprise that the Post editorial board, in that same edition, published its own struggle session. Citing both Floyd and Bailey, the editors declared that “incrementalism has failed to protect Americans from the violence of racism.”
They added, “But even the most progressive of America’s police departments need something overnight that a reform bill cannot bring: the immediate purging of a culture of force and power and might.”
So what was the message—incrementalism failed, so now it’s time to burn it down?
June 6
As Denver’s protests stretched into their ninth night, activists in Aurora turned to another 2019 case—just like protestors in Colorado Springs had with De’Von Bailey. The spotlight was now on Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old black man who was declared brain dead after Aurora police used a carotid hold and paramedics gave him ketamine. The call came in about a man in a ski mask waving his arms. The caller was Latino—not white.
When officers approached McClain on the sidewalk, he didn’t stop. Bodycam footage shows him resisting as they tried to restrain him, saying he couldn’t breathe and vomiting several times. As tragic as it was, Adams County DA Dave Young initially found no criminal wrongdoing by police.
The original autopsy listed the cause of death as “undetermined.” It wasn’t until September 2022—over three years later—that a revised autopsy listed the cause of death as “complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint.”
The ketamine, notably, came from paramedics—not police. But the fallout continued. Officer Randy Roedema was later convicted of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault, and got 14 months in the Adams County Jail.
Paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec were also charged. During the trial, Cooper admitted he misjudged the dosage of ketamine needed, and Cichuniec delivered the fatal injection.
Both were convicted of negligent homicide. Cichuniec was initially sentenced to five years in prison—the mandatory minimum—but that sentence was later reduced to four years’ probation. Cooper received four years’ probation from the start.
But back in June 2020, before those details were widely known, protestors like Ryan Ross framed McClain’s death as undeniable proof of racist policing. “Educate yourself,” Ross said. “Understand you’ve been lied to for a long time. Ignorance is not bliss, and it can’t be tolerated.”
McClain’s mother, Sheneen, criticized protestors for what she called “selective protesting,” telling the Aurora Sentinel, “Colorado fails (in) accountability for their own residents but urges justice for someone in a different ZIP Code.”
Meanwhile, in the Denver Post opinion section, retired Woodland Park police chief Fred Fletcher leaned on Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist to argue that law enforcement must stand not merely for justice, but for social justice.
“While social justice is a goal that transcends policing,” Fletcher wrote, “achieving social justice requires safe communities—not just those free of criminals, but those where neighbors feel safe. A sense of safety requires sound, effective, and procedurally just policing. And procedurally-just policing begins with us.”
June 7
The Denver Post capped the week with the obligatory Sunday longform, aiming to put the George Floyd protests in “proper perspective.”
The 2,161-word centerpiece, titled “‘Enough is enough’: Why George Floyd’s killing resonated so deeply in Colorado,” was penned by reporter Shelly Bradbury—who, to no one’s surprise, struggled mightily with impartiality.
Buried deep in the piece, Bradbury said the not-so-quiet part out loud: there was no meaningful difference between the mass destruction caused by the Floyd riots and the peaceful, permitted, armed anti-lockdown protests that had taken place in the same city just weeks prior.
Apparently, to Bradbury, peacefully exercising Second Amendment rights in public is morally equivalent to smashing windows, hurling rocks at police, blocking traffic and lighting private property on fire—because, well, stupid Trump.
“The demonstrators in Denver have chanted,” she wrote, “among many things, obscenities about (President Donald) Trump—who called the protesters at George Floyd events ‘thugs’ just weeks after supporting mostly-white and heavily armed protests over coronavirus restrictions. They’ve called for him to resign or be voted out in November.”
If you were starting to suspect the narrative around COVID, the lockdowns, Floyd’s death and the racial riots was more theater than reality—well, the Denver arts scene delivered a finale worthy of Broadway.
At the very plaza where the Denver Performing Arts Center (DPAC) had just days earlier requested National Guard protection from the riots, it was now the Broncos taking center stage.
A day after John Elway endured his own public struggle session, 50 Broncos players and 20 coaches gathered outside DPAC to protest police brutality and racial injustice.
“And if there was one unforgettable image,” Denver Post reporter Ryan O’Halloran wrote, “it was (Broncos wide receiver Courtland) Sutton, the back of his T-shirt saying, ‘If You Ain’t With Us, You Against Us.’”
How inclusive.
And in case anyone still remembered that virus—what was it called again, COVID?—the state reported no new deaths in the past 24 hours, and COVID hospitalizations dropped to a new post-peak low of just 207.
Yet thousands of Coloradans remained crushed under the weight of lockdown restrictions.
Among the most vulnerable: foster kids.
The Center for Public Integrity reported on a first-time Adams County mother, who tested positive for methamphetamine and had only seen her baby via video since the fourth day of the child’s life.
Colorado, unlike other states, hadn’t yet eased visitation restrictions for foster families.
“I just want to see her to see that she’s OK,” the mother, Smith, said. “It just hurts that I can’t hold her or kiss her or feed her, or when she starts to cry, comfort her.”