Protestors storm Capitol
by Boyd Fletcher
The Metropolitan
 Matthew
D. Jonas / The Metropolitan
A protestor runs from an American flag he doused in gasoline and set on fire while marching down Broadway Avenue into oncoming traffic at a "Democracy in the Streets" demonstration Nov. 3, 2004.
A
group of about 150 protestors rallied at Civic Center Park Nov. 3 to speak
out against the recent elections and march through downtown in protest,
ending up in a confrontation with Denver police and a local television
station.
The event was loosely put together by e-mails and flyers, which read
“Democracy in the Streets,” and urged participants to bring
pots and pans to create noise and show their opposition to the recent
election.
Sgt. Michael Pace of the Downtown Motorcycle Unit said the police were
informed that day about the protest by flyers that had been posted downtown.
According to Creative Resistance members, the rally wasn’t organized
by any one group, partly for legal reasons, and partly because people
were there to express their anger over many different issues.
People began to show up around 6 p.m., walking from all directions, many
banging skillets and carrying signs.
Cody, 21, a computer securities student at Front Range community college,
carried a sign that read, “RIGGED: DON’T BUY THE LIE.”
“I don’t believe the way this election was carried is legit,”
said Cody, 21, referenced George Orwell’s novel 1984 when declining
to give his last name. “With an administration who has proven to
have no scruples when it comes to lying, why should we trust these electronic
machines that leave no record?”
At around 6:20 p.m. Metro student Tom Mestnik, using a portable public
address system, urged the crowd to take action for what they feel is right,
even though this election might have discouraged them. Mestnik said the
rally was not just against George W. Bush, but against the process by
which our elections are decided and the dominance of the two major political
parties.
“There comes a time when the actions of the machine become so odious
that you don’t want to participate,” Mestnik said.
Mestnik presided over the handful of speakers, who ranged from small
business owners to students to professors.
 Kristin Skvorc / The Metropolitan
A group of roughly 150 people gathered Nov. 3 to protest the election process. The protest, loosely put together via e-mails and flyers, was titled "Democracy in the Streets" and lasted about two and a half hours and ended in confrontation with the police and the media.
“We
need a great movement that can challenge this system and overthrow it,”
said Alan Gilbert, a political science professor at the University of
Denver. Gilbert, like many other protestors, is opposed to electronic
computer voting which is run by private businesses and leaves no auditable
records behind.
Marilyn Megenity, owner of the Mercury Café, sang a song in protest
from the point of view of the Bush administration praising electronic
voting. Megenity said in her song that Diebold, manufacturer of more than
75,000 electronic voting machines, helped the Bush administration to win
the election.
Igor Rakin, a junior-high history teacher at a juvenile prison, said
that until we approach the teaching of American history with more honesty,
the problems we are seeing now will continue.
“If we don’t teach them what was, they will never know what
is,” Rakin said.
“The biggest myth is that we live in a democracy, when it is actually
ruled by fear,” said Nathan Jeffries, 18, who was at the event to
protest the current administration as well as the electoral process.
After the speeches, the crowd marched out of the park to Lincoln Avenue
in front of the capitol chanting “One, we are the people. Two, a
little bit louder. Three, we want justice for the whole world, one…”
The protestors then marched through the streets of downtown Denver to
Larimer with a police escort, where they turned and marched back toward
the capitol down the 16th street mall, picking up protestors along the
way. The protestors chanted and made noise with the pots, pans, buckets
and whatever else they had thought to carry.
Some protestors knocked over fencing from street side café’s
and trashcans, only to have them picked back up and set into place by
those following behind them.
“That’s not what this is about,” yelled a girl after
a fence outside of a seafood restaurant was pushed over by protestors
in front of her.
The police left the crowd as the march came back to the capitol, where
the protestors gathered on the steps chanting, “Not our president,
not our war,” and “When you say get back, we say fight back!”
Rhonda Ntepp, a professor of criminal justice at Metro, joined the crowd
marching through downtown and followed them to the capitol. Ntepp urged
the crowd that if they wanted to be heard they must get the media involved
by getting the police involved. Ntepp informed the crowd that walking
in the street would be considered jaywalking, which is a misdemeanor.
“I’m not saying do anything illegal, but we won’t be
heard unless we can get the police to participate,” Ntepp said to
the crowd from the top of the steps.
The protestors then marched un-accompanied from the capitol south down
Lincoln Avenue in the street, blocking the northbound, one-way traffic
in all lanes. Police motorcycles and cruisers began to drive through to
the front of the crowd blaring sirens and ordering them to move to the
side of the street.
The crowd continued to march in the street until hitting a roadblock
at 11th Street of four police cruisers and about 10 officers who had gathered
to keep the crowd from further disrupting traffic. As the crowd stood
in the street chanting, the officers began to pass out chemical spray
and riot handcuffs to each other.
According to Ntepp, the police then said to her, as the crowd moved from
the capitol, that they were not going to write tickets for jaywalking,
but they wanted to make sure the crowd was safe.
The standoff lasted less than five minutes before Ntepp arranged for
the police to escort the crowd, in the street, the remaining two blocks
to the Channel 4 building, where she said they wanted to speak to the
media about their message.
The crowd reached the station, and began to file into the empty lobby,
again chanting
“One, we are the people. Two, a little bit louder. Three, we want
justice for the whole world.”
A security guard came down and spoke with Ntepp who was waiting in the
lobby, and asked her and the remaining protestors to leave, saying that
no one would be coming to talk to them.
As the crowd left the lobby and overhang of the Channel 4 building, other
local media stations that had shown up to cover the story met them.
“We are here to express our dissent, and to say the young vote
is not stupid,” Ntepp said to a Channel 7 cameraman. “Our
problem with the media is that we get one side of the story.”
Other people voiced their reasons for protesting to the cameras, including
Erika Veil, 37, an election observer in Colorado Springs, who said she
witnessed voters being turned away from the polls for illegal reasons.
“I watched them turn away Hispanics because they couldn’t
fill out the green card,” Veil said, referring to the green card
handed to voters asking them to fill out their information and give their
signature. “They said if you can’t understand it to fill it
out, then you can’t vote. That’s illegal.”
The protest ended around 8:30 p.m., after the police asked the crowd
to stay on the sidewalk so they could re-open the blocked lanes of traffic.
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