DENVER, COLORADO- A coalition of Colorado activists led by Black Lives Matter 5280 marched through the state capitol on Sunday to mark the one-year anniversary of the killing of Michael Brown by Ferguson police. Over two hundred marchers gathered at Lawson Park and marched to the courthouse where a memorial ceremony was held for all recent victims of police violence.
Photos by David Lee Anderson
DENVER, COLORADO- On Thursday July 30 in Denver Municipal Court, Argonaut Liquor succeeded with what the City of Denver and its violent policemen have been trying to do for years: take down Occupy Denver activist Caryn Sodaro. Earlier this year, Caryn was attempting to film the DPD as they brutalized a handcuffed detainee in the parking lot of the liquor store on Colfax Ave. When store managers couldn’t block her camera phone with their hands, they authorized officers to arrest Caryn for trespassing. Of course they had to pretend she’d been warned once before.
Yesterday a jury found Caryn Sodaro guilty of trespass, though they heard scant mention of the crime she was trying to document and prevent. It didn’t come up and video evidence was snipped to exclude it. Videos from multiple vantage points were excluded and witnesses were not questioned about the brutality they saw. Protesters were characterized as protesting the police, not police VIOLENCE and not protesting to PREVENT IT.
In one of the trial’s most surreal moments, the city attorneys were trying to admit officer body cam evidence taken of Caryn after her arrest, angrily describing the brutality she witnessed. The prosecutors hoped her coarse language would displease the jury. The defense attorney objected for that reason, even though it would have been the only evidence to explain why Caryn risked arrest, if indeed she knew she was not allowed on the Argonaut lot. The judge disallowed that video in the only ruling she made in favor of the defense.
Caryn’s protesting activity has been given area restrictions before and friends know how strictly she adhered to them, unconstitutional as they were. Drivers giving her rides had to take detours to keep Caryn geographically safe. When a defense witness tried to add this detail, or that he’d returned often to the Argonaut even while the managers had testified that he too had been “trespassed”, the defense attorney cut him off, stopping his own friendly witness with “I ask the questions here.”
I’ve seen valiant public defenders, but this free public servant was determined to give Caryn her money’s worth. No character witnesses, no context of Caryn’s activism, nor even sympathy for her altruism. The argument was restricted to: did Caryn trespass or not, and Argonaut employees perjured themselves claiming that Caryn had been instructed twenty days before that she was “trespassed” from Argonaut’s property. That incident was provoked by Caryn being harassed and humiliated by an in-store Argonaut rent-a-cop who followed her to the checkout stand and told her she was “too drunk” to purchase a bottle of wine. He initiated a shouting match, not she, and that’s another detail the PD declined to exploit.
Did I mention Caryn’s public defender opted to forgo his opening statement! The jury was let to assume the case was about a retailer’s property rights versus a group of protesters’ whim for trespassing.
Even when public defenders are brighter than you expect, it’s important to remember they don’t work for you. Public defenders serve the judicial system, this one determined to preserve law and order even when it is demonstrably racist and violent. Mr. DiPetro, the Judge and the city attorneys colluded to frame Caryn’s prosecution as independent of the DPD’s agenda to target her and bring her down. At moments of the two day trial, the audience was equal parts fellow activists, armed sheriff deputes, and DA attorneys gathered to oversee the exploitation of charges pressed by Argonaut Liquor. The only laugh the audience was allowed was when officer descended on Caryn, eager to put her in handcuffs, before she even had time to sign the paperwork required to imprison her.
DENVER, COLORADO- Anonymous dedicated May’s Every5th to victims of Denver police violence. For Cinco de Mayo, Anons brought PINATAS in the likeness of the DPD! Many “Every Cinco” attendees were victims of the pepper spray incident of April 29, when DPD riot cops tried to exterminate its infestation of stubborn marchers by fumigating them with cayenne pepper. In response, Anons considered macing the piñatas, but aerosol wasn’t going to bust these piggies open and guests were eager to get to the chocolates and FTP pins inside. Participants took turns whacking the pigs with UMBRELLAS, Occupy Hong Kong’s answer to pepper spray. After an interminable beating the pigsters gave up.
