Protesters gather, squads of police emerge

Carlo Garcia never should have gone to jail on Tuesday. Neither should have Alicia Forrest, though she should have known the cops always come for those who question, even legitimately, why they are arresting someone else.

The odd thing is, they weren't at first going to arrest Alicia Forrest, even after one officer dropped her right in the park grass with his baton. She had gotten up and was talking with reporters when suddenly she was hauled away.

An even stranger thing is that now, three days into convention-week demonstrations and protests, the number of people arrested so far wouldn't fill much more than a couple sheriff's buses.

Four years ago, with the Republicans in New York, the number of people hauled off to jail on the first day was larger than the population of many eastern plains towns.

I spent most of Tuesday trying to understand this difference.

On nomination night four years ago, the largest number of police officers visible on the Manhattan streets in one place was maybe six. Another six might be a full city block away.

With $50 million to spend on security, Denver, it seems, has hired every cop in Colorado - many stationed in Civic Center. This is fine if you are a delegate or visiting celebrity to this fine city; you could fairly pin your money in your hair and not be bothered.

But it is pretty much your backside if you have decided to spend the week protesting or demonstrating anything.

I have watched this dance to date.

Protesters gather and pick up their signs in Civic Center. Police officers, almost all of them in riot helmets and full armor, emerge from the shadows of the trees and move along the sidelines of the park with them.

Cheers, chanting and already loud guys on megaphones draw them closer. Other police teams soon emerge. Depending on the level of the shouting, chanting and cheering, mounted policemen arrive.

This is how Carlo Garcia went to jail. He was shouting at a group of gay-hating and baiting bigots who'd taken up the demonstration spot he and his group had long ago secured a permit from the city to occupy.

Rather than go after the gay-hating and baiting knuckleheads, the riot cops came for Carlo Garcia. Alicia Forrest never should have attempted to show them the error of their ways.

When Glenn Spagnuolo of the Re-create 68 group arrived with a host of media to explain his version of what had happened Monday night, in which some 100 people were arrested, we were surrounded at police headquarters by, you guessed it, yet another swarm of police officers in riot gear.

Trust me, it makes you shake a little. All you can think is that you are just doing your job.

Had I weeks ago thought of participating in a demonstration, I would have turned and walked home the minute I arrived at Civic Center and seen the flotillas of slow-driving police SUVs with riot policemen hanging off the sides.

I would have looked at the dark figures beneath the trees, the others on bicycles, motorcycles and on horseback. Sneeze wrong and I could be in jail.

"It is about keeping people away," Glenn Spagnuolo said after his news conference, during which he said his group will no longer negotiate with police because after Monday, "they cannot be trusted."

"I asked my dad to come down and walk with me," he said, "and he refused, saying he'd seen all the police officers, that getting arrested is a young man's game, one he didn't need."

"I do it for my conscience," he said of the sparse number of protesters. "I don't need a crowd with me. But I'll tell you, I am very proud of the people who have shown the courage to come out and march. They should be applauded. Instead, they are being arrested."

Sunsara Taylor, a spokesperson for the World Can't Wait group who was in the park Tuesday when the midday arrests occurred, voiced what everyone who was there agreed upon: The arrests were unneeded.

"They're here to scare us," she said. "What they are doing, it is working."

Indeed, it is.

It was just after 4 p.m. when I pulled up my bicycle to the Food Not Bombs tables in Civic Center where workers everyday feed the homeless.

It was the trigger point of Monday's mass arrests.

A few yards away, a squad of riot police stood. You could practically bathe in the unease.

God bless America.

Please.

Police Trap Peaceful Protesters in Denver

A calm political protest quickly turned chaotic as anxious Denver police surrounded protestors peacefully marching toward the Democratic National Convention Center. After trapping the crowd between two buildings, hundreds of officers used pepper spray, batons and unwarranted aggression. After being surrounded for 20 minutes, two ANP producers managed to escape after recording the whole affair.

DNC Protests: CodePink protester is slammed to the ground by police in Denver

A CodePink protester is knocked to the ground and later arrested when she did not move back fast enough after the Denver police made an arrest.

Unconventional Denver Offers to Call Off All DNC Protests

Before the steps of City Hall, anarchists with Unconventional Denver made an uncanny move, offering to call off all protests if the City of Denver granted one simple request- take the $50 million security budget intended to brutalize and repress free speech and instead invest it in the local communities of Denver.

7.28.08: Complete Text of Unconventional Denver Statement

Unconventional Denver, an anarchist and anti-authoritarian group organizing direct action to confront the Democratic National Convention this August, is here today on the steps of the City and County Building to make an offer. We are here to make clear our vision of a world where the needs of people and the earth guide our decisions and where democracy is direct and face to face. The heavily policed, corporate funded political spectacle coming to Denver at the end of August is yet another jarring example of how the government and its wealthy backers’ priorities are exactly the opposite.

