Tag Archives: Denver

For DPD the pretext to use pepperspray came as easy as falling off a motorbike

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DENVER, COLORADO- You don’t have to be a high school physicist to know a bicyclist is less likely to topple a quarter-ton motorcycle than to cause the equal opposite reaction. But it was cyclist Michael Moore that officers had to yank from his bike and wrestle to the ground. So where Newtonian law might have failed, the DPD enforced it in their own manner. A bystander video shows the motorcycle cop fall over of his own accord. The DPD used this false flag as an excuse to rush the crowd, douse it with First Amendment disinfectant, and make arrests.

Get a job you dirty hippie! Unhelpful advice which activists take personally.

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Occupy Wall Street composed a chant to rebut the ageless heckle hurled at protesters: GET A JOB YOU DIRTY HIPPIE! After Zuccotti Park was razed and Occupiers regrouped, they offerd this rejoinder. Remember it?
    “Got a JOB. Took a SHOWER.
    We’re still occupying, speaking truth to power!”
Of course it wasn’t true, or at least whether we did or not was as irrelevant as the original misconception. But street activists come up against misguided advice much more pernicious than the crudely insulting. Consider the constructive advice from journeymen activists who’ve been at this for a long time and know how it’s done. You know the ones, who preach nonviolence or you’ll never get anywhere, as if they have a record of success or fount of experience more illustrative than the old grindstone. False history has even robbed them of the authentic lessons to glean from Gandhi and MLK. Yet even the best-intentioned of our peers caution that movements will never take hold without blablabla. This sacred cow, for instance: community outreach.

A colleague of mine recently asked about my ideas to better reach out to the African American community vis-a-vis the protests which Occupy Denver has been spearheading to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter uprisings in Baltimore and Ferguson. At face value it’s a reasonable question as Occupy franchizes across the country have been predominantly white. At base however, the distinction is academic and the implication insulting.

In Denver, as probably in many multicultural urban centers since Ferguson, authorities have succeeded in working with community leaders to redirect street protest into the usual back channels. In Denver the spiritual leaders have kept their flocks locked in their churches. When Denver high schoolers began to stage walk-outs, school administrators put the schools on lockdown. Traditional social justice groups fell victim to academics and their identity politics diatribes. White priviledge must “make space”, in effect, step back, whether or not alternative leaders were knocking. In Denver the most significant protest entity impervious to scholatisc impotence or the wiles of religious submission was Occupy Denver. Since 2011 this ad hoc collection of protest-hardened activists could mobilize at the flick of a switch, usually through social media. By definition, Occupy refused to bind themselves to everybody else’s longstanding arrangements of detente.

Of course this persistence is not static and there are ceaseless internal pressures to conform and play for crumbs. Table scraps are sustenance after all, and all mature decisions are compromises. Adults choose lesser evils, safety nets, the bird in the hand, wisdom over altruism. Can dreamers even be sure the burning stove isn’t an adage meant to waylay us from our childish intuition about freedom? From the frying pan into the fire is more probably the forbidden roadmap to revolution.

You want to know the sage advice that burns me up the most? Comrades telling me the struggle will be a long haul. A marathon. Are you kidding me? Revolution is a sprint! We’ve got to light a fire under your ass!

In any case. Community outreach. What’s the problem? My first thought was of the criticism protesters still face everyday: “GET A JOB!” Everyone seems to have their own idea about what other activists are supposed to be doing.

On the subject of Occupy and “outreach” I offer six points:

1. Did Occupy Wall Street reach out to the community of brokers and bankers on Wall Street? It did not. Occupy was about disruption, gathering on the street and uniting activists. Community organizing was another sort of activism. Occupy was not voting, or going around trying to get out the vote, or lobbying legislators, or gathering petition signatures, or fundraising, or taking in cats, or walking in people’s shoes. All of these are perfectly constructive things, but they’re fundamental to what Occupy was not. I know it sounds mature to talk about building community and helping out and being less disruptive but those are tasks that keep conventional social justice groups too busy to occupy.

2. I am reminded of a lesson learned as occupiers coordinated their efforts. If you feel there is a task going undone, you probably should step up to do it. Others have their hands full with what they are doing. If you feel there is a deficiency and it’s important to you, fill it.

3. That said, there is an imperative not to dillute the fundamental mission. If tangential efforts drain the human resources needed for the goal that brought everyone together, then somebody is winning and it’s not Occupy.

4. Denver’s African American community already has their leaders, most of them undisposed to street activism. Occupy Denver’s community is with activists of all colors. We reach them through the message, our actions, and our unending persistance. None of these are based on color lines.