The EVERY CINCO bash on the west steps of the capitol
Three little piggies
Blindfolded Anons
Preparing to spike
Going
Gone
If there’s a chant that unites protesters across America it is “FTP!” No matter the issue, from BLM to GMOs, excessive use of force by police against dissenting citizens is the common grievance. The UN has even condemned US human rights abuses, this time police violence and racial discrimination. Our emergant police state may be the business end of the New World Order, but its troubling conduct is directly traceable to US military rules of engagement. These violent cops are our vets!
Stuck with PTSD, no marketable skills, and a taste for blood, American soldiers are transitioning to law enforcement jobs where they’re already familiar with the militarized equipment and the shoot-to-kill MO. The irony of course is that many of America’s homeless are veterans who could not live with the acts they were made to do in Afghansitan and Iraq and elsewhere. Those that could are the cops beating them!
When American soldiers shot first and asked questions never, overseas, at vehicles or at civilians whose needs they did not understand, you shouted SUPPORT THE TROOPS. Now they’ve brought the war home with lethal force and indescriminate brutality. You asked for it, you got it.
DENVER, COLORADO- It started with a cop falling off his motorcycle, being pushed it’s alleged, by a bicyclist. Paramilitary officers piled on the cyclist while playing Orkin Man to Civic Center Park’s infestation of free speech. Photos from Denver’s April 29 march against police violence reveal that pepper spray was used less to disperse the hundred or so marchers than to repel Youtube bites. Photos by Patrick Jay and Jason Metter.
Although the marchers had already been herded back unto the sidewalk, militarized state troopers laid down a smokescreen of spray to create a no man’s land around their arrestee.
The march was 2% black, but the DPD chose from the 2% minority for the first arrests. Here activist Al Nesby has been pulled from the crowd while tablet-bearing witness David Long records the irony.
An officer assists in Al’s arrest by directing pepper spray at David whose perspective was apparently too up close and personal.
The officer also arcs his spray toward photojournalist Tanner Spendley.
Here officers spray an activist who was only mouthing off.
When the DPD aimed their pepper spray at individuals, it was because they bore cameras. Otherwise the spray seemed intended to fumigate. At no time were police officers under attack or trying to break apart a stubborn crowd. The pepper spray was dispensed like backwoods insect repellent toward an unseen foe whose sting the officers feared.
Wrote activist Jason Metter:
I believe the cops intended to attack us from the moment the march began. The cop who dropped his motorcycle, unprovoked, started a mini cop-riot by pretending to have been pushed. I did not see any protestors take aggressive actions against the cops. It seems the cops pepper sprayed us to prevent us from photographing and filming them and to punish us for not being meekly obedient to their unreasonable orders.
Even as the clouds of cayenne aerosol appear distant in these photos, each debilitated the nearby subjects and required rinsing of clothes, hands and faces.
Production note: all photographers were harmed in the taking of these pictures.
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.
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.
DENVER, COLO.- Saturday’s “Every 5th” Anonymous march didn’t get two blocks along the 16th Street Mall before Denver police officers advanced into the compact procession to extract what looked to be targeted activists. Said one Anon: “One minute we were chanting ‘FUCK THE POLICE’ and the next they were fucking themselves! Our demonstration AGAINST police brutality was in solidarity with the New Mexico action #OpAlbuquerque, but became a demonstration OF police brutality. Thank you DPD!” Hundreds of downtown shoppers were drawn to the shit show, to see four dozen masked protesters menaced by a paramilitary force three times the size, ostensibly for jaywalking.
Local news outlets reported that the marchers were diverted from the pedestrian mall when their path was blocked by a dense row of police. Officers made five quick arrests, spraying pepper spray into the faces of marchers who weren’t accommodating their unprovoked, seemingly arbitrary snatch and grab maneuver.
