Tag Archives: Democratic National Convention

Mother Jones at Denver Capitol steps

Mary Harris Jones in Denver

2008 rally at Democratic National Convention

August 2008 at the Denver Courthouse

Police crowd control at the Denver DNC, August 2008
Spending so much time at the courthouse for the Ward Churchill v CU case, I was prompted to review these yet-unseen photos from last August’s DNC, featuring… the Denver Courthouse!

Monday morning, August 25, 2008
Peacefully assembled demonstrators are protesting the arrest and brutalization of an R-68 organizer and a Code Pink activist. Chants of “LET THEM GO, LET THEM GO” prompt this response from the police.
Police crowd control at the Denver DNC, August 2008

Police crowd control at the Denver DNC, August 2008

Police crowd control at the Denver DNC, August 2008

Monday afternoon, August 25, 2008 same place
Police crowd control at the Denver DNC, August 2008

Police crowd control at the Denver DNC, August 2008

Police crowd control at the Denver DNC, August 2008

Police crowd control at the Denver DNC, August 2008

Police crowd control at the Denver DNC, August 2008

Police crowd control at the Denver DNC, August 2008

Police crowd control at the Denver DNC, August 2008

Police crowd control at the Denver DNC, August 2008

Obama presidential address to Congress addressed to dueling teleprompters

Obama addresses tele-prompters instead of Congress
I’m sorry, but I can no longer be awed by Barack Obama’s unfaltering eloquence, I’m too distracted. When our impressive speaker in chief addresses an audience, he looks from side to side, but never in between. Have you noticed that? We think he’s politely avoiding looking into the camera, but everyone sitting directly in front of him must feel like chopped liver, struck by how enamored he is of the teleprompters.

I’m beginning to wonder if Obama spoke this way from the start at the 2004 DNC, because now it seems he never doesn’t.

Press conference
Even at his first presidential press conference a couple weeks ago, Obama’s head swiveled from side to side, his eyes never panned. From other television camera angles we could see the reporters were arrayed right in front of him. Can you imagine sitting across the table from a dinner companion who can’t stop talking to his knife and fork?

A friend of mine was impressed that Obama’s answers were nine minutes long. I was starting to wonder at the inconsistency of the president choosing questions from reporters in the center, but then proceeding to mimic what I can only presume was a campaign whistle stop posture, speaking from the back of a train caboose, alternately addressing people on one side of the track, then the other.

Address to Congress
The image above, by the way, is grabbed from a network broadcast of last night’s address to Congress. This angle wasn’t shown on the White House streamed video, nor that of C-Span. Every TV director’s cut of our new president’s speech featured plenty of his DC audience, rising and clapping repeatedly, but the official version completely avoided this specific vantage point. As far as I could tell, it was the only angle they excluded.

Care to imagine why? I’m thinking it’s why I insisted on finding the sequence to illustrate this post. I caught sight of the tell-tale spectacle on an evening news recap, and then hunted until late for the footage. Throughout the address, from plenty of angles, the teleprompters were plainly evident. It’s not like the cameras avoided them. But this was the only view which showed Obama’s line of sight.

This shot makes plain what Obama was looking at, juxtaposed against the mass of legislators, cabinet members, and Supreme Court justices, at whom he wasn’t.

I’ll leave it to another time to question why the networks supplemented their coverage with this shot, three times, instead of going with the official feed.

It could owe also to the non-novelty of everything Obama is saying, but I’m just bored. Now his mechanical turning to and fro compels me to think we’re both watching a slow-motion tennis match. And instead of following the ball, our eyes linger on the players, as if the goal of this game is to compare what the players are wearing to determine whose tennis white socks were the ones bleached with Clorox and whose were not.


President Obama’s gaze was bouncing back and forth between the teleprompters obviously. And what’s wrong with reading a speech anyway? That Obama was reading was obvious by the occasional false starts he made. I noted the omission of a consonant which produced an incongruous word choice, and a missed punctuation, among others. Neither would be errors made in extemporized locution or a recitation of memorized text.

