Despite the weather, illness (the other driver got sick), and early departure time, a small band of us made our way to Denver yesterday, to attend both a summit for the defense of Colorado’s many affirmative action programs (the Colorado Unity 2007 Coalition Conference), and the antiwar rally held on the steps of the state capitol building.

The conference was to spark an alert to the public that national Right Wing groups are going to try to implement legislation come 2008, that would reverse the many affirmative action programs that are in place that mandate fair treatment to women and minority racial sectors of our population here in this state. And well, the rally was part of a national effort to end the war and to prevent it from being further extended regionally into Iran, Syria, and Lebanon.

The keynote address to the conference was to have been the Democratic governor of the state, but apparently he was too exhausted from the previous night’s business gala here in The Springs to either attend the conference, or to attend the rally at the capitol building against the war. Go figure? However, I was pleasantly surprised by another Democratic Party speaker, the president of the Colorado state senate, Peter Groff. Instead of the usual pretending that the Democrats are preparing to change it all around, Senator Groff basically all but admitted that his fellow democrats were a fairly totally hopeless cause for backing up any progressive political issue! What a breath of fresh air and from a Democratic Party politician no less. Honesty, and honestly. To see what I mean about the man, here are some remarks he made on MLK Day this year.

At 11:45 we headed towards the antiwar rally, and we were met by crowds of people streaming toward the capitol building. Protesters were already assembled up the steps, and cars passing by were highly supportive with their honking and varying salutes to the people at the protest. The rally was definitely spirited and the numbers were fairly good, though not great. I would say that there were about 1300-1500 that participated. Certainly this merits coverage by the Colorado Press, but they deliberately blacked us out. Instead, the Rocky Mountain Mainly Censored News carried an AP release titled, Thousands protest from coast to coast that mentioned none of us protesting the war in cities in between.

There was also a march and protest in Boulder of at least hundreds of people. The Boulder Blocked Camera hid this away under a headline titled, “Activists, Stop funding”. Actually behind this hidden door, the coverage of the local event was not too horrible, but nothing about Denver there at all. And our on local toilet paper, The Gazette? Well really, does anybody really go there to get news coverage anyway? Suffice it to say that their coverage of national antiwar actions and local was their standard par for the hole. About 20 strokes and into the pond. We can only hope that the publishers there do more bird hunting with Dick Cheney. They have nothing to worry about anyway, since they are heartless ideological fools, so the birdshot will not damage.

After the rally, we headed back for the afternoon sessions of the Affirmative Action conference. Lessons learned for the day? We cannot depend much on either the politicians are the corporate press to support what’s right for us and the rest of the world. Without more anger there will not be more action. We certainly need more groups like Colorado Unity to defend equal treatment before the law in jobs and education, but if we as a people don’t have any fight back in ourselves, then we will still get trompled by the Right. We as a people are being assaulted on all fronts, and yet the anger has yet to reach a level where other than a few people will do much of anything.

Colorado Unity needs the public’s help to defend Affirmative Action in this state. Without it, the already privileged will stomp on the rest of us. Equal access to opportunities, and equal pay for equal work. That’s Affirmative Action.