A few minutes later, with tension waning, the DPD made an odd sixth arrest, tackling an unrelated passerby who suddenly bolted from between their ranks. Whether opportune or calculated, the officers piled on this small man which provoked the crowd to close in on the action and boo. This resembled an attempt to incite obstruction, to provide a pretext for a police escalation, because the little man’s curious entrance coincided with a squad of riot cops already dismounting from the sideboards of their SUVs, 
in formation to march but without a situtation to warrant it. Let’s also add that the mystery arrestee was cop-shaped and was led off in a different direction than the other detainees.
There was plenty of shouting “FUCK THE DPD” but protesters didn’t take the bait, hardly resembling the riotous mob the DPD pretended them to be. Instead Denver citizens were treated to a front row DPD command performance of “SHOW ME WHAT A POLICE STATE LOOKS LIKE.”
For me, the FTP message resonates on more levels than the delightfully juvenile. The DPD show of force makes a regular cameo at every political demonstration. Often the military equipment is kept around the corner, but the oppressive presence is made felt. After DPD brutally squashed the Occupy demonstrations of 2011, even activists are deterred from joining protests in large numbers because of the eminent threat of police violence. The ever present police escorts which tail protest marches also taint demonstrators with the implication that their legal assembly verges on illegality. No matter what your issue, the police are going to stand in your way.
Though unpopular with the nonviolence zealots who consider it more effective to be non-confrontational, the FTP theme has become universal across activist disciplines, even with those one might presume were uninitiated. Obviously police violence extends well beyond the curtailment of civil liberties. Earlier on Saturday a group of Colorado Springs Anons stood before the CSPD HQ with a sign than read only “FTP”. It was complemented with posters that tempered the message for the city’s more conservative population, such as “Free the Prisons” and “Failed the People”. Yet countless passing motorists responded by rolling down their windows and pumping their fists shouting “Fuck the Police!”
More photos from Denver Anon and photog Stuart Sipkin.
Here’s the official 4/5 press release, reproduced from Pastebin:
Anonymous Police Brutality Protest/#Every5th/@AnarchoAnon
MEDIA ALERT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEContact: anarchoanon@riseup.net / @AnarchoAnon
Denver 4/5—Police in Denver violently attacked a protest march against police brutality on the Downtown 16th street mall a few minutes after it began at 5:30 pm. 6 arrests took place, with police violently tackling individuals in the crowd and spraying pepper spray at protesters and bystanders. A witness said that several of those arrested were passers-by who were not involved in the protest. This protest, called by the informal net-based group known as “Anonymous,” was part of the “Every 5th” event series, in which protesters have gathered downtown on the 5th of every month to protest various issues since November 5, 2013. This particular march was planned in solidarity with protests over a recent police murder of a homeless man in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with an eye to similar ongoing police brutality issues in Denver.
“The Albuquerque Police Department has come under federal scrutiny for being involved in 37 shootings since 2010, 23 of them fatal.” (Democracy Now)
One participant said: “There were about 50 of us at the march. We peacefully marched from Civic Center Park to the 16th st mall, our usual march route. As soon as we turned off the mall, police officers violently tackled individuals, swung clubs at others, and sprayed clouds of pepper spray at the crowd. They then formed a line and took out rubber bullet guns, and continued to try to antagonize the crowd. The crowd grew larger as pedestrians became alarmed by the aggressive behavior of the Denver Police Department. There were also numerous military-style vehicles present with SWAT officers riding on the outside. This seems to be a deliberately intimidating response in which DPD is trying to send a strong message to the citizens of their city that the police will not tolerate people speaking out against police brutality. Despite the police violence, our march continued successfully for several hours, snaking through city streets, denouncing police brutality with chants and fliers. This sort of behavior by the police really only serves to promote our protest, and as we saw today, it actually encourages people to join us.”
UPDATE:
All 6 who were wrongfully arrested have plead not guilty and have been released on bond/PR and reported back the following:
Police kept insisting the protestors’ water bottles in their backpacks were “molotov cocktails” even after smelling the water. Repeatedly.
They were taken to what appeared to be a mass arrest area that had been set up in advance. There was a table piled with sandwiches and frosted cupcakes. When asked by one of the protesters if the cupcakes had been made especially for the occasion. A cop responded “Yes, there are cupcakes. And they aren’t for you!”