We can see the smoky plexi-glass plates on stands positioned at each side of the podium. Angled at 45 degree to the floor, they reflect whatever is transcripted from projectors below, without blocking the view of the audience, and creating the illusion that the speaker is looking through the glass. The panels bookend the podium at something like 60 degrees to either side of the speaker, which means his head has an approximate 120 degree range of motion, except really only at the two extremes. The entire panorama in between, as Obama’s quick head turns suggest, remains perilously unprompted.

Does it seem to you like Obama retrieves only a solitary phrase from each side? As near as I can measure, Obama turns his head with the same frequency that George Bush used to take a pause. Bush started to make fewer gaffs when he stuck to: short phrase, breath, short phrase, breath. Now it looks like Obama could have served as Bush’s metronome. At least Obama’s delivery demonstrates a stronger lung capacity; and I think we’re all thrilled with the more sophisticated grammar. But has the new president as limited an audio-memory as our previous idiot in chief? I’m afraid to think it.

I am still impressed by President Obama’s projected confidence, and I am not about to confuse him for a moron, but that first press conference worried me. Why is it, and how is it, that Obama would be fielding questions with the aid of a teleprompter?

Remember when simpleton Dubya was stumped by an unexpected question and told the correspondent that he wished he’d received his “written question beforehand?” It’s not difficult to imagine that questions are submitted ahead of time, nor might it be so unreasonable, when the Free World hangs on a US president’s every utterance. But I did imagine that Obama was up to the task of responding with an answer. He needn’t improvise one, but you’d think he could trusted to remember it.

Are the teleprompters there to assist the president with his phrasing, or are they there to enforce that his answers, like the correspondents’ questions, stick to the script?

Denver trial of R68 organizer starts Mon.

NEWS FROM RECREATE-68- The trial of R-68 organizer Carlo Garcia will begin Monday, January 5, in Denver. Carlo’s arrest was one of the worst cases of racism and police misconduct at the DNC. Below is a video of the incident which then led to the police assault on Code Pink organizer Alicia Forest.

When: January 5 at 8:30 am. The trial should last 2 – 3 days. Please come to all if you can.


ACLU: Police provoked first DNC arrests

The ACLU has uncovered a police report which reveals that the first gassing of protesters at the DNC was in response to actions by an undercover provocateur. The police explain their ruse was to extract the infiltrator from the crowd without blowing his cover, but those who were there saw the maneuver’s real purpose. The Denver Post wrote DNC police staged confrontation that prompted pepper spray





Well, there’s another hypothesis for the police actions. It’s textbook crowd management. I’d say “riot control,” but it means inciting a riot in order to control it. Police use infiltrators to start fights in order to justify their use of violence to intervene. Often this can be as simple as an infiltrator to play stool pigeon while the police jump in to make the arrest. The crowd moves to protect what it thinks is a member unfairly targeted by the officers, and this reaction gives the police justification to crack down.

It that what happened at the DNC on Monday? Not even. While the undercover officer struggled against being “arrested,” before there might have been a reaction from the crowd, another officer “mistook” the event for a protester resisting arrest. His assault with pepper spray led to the crowd reaction which prompted indiscriminate spraying.

I can attest to two details which reinforce the likelihood of this latter scenario. Number one, all protest participants were always free to retreat from the street. It’s the path I chose in fact. My photographs illustrate my vantage point from curbside. Two, DNC activists were always savvy to the police infiltrators. We gave them as wide a berth as possible at all times. It’s likely the crowd never fell for the one who provoked the escalation of violence at Civic Center Park. In fact by the DPD’s own admission, the step up was a “mistake” on the part of one of their men.

Here’s raw surveillance footage which shows the chronology of the spraying.

Getting the short hard end of the baton

police state




Say Guantanamo and torture and rendition and unlawful detention and surveillance and intolerance persist despite court orders to stop. Say your representatives in Congress won’t listen, no matter how many times you call. How exactly do you propose bringing your government to heel?