5. Occupy has many black activist allies. On the street we support them EVERY TIME regardless of whether they support us. Even if it’s “their” issue. If they are not able to rally as frequently as we can, it’s not their fault. (That is White middle class privilege.)

6. If you think the African American community is central to addressing the probem of racism, that’s a problem. It should be up to the WHITE AMERICAN COMMUNITY to shout “BLACK LIVES MATTER” the loudest of all.

Denver police attacked last night while holding peaceful motorcycle parade

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DENVER, COLORADO- Last night in Denver, once again the DPD showed what they are all about. If it wasn’t so shameful and painful you could only laugh at their conduct.
 
dla News Service: Denver Police attacked while holding a peaceful parade to show their support for “Baltimore Brothers in Blue”. The police were attacked by several young boys and girls armed with cardboard signs while on parade down Colfax in Denver. The children claimed that the police were marching without a permit and were interrupting the flow of traffic.

Eleven of the children were pepper sprayed and restrained at the Denver Correction Facility for their own safety. Chief White appealed for calm and said the police march will be re-scheduled at a future date.

Several officers were treated at local hospitals for paper cuts on their hands and wrists. They will be placed on sick leave, with pay until they recover from their injuries.

Occupy Denver stands with Baltimore, DPD blocks march to Union Station PHOTOS

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DENVER, COLORADO- Occupy Denver took to the streets Tuesday night in solidarity with the uprising in Baltimore against a common oppressive police state.


March was blocked at Union Station

April 15: NYC took a bridge, Chicago & Seattle took the streets, Portland took Town Hall, and Denver took the cake

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Photo by Laura Avant
DENVER, COLORADO- Yes, Denver’s FIGHT FOR FIFTEEN march kept to the sidewalks. When ISO members (organizing the local “15 NOW” group) pushed the boundaries, SEIU marshals criticized them not just for agitating, but for pushing their socialist agenda. Occupy Denver activists held a prominent banner which referenced reigning minimum wage champion Socialist Alternative. Most of the attendees were union members whose representatives have obviously failed to credit the SA party or Seattle Councilwoman Kshama Sawant for the nation’s first $15 minimum wage victory. We fielded questions all evening from marchers eager to know if an SA chapter was brewing in Colorado.

TO BE FAIR, Denver’s march did take an adventurous turn, by Denver standards, but the rally began as might be expected from an event dominated by the SEIU and other corporate unions and their immobile nonprofit cohorts. Denver’s 4-15 rally started in the middle of CU-Denver’s Auraria campus, invisible from any street and unseeable to even partipants arriving, until they turned the corner to find it, behind the Tivoli Center.

Then organizers had a lineup of speakers which stretched well past expectations, trimming the crowd by over a third as supporters opted to slip away due to the unexpected cold front. Next participants were admonished to stick to the sidewalk, even on campus grounds, and applaud the police who’d agreed to permit the march. We were heading to a neighboring McDonalds, at least we were taking the scenic route.

Throughout the rally and march, a brass band played, and members of the local band Flobots led chants and songs. This lent a fun energy but it did preclude ordinary marchers speaking out or centering the vocal messaging on anything more than the generic themes of financial discontent. Even as crowds lingered in front of McDonalds, the band played on, when poignant denunciations might have provided a suitable climax.

Fortunately, a “Silver Brigade” had been deployed to patronize the fast food monster beforehand, to prevent managers from being able to lock the doors when the marchers arrived. McDs managers did lock the doors and they discussed a number of interesting defensive tactics under the noses of our operatives, but the managers were ultimately unable to refuse senior citizens demanding they be allowed to exit. This exit was timed to allow the Fight-for-Fifteen procession to march straight up to the counter, demanding a living wage, etc. Their objections heard, the marchers left and eventually crossed the street and dissolved into shortcuts through the Auraria campus.

(Note: My account of our inside job may appear indiscrete, but I include it purposefully. One, because even with advance knowledge it’s a difficult tactic to prevent, and two, because organizers of successive protests of establishments such as McDs need to include this tactic if they don’t want to remain locked out.)

Photo by Laura Avant
The highlight for me was infusing the event theme with the S-word. Desperate as they were today to fight for a living wage, vowing “we’ll be back” or else to “shut it down”, these union adherants will shortly become the usual Democrats, waving the Hillary banners, as if there was no alternative.

Whose fault is it that America’s minimum wage has been allowed to lapse below the poverty level? Is the responsibility not in part that of the unions’? The SEIU is driving the official “Fight for Fifteen” campaign, but only after socialists have led the way, as they did whenever the labor movement made its gains.

