On June 4, Candi CdeBaca won a runoff race for Denver City Council. It was not long after that we began to see conservative posts on social media, from people far from Denver or Colorado, saying Denver had just elected a communist to the council.

That cannot be right, we thought. So we were intrigued when the Colorado Independent posted an interview with CdeBaca last week, “People are calling Candi CdeBaca a communist. She’d rather be called an anarchist.”

But, we thought, she denies she is a communist, right? The Red Scare seemed to go too far, but is 70 years enough time to say all is forgiven, especially when we saw communism implode in the interim?

What CdeBaca had said was, “I don’t believe that our current economic system actually works... I believe in community ownership of land, labor, resources and distribution of those resources. And so, whatever that morphs into, I think, is what will serve community the best and I’m excited to usher it in by any means necessary.”

CdeBaca told the Colorado Independent she is not a communist, but, she said, “I have never believed in capitalism.”

A professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and “one of the country’s leading communist political theorists” told the Independent CdeBaca is a communist, but not one of the bad ones.

“I’ve been to Cuba,” CdeBaca told the Independent. “I love Cuba. I love the way there’s not that rampant consumerism like we have here.”

We were still confused.

“So when you say you’re not a communist, you mean that you’re not a communist according to the definition used by people who you think misunderstand communism?” interviewer Alex Burness asked. “You’re saying you’re comfortable with its ideals, but not how it’s seen?”

“Yes,” CdeBaca said.

We are glad to get that cleared up.