We get up early to BEAT the crowds



When policemen don their gas masks

Mass response

To those already disinclined? It’s a growing number.

He’s a lawyer. What would he have to protest?


But what happens when some part of those agreements are abridged? Let’s say a court rules we cannot have redress. Let’s say the court decides against the law? What then? What if we are denied access to our representatives who legislate the laws? What if the enforcers shrug us off? To where do we take our voice? So quickly, a mutual agreement to remain civil, becomes rule by brute force. You voted for who? You expected what? Says you and whose army?



Free Speech in the USA, USA, USA Zone

Exploring your free speech rights in America. Has it come to this? Mouth off all you want into the online ether or in the privacy of your local spheres of influence, but try to rise above the din where cameras might be forced to televise your message, and you’d better come equipped. Forget your pocket constitution, you need helmet, goggles and bandana.
Peace pith helmet Continue reading

Defend Denver with a Kalashnikov

Recreate-68 t-shirt DEFEND DENVER
DENVER- I wasn’t sure what this R68 t-shirt meant in advance of the 2008 Denver DNC. Protest organizers were anticipating riot police and a super- weaponized National Guard deployed to secure the city against us peaceful demonstrators. But the AK-47 wasn’t lost on others. It’s the assault rifle used worldwide against imperialism. The only gun honored on a national flag (Mozambique), the Kalashnikov revolutionized la revolucion.

If “DEFEND DENVER” is opaque, the tag line isn’t. Along the bottom of the shirt reads “*smash development, stop snitching, steal their shit.” Fun innocuous hyperbole is all. Please note that all of the DNC protests were nonviolent.

Who to blame if nobama

nobama pinA lot of people are still irrepressibly buzzed about electing Barack Obama to the presidency. For many months now the prospect has buoyed such hope, that Obama’s victory over John McCain has seemed almost foregone. I hate to suggest we’re starting to catch a whiff of an ill wind change.

School children still jump up and down at the mention of Obama, who they know is clearly better than smells-like-farts McCain. But while you might marvel that schoolteachers are passing along this election enthusiasm, they’re also making sure not to get the children’s hopes too high. “America, the children explain soberly, may still have too much racism.”

Or too many nay-sayers. Or discontents who’ll split the vote.

Anyone who thinks that public protest of Obama, or criticism of Obama, or too spirited derision of Sarah Palin, will sink Obama’s bid for the presidency, is ignoring who the real party pooper is already showing itself to be. It’s their party and the corporate shills are going to cry when they get their cue.

The media had to get excited about Obama when their focus groups confirmed he’d caught the public’s interest. In the meantime of course they gave McCain a free ride, with the exception of telling old man jokes at his expense. But now that they’ve played along with the DNC, and given equal time and a half for the RNC, the mouthpieces have liberated themselves from nonpartisanship.

Did you watch any of the RNC? Are the media describing it with superlatives where you’d have used expletives? From now until November, the pundits are going to cover John McCain on the campaign trail according to scripted GOP talking points. And they’ll report the travails of Barack Obama, according to the GOP talking points too.


Wake up and smell the shit coming from your television.

Denver DNC photographs by others

tony eric and andy
SUNDAY R68 RALLY (Michael G. Seamans on Flickr.)

SUNDAY R68 PARADE (Imiglio, Flickr)



SUNDAY R68 PARADE- Bill Moyer of the Backbone Campaign






eric drumming

eric at denver mint
MONDAY MINT LEVITATION- (David Bjorkman, Zone 913 Photo Agency)

eric code pink


NMT coverage of DNC 2008 protests

R68 STORM iN THE QUEEN CITYAt right is R68’s CMYK guide to DNC protests, STORM IN THE CITY, colored mischievously enough to read STORM’N.