One Denver Sheriff was heard bragging in the jail to another sheriff about how he had just said to one of the cuffed arrestees “I can beat the shit out of you and won’t even lose my job. Nothing will happen to me.”
Multiple photos of direct police interaction during the protest were deleted off of one of the arrestee’s cameras.
When one bystander tried to ask a question about the protest, he was called homophobic and sexist slurs by the police as he was being arrested.
Regardless of arguments about reforming the police versus abolishing them altogether one thing the protesters are in agreement about is that DPD acts like a gang of terrorists who aren’t accountable in any way to the people they purport to “Protect and Serve.
Archived livestream footage clips from march: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/anarcho-anon
Twitter handles with details from the event: @anarchoanon @standupdenver @mcsole @occupydenver @internerve
Here’s one of the more popular pamphlets distributed at Occupy Colorado Springs, courtesy of the DABC. DEAR OCCUPIERS: A LETTER FROM ANARCHISTS
Support and solidarity! We’re inspired by the occupations on Wall Street and elsewhere around the country. Finally, people are taking to the streets again! The momentum around these actions has the potential to reinvigorate protest and resistance in this country. We hope these occupations will increase both in numbers and in substance, and we’ll do our best to contribute to that.
Why should you listen to us? In short, because we’ve been at this a long time already. We’ve spent decades struggling against capitalism, organizing occupations, and making decisions by consensus. If this new movement doesn’t learn from the mistakes of previous ones, we run the risk of repeating them. We’ve summarized some of our hard-won lessons here.
Occupation is nothing new. The land we stand on is already occupied territory. The United States was founded upon the extermination of indigenous peoples and the colonization of their land, not to mention centuries of slavery and exploitation. For a counter-occupation to be meaningful, it has to begin from this history. Better yet, it should embrace the history of resistance extending from indigenous self-defense and slave revolts through the various workers’ and anti-war movements right up to the recent anti-globalization movement.
The “99%” is not one social body, but many. Some occupiers have presented a narrative in which the “99%” is characterized as a homogenous mass. The faces intended to represent “ordinary people” often look suspiciously like the predominantly white, law-abiding middle-class citizens we’re used to seeing on television programs, even though such people make up a minority of the general population.
It’s a mistake to whitewash over our diversity. Not everyone is waking up to the injustices of capitalism for the first time now; some populations have been targeted by the power structure for years or generations. Middle-class workers who are just now losing their social standing can learn a lot from those who have been on the receiving end of injustice for much longer.
The problem isn’t just a few “bad apples.” The crisis is not the result of the selfishness of a few investment bankers; it is the inevitable consequence of an economic system that rewards cutthroat competition at every level of society. Capitalism is not a static way of life but a dynamic process that consumes everything, transforming the world into profit and wreckage. Now that everything has been fed into the fire, the system is collapsing, leaving even its former beneficiaries out in the cold. The answer is not to revert to some earlier stage of capitalism—to go back to the gold standard, for example; not only is that impossible, those earlier stages didn’t benefit the “99%” either. To get out of this mess, we’ll have to rediscover other ways of relating to each other and the world around us.
Police can’t be trusted. They may be “ordinary workers,” but their job is to protect the interests of the ruling class. As long as they remain employed as police, we can’t count on them, however friendly they might act. Occupiers who don’t know this already will learn it firsthand as soon as they threaten the imbalances of wealth and power our society is based on. Anyone who insists that the police exist to protect and serve the common people has probably lived a privileged life, and an obedient one.
Don’t fetishize obedience to the law. Laws serve to protect the privileges of the wealthy and powerful; obeying them is not necessarily morally right—it may even be immoral. Slavery was legal. The Nazis had laws too. We have to develop the strength of conscience to do what we know is best, regardless of the laws.
To have a diversity of participants, a movement must make space for a diversity of tactics. It’s controlling and self-important to think you know how everyone should act in pursuit of a better world. Denouncing others only equips the authorities to delegitimize, divide, and destroy the movement as a whole. Criticism and debate propel a movement forward, but power grabs cripple it. The goal should not be to compel everyone to adopt one set of tactics, but to discover how different approaches can be mutually beneficial.