Occupy Denver activist is arrested for filming cops brutalizing homeless man

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Video still from camera footage
DENVER, COLORADO- On the subject of filming cops, Denver activist Caryn Sodaro is in trouble again. Caryn was attending a community meeting on Colfax Avenue when attention was drawn to an arrest happening at an adjacent liquor store parking lot. Several people converged on the scene, Caryn ahead of everyone, her videocamera aimed at an officer grinding his knee into the face of a prone man, likely homeless. Another cop looked on, warning his partner that they were being filmed, while an Argonaut security guard prevented the witnesses from getting close. Unlike onlookers who only dare to record an abusive arrest, Caryn tried to prevent further brutality and so raised her voice to caution the officers that their acts were not going unnoticed. Soon enough the witnesses were being ordered to leave Argonaut’s private property. Though deep within the departing group –everyone was complying– Caryn was picked out for arrest anyway. Fortunately she passed her camera to a colleague who was able to prevent the footage from being confiscated by the DPD. It’s all on tape: the details described here and the reinforcements piling on Caryn. She spent the afternoon in jail. Her next court date is April 27.

Denver Anons light torches in spite of being surrounded by five SWAT SUVs

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Anonymous Denver
DENVER, COLORADO- Anonymous activists converged on the capitol on Sunday, as they do “Every 5th”, this time to remember the growing list of victims of Denver police violence, and this time was going to be different. This time the call went out for torches or similar flamables and enough unnamed Anons delivered. As dusk approached and numbers grew, so did sightings of SUVs ferrying riot cops, at five staging areas. Despite another SUV whose officers were glued to binoculars, and a new HALO camera installed on a nearby streetlight, Anonymous lit its torches to send an angry message before the police rushed in.

Justicia para Jessie Hernandez
This banner commemorated Jessica Hernandez, the Latina teen killed by DPD on January 26. Others remembered were: Joseph Valverde, Ryan Ronquillo, Alberto Romero, Ismael Mena, Mark Ashford, James Watkins, Marvin Booker, David Flores, Clay Rampon, Carlos Jurado, Joel Jurado, Juan Vasquez, Eric Winfield, Alex Buck, Jared Lunn, John Heaney, Michael DeHerrera, Nicolas Alvardo, and Kevin Ryberg. Anonymous also called for justice for survivors Sharod Kindel and Alex Landau.

CASE DISMISSED! City of Denver drops charges against Occupier Patrick Jay

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DENVER, COLORADO- Prosecuting attorneys for the City of Denver were granted their own motion to have their case against Patrick Jay dismissed for lack of evidence! Prominent civil rights lawyer David Lane was informed this weekend that all charges against Patrick have been dropped.

Patrick was arrested last December while returning to his car after a ?#?BlackLivesMatter? protest. He was seized by SWAT officers while VIDEOTAPING the snatch and grab arrest of fellow activist Max Mendieta. Patrick was charged with obstructing traffic while marchers staged die-ins at prominent Denver intersections. *

According to police, HALO cameras recorded Patrick and others blocking vehicles. The cameras might also have confirmed that their actions prevented cars from running over the marchers laying prone on the pavement. We’ll never know because the DPD now says the footage is gone. After defendants declined to take plea deals, Patrick’s defense attorney David Lane learned the HALO footage would not be available for discovery because the surveillance files had been accidentally overwritten! In view of this, David Lane motioned for a dismissal, but city attorneys assured the judge that there were DPD officers enough to bear witness against Patrick Jay. Lane vowed to compel those officers to first have to pick Patrick from out of a line up. Patrick’s jury trial was set for April, but last week city attorneys tendered their own motion for a dismissal and that motion was granted.

Patrick Jay’s charges were dropped and his First Amendment rights were vindicated, but of course the Denver Police achieved their goal of intimidating activists who have to brace themselves for arbitrary arrest even though they know their rights. Over the course of many months of marches, participation has suffered attrition not just because people are frightened, don’t want to or can’t subject themselves to arrest, but some activists who had no alternative but to take plea deals now cannot risk violating the terms of probation which forbid their participation in protests.

Only a few days after Patrick’s arrest, he and I were leaving another anti-police-brutality march when multiple DPD cruisers swooped up to us on the sidewalk. This time instead of jumping off and unto us, an officer in the lead vehicle shouted from his rolled-down window: “Scared you?!”

Yes, officer, you did. **

Arrests and harassment have helped the DPD reduce protest numbers. Because of favorable plea deals or inadequate legal representation, no one has yet had the chance to challenge the veracity of their charges, until now. Several cases, including Max Mendieta’s, are still pending. Max is also represented by David Lane. Hopefully the recognition of Patrick’s arrest being unwarranted will turn the tide.

