Tag Archives: Centennial Hall

FRIDAY 9/17: See Jim Hightower, then rally to save Social Security, sort of

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This Friday evening, September 17, Colorado Springs activists can have their cake and eat it too. The Jim Hightower event and the Colorado Senate race debate are back to back. So it’s sheet cake.

Jim Hightower is still plugging his populist pun, The People Are Revolting, which may be true of the hoi polloi in the whimsical sense, but hardly describes their political momentum –unless you count the Tea Party and its pretend rebellion, if anything, a conservative counter-revolution to reinstate the tea tax. Though Hightower’s tales are getting as long in the tooth as his common super-citizens meant to serve as examples for us all, he’s still worth lots of laughs, and his material angers, even if it fraudulently attempts to raise hope. That’s at 4:45PM, at the Cornerstone Arts Building, the southern-most encroachment of the Colorado College campus.

At 6:30PM there’s a rally planned for outside Centennial Hall, where Michael Bennet will be debating Ken Buck for the US Senate seat. Democrats have organized to protest Buck’s campaign promise to privatize Social Security. A progressive group is supplying the placards which read “HANDS OFF MY SOCIAL SECURITY.” It’s a worthy message, but like all slogans pre-printed by the SEIU, it tempers the more appropriate syntax. “Hands off” should be “Do not steal.” The bid to swipe the public monies is more like pillage than misguided tinkering.

And will those attending the rally be directing their outrage at only the Republican nominee? What about Bennet, the Democratic incumbent, who’s already been doing Wall Street’s bidding without fail? Thorough activists might want to bring ther own signage, for example: TELL BOTH CORPORATE PARTIES: DON’T STEAL SOCIAL SECURITY or perhaps: PRIVATIZATION IS CLASS WARFARE.

Otherwise, both events are exercises in placating public unrest. This Friday evening you can pretend your voice is being heard by the senate candidates, while Hightower comforts you with stories of others who think they’re making a difference too.

Opportunities for September, updated

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SEPTEMBER
12- Day of Solidarity with the People of Zimbabwe
15- GLOBAL VOTE international plebiscite
16- Dave Rovics concert, CC Slocum Commons, 7pm
16-19 A.N.S.W.E.R. Days of Action in Solidarity with BRADLEY MANNING
17- Gender And Liberation demonstration against unsolved crimes against women of West Mesa, NM. At UCCS Upper Plaza, 1:30pm
17- Jim Hightower lecture, The People Are Revolting, CC Cornerstone, 4:45pm
17- Rally: HANDS OFF MY SOCIAL SECURITY, Centennial Hall, 6:30pm
20- David Barsamian, “War & Peace in Central Asia: Thinking Globally, Acting Locally,” CC Slocum Commons, 7:30pm
21- UN International Day of Peace, sponsors PTP, UF & CPI
22- World CAR FREE Day, bike or walk to work
23- Day of Solidarity with the People of Puerto Rico
23- Emma Goldman biographer, Candace Falk, lecture, Packard Hall, 3:30pm
25- Banned Book Week

Election day fire alarm at Centennial Hall

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Centennial Hall fire alarmCOLORADO SPRINGS- The Gazette has video footage of city firefighters arriving at the El Paso County election offices at Centennial Hall on the evening of election day, Nov. 4th, just as Clerk and Recorder Bob Balink exits the building. RNC delegate Balink’s possibly illegal ban of news crews from all county polling places, did not prevent cameras outside from documenting the 8:20pm fire alarm which delayed the tabulation of election results. Here’s the official CSFD DUTY REPORT for UNIT E1C.

Incident No. 838997
Alarm Time: 20:20
Dispatched: 20:21
Arrived: 20:24
In-Service: 20:54

ATAL-Detector Operated Due to Particle Contamination

E1 to scene for automatic fire alarm sounding, unknown further.

E1 arrival to a single story government building, fire resistive construction, no visible signs of emergency, evacuation completed. Investigation of fire alarm panel, activation of detector in zone 5. Further investigation shows activation of detector, apparently due to dust, in basement level electrical closet. Facilities maintenance on scene completed successful reset of system after cleaning out detector. No further action required, E1 return to service.

El Paso County resists blue trend how?

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Two articles caught my eye in this morning’s Gazette, and I’d like to thank the editors for putting them side by side. The first lauded El Paso County’s strong Republican push-back to the Obama landslide, the other illuminated Clerk and Recorder Bob Balink’s dubiously legal measures at the EPC polling stations. Do the Gazette editors think, as I, that one of these stories could have a bearing on the other?

The first article was written with the partisanship we’re used to from the Gazette. In face of this election’s “blue tsunami,” El Paso County remained high and dry. Can we read this any other way than meaning “safe” and Republican (red), in the face of the Obama danger? The article detailed how El Paso County voted against the prevailing tide. Even the Democratic candidates who won elsewhere were “stomped” here. Stomped –like cockroaches?

The adjacent article was about the Clerk and Recorder. It reported that on election day, the media had been banned from the local polling places. This measure was in defiance of common practice and, the question was raised, even election law. Apparently, lawsuits may follow.

Mention was also made of Balink’s attempt to intimidate Colorado College students.

Did the media ban mask inappropriate election worker activity? Had the CC letter deterred student voters?

The article did not mention a yet-to-be investigated story, the mysterious fire alarm at Centennial Hall, a half hour after voting closed. Everyone had to leave the building. By the way, the fire alarm tactic is a recurring theme if you’ve watched video reports of past election irregularities, in this new age of the self-deputized citizen poll watcher.

Centennial Hall was not only the main poll station downtown, and the chief early voting location, it was the central office into which all the El Paso County precincts reported their election results. Might there be a story here?

The article also didn’t address why in El Paso County, paper ballots were not permitted for early voters. Only Diebold touch-screen machines were available for the early birds, who one might guess would have been the most activated of the new wave.

GOP behaving badly at Hillside Center

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Mark Lewis recorded some white-people desperation at the mostly African-American Hillside Center polling place. Here’s his account:

The lawyer for the El Paso County GOP, John Buckley takes down an Obama sign from across the street to the polling place, blames it on poll workers, then two McCain worker show up to place signs closer than this new several hundred foot limit.

They also come equipped with some silliness about firecrackers being thrown at kids (by kids) It turns out to be as false as the fire alarm pulled at the Centennial Hall polling place.

As usual, the first order of business in a controversy is the suspend the first amendment right of the free press and rewrite the laws on public “reasonable expectation of privacy”. People cheating and breaking the law hate this open society that exposes them.

In the end, no big deal, just the usual wrangling by a loosing party, desperate to take an election the way they’re used to taking them. They also misrepresented what they knew nothing about: that a person coming to vote carried up an OBama sing and the poll workers told them the law: you can’t come within 100 feet with that sign, so they folded it and put it in the trash. The poll workers thought that might be a violation too, it was visible in the open trash if you looked inside, so removed it, and these 2 guys witnessed the removal, and claimed the poll workers were electioneering within 100 feet.

Earlier Buckley threw out observers from the floor who were later allowed back in because they had a right to be there as credentialed by various ballot initiatives.

Another GOP poll worker threw out a woman looking up registrations for people and claimed she was electioneering and causing a “disruption”. I taped her helping people and she found some at the wrong precinct, directed other to the correct line (3 precincts at this polling place) and some mail in ballots that needed to be taken downtown. Never a word about any political issue.

Otherwise, where I was: West Middle School, Colorado College, Palmer High, and Hillside, the early voting long lines ended up making shorter lines on election day. Now if we can just get the lines down to the 2 hour limit that state law requires and employer give employees time off to vote, we’ll have a match and reasonable election day.

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