Don’t assume those who break the law or confront police are agents provocateurs. A lot of people have good reason to be angry. Not everyone is resigned to legalistic pacifism; some people still remember how to stand up for themselves. Police violence isn’t just meant to provoke us, it’s meant to hurt and scare us into inaction. In this context, self-defense is essential.
Assuming that those at the front of clashes with the authorities are somehow in league with the authorities is not only illogical—it delegitimizes the spirit it takes to challenge the status quo, and dismisses the courage of those who are prepared to do so. This allegation is typical of privileged people who have been taught to trust the authorities and fear everyone who disobeys them.
No government—that is to say, no centralized power—will ever willingly put the needs of common people before the needs of the powerful. It’s naïve to hope for this. The center of gravity in this movement has to be our freedom and autonomy, and the mutual aid that can sustain those—not the desire for an “accountable” centralized power. No such thing has ever existed; even in 1789, the revolutionaries presided over a “democracy” with slaves, not to mention rich and poor.
That means the important thing is not just to make demands upon our rulers, but to build up the power to realize our demands ourselves. If we do this effectively, the powerful will have to take our demands seriously, if only in order to try to keep our attention and allegiance. We attain leverage by developing our own strength.
Likewise, countless past movements learned the hard way that establishing their own bureaucracy, however “democratic,” only undermined their original goals. We shouldn’t invest new leaders with authority, nor even new decision-making structures; we should find ways to defend and extend our freedom, while abolishing the inequalities that have been forced on us.
The occupations will thrive on the actions we take. We’re not just here to “speak truth to power”—when we only speak, the powerful turn a deaf ear to us. Let’s make space for autonomous initiatives and organize direct action that confronts the source of social inequalities and injustices.
Thanks for reading and scheming and acting.
May your every dream come true.
The Black Bloc Anarchists have to be some of the most block-headed people around. It is simply impossible to differentiate between many of them and the police themselves, as both contrive to push innocent people into being victimized by police violence so as later to say that some demonstration or other was ‘radical’ and ‘violent’.
The Black Bloc dominated demonstration is always one of superficiality and most often times centered on petty vandalism and petty loser bouts against the police. Here on film is how the police and Block Bloc teamed up to murder one man, Ian Tomlinson. Ian Tomlinson death: Guardian video reveals police attack on man who died at G20 protest
Who Controls The Black Bloc Anarchists? The press would have us think that it is merely some bozo or other that does. The Evening Standard newspaper in their report ‘Black Bloc’ anarchists to hijack summit protests using shields and truncheons blamed the G20 London Black Bloc group on some individual lunatic named Alessio Lunghi, but the real control of these ‘ultra radical’ dumb-shits might just probably be with the police themselves?
It is important for us in the US to reject completely this type of confrontational idiocy being pushed by the Black Bloc Anarchists and the police. Those who tell us that it is ultra radical and effective as a protest method are just lunatics. What this mindset actually gets us, is smaller and smaller demonstrations, since normal people begin to fear to show up at events where they most likely will be tear gassed, arrested, or hurt in other ways.
JUST SAY NO to deliberate confrontational tactics with the police! It was the police themselves that hijacked the G20 protests, but the Black Bloc Anarchists gave them a helping hand. There is nothing radical about that at all.
Like a carefully choreographed play, accusations by the police that they have uncovered shit and urine stockpiles by protesters has been their routine to cover up their actions at both the Democratic and Republican Party Conventions. By making these false accusations in the press, the police and politicians hope to cover up their own shitty actions against lawful protesters. What they are actually trying to do is make political dissidents in the US out to be of the same stripe as common criminals in the police torture chamber prisons around the US, thus justifying their overkill storm-trooper presence these last two weeks. Thus helping tear up all our legal protections and rights.