————-
NOTES:
* PATRICK’S ARREST WAS SURREAL. Everyone was returning to their cars, putting signs into trunks etc, when the police SUV carrying riot cops on its sideboards made a slow pass. This was a development we began to notice at earlier events. Even though the officers in riot gear might not have had to show themselves during a march, they would emerge afterward on their SUVs to cruise by our vehicles, almost to a stop as if scanning our cars looking for suspicious occupants. We didn’t think much of it except this time they stopped and the entire gang lept off to seize one of our group, Max Mendieta, as he walked the few solitary steps to his car. Patrick started to film the whole incident, from when police forced Max to the ground until they hauled him into custody. We’d reconstituted into a small group of less than a dozen, activists eager to dissuade further arressts, but the riot cops elbowed past us to seize another, which Patrick filmed, and then they grabbed Patrick. Patrick asked what they were arresting him for, but the officers wouldn’t say, only that it would be listed on his arrest warrant.

Ironically their irreverant answer turned out to be incorrect. But first I want to tell you what happened when the police drove off. They left an officer behind. The SUV loaded with riot cops, minus one, stopped several car lengths away when someone noticed the error. Their sargeant had been left on the street, in his cumbersome riot gear, unable to fit in the ordinary cruisers, and barely able to catch up with the waiting SUV. I guess the SUV driver didn’t want to risk backing over his sargeant, so the fat man lumbered slowly back to his perch, his riot gear clinking with every plodding step, like a minuscule robocop, the crowd barely able to sustain its “nah-nah-nah-nah” chant for laughing so hard.

Perhaps as payback, the arrestees that night -there were four total- had to wait sixteen hours “for their fingerprints to clear.”

Back to Patrick’s undeclared charges. Due to what we could only construe to be a typo, Patrick’s citation read “database-error” where the offense was supposed to be. Patrick had to sit in jail for 16 hours, post bail, await arraignment, and seek a lawyer, knowing only that he was charged with database-error. When the magistrate asked if he pled guilty, Patrick said “To what? Database error?” “No.”

** YES THERE’S MORE TO THIS STORY TOO. After the DPD pulled their gag, the officers watched as we walked to the building under which we’d parked our vehicle. The hour having become late, we discovered the stairwell doors locked. We imagined the officers laughing as they saw us circle the office building testing every door. We soon realized that our only recourse was to descend the car ramp to the parking area, but we were afraid that the police would follow and corner us there, out of view of other late night passersby. Security cameras or no, we feared what two dozen or so cops could do to two pedestrians; what we know often happens to homeless indigents in back alleys and poorly lit spaces; what happens to African Americans in broad daylight while they scream “I Can’t Breathe!” So we waited until the police cars lost interest before we ventured down the ramp.

Not being able to count on even our own police to obey the law, knowing the brutality of which police are capable, and witnessing the capriciousness of police abuse of authority, is the terror that defines living in a police state.

The police murder of Jessie Hernandez -what happened? (to the outrage)

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DENVER, COLO.- The Denver police had really stepped in it this time. At 6:30am on January 26, officers opened fire on a parked car full of unarmed teenage girls, killing Jessie Hernandez with eighteen bullets. This time the most homocidal police force this side of Baltimore used lethal force against a charismatic 17-year-old Latina. Even if officers had confused the queer tom-boy for a male, Jessie wouldn’t pass for a boy over eleven. Jessie’s killing follows a year rocked by public protests against police excessive force in Ferguson and New York City. Victims Mike Brown and Eric Garner were black males with the attendant stigmas. This victim was literally a poster child. If Jessie had a criminal record it was as a juvenile. The official account immediately began to unravel as witnesses came forward. Most notably, after the passengers were released from jail, one of them said the police fired first, before an officer was struck by the vehicle and not afterward as the officers claimed. Yet the public’s revulsion has been measured and dimminishing. What happened? Was the outcry stage-managed? By whom? The aftermath of Jessie’s execution was captured on video, in defiance of officers threatening the bystanders. It’s only been described to reporters but the Denver Post has it.

If the family of Jessie Hernandez decides they don’t want people to protest, do we cease protests? If the family doesn’t want to see the video, do we stop demanding its release? Of course they don’t want to relive the brutality of Jessie’s murder, no one does. But the DPD and the Denver Post must not be allowed to draw the curtain on the teen’s brutal death. The DPD’s actions must be exposed. The family doesn’t own this tragic crime. The responsibility to demonstrate against police brutality doesn’t fall on them, or the Latino community or the queer community. It falls on everyone. The Denver police own Jessie’s murder. They own all eighteen bullets, they own the handcuffing and searching of Jessie’s still-live body, they own the jailing of the four other traumatized teens, and they own all the subsequent lies told to excuse the inexcusable, shooting at a carload of unarmed children. If the public is not given the chance to face the reality of police brutality, we’ll never stop the DPD.