We are here however, to give the City of Denver, Federal Government, and the DNC a chance to prove us wrong.

In a few minutes, the City Council of Denver will be meeting in the building behind us to discuss an emergency ordinance aimed at restricting what demonstrators can carry during the DNC and beyond. The peddlers of these enhanced police powers continue to insist that people looking to exercise free speech and stand up against a corrupt system will allegedly be carrying disgusting weapons such as “super soakers filled with urine.”

Anyone who takes a close look at the recent history of mass street protests in this country knows that there is no record of this ever happening. In fact, if you were to look back on protests, including those in Denver itself, you would not see images of fecal covered protesters terrorizing the public. What you would see instead are police forces again and again acting above their own laws. Police minimize and marginalize free speech through protest pens, unnecessary force and unjustified arrests, and through ridiculous, unnecessary ordinances such as the one before council today. Major court cases have come from New York, Seattle, Miami, Washington D.C. and other cities where the courts have found that the police intentionally brutalize protesters to silence their dissent and have been forced to pay out millions in damages and compensation to protesters they have systematically targeted. This exemplifes that the violence and lawlessness was not coming from protesters, but in fact the government itself.

And so in a way, local government officials and the corporate media are right about the coming violence that will descend on Denver. It is true that there is a group mobilizing forces from across the country and amassing exotic weapons they refuse to disclose to the public. They have a track record of inflicting violence on unarmed civilians and illegally spying on citizens working towards positive change. They even dress in black- they are the Denver Police and the various local, state and federal forces that will be transforming Denver into a miniature version of the occupation of Iraq when the DNC comes to town.

This invasion has been given one of the largest single allotments of any department in Denver history. The DNC comes to Denver with a $50 million dollars security budget — money that was tacked on to funding for the War in Iraq and approved by the Democrats. And like the war abroad, the militarization of Denver comes at an equally high cost. Imagine the Denver Public Schools receiving $50 million dollars for a week-long event. That money alone would be enough to re-open six of the schools closed last year. Or what if that money were invested in the healthcare program? It would provide 18,986 uninsured children with a year’s worth of healthcare they deserve. This would be a small but important step towards taking care of the more than 160,000 children in the Denver area without healthcare coverage. And yet, as anarchists, we know that this will never happen. Addressing the real needs of the people is not in the interest of the government or its wealthy backers.

There will be no democracy within the DNC. There will be no one sincerely addressing the grave problems the average person in the United States faces on a daily basis. There will only be a scripted political performance guarded by walls of heavily armed riot police as party insiders and corporate lobbyists live it up behind closed doors.

We, Unconventional Denver, have a different vision of what democracy is. We see democracy as direct; where decisions are made by those most affected, not those with the most money; where democracy penetrates every aspect of our lives; where the workers rather than CEOs decide how their workplace should look; where instead of incarcerating more people than any other country, we meet the needs of our children and raise them in loving communities. We seek a world where the land is seen for what it is, the source of life, not a piece of property to be exploited for profit. The government will never bring these visions to fruition; in fact it stands in the way of it. It will take us as people, organizing on a grassroots level to make the change we wish to see.

This is why we are taking to the streets. Enough is enough. This government does not care about meeting people’s needs. AT&T, Lockheed Martin, Coca Cola- Obama will serve the same big money that all politicians end up serving. As anarchists working towards dismantling this corrupt political system of violence and corporate greed, we are not going to allow this spectacle to go uninterrupted-

unless the City of Denver, the Federal Government and the Democratic Party can prove us wrong.

We have watched Obama ride a wave of political momentum based on a vague rhetoric of hope and change all the way here to Denver. We however, are demanding that real change be implemented immediately. If the Democrats want to show they are sincere and are going to depart from the sad state of politics in this country then they should start immediately…. and use the convention as an example.

So we come here today with this offer:
If the Democrats and their allies in the city government of Denver can show their good faith … can show they are immediately working for real positive change by using their 50 million dollar federal grant for something better than crushing democracy then we will change our plans. If they are willing to do this, then Unconventional Denver and hundreds of anarchists coming to town will sit this one out. We Anarchists are willing to call off all of our protests, if the democrats are willing to call off their occupation of Denver and re-invest their police budget toward real community security.

New elementary schools; healthcare for the uninsured; providing clean, renewable energy to the city- 50 million dollars could do all of this. If this money is used to concretely demonstrate that meeting people’s needs will be the top priority of the Democratic Party and the City of Denver instead of protecting the robber barons of today, we will spend the last week of August with our friends and family continuing our work of furthering our communities instead of direct action confronting the Democratic National Convention.

Otherwise…. we’ll see you in the streets.