Outside the Hall in Denver
August 27th, 2008 at 8:59 am
There is much to be said about how well Denver is doing as convention host. One of the smartest things going on is the free day-rental of thousands of mountain bikes and other bicycles. I rode into the city from Boulder on buses that seem to run unusually on-time, and I managed to get around downtown easily on a rented bicycle. The city has seriously, and responsibly thought through how to make its vast downtown accessible to all (excepting of course the park and streets surrounding the convention hall).Later today (Wednesday), a critical mass bicycle protest is planned. One thing I have learned about the people of Colorado is they don’t fool around when it comes to cycling. The bicycle protest is one event I’ll definitely be making. You don’t need an invitation, either.
For the first two days, pictures of Denver cops pepper-spraying bandanna-masked protesters graced the pages of most local daily newspapers, with Tuesday’s noting the mass arrest of over 100 protesters, many of whom are associated with Recreate 68 — a group whose name perhaps needlessly taunts the thousands of police officers on hand in the mile-high city. The anti-war group Code Pink also has seen its share of dust-ups with the authorities, as has the radical camping group Tent State.
The Tent State folks originally asked to be able to camp overnight in Denver’s City Park, but were told no earlier this month by the Denver City Council. In a “compromise,” the city told them they could camp in the parking lot of the Denver Coliseum (which is substantially farther away from the convention hall). But when protest leaders learned they’d be charged $1,000 per night, they balked. Now the plan is to camp in the officially designated protest area, known derisively by protesters as “The Freedom Cage.” I hope to visit it later tonight and get a glimpse of what radical camping is all about.
August 28th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
[…] under control, to put it mildly. But, with a little help from the band Rage Against the Machine and Tent State, a protest organization called Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) yesterday made a difference and […]