When Denver policemen train in Israel, city alleys become Iraqi checkpoints

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To Denver police unarmed female teen queer brown lives matter the same as black lives
DENVER, COLORADO- When police killed 16-yr-old Jessie Hernandez in a Denver alley where the teen was dropping off a friend on the way to school, they claimed her vehicle had struck a DPD officer. Police jailed her four teen passengers, ordered residents not to videotape, and refused to release details of the incident except a statement from Police Chief White which claimed that all police conduct had been according to protocol. Now journalists have reached one of the teens who reports that police officers fired first, killing the driver, which caused the car to veer toward the officers and crash. Where did Denver police learn they can face a car load of teenage girls and shoot first. Let’s note that DPD brags about sending officers to train in Israel. Let’s consider too that DPD hires recent veterans who may be suffering from PTSD, some of whom may have experience with the “Iraqi Checkpoints” where vehicle braking speeds were augmented with the stopping power of US bullets.
 
SO, the police lie about shooting Jessie Hernandez after the car struck an officer and not before. Maybe next we’ll learn they’re lying about the teens’ car being “stolen”.

March for Ryan Ronquillo and DPD play cat and mouse near I-70 onramp

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DENVER, COLORADO- Temperatures didn’t exceed 10 degrees, but that didn’t stop protesters or their SWAT escorts from their appointed rounds. Activists weren’t about to attempt to block Interstate 70 where vehicles were already negotiating very hazardous conditions but their police minders didn’t know that, so processions past the on and off ramps meant heavy police blocking which couldn’t help but impede traffic flow on its own. After laughing at officers jeopardize everybody’s safety, the march swung back to the quiet neighborhood streets and dispersed. Not before encountering a “MONSTER” energy drink distrubuter determined to give free samples to the cold officers forced to ride the sideboards in their riot gear.

150 year remembrance of Sand Creek still firmly in grip of master narrative

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DENVER, COLORADO- The Denver Art Museum assembled a panel of Native American artists to build collections of recollections of the Sand Creek Massacre on the occasion of its 150 year anniversary. Question: what do the artists think of resting the onus of remembrance of a crime on its survivors? How convenient for the perpetrators of genocide –by a hair we mightn’t have had to remember it at all, the aim of genocide after all. If Westward Expansion had succeeded in wiping out indigenous peoples entirely, a genocidal program which is ongoing, to repeat the obvious, that the great white tribe wouldn’t have to be bothered to remember Sand Creek at all. Wrestling the narrative from the hands of the white fathers isn’t solved by seeking indigenous voices only, many of those by now have assimilated the colonialist temperment, the burden of remembrance must be taken up by the white supremacist if we are ever expected to atone.

BREAKING: Denver deputies owe $4.6M for excessive killing of Marvin Booker

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DENVER, COLO.- A jury reviewing the case of Marvin Booker v Denver County Sheriff’s deputies has awarded $4.6 Million to the Booker estate for the excessive force that caused his homocide. Is this justice? Not yet, but it is a huge victory against police brutality at a moment when cities across the nation are errupting in protest and police officers have yet to be charged with wrongdoing. The five deputies who killed Marvin Booker have now been found culpable. The next step would be criminal charges. BTW, after the verdict was read, the five were given an armed escort out the back door away from the courtroom audience. Next time let’s see that happen in shackles.

US torture industry defends its murder of Marvin Booker at Denver federal courthouse

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Stop whining murderous crybabies
DENVER, COLO- Well, you’ve almost missed the most compelling courtroom drama this side of television. Although even on TV you don’t see a judge having to repeatedly admonish the audience to refrain from reacting with audible incredulity at the clueless ambivalence, awkward dissembling, and brazen lies being told on the stand by sheriff deputies and their witnesses concerning the death of Marvin Booker, 56, in their custody on July 9, 2010. National law enforcement experts have been flown in to defend the Denver Sheriff’s Department policies. It’s been quite a laugh and the jury seems wise to the scheme. Closing arguments begin Friday. If you’ve followed the Denver Post coverage you can skip the next paragraph, but those who’ve been packing the federal courtroom these past three weeks can assure you, you haven’t been treated to the half of it.

Four years ago Marvin Booker, an itinerant African American street preacher who weighed 135 pounds, died under a pileup of Denver Sheriff deputies simultaneously restraining him, kneeling on his prone body, twisting his wrists, contorting his ankles with nunchucks, choking him by the neck, and Tasing him. All of these methods are permitted means of “pain compliance”. Denver County Jail deputies assert they were trying to stop Booker from struggling. Asked one juror: “Could you keep still if you thought you were being killed?”

They held Marvin Booker in a carotid choke hold for two and a half minutes, and tased him for up 27 seconds.