Sorry, Guys, it won’t work. To the world it looks like American police and government are of the same stripe as what we saw on TV in Beijing, China. Smart, Dudes! American police may still have the support of the conservatized American population as a whole, but this support will ebb if you keep these actions up for much longer.
Of note is that Denver’s Democratic Party mayor, John Hickenlooper, has joined with St. Paul’s Democratic Party mayor, Chris Coleman, in backing up these police smears in the press. The Denver Post today ran this piece of police disinformation backed up by the DP mayor of the city… Mayor: Protesters hid feces and tools Yeah, right! The real poop in bags being hidden is that of the mayor and police.
When are Democratic Party liberals going to hold their party accountable for acting like the Republicans, on behalf of the Republicans, and on behalf of abusive national policing policies? Many of you DP voting liberals are among the group of protesters being smeared with dishonest shit by these false accusations by Democratic Party mayors, so why do you take it? Shame on you and your party! All you can seem to do is scream about Sarah Palin. Democrats, you are a pathetic lot indeed. Cop talking shit!
Just like in Denver, the Minnesota Democratic Party is now encouraging an excessive police presence plus police violence against protesters, but this time at the Republican Party convention! Here is Chris Coleman, the DP mayor of St. Paul, praising the police violence in that city Below is an excerpt from press coverage by the Minneapolis paper…
‘St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman praised officers for showing restraint and said a small number of law-breaking demonstrators marred what started as a peaceful day of free speech.
“Their efforts were nothing short of heroic,” Coleman said. “They did not fail. They did not take the bait. We’ve done what we could to offer unprecedented access so peoples’ voices could be heard. Unfortunately, very small handful of individuals decided to break the law.”
St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington said the trouble makers came from a half-dozen loosely organized groups totaling up to 180 people, representing a small fraction of the massive turnout Monday.’
Yeah sure, Mayor. And just what are these small group of people doing that merits turning out the National Guard in addition to the already massive police presence in your city? What a bunch of crap, and the whole Democratic Party shares responsibilty for this police state atmosphere everywhere today in America.
Two PPJPC board members, Genie Durland and Dorothy Schlaeger, wrote to The Colorado Springs Independent trying to explain why the group’s officers locked some of its membership out of the PPJPC building where we had tried to hold a meeting.
To compound the insult of locking us out of the building, the new Board Director, Jo Ann Neiman, then called the police when she saw us still attending our meeting on the sidewalk in front of the PPJPC building! She explained to the police that she wanted us to be told that we were all trespassing!
So what did Genie and Dorothy have to say about all of this?
In short, they implied that we, the members of the PPJPC who wanted to meet inside the PPJPC rented building, were violence-prone, and they used a bunch of excessive religiosity about Gandhi to do so! They mixed their own liberal religious beliefs together with what they see as the teachings of the Hindu religious leader, Gandhi. Here is how they justified the current board director calling the police on us,
‘Many who consider themselves “peace activists” across the globe engage in tactics, which fail to engender peace. PPJPC is deeply committed to nonviolence and will neither engage nor support activism employing tactics inconsistent with Ghandian nonviolence.’
Genie and Dorothy, I might ask you both, what is ‘Gandhian’ nonviolent about suggesting we are violence-prone when we are not that in the least? You do the rather violence-prone Colorado Springs municipal police a big favor in labeling others amongst the PPJPC and general public in such a manner. You are actually encouraging police violence against us with this sort of rhetoric against us, who are all people that have in fact never engaged in any violent acts at all. In short, you are playing a game of Holier-Than-Thou and The Independent was absolutely correct in labeling and titling that as being ‘Malice in the Movement’.
What also is Gandhi-like in calling the police on us to tell us that we were supposedly trespassing by holding a nonviolent meeting, of all things? What is nonviolent in locking us out from the meeting we wanted to do inside of the PPJPC building, not out on the sidewalk? And most of all, what is nonviolent in a PPJPC organized to have a single membership meeting per year? That is undemocratic community organization, not nonviolence.
This is the real issue of concern, not whether to be tactically violent, as you falsely imply that it is. We tried to hold our meeting because we want some internal democracy within the PPJPC where now there isn’t any.
