The designated protest area at the Democratic National Convention was empty Monday. Many protest groups are opting to take their messages elsewhere in Denver. (Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff)
Protesters at Democratic convention fly the ‘cage’
They've come to Denver for countless causes, but they almost uniformly reject the designated protest zone.
By Ariel Sabar | Staff writer/ August 27, 2008 edition
Denver – They’re outside city offices, in parks, on the capitol steps and near the US Mint. But the one place most protesters here are avoiding is the official demonstration zone, a fenced-in parking lot near the Democratic National Convention that activists here mockingly call “the freedom cage.”
The 47,000-square-foot zone is hemmed by rows of metal barricades and concrete barriers and watched over by uniformed Secret Service agents. Views of the Pepsi Center convention site, some 700 feet away, are blocked by a giant tent housing news media.
On Monday afternoon, a couple hours after the convention kicked off, the zone was an asphalt desert. A microphone stood on a lonely stand. A Canadian documentary crew waited for protesters who never came. An official sign-up sheet near a low-rise platform was a study in sarcasm.
Requesting the 7 a.m. slot was one “G. Washington,” who listed his cause as “You can’t cage freedom.” At 11:30 p.m., “B. Obama.” Topic: “Hope for Cages.”
“It’s so far away, it’s surrounded by cops, it’s just ridiculous,” said William Aanstoos, a college dropout from Asheville, N.C., with a yellow bandana around his neck who came to see the site after taking part in antiwar rallies elsewhere in the city. “I don’t think anyone is taking it seriously.”
The American Civil Liberties Union and several protest groups sued Denver and the Secret Service over the zone earlier this summer and lost. A federal judge ruled that the zone didn’t infringe on free speech because convention delegates would pass within 200 feet on their walk into the Pepsi Center, and no trees or other objects would block sight lines to that walkway.
Unlike the “free speech zone” at the Democratic convention in Boston in 2004, where protesters were corraled behind concrete barriers away from the convention site, delegates inside the secure convention perimeter here can walk within eight feet of the protest zone.
The Secret Service says the barricades and large police presence are critical precautions against tossed explosives, car bombs, and other threats to security at the convention, home this week to the stars of the Democratic Party, including two former presidents.
“The legal requirement is that those expressing their freedom of speech are within reach of the delegates,” Malcolm Wiley, a Secret Service spokesman at the Denver Joint Information Center, said in a phone interview. “The requirement isn’t that you see the building.”
Even so, most protesters are taking their message elsewhere, many to a constellation of 13 parks within a mile of the Pepsi Center.
One of the most active groups is Recreate 68, an alliance of anticorporate and antiwar protesters that has demonstration permits every day of the convention. But rallies and parades have also being staged by groups pitching everything from immigrant rights, women’s equality, and Ralph Nader to lower fuel costs, legal marijuana, and a united Jerusalem.
Police have so far been underwhelmed. A parade permitted for 25,000 Sunday drew just 1,000, according to the city. A march on Monday was so small that police reopened closed streets.
As of Tuesday night, the city had reported 135 convention-related arrests. Most occurred Monday night, when police say a crowd of 300 disrupting traffic near Civic Center Park refused requests to disperse and then rushed a police line.
Suspects were charged with disobeying orders, obstructing a public street, and interference, violations of city ordinances. But most events have been peaceful, officials say.
On Monday afternoon, Bob Kunst, a Miami man who is president of Shalom International, a pro-Israel group, stood outside an entrance to the convention site with a sign that read “Obama BAD for America and Israel.”
His group had planned a demonstration that evening in the official protest zone, but after seeing it he had second thoughts. The site is several blocks from roads accessible to cars, and he worried about whether some of his group’s elderly supporters would survive the walk.
“It’s not fair to hold everyone hostage to a few crazies,” he griped. “They’re treating everyone like a criminal. Who are we catering to with this type of paranoia?”
Comments
2. Gavin | 08.27.08
Like everything else in America, the convention is canned and packaged into “palatible” portions that are easy to digest by by the sheep-like hordes of this once-great country.
3. john | 08.27.08
Once great country? What drugs are you on?? last I checked, I had a great job, making good pay. I feel safe when i walk outside, and everywhere i go ( besides the ghettos for obvious reasons…). This is a great country and we got here by doing what we have been doing. Why throw it all in a bag and shake it up just to see what comes out. Just because you may have fallen on hard times doesn’t mean this country has gone down the tubes. Granted, half the people in this country are total sheep.. but that’s another story.