Perhaps you’ve heard about the anomalies. The deputies met afterward to get their stories straight. Surveillance footage is missing, video of inmate witness testimony is missing, the taser is missing! Now everyone’s memory has gone missing too, they even try the excuse in the present. “No I don’t recall seeing myself do that in the video just now.” But most of what may be damning video is gone. The deputies were said to be high-fiving themselves afterward in an area where the camera footage is missing.

The significance of the missing taser means follow-up investigations can conclude its use is unproved. Another taser with a timestamp indicating it was deployed at an event forty minutes later, was fired for eight seconds. The video and inmate witnesses suggest Booker was tased for 27 seconds, but because the first taser surrendered to investigators hadn’t been fired at all, authorities are allowing for the implausible: that Booker wasn’t tased at all.

[work in progress]

White St Louis cop kills another black teen, for aiming a sandwich at him

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With crowds still in the streets of Ferguson protesting the murder-by-cop of African American teen Michael Brown, another white officer in neighboring St. Louis has pumped another two digit number of bullets into another black teen. The off-duty policeman was attempting a “pedestrian check” –a term authorities are yet reluctant to explain– when according to him the victim began firing. Insensed residents are again taking to the streets. No confirmation yet on whether video will emerge to prove witness accounts that the victim was holding a sandwich and not the 9mm which the police claim to have found. Community leaders urge calm but fortunately St. Louis locals are undeterred. In Denver, where commuynities of color are still reeling from a string of typical lynchings by police, religious keepers-of-peace are successful at diffusing the outrage. They admonish against misplaced anger, declare we’ve made ourselves heard, laud us for bringing attention to racism, and urge everyone to all go home. Here, have a sandwich.

The People’s Climate March will move the United Nations if marchers push it

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I heard a dispiriting conceit at yesterday’s 350.ORG whistestop rally at Denver’s Union Station to cheer climate activists bording the Amtrak Zephyr destined for the New York City #S21 People’s Climate March. This young, otherwise energetic and charismatic environmentalist told the crowd that she did not expect anything to come of the hoped-to-be-massive demonstration but would attend anyway. Ironically this was addressed to supporters who’d already decided not to join the march based I’m guessing on the same logic. Yet we cheered, chanted about the imperative to act, and applauded a successive speaker who added that if world leaders ignored this people’s march, there would follow another and another, ever larger. Hmm. I doubt it. Activism is already showing diminishing returns and drawing numbers to unsuccessful actions doesn’t help. I appreciate not wanting to seem to hold foolish expectations, but I’d rather accept defeat having believed it was not inevitable. The antiwar movement laments the election of Barack Obama because he herded the populist anti-Bush groundswell toward supporting the other corporate war party. But I blame Obama for a larger malpractice: innoculating Americans against hope. Extended generations of altruists lost their cherry to the hope-change-artist and while they wise up incrementally, I have yet to see hopefulness normalize the defeatism. This doesn’t mean that hopefuls don’t keep falling for smooth promises, but the promises are smaller, to be believable. Bill McKibben’s 350 march for example doesn’t even want to make demands, yet insists that your personal attendence will be the biggest impact you can make against climate change. And if the march doesn’t move UN leaders, come back and do it again. Until what? Until world leaders are convinced that the public is serious. Why are we not serious? Should McKibben admit that traveling to New York could be distracting activists from where their bodies really need to be, in front of coal plants, blocking pipelines, and organizing communities against fossil fuel extraction? Pressuring the UN is similarly immediate but we have to apply veritable pressure. If a march is meant to impress, even as a gesture, it must be more than a parade.

Arrests reach seven at weekly protest of two-faced Denver bookstore

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Tattered Cover arrests
DENVER, COLORADO- Occupy Denver’s Tim Calahan and I were arrested and jailed at last Friday’s boycott action against the Tattered Cover Bookstore. This marked Tim’s third citation for drumming, my second, and Janet Matzen’s first. For drumming. Disturbing the peace is what the DPD charges. We maintain the DPD are curbing our free speech. SO NOW I want to tell you the story of how famed civil rights attorney David Lane came to represent us.

The story begins Thursday before the Anonymous “Every5th” march. A couple friends and I were feeling trepidatious about the Anonymous march because the previous month’s Every5th had been abruptly curtailed by riot police. Several Anons were arrested and a number more pepper-sprayed, and so we wondered if we couldn’t get legal advice about how to assert our First Amendment rights without surrendering ourselves to jail. Also on our minds were the past two fridays at the Tattered Cover where citations had been handed out, drums confiscated, and warnings given that if we drummed again, the next arrestees would be jailed. So we went to the celebrated lawyer’s office and tried our luck with the receptionist.