Public debate
R68 planning
ACLU court case
Blogger role

Unconventional Action
Planning meetings

Tent State
Green Party
McKinney rebuttal
People Call For Change
Dividing movement
Disrupting R68

Tent State no go
Detention plans
Recent DPD undercover brutality
Police Liaisons

Family day trip
fodor guide
Call out

Fox disruption
Antiwar march
UA downtown action
Plain-clothed surveillance
UA park disruption
Plain-clothed surveillance

Freedom cage
March to courthouse
Levitating Denver mint
UA tries to leave park
Arbitrary arrest
Containment downtown

Early arrests
Puppet parade
Evening unrest

Lost park
Hassling street kids
IVAW march
Self-policing the protest
Pepsi Center

Immigrant rights march
March to Invesco Field

RNC plans

Undercover surveillance has uniform too

den-sun-under-civilian.jpgDENVER- DNC day 0, Undercover observers.

den-undercover-videotape.jpgAnother barrel bellied gentleman was recording the Sunday antiwar rally. There were hundreds of police video cameras out there, not held at the ready for something to happen, like the other videographers, but constantly pointed. Wouldn’t that be recording a bunch of nothing, unless you’re simply trying to document faces?

I have another theory, which comes of imagining dozens of surveillance cameramen each shift, clocking out and depositing multitudes of digital videotape cassettes, marked by location, time, and perhaps incident. Would that seem to be a nightmare to organize? I’m thinking these cameras were up to something else.

Two cops a tapingThese two square pegs were videotaping the Sunday UA Lincoln Boulevard standoff. The person in the foreground is an example of what real participants look like. His camera is waiting for something to capture. The rear two have cameras aloft, whether they’re paying attention our not.

Third cop a watchingThe yellow shirted boy scout gestured to this third duffer behind them. I’m not sure the signal except that he stepped back as I photographed.

I wonder if these cameras held aloft haven’t been retrofitted to give live video feeds, instead of recording unto individual DATs. I bet they’re transmitting wireless signals to a communications truck nearby, where not only are the images being recorded into a data bank, likely they are being monitored for a real-time sense of what’s happening in the crowd. That might explain why the cameramen were seldom seen panning or changing their angle. It might also be possible that they were receiving their instructions through the camera viewfinders.

Undercover plantNow this guy isn’t wearing the day uniform. What’s he doing? I include him just for contrast. He’s wearing the black colors of a provocateur or plant and sure enough when the antiwar march came its closest to the Pepsi Center, suddenly he broke his silence. Where before he’s stood back, observing the morning rally. Now he was moving through the marchers offering instructions. Many of the organizers were trying to create something of a circle in front of the Pepsi Center entrance. This “marcher” who held no banner, and wore no political message, was now helpfully urging everyone to continue past.

DNC disruption provided by FOX NEWS

Fox bulldogDENVER- Sunday DNC Antiwar Rally. Predictably enough, the only disorder at the DNC protests was instigated by Fox News knave Griff Jenkins. At Recreate 68’s kickoff rally on Sunday, ambush reporter Jenkins tried to rush the stage and force an interview of Ward Churchill. AIM security intervened, but the camera skirmish created an inordinate distraction for the speaker at the podium and the audience trying to listen.

The diminutive Fox dick started shouting about HIS FREE SPEECH RIGHTS, which I believe illuminated his own understanding of the “journalism” role Fox serves. He doesn’t report, he decides. This thug’s media clout gave him the delusion he could speak over our right to assemble and attend to our speakers. His self-importance was laughable, and the crowd was not convinced. It started chanting FUCK FOX, FUCK FOX. Which of course Fox News reported as an anti-Fox riot. This was repeated later when Jenkins tried to interview marchers along the parade route.

Ward Churchill

In fact the only confrontations to come of the DNC demonstrations involved Fox’s Jenkins, Michelle Malkin, and inexplicably as far as I can undersand, Alex Jones from Prison Planet.

Fish out of hot water in peaceful crowd

den-sun-under-agent-cops.jpgI made it a sideline to take photos of potential police instigators at the DNC protests. What excuse can law enforcement make for planting undercover agitators in a peaceful assembly? Encouraging lawlessness is how Pinkerton thugs used to bust up efforts to organize unions.