No to socialism, No to Obama.
4. Dave | 08.27.08
According to the Census Bureau 18% of our children are below the poverty line.
Meanwhile we’re hemorrhaging hundreds of billions overseas to pay for a war against people who didn’t attack us until we got over there. And the war against the people who actually did attack us goes under-funded and under-manned.
Great country, there #3.
No to corporate welfare, no-bid contracts, myopic and aggressive foreign policy. No to the shredding of the 4th Amendment, and the hegemony of the Christian Right. No to yet another president born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who admits he doesn’t understand economics or technology.
No to McCain.
5. Kevin | 08.27.08
Have you seen the Obama W2???
Silver spoon Dave???
Heck I would rather see John or Dave as the next president than either of these two.
6. Big City | 08.27.08
“According to the Census Bureau 18% of our children are below the poverty line.”
Isn’t it funny that the vast majority of those poor kids live in cities that have been run by democrats for decades.
7. Deborah | 08.27.08
Yeah we’re a Great Country. That’s why we have protestors caged in at political conventions. That’s why we have poorly-educated citizens who think Obama is akin to a “socialist.” That’s why AT&T paid for a party for “blue dog” democrats to reward them for giving telecoms immunity from prosecution for breaking the law and spying on Americans after 9/11. And that’s why there has been no media coverage of that party and little mention of the fact that AT&T is funding a large portion of the costs of this convention. And that’s why there are still Americans who really think that there is some vast and enormous difference between the DNC and the RNC.
No to McCain, but keep the pressure on Obama to make good on his promises to redirect this country.
8. 8hyest | 08.27.08
To: John who said…
“Once great country? What drugs are you on?? last I checked, I had a great job, making good pay. I feel safe when i walk outside, and everywhere i go ( besides the ghettos for obvious reasons…). This is a great country and we got here by doing what we have been doing. Why throw it all in a bag and shake it up just to see what comes out. Just because you may have fallen on hard times doesn’t mean this country has gone down the tubes. Granted, half the people in this country are total sheep.. but that’s another story.
No to socialism, No to Obama.”
Spoken like a true capitalist American. You could have summed it up by stating the unspoken American motto: Hurray for me and screw you.
9. mikee | 08.27.08
It’s scary when you look at old tapes from the sixties. The sixties! We’re not talking horse and buggy. We’re talking hippies, incense, free love, Jimmy Hendrix. SO MUCH MORE FREEDOM! It’s scary. For if freedom has withered so in forty years, how much less freedom will there be in forty more?
10. starryperdun | 08.27.08
Odd, no mention of the ABC reporter arrested for doing his job:
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 28, 2008; Page A28
DENVER, Aug. 27 — An ABC News producer was arrested outside a downtown hotel here Wednesday while he and a camera crew tried to shoot footage of corporate donors leaving a meeting with a group of Democratic senators.
Asa Eslocker, who works with the network’s investigative unit, was charged with trespass, interference and failure to follow a lawful order. He was released four hours later on a $500 bond.
“We expect to see this kind of behavior in Myanmar, not in Denver, Colorado, at a national political convention where a reporter is trying to videotape big-money donors trying to meet with elected officials,” said ABC spokesman Jeffrey Schneider.
Footage of the incident showed one police officer pushing Eslocker as the producer backpedaled across the street, and another officer placing his hand around Eslocker’s neck. Eslocker kept saying that it was a public street and asking what law he was violating. Schneider said Esocker never entered the Brown Palace Hotel, where the meeting was taking place.
The footage was shown on ABC’s “World News” last night. Eslocker was working with chief investigative reporter Brian Ross, who does stories on conventions and donors every four years. Schneider said the arrest was initiated by an off-duty sheriff’s officer working as a security guard for the Brown Palace.
Jamie Glennon, a spokeswoman for Denver’s Joint Information Center, said Eslocker “was advised numerous times by the police before he was apprehended to stop blocking the sidewalk and entryway to the hotel.”
11. nobama | 08.27.08
Obama is a 3 yr senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name.
Obama has shifted his stance on 5 major policies.
Obama has lifted parts of speeches from no less than 4 different major speechwriters.
Obama voted FOR FISA and telecomm immunity.
Joe Biden is on record for saying that Obama is not ready to lead America.
Obama is receiving more corporate money for his presidential run than any other candidate in U.S. history.
Obama supports increasing capital gains tax…kiss your pensions goodbye.