I told her we were activists who were having a rough time with police, we thought they were violating our civil liberties, could David Lane be of any help? She looked at us increduously. We couldn’t just walk in she said, we had to take a card, we had to call in, we could leave a message, they’d call back if they were interested, they might not call back at all, it certainly wouldn’t be right away.

We told her time was rather of the essence, these arrests were as predictable as they were egregious, we didn’t know where to turn and these arrests seemed to present the kind of case in which David Lane specialized. The receptionist repeated her instructions in a tone that reflected she was not sure I wasn’t simply a lunatic.

After making more prolonged and embarassing enteaties, I finally submitted to following her instructions but I insisted too on leaving a written note which gave me further time to expound on our DPD versus the people predicament.

Turning to make our exit, I explained that we would be leaving her office to join a protest at which chances were pretty good we were going to be arrested, but that the next night at the Tattered Cover, we were most definitely going to be arrested. The receptionist made the oddest face as she search my eyes for some sign that I spoke her language. “Wait just a minute please” she told us as she beat a hasty retreat. Within that minute she returned to say “David Lane will meet you in the conference room.”

We spent the next half hour relating the details of our past arrests, how each had been captured on video, in front of witnesses, and how we’d been warned arrests would continue. We offered too that the police were also videotaping assiduously and that their accounts would match ours. David Lane assured us if we were conducting ourselves as we presented and if arrests endured, he would represent us and anyone else who stepped up to the plate. If exercising our freedom of speech became a risk where it was supposed to be right, standing up for us was the least he could do.

That night we hit the streets with a renewed sense of confidence, and the following evening at the Tattered Cover was an empowering experience like no other. As you can see in the photo above, we couldn’t keep our eyes off the half dozen cruisers keeping watch on us. Would they swoop in? When would they descend on us? The anticipation was frustrating. Who should film, who should take whose keys and phone, who did or didn’t want to beat the drum. We were ready for jail, we were ready to tell the officers, as we had the weeks before, that they couldn’t do what they were doing, we knew our rights. This time we could assure our DPD captors that they were asking for trouble in messing with Occupy. Stay tuned!

Continued arrest of Denver Occupiers confirms homeless protest is battle line where people’s rights offend Capitalism

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Occupy Denver arrests at LoDo Tattered Cover boycott
DENVER, COLORADO- The weekly demonstration in front of the Tattered Cover bookstore ended once again in arrests yesterday. Three Occupiers were arrested, led away in handcuffs, detained at length in the back of police cruisers, and given citations for “disturbing the peace”. Four bucket drums were confiscated, presumably one was beating itself. This marks the fifth arrest at the Tattered Cover action. Arrestees at earlier homeless ban actions had been cited for jaywalking, some required to post bond before being released from jail. Many more Friday night actions have been interrupted and truncated by a DPD show of force or DPD warning that a complaint gave officers license to restrict “time, place and manner” of what the activists decry as their free speech. Although a bullhorn was initially taken last night and declared to be evidence, it was returned to the Occupiers, probably for fear the act would too literally represent their voices being silenced.

The Tattered Cover disturbers of the peace are scheduled for arraignment on June 16 and June 30. These cases are not unrelated to other Denver protest arrestees who have court dates on June 10 for obstructing traffic and other technicalities contrived to intimidate political demonstrations. Until defendants are able to confront their charges, the DPD appears determined to arrest protesters at will.

Wall Street is why we can’t have nice things. Your gullible good nature is why America can’t change that.

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Contentious Occupy Denver protest at Tattered Cover bookstore
Cops are people too, voting matters, use honey not vinegar, the only way is nonviolence, yada yada. Try this against your old liberals’ tales: If one million indignados foreswore property destruction, a policeman with a sharp pencil could subjugate them all, the state could spend more on amassing capital, and the press wouldn’t have to report a thing, etc. Occupy is a revolutionary movement rallying support for the understanding that we must burn down this castle of inequity and injustice. Those urging demonstrators to lower the pitchforks are the primary defensive line of the system. Armored police are nothing compared to the duped stooges who circulate among us enforcing conformity and dissent within-limits. Occupy Wall Street targeted Wall Street because it pulls the strings in DC. We can continue to protest corporations and the military but our biggest adversaries are our own defeatist tendencies. They are neither accidental nor transcendent, they are malignant.

Did you know that if you disagree with someone’s free speech you can call the cops and say their voices disturb you?

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IN DENVER YOU CAN! Denver police have been silencing picketers at the downtown Tattered Cover Bookstore by asserting that complaints give them the authority to curtail the Friday evening protests at will, even before the 10pm noise restriction. The DPD cite “time and place” restrictions to free speech, such as, you know: you can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater. Apparently they’re worried that crying “Boycott the Tattered Cover” will cause a stampede. We hope so too, and in a PUBLIC SPACE, we have that right.