We want a group not controlled by paid office staff eating up tens of thousands of donated dollars in their salaries each year, just to run the group autocratically as they determine activities of their own making for non paid volunteers to carry out. This is non-sustainable situation in the long run, and it would be much better to help work out something, instead of locking members out of the PPJPC offices. Currently the group is headed towards a financial shipwreck and that is the Big Issue. The PPJPC has no real membership accountability at this time to check their deficit spending.
We also want a board picked by the activist , than have board members pick their own replacements beforehand and then present it as pre-determined fate to the rest of us who have no current voice in PPJPC policies. Most of all, we want a PPJPC that is not crippled by police interference into our own internal affairs. This has led to those who now hobnob at the police station with the cops in secret meetings then arranging affairs of the PPJPC where the cops are called out on other PPJPC members less religiously inclined than yourselves.
Most of all, this is about trying to make the PPJPC into something other than a religious-run clique, but into a true body of diverse people that for many different reasons are against the US government’s global militarism. You two are opposed to doing so, and hide behind the figure of Gandhi to oppose those who are. The religious and those not religious must be united in a Peace movement, not separated as you would have done.
Disagree with us if you will, but do not falsely label those who differ with you as being less non-nonviolent than yourselves. You are doing the work of the violence-eager police force and local government bodies when you do so. We respect your religious beliefs in nonviolence, but we ask you to not try to force these relgious beliefs that you have off on all others as you have currently justified doing so with your current letter to The Colorado Springs Independent.
We look forward to working with you together in the future as in the past inside the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission.
The division in Denver amongst groups supposedly building protests at the Democratic Party National Convention offers us a prime example of how excessive preaching of ‘nonviolence’ in a religious manner can actually encourage police violence against the protesters who are the most critical of the dominant political establishment.
Groups allied with the United For Peace and Justice coalition split off from Recreate ’68 claiming that the leaders were not sufficiently committed to being nonviolent. By doing so, they gave the police rhetorical backup for anything they might do at the DNC to protesters that come to protest the politics as usual agenda of the Democratic Party. This split was a divisive blow against having a united Left political organization focusing on advocating Progressive ideas at the big event, which the DNC represents in the US, and those who arrive to protest will find themselves in the streets with a split organizing leadership, all due to the rather sectarian religious rhetoric of the ‘nonviolence’ preachers.
The truth is, the Democratic Party tied leaders of the United for Peace and Justice don’t really want that much of a real protest at the DNC because most of these UFPJ leaders’ are tied to the philosophy of voting for the so-called lesser of two evils. They plan to encourage people to vote for the Democratic Party candidate. The non-violence issue has allowed them an excuse to make the protest against the Democratic Party smaller, divided, and inconsequential. Further it allows them to label their political opponents in the Peace Movement, those not tied to the Democratic Party like they are, as being unreasonable agitators who want confrontation, which is actually how the corporate press of this country wants to portray all protesters.
The reality is that there are no members of the Recreate ’68 coalition that are violence prone, and everybody wants the protests at the DNC to be nonviolent. However, the ‘I am more nonviolent than you’ preaching from the Alliance for Real Democracy crowd has obscured that, something that can only help create greater police violence and not less.
‘Bicyclist, Christopher Long, 29, was charged with blocking traffic, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, and assault, prosecutors said.’ (from CNET news) To see this bicyclist assault a NYPD ‘peace officer’ go to youtube video of incident.
Shades of St. Patricks Day here in Colorado Springs a while back…
We are not alone in Colorado Springs of having a pattern of police abuse of citizens exercising their right to assemble peacefully. This Tuesday Los Angeles saw a police ambush of the predominantly Hispanic crowd during the May Day rally there.
See this youtube video for good footage of this May Day attack Also see Video as police go after cameraman and kick him to ground. And less one think that this police violence in LA is anything less than routine, then check out this video of the LA police in action in 2006.
However, there is city government condemnation in LA of what happened there May Day, unlike with how Colorado Spring’s city government is currently relating to how its police have acted in their attacks on peaceful citizens in events here.