The Denver cops had no heads to bash at this Democratic convention — not that they wanted to, of course.
This wasn’t 1968, when Chicago police bloodied anti-establishment protesters and national news reporters alike, turning the streets into a bloody riot and upsetting the party’s chances at a White House seat.
Big crowds of protesters were expected in Denver this year. The city was ready with an army of police — and a new law to prevent people from throwing fecal matter in the streets.
Protesters said they were going to “Recreate ’68.” They weren’t talking about the violence — they were talking about the spirit of dissent. But when it came time to hit the streets, relatively few protesters were to be found out Denver’s Democratic Convention Monday. And the mood was so tame that at least one cop was begging dissidents to ramp it up.
Forget ’68. This wasn’t even 2004.
(In one notable exception, police used tear gas Monday night to disperse a small group of protesters outside a hotel, and made more than 50 arrests. Details here.)
Officials have set up a 47,000-square foot protesting zone near the Pepsi Center, hub of convention activity.
Protesters Monday boycotted the pen for its distance away from the delegates. By late afternoon, when the convention crowds poured in, cops from Aurora County, Colo. appeared to be half-asleep. One read a book inside a car. Another rested his head on a sand bag.
Inside, the cage was almost empty save for a Mexican absurdist group and two Canadian filmmakers.
Unlike the legendary club-wielders from Chicago, the Colorado cops had a sweeter touch.
“Entertain us a little more,” pleaded an unnamed cop as the absurdists pedaled away on bicycles.
There were protests in some parts of town.
An afternoon rally about homosexuality spurred a clash between protest and counter-protest and resulted in one arrest.
A total of 13 people were arrested Sunday and Monday for convention-related behavior, according to Denver police. Charges included disobedience, false information and trespassing. A local police watchdog group reported no police brutality.
A group called the Recreate ’68 Alliance held a morning march from a downtown park to the federal court to protest the U.S. detainment of political prisoners. The march drew several hundred people, some clad in bright orange prison jumpsuits. Monday’s midday capstone rally was lackluster, too — participation dwindled to fewer than a hundred.
Mumia’s Long-Distance View
Outside federal court, the group played a taped message recorded from death row by prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was jailed for killing a police officer in Philadelphia 27 years ago.
In his taped message, the prisoner called today’s convention environment “more repressive” than ’68. “So much for respect for the Constitution,” he charged. “Now, as in L.A. 2000, you can get your ass whipped in a cage. That is what democracy looks like in 2008.”
Veteran protesters looking on, however, had a different take.
Ben Masel, 53, stumbled across the protest, on his one-man tour around town with a sign that read “Stop Government Spying.” He wore long hair in a ponytail and a shirt reading “I Love Big Brother.” Taking a break from his citywide tour to sit in the grass, he told of why he Denver’s high up on his list of free-speech convention cities.
Back in 1972 in Miami Beach, Masel joined fellow Zippies who stomped on top of a bus that had been dismantled near the presidential convention by tire-slashers. A buddy poured water under the vehicle and pretended it was gasoline, he said. “He threatened to blow it up.”
In 2000, at the Democratic convention in Los Angeles, he got beaten 13 times by a billy club when he refused to stop a theatrical yelling skit about Fourth Amendment rights.
“I was doing a lot of tai chi, so I could avoid the blows,” said Masel. He rolled with the punches and came away with one big bruise to the calf.
The veteran protester flew to Denver this year from Madison, Wis., to “test the emergency free speech system” outside the historic convention. This time around, Masel has been having a more peaceful time.
When he took his “Stop Government Spying” sign to downtown Denver, he was met with a more reasoned approach than the billy clubs of Chicago and L.A.
Sunday night, he hoisted his sign on the sidewalk outside an AT&T-sponsored party for Dems. He was protesting the retroactive amnesty for companies that participated with Bush-ordered warrantless wiretapping — an amnesty that the party’s presumptive nominee, Barack Obama, approved.
Someone told him to get off the sidewalk, claiming it was “private,” according to Masel. The protester refused. He said he lucked out and came across a cop who reasoned with him. Instead of arresting him, the cop did some homework and found out the sidewalk was public, after all. So the one-man picket show went on.
Lifelong protester Russell Bates, 61, (pictured) said tactics have changed since he first started shaking his fist against the government after serving in the Vietnam War. He’s been arrested 25 times, he said — for failure to disperse, disobeying cops and once for “inciting a riot.”
Monday, he was having a quieter time, resting on a patch of grass, taping up a blister from his new hiking boots. He flew down from Berkley, CA to take part in a group named Cop Watch that looks out for police brutality.
Bates said over the decades, he’s developed a new weapon, too — a hand-held video camera, ready to upload to YouTube for all the world to see. So far in Denver, he hasn’t had to utilize the power of the Web. The 15-20 members of Cop Watch haven’t come across any police brutality in Denver, he said.
“Police here have been pretty restrained,” he said.
Just as magnitude of the protests more subdued than expected, so are the tactics.
Acting on rumors that protesters would be chucking feces or urine at convention-goers, the city of Denver cracked down on the practice, banning possession of feces within city limits.
So far, the feared nastiness has not come to fruition, according to the joint Denver police information center. As of 1 p.m. Monday, no one had been arrested for breaking that fecal law, police said.
“It’s A Joke”
Back at the Pepsi Center, where the biggest media swarm in the world buzzed with the country’s politicians, a few youngsters on bikes wheeled into the official protesting cage.
“We are Mexican absurdists,” announced a young man, standing on a four-by-four wooden platform that served as a stage.
“We gave them those microphones,” said an onlooking Aurora cop, as a crew of five bored deputy sheriffs perked up at the sudden activity.
“We are here to preserve the tradition of Mexican absurdists,” announced the man. To the disappointment of police, who were seated at the perimeter of the cage, the show didn’t last much longer.
A second group of cops, sitting on a wall outside the cage’s two iron fences, pleaded for the show to last longer, “so we don’t have to sit here another three hours.”
The cage had been largely empty, cops said, since a morning protest by a pro-choice group called Code Pink. The protesters complained of being shut up in a pen, the cops said.
“They started heckling us. They said they were caged in,” said an Aurora deputy sheriff. “I said, no, we’re caged in.
When the absurdists left, only a few wandering members of the press remained inside. A handful of three Canadian filmmakers scanned the empty cage, zooming in on another reporter.
The cameraman, Pablo, said his group is making a film about the Green Party. He took his headphones off for a minute to respond to a reporter’s inquiries shouted through the cage. What did the visitor think of the pen?
“It’s a joke,” said Pablo, gesturing to the empty pavement.