DPD waits until dark to make 5 arrests, but blunders pretext for May 5 charges

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may5-anon-nmt
DENVER, COLORADO- Five arrests resulted from last Monday’s Anonymous march, two on the scene and three afterward, but measures employed by combined Municipal, County and Homeland Security forces to suppress the demonstration will likely prove to undermine charges of wrongdoing. Marchers were accused of obstructing the roadway, but all vehicular traffic had already been blocked while ordinary pedestrian usage continued unhindered.

SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT was the least of the DPD’s abuses that night, whose strategies also included INTIMIDATION and direct SUPPRESSION of free speech. During the march participants faced a continuous escort of SUV-mounted riot police, who chose an arbitrary moment to dismount and assault the procession. After the march, a number of participants were met by officers as they neared their home addresses. Some were interrogated, three were arrested. At several times during the demonstration, empty city buses queued to form long barriers to obstruct passerby access to the protestors.

16th Street “Mall Ride” buses were decommissioned to inhibit public view of the march, which prevented the protest being witnessed more widely. It also gave intended commuters reason to be angry at the activists. However the action also negated any useful reason why pedestrians needed to heed a throughway for buses, the only vehicles allowed on the walking mall.

Actually the May 5th march of approximately 50 people was small enough to stick to the sidewalk and it did. Police warnings made over a loudspeaker to “get out of the street” occurred on only transitory occasions and were directed at stragglers.

On the 16th Street Mall the distinction between sidewalk and street was not always clear. On the walking mall bicycle cops used their bicycles to ram marchers in an attempted to allege that the central pedestrian area was off limits. No curbs distinguish this area from the bus lane, but the absence of buses made the distinction mute.

Just after dark, on the march’s final turn toward the state capitol, officers in riot gear suddenly dismounted and thrust into the crowd to arrest two participants they considered to have received three warnings. The action caused a stampede. Activists who didn’t scatter were pushed to the ground by the police. A half hour standoff eventually diffused, the militarized officers were withdrawn, and the tired marchers left to their dispersement area, escorted by the bicycle police.

It was not until later that participants learned of colleagues followed, swarmed in front of their apartments, interviewed, assaulted or arrested for having obstructed the path of buses that were not running.

Should the DPD be allowed to deploy the Mall-Ride buses to block a protest march, and simultaneously hold protesters responsible for getting out of their way? They want to throw cake in our face and have us to eat it too.

On May 5th, “Every 5th” activists were deprived the public audiences they were seeking, blocked from view by municipal vehicle barricades, and forbidden the public space. Neither bus-riders nor dissenters could use the public bus lane because Denver law enforcement commandeered it to squelch free speech.

Ludlow 100 year anniversary feted by social class that committed massacre

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Cover of WestwordDENVER, COLO.- I might be sensationalizing a technicality, but in effect it’s what happened: the remembering of Ludlow has been commandeered by the class who perpetrated it. The preliminary series of events commemorating the 100 year anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre (April 20, 1914) concluded tonight at Denver’s History Colorado Museum with a panel discussion featuring only establishment voices. “Is Ludlow relevant?” was the question posed to five participants among them three professors, a soldier, and a union rep. That’s like asking “is global warming real?” The question is loaded with the suggestion that the opposite is equally plausible. I would have preferred to hear HOW is Ludlow relevant. Though the union rep skillfully skirted the issue, no one pushed back at another flawed presumption, that the coal strike was an armed conflict. Yes the massacre provoked the ten day “Coal Field War” during which striking miners retaliated against the mine company employees, but the death toll was still but a fraction of the number of miners killed in the mine accidents which precipitated the Ludlow strike. It took an audience member to address that omission. Alas nobody mentioned the aftermath that found many miners under arrest, others scattered, and no mine owner, operator, guard, strikebreaker, Baldwin-Felts thug, or National Guard save one, was punished for the atrocity. Yes many immigrant miners were veterans of Bulkan wars, but some Colorado soldiers were veterans of the US campaign in the Philippines, where villages were dispatched with flame and machinegun fire. Not mentioned. Instead a Colorado National Guard representative was let to say that burning the tents at Ludlow was not a tactical error -and since the “non-combatant” deaths were unintended, Ludlow was not technically a massacre.

While Denver activists hold six rallies in solidarity with Gaza, Colorado Springs is content to mourn the dead

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cos-gaza-vigil-nmt
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO.- A passing motorist can be excused for mistaking that gathering for a prayer vigil, and it’s typical of Colorado Springs, nothing escapes the Christian crutch. Notice how no one’s banners faced outward. This is what preaching to the choir looks like for the hearing impaired.