They stand out like black-clad thumbs. And they’re making the crowd nervous. I’m still not sure these thug cops aren’t planted to be noticed on purpose. They serve as sheep dogs, moving the flock along with just the faintest of aggressive postures to trigger fear responses.

Now would you say they’ve been joined by a female officer of similar demeanor?

three more
Isn’t this fun? Can you detect another TRIO moving along the same walkway? Hint, they’re closer to forty something.

DPD DNC provocateurs shy from camera



Getting suited up


Ready for anonymous action

Leaving camera flash


UPDATE: Here’s what began that afternoon.

Police harrass kids at Denver DNC

DENVER- On the fourth day of watching Denver mobilize countless police squads in anticipation of problematic demonstrations, you’d think this patrol wouldn’t have caught our eye. Except, the officer leading point on this patrol advanced past our outdoor table with his weapon drawn…



Next the leader, or perhaps he was the youth-liaison officer, pulled the kids aside to offer his advice. “No one wants to see you guys on the 16th Street Mall.” And: “You guys aren’t dressed for the occasion. Do you think Colorado’s visitors this week want to see kids dressed like you are on the 16th Street Mall?” He recognized a couple of them from Juvenile Detention, I’m guessing, and cautioned them that he could make things easier, or more difficult, depending on whether they helped him out today. He added: “You heard about the two hundred people we arrested the other night? They were arrested for not following our request that they leave.”



My travel plans for the Minneapolis RNC

To get the hell out of the country. We have a police state and a people who stand awestruck. They’re shocked by it, but not enough to say.
Pepsi Center behind guards
Really, the activists hyped the risk of arrest and spread that legal illogic to reporters. We faced potential police brutality if we sticked by the IVAW vets? We faced arrest for standing on the grass? We put ourselves in jeopardy of being jailed for turning onto Speer instead of following the Police golf cart leading the way for the “unpermitted” march? Wouldn’t journalist want to ask why? What law are we breaking? Do we have to obey a command to disperse if it’s not lawful? What happened to free speech? We’re just standing here. Can we no longer do that?

Pepsi Center fortifications

ARD, Tent State surrogate for DNC cops

IVAW ARD march



Navigating the Auraria enclosures, the coordinator monkeys would circulate alongside their restless marchers admonishing them “Hey guys, let’s keep the focus: on the vets and off the fence.”


If Tent State has any role in the planned RNC protests, we must forewarn the activists in Minneapolis. They’re collaborator scum, every bit as fraudulent as the Democratic Party of good cop to the GOP bad cop. If we can salvage anything from our Debacle in Denver, it’s to ferret out these Quislings. Tent State, ARD, UFPJ, Code Pink and the Greens. Derelict saboteurs.

I love the spirit and wit of Code Pink, they show determination and stamina, but ultimately no savvy. Their I MISS AMERICA gag is dead on, but it’s a lament, isn’t it? She’s gone, their America. Where the occasion calls for drums, Code Pink would march us into battle to the beat of Kum ba yah.

IVAW betrays their youthful marchers and capitulates to the Democratic Party

IVAW march

Denver Riot Police


police state song and dance
Instead of chants like THIS IS WHAT A POLICE STATE LOOKS LIKE, or megaphone entreaties to ask why do nonviolent common citizens face such intimidation by police, the crowd watched Code Pink and other theatrical performances sing cutesy songs to recast the oppressive tone into a humorous light. They should have been signing “Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.” Comedic relief is often laudable, but should we be laughing, instead of facing the militarization of our policeman stone cold sober?

No, instead of calling the Democratic Party and the City of Denver on their repressive ways to curb dissent, the situation was kept in check by the vets’ self-policing. The police never had to issue an order. Instead the IVAW coordinators were constantly detailing city ordinances and forewarning everyone about possible arrest. Every time, more and more people retreated from the action.

