October 16, 2011 06:21 PM UTC

Big Crowds And A Few Stupid People

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• by: Colorado Pols

9NEWS reports the good and the bad from yesterday’s Occupy Denver protest march:

Denver Police said they cleared the protestors off Broadway about 6:30 p.m. after the protestors refused to move out of the street. Police say there was at least one instance where pepper spray was used to subdue protestors.

Crowds swelled around noon Saturday, and reporters on the scene estimated between 2,000 and 3,000 people participated in the march.

About 8 p.m., the crowds moved to 16th Street Mall. The crowds forced RTD to shut down service along 16th Street for over an hour…

“We still want to do all we can to protect individuals rights to free speech,” [Denver Mayor Michael] Hancock said. “But we are not going to allow anyone to sit in the middle of the street.”

Governor John Hickenlooper issued the following statement Saturday evening: “We respect the First Amendment, but we can’t condone illegal activity. State troopers and Denver police are showing great restraint in the face of very difficult situations. The governor and senior staff have closely monitored the situation in downtown Denver all day and continue to do so. We urge all protesters to obey the law.”

In the aftermath of Friday morning’s dismantlement of the Occupy Denver camp at Lincoln Park on orders from Gov. John Hickenlooper, word of the “suppression” of their protest spread far and wide–although a number of cities have moved to enforce laws against camping in city parks, etc., against Occupy Wall Street offshoots, Denver appears to have been more “successful” in doing so than some others. This leaves Hickenlooper in a bit of a jam politically.

It was a foregone conclusion that after Friday morning’s events, Saturday’s Occupy Denver march would be very large, and they didn’t disappoint. But the weekend demonstrators who swelled Occupy Denver’s crowds, based on numerous reports we’ve received, were not involved in the illegal blocking of roadways and other incidents that escalated the police response yesterday. The overwhelming majority of yesterday’s estimated 2,000-3,000 protesters dispersed peacefully after the protest march.

In our view, yesterday’s events call out a growing problem with the relatively disorganized Occupy Denver protests–despite a popular message and broad public support, some of the protesters are the same fringy scofflaw types who consistently give such events a bad name. We would argue that the vast majority of Occupy Denver protesters do not wish to be pepper sprayed or otherwise attacked by police, but some among them are determined to do stupid and counterproductive things like sitting down in the middle of Broadway that provoke such a response. Even from a hard-core protester’s point of view, doing that creates exactly the “pretext” police need to break up your protest. Our personal view is that once you sit down in the middle of a major boulevard, police are obligated to remove you for your own safety.

Which brings us to the Occupy Denver encampment broken up Friday. In a press conference, Gov. Hickenlooper asserted that Occupy Denver campers had illegally tapped power in Lincoln Park for use in their makeshift kitchen, necessitating repairs by Xcel Energy. Hickenlooper also made specific reference to “squalid” conditions in the park during the campout, the details of which we’ll spare you as it’s breakfast time. But Hickenlooper was very explicit about, well, insufficient sanitary facilities in Lincoln Park in the weeks Occupy Denver was encamped there.

We have also heard from some eyewitnesses who dispute Hickenlooper’s account of conditions in Lincoln Park during the encampment. But we do see how what he described certainly could have happened in a large unplanned public gathering over the course of a couple of weeks. And we hate to say it, but that’s one of the reasons we have a permit process–long events need to provide for sanitation, folks. If they don’t, it’s a problem. And not a “civil liberties” one.

We feel as though if we keep going down this line we could find more to criticize, but that’s really not our intention: as we’ve said, the Occupy Wall Street movement is popular, and core tenets of their message are broadly identified with by the public. These protests are trying to give voice to frustration felt by millions of Americans over an economy that doesn’t work for them anymore, and declining opportunity in this country–that can in no way be dismissed as “the fringe.” We’re talking about the thousands who came to Denver yesterday to stand with Occupy Denver, but not the dozens who were arrested for making idiots of themselves.

If you care about what Occupy Denver says it wants, then do right by those millions of people looking to these protests for hope. Do not squander this opportunity, perhaps the most important grassroots uprising in this country in decades, with stupidity that discredits everyone involved.

This concludes our Sunday morning lecture.