Commentary: Police Presents

August 28th, 2008 Tony Robinson Posted in Commentary |

Denver’s convention might be the most militarized convention in suppressing dissent of any in American history. And what’s worse is, so few seem to care.
How many cops are in Denver? They won’t even tell us. 52 different jurisdictions have send officers to Denver—Wyoming has even sent a cavalry unit. In Boston for the 2004 convention, they mobilized 5,000 officers. That’s a ratio of about 10 cops per protester at most of the demonstrations we seen in Denver.

I counted the officers on my journey from Colfax and Kalamath to the Pepsi Center. Without seeing a single protester, I counted 77 cops, including three vans bristling with riot police cruising around without seeming purpose or urgency. On every downtown corner and back alley we see packs of heavily armed police. During the anti-war march, the Denver Post concluded that there were more officers than protesters. Long lines of riot police formed near the Pepsi Center and they shut the whole place down when a few hundred protesters moved near the Center and wouldn’t quickly retreat to the freedom cage, a stark concrete desert surrounded by concrete barriers and fences—and completely hidden from view of any delegate.

I saw the cavalry in action myself, rushing across Civic Center Park to the puppet march—giant puppets of all things, constructed by the usual demonstrators, but also young children and seniors, gathered to march their colorful puppets. And of course the police swarmed the scene. It was here that I saw a young woman, without a weapon or provocation, beat to the ground with a baton for insulting an officer, who shouted out (as reported by the Denver Post) “Back it Up”—and swore at the women with a derogatory term rhyming with hitch.

They say they are just keeping order. Sure, the Nazi’s made the trains run on time, didn’t they? So you got order, now just be quiet and enjoy it. Or go speak in your freedom cage, where no one can even see or hear you. It’s obscene.

And what’s worse—we can’t even pretend the whole world is watching, because its not.

I asked one superdelegate about the protests and the police, and he replied “Haven’t heard a thing about it.”

During a lunch with another delegate, he reminisced about the 1960s days of protest. What about the protests in Denver, I asked. “Haven’t heard anything,” he said.
I talked with Denver’s outgoing President of City Council, Michael Hancock, about his thoughts on the forlorn freedom cage—“I’ve never even seen the cage,” Hancock admitted.
It’s the banality of evil. The commonness of authoritarianism.  The whimperered acceptance of omnipresent police force on every corner.

When this convention is over, we shouldn’t measure success by the number of dollars raised, the business success fostered. We shouldn’t measure it by whether Obama wins. Success should be measured by the extent to which a convention truly become a celebration of democracy, a moment when people can gather to speak out, celebrate their freedoms, water Jefferson’s tree of liberty with the water of dissent. How can we have a democratic success like that when we have wrapped this convention in a blanket of armored guards, mounted police, and baton clubs at the slightest provocation? “This is what a police state looks like” one protestor chanted while arrested.  I have a hard time disagreeing.

It should make us sick to our stomachs and what our city has become during this convention.

KGNU’s national politics analyst, Tony Robinson, is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado Denver. You can find more at http://mypoliticscampaignblog.wordpress.com/