For example, the IVAW march was un-permitted, and yet they directed it into the allowed free speech area, instead of veering toward better visibility and “certain arrest.” Oh, you don’t have a “permit” for your march, but there are places that are off limits, meaning, for which you don’t have “permission?” Which is it then? The crowd of Rage fans wanted to have their voices heard. They didn’t want to be led in somber veteran respect mode until all their spirit was worn out of them. The IVAW march coordinators kept everyone in line, followed prearranged parade direction signs, and even allowed themselves to be led by the damn police golf cart whose backward facing sign flashed FOLLOW ME.

IVAW drama stop
So the crowd followed the IVAW into the Free Speech dead end, and they and a multitude of press waited for something to happen. I heard an IVAW coordinator phoning Barack Obama’s office from which they were expecting a phone call. When no Obama appearance materialized, the vets led everyone back out again and into the “forbidden area” with it’s oft-reminded possibility of arrest.

I was asked to stay back with the rest of the followers, and not crowd the IVAW formation. I told the coordinator that he had led us into the Auroria free speech maze and back, and I was not about to obey a single further idiotic command, no matter how much “respect” the veterans were needing.

Seriously. All “out of respect for the veterans.” Even reporters were barked orders as if they were subordinate to the vets. I took umbrage at being told constantly to stop every few minutes to listen to the vets give their witness of Iraq and wait as their spokesman gave further statements to the press. Staying behind, keeping a distance, or keeping the way clear was supposed to be honored “out of respect for the veterans.”

These were the same veterans who went to war when we asked them not to. I’m very thankful that each of them has changed their tune now, but where was their respect for us before more than a million Afghans and Iraqis were killed at their hands? No, the veteran worship was severely misplaced. They earn no points from me for “their sacrifices in the service.” The bastards killed innocent people, they should be begging forgiveness, not assuming to command our respect.

That said, I think the antiwar movement is misplacing its hopes thinking the IVAW can carry any sort of ball promoting an end to war. The vets are after a return of their comrades, and better veterans benefits. That’s a far cry from pacifism, or even a repudiation of US predatory militarism. And this DNC stunt proved it. Here’s how the self-aggrandized crunts blew the last opportunity to show dissent at the DNC.

They held a concert which pulled the youth element away from where they might have been participating in street actions. Of course this is no different than Tom Hayden and Ralph Nader drawing their audiences from likely people who had to choose whether to protest or go see them. Not such a big deal, but it got much worse.

This afternoon the IVAW shepherded a reported 5,000 supporters not to the Pepsi Center delegate entrance, but deep into the Free Speech Cage, away from sight of convention delegates. After a long delay they moved everyone into the promising area, but kept thinning the crowd with warnings of potential arrest. They also kept the marchers well out of proximity of the police lines. The IVAW limited what anyone could say, out of respect for the vets, led them in a last chanted instruction to Go Home, then reminded stragglers that it was the expressed wish of the veterans that everyone leave the area lest an ensuing disturbance mar the IVAW event. After everyone was gone, the veterans even gave a round of applause for a nearby contingent of cops. More in the morning when I’m feeling less enraged.

Tent State stole park from DNC demos

Civic Center Park Closed

The organizers of “Tent State” had a permit to use Civic Center Park on Wednesday. Since Saturday, Recreate-68 and Unconventional Denver had used it as a rallying point. Two weeks ago Eric Jung of Tent State announced that they would not be using the Wednesday permit. At the last Consulta, R68 organizers asked Jung to relinquish the permit so that others could keep using the park. Jung said he would, but he didn’t. As a result, the city pounced on the chance to begin setting up canopies for the annual Taste of Colorado scheduled for Friday. Have you ever seen a park fair event that wasn’t assembled the same morning of the event? This was a thinly disguised move to leave DNC protesters without a communications hub. Courtesy of Tent State.

Hopefully this will be the last of the many DNC betrayals by Eric and his friend JoJo Pease. They told 5280 magazine that R68’s turnout would be in the double digits, while theirs would number thousands. But Tent State turned out to be more like a pueblo. A camp circle more accurately.

Jojo Pease pleased with delivery of Students For a Democratic Society (SDS)