Tag Archives: Confluence Park

Colorado Springs gay pride festival 2013 moves back into the closet

Posted on by
Reply

Haven’t we seen this countless times before: a nonprofit buys bigger britches forgetting that there was a reason it wore tight pink shorts, esthetics being the governing factor in neither case. Local Pride organizers may tell you they needed a larger park, but for what? The world’s loudest private barbeque? Over the span of two decades the annual Colorado Springs pride festival became the preeminent outdoor festival, dwarfing Spring Spree and Cinqo de Mayo in attendance and charm. The city even tried to dislodge it with its own “Diversity Fair” in lieu of formally endorsing Pride. And the authentic pride event took place where this traditional homophobic city had to look at it, smack dab in the middle of downtown, at town center, the square block of Acacia Park. This was also convenient for the pride parade which marched to it from blocks away. Convenient because the Springs gay community may fill a park, or a parade, hardly both, with barely enough leftover to be spectators. This year the festival is installing itself into America The Beautiful Park, formerly Confluence Park, formerly the unpaved ramshackle neighborhood in the lee of the coal power plant, adjacent too, as recently profiled in the local newsweekly, a toxic cleanup site. But mostly it’s a park invisible to anyone not going there and nearly inaccessible to them, by virtue of its single entrance and minimal parking. To ameliorate and confound access it’s going to be surrounded by police cruisers, so gay pride will be a guarded closet. Will enough of the gay community turn up to man the booths, trek 1.5 miles to the parade staging ground, and or attend along the parade route? Crowd enough to leave everybody feeling pride? Let’s hope so, this year of victory for gay marriage.
 
I haven’t been a loud advocate of gay marriage, not while grievous inequities mount worldwide, and especially as American gays clamor for the right to join the war making not end it. I was also disappointed by pride organizers in San Francisco who declined to name Bradley Manning as honorary grand marshal in response to the brilliant campaign by Bradley supporters: “Parade Marshal not Courts Martial!” What are the chances of that flying here? Last year we marched with a sign saying “I am Bradley Manning” and they took it literally, asking “And?”

CSPD Junior Police Explorers learn early to swagger and menace like pros

Posted on by
22

2011 DIVERSITY FAIR, NOTES, PART 1- What is our police department doing with high school age “explorers?” They’re uniformed and have their own shoulder patch. Exploring what? The limits to which they impose their weight against peoples’ rights? I’m at a civic festival in Confluence Park, across from a canopy whose shade does not conceal a mass of blue uniforms, adult officers bulky with bullet-proof vests and leather, holstering all manner of law enforcement weaponry, and CSPD apprentices, skinnier for lack of the armor and accouterments, but otherwise dressed exactly like police officers, and adopting the swagger which comes of trooping the colors, emboldened by the anonymity of the requisite Ray-Bans.

I don’t know what the CSPD think they’re doing. Community outreach would be far better accomplished in t-shirt and shorts. I can’t help but think that the authority communicated by the uniforms is being abused in this setting. I’m reminded immediately of the menace which fascist youth groups projected over even their parents. These kids are strolling around the event like appointed hall monitors. Patrolling, some of them would you believe, with their thumbs looped on their leather belts. If they had clubs they’d be twirling them.

Of course, they stroll pretending it means assimilation, as if submission to authority is a normal ingredient of any balanced community. I suspect that’s what the early indoctrination “explores.”

Actually, the Explorers get their name because they’re “exploring law enforcement as a career.” Yes any profession would be something an apprentice might want to explore, but police craft is one which requires alerting the public that this uniformed person does not have full-on authority/responsibility over you. Well, responsibility is probably what they’re most concerned about.

No one should doubt the craft of policemanship bears complexities worthy of journeymen, but I’d rather recruits came into law enforcement in the more common manner, after a college education.

