Posted on 04/18/2008 5:10:20 AM PDT by Libloather
Denver won't 'cage protesters' at DNC
By Chuck Plunkett
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 04/17/2008 04:38:57 PM MDT
Protesters will not be confined to "cages" during the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and the city wants to get away from the long lines of shoulder-to-shoulder, riot-gear-clad police that typified security at the national conventions in Boston and New York, Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown said today.
"We don't want to provoke violence," Brown said.
Brown said he talked with Mayor John Hickenlooper on Wednesday and that the two discussed "trying to get away from having lines of police officers."
Brown later asserted: "We aren't going to cage protesters."
The councilman made his comments before a group of about 50 students and others at the University of Denver law school, where local law groups are sponsoring a four-day series of workshops and discussions that offer training and tips for activists and protesters planning to demonstrate in and around convention week.
Brown participated in a noontime panel discussion with Glenn Spagnuolo, a representative for Re-create 68, the Denver-based umbrella group for war protesters and other activists that has said it will occupy Civic Center day and night throughout the convention, which runs Aug. 25 to Aug. 28.
Spagnuolo had charged that Denver planned to keep protesters as much as a mile away from the Pepsi Center, where the convention is to be held, saying he had it "on good authority" that the security perimeter would extend in a mile radius around the arena. Spagnuolo also reminded the group that protesters in Boston, where the Democrats held their convention in 2004, were contained behind security fencing far from the convention hall.
Details of the perimeter have not been released, but Mike Dino, who leads the Denver committee responsible for hosting the convention, told a group of business executives at the Pepsi Center this morning that the one-mile radius was a rumor and not true.
Brown said he expected details of the perimeter to be released in six to eight weeks.
Spagnuolo has said the city "is creating a very dangerous situation" because it awarded, in a blind lottery, a permit for Civic Center on the Sunday before the convention begins to the host committee's party planner. But he also has said that his group is nonviolent, and he repeated that claim several times today.
"They're trying their hardest to repeat a mantra that this group is going to engage in violence," Spagnuolo said. "That's a distraction to avoid focusing on the real violence that our country is perpetrating around the world."
I will see your "recreate '68" and raise you a 2008...
Don’t worry about inviting violence, it’ll show up anyway. Who invites violence? What an asinine comment. Those anarchists will throw a brick through a Salvation Army window, they’ll attack anyone and anything they feel like, and you show up to the workshop that they used to organize it.
If the DNC wants to be true to their “liberal” policies they should let all the protesters into the convention hall.
Brown said he talked with Mayor John Hickenlooper on Wednesday and that the two discussed "trying to get away from having lines of police officers."
Brown later asserted: "We aren't going to cage protesters."
Typical pantywaist liberal thinking.
Maintaining civil order = provoking violence.
Pass the popcorn.
How do you provoke... what's already the stated agenda of 'Recreate 68' ?????
My advice to the triage centers in Denver... STOCK UP ON BODY-BAGS!
Green light, R-'68; time to trash Denver!
"Tantrums by children" are similarly illogical.
“We don’t want to provoke violence,” Brown said”
Great idea here: just give the police the week off, let them have some family time, relax with a brew and a ball game and the protesters will surely not be provoked. And if they are, peace and reason will regain the upper hand and there will be utopia in Denver.
Protesters = Lucy, Charlie. Rots o’ ruck with your strategy.
Anybody who has seen Spagnuolo and his comrades in action at the Columbus Day Parade knows that he is a liar.
Avoid the Summer rush,
buy your popcorn supplies now!
Makes me really glad I don’t live in Denver, and won’t need to visit there during this fiasco. Prayers up for the good people in Denver who will get caught up in this mess.
If I were a Denver business owner, I’d be closing down my shop and moving out of the city permanently before the nutjobs trash the commerce district during the convention.
I say issue every left-wing group a 2x4 upon arrival, and let them go at it.....
I had an idea earlier for setting up a kiosk near the Convention Center and selling rocks to anarchists. I’d call them “Weapons of Modest Destruction” and price them at $1 each. Could also sell sheets of plywood to first floor merchants — “Missile Defense Shields.” That idea sounds more and more profit-making as time goes on.
I’m going. I am selling, “My lefty parents got beaten up at Recreate-68 and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” shirts.
Man, this going to be such fun to watch.
Yup. I just can’t decide whether I want a large police presence or none. Businesses should have some protection, of course, but replacing those riot shields and helmets after extended use might be pretty pricey.
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