Obama is not “working class” claiming $983,626 on his 2006 tax return. In 2005, 1.65 million.
Obama and Bush support Gun rights.
Obama and Bush think mental distress should not justify late term abortion.
Obama and Bush support the death penalty.
Obama voted for FISA making Bush VERY happy.
Pepsi Center DNC Convention = 21,000 seats…Obama somehow needs 76,000
As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, Obama has not produced a single notable piece of scholarship.
Obama voted “present” nearly 130 times while in the US Senate in Illinios.
Obama was for complete overhaul of campaign financing BEFORE throwing it out the window and refusing public campaign financing.
Obama’s Running mate will help him lose: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12850.html
12. Justin | 08.27.08
I love how the McCain supporter called half of Americans “Sheep”.
Pretty sure you know what half he’s talking about.
13. gergllud | 08.27.08
The loss of our feedoms can be likened to the decaying orbit of any falling body. I guess we have to ask ourselves — it is better to burnout or just fade away?
The rest of your freedoms will be gone in ten years……not forty.
14. Rural Poverty | 08.28.08
To “knee jerk” number 6–Poverty is actually pretty evenly spread between urban and rural. So there are plenty of poor people in all those tweener red counties run by the lovable boss Tweed. The rural poor however have a greater pecentage who are white. For example 38% of white rural children are in low income houses (not poverty level) and make up 60% of the total low income rural children.
The perception that poverty is an urban problem is because most people in red areas don’t think that the single mother serving them their flap jacks is barely above the poverty line and well below the low income line.
http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/publications/IB_UrbanRuralChildren08.pdf
15. Nelson Robison | 08.28.08
The idea of “Security” has become a stumbling block to the ideal of Free Speech and the right to make our voices heard by the delegates to the election conventions. With the advent of electronic surveillance and the tracking of the movement of all protesters in this country, we are now at the brink of a controlled state which in plain words is fascist and totalitarian in nature.
The founding fathers never envisioned a time when you could address your ideas and the wrongs that have been done, to the delegates to a nominating convention.
Frankly, George Washington in one of his last speeches as president cautioned Americans to beware of partisan politics, saying it would be the downfall of our form of government.
No longer are the presidential candidates accessible to the people, except if you have large amounts of money to give to the “cause.”
This is abominable and heretical in the utmost, no access means no voice in the nominating process. No access means no voice to air our grievances with how we think that this country is being run.
Television ads and large scale rallies do not make for conversation and hearing from one side or the other. To do this you need copious amounts of cash, to be able to give to the election committee of one or another candidate.
The only candidate that did not do this was not allowed to continue his run for the presidency, the Main Stream Media made sure that the people did not hear his message and was not allowed into the debates by the TV networks.
Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, would have turned this country around, yet candidates like him and Rep. Ron Paul, were not given the time of day.
The process of electing a president should be overhauled and the electoral college should be on the scrap-heap of bad ideas.
The people’s voices should be heard and must be heard if this country is to continue to be a government of by and for the people.
16. willie | 08.28.08
the reason there is poverty for many in the U.S. is due to drug use and mental illness… it certainly can’t be for an unwillingness to complete public education and work, can it? or a willingness to save for retirement? if you think things are bad now, just wait until retirees outnumber workers - there will be much gnashing of teeth, wailing, and whining among those who failed to live frugal, productive lives - and of course, it will all be the fault of [fill-in-the-blank’s] administration - another indication of the mindless constituency that increasingly places the emphasis, blame, and problem-solving on the Executive branch of Federal government, and not the Legislative.
17. lorac | 09.08.08
As long as there are hungry, abused, and underhoused people in this country it is a sham. As long as corporate entities suck the most they can from a populace that has been taught to think a trip to Walmart is entertainment, we are headed for mediocrity at the best and complete destruction at the worst. Community and care for our fellows must guide the ship and politics as usual from corporate funded and selfish politicians and their lobbyists is inexcusable for a true democracy. This election is scary as the candidates we are given as well as the hidden backing they are recieving seems to be creating a fantasy for those who dont look closely and there are many.
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1. C M Fisher | 08.27.08
Once again, the Monitor’s coverage of the Obama campaign seems intensely skewed to the negative and misleading. Here in this article about the”cage” - headlined - one has to search and dig to determine that this cage was not a decision of the Democratic Party, but the city of Denver. But that is certainly not the implication of the headline. In years of Monitor reading, I have never seen its coverage of a political campaign so blatantly biased.