Well, this IS the EVERYBODY WELCOME Diversity Fair, so we can’t exclude the Fascists. But do the city’s traditionally marginalized populations really feel welcomed by such an asserted police presence? I’m thinking of the immigration-challenged circles. But in general, how welcome do you suppose Hispanic, African, or Native Americans feel with white kids semi-officially playing cop?

Presumably the Klan was excluded from invitation, like any hate-group, because it offends the hatees. Probably law enforcement should take a backseat too, and not pretend that policing be considered a cultural component of a community.

It’s given me an idea however. Maybe the point could be brought home if we injected the event with worse than these crew-cutted crackers. How about a para-militarized presence?

I’m thinking cops in riot gear, patrolling like it was no big deal. In protest situations it’s become the norm, imagine if the average non-protester were to see the face of the US police state. Would citizens be so comfortable if instead of officer friendly, or junior uniformed friendlies, the event was patrolled by storm troopers. The CSPD knows better than to expose itself like that, but imagine a riotous development to draw them out.

Or, why not assert a pseudo-authoritarian presence for them?

If not riot gear, maybe a paramilitary uniform, American dark blue, with plenty of USA insignia, the American eagle made to look a little Germanic, let’s say. Jack boots, riding pants, leather straps, and black gloves a must.

Technically, the force could pretend to be a secret service, community outreach for the NSA or the plethora of intelligence agencies. The idea would be to present a dark, ominous authority. Handing out small fliers that read “Please take no notice of us, if you’ve done no wrong, you’ve nothing to be afraid of.”

Fish out of water in the park

Posted on by
Reply

We spent Labor Day afternoon in the shade of a newly planted tree, upwind from a gargantuan new fountain/sculpture at the center of Confluence Park, rechristened post-9/11 as America the Beautiful Park. Perhaps our city councilmen were thinking that Katharine Lee Bates, looking down from Pikes Peak, might have been describing just the spot where Fountain Creek meets the Platte, before the city spread out. Now this land sits in the lee of our coal-fired power plant, until recently a lowland neighborhood of unpaved streets and homes with sofas on their porches. If the rest of Colorado Springs residents dared to drive into this white 9th Ward, before it was razed, we would have noticed the bare feet of the unemployed I’m sure.

Our city’s perfect dry high altitude protects our homes from Orkin pests. The lone exception is the area surrounding the steaming cooling towers. It is notoriously roach infested. Perhaps it’s best that the humidity now feeds a vast public lawn between a riverfront trail and railroad tracks.

(We receive two coal trains a day along this track, and when Ft Carson deploys its heavy armor, this is the place to see it. You feel the gravitational pull of the endless procession of Abrams tanks, as impressive as the now-interminable first tracking shots of the Star Wars battlecruisers.)

We stared up into the cloudless sky and thought about our city’s ideal environment, unmarred today by its poor crackers and poorly educated nuts. The park was none-too-crowded, regulated by its access and limited parking. Plenty of adults and children were playing in the fountain, but not too many so as to crowd our blanket. The park seemed a perfect example of successful gentrification of the wrong side of the tracks, but for one point.

There’s something about animated water sculptures that gets in my craw, and today I caught a glimpse of what it is. The Julie Penrose fountain in ATB Park, which resembles a large Hotwheels loop-de-loop, and the downtown Uncle Wilber Fountain, are two popular public works which draw children in the summer days, to splash about in the heat. They’re public art with a practical application I suppose. Squinting into the watery mist, I recognized that application: the hijacked city fire-hydrant.

Middle class America left the jacking of hydrants to the land-locked urban neighborhoods, preferring to build public pools for their children. Swimming pools could provide respite and recreation, plus physical exercise and jobs. The fire-hydrant, as I saw today, is a throwback to not much for your money. It’s running through the sprinkler for cement bound fat kids. Exuberant, elated, screeching with glee, none-the-less fat children acquiring no aquatic experience, their energies taxed for nothing, offered poor prospects and a poor excuse for an afternoon.