Thanks for turning my city into a fortress

Dear Protesters,

Thanks for turning my city into a fortress with your overinflated turnout projections. I love to see cops with three-and-a-half foot nightsticks, riot helmets, and tear-gas launchers surrounding every building in sight. It’s fantastic.

From today’s Denver Post:

Maybe it was too hot Sunday afternoon, or maybe they hadn’t gotten warmed up yet, but the tens of thousands of demonstrators that protest organizers promised would march through Denver turned out to be tens of hundreds.

Demonstrations began early Sunday and kept up a steady beat of marching, sign waving — and tying up downtown traffic. But through most of it, protesters were vastly outnumbered by police and, occasionally, even by those who came downtown just to watch the spectacle.

Lt. Ron Saunier, a Denver Police Department spokesman, said the number of protesters that actually showed up was nowhere near what groups had told city officials to expect.

Recreate 68 had projected that 25,000 or even 50,000 people would participate in activities this week. Instead, a group estimated by police at 1,000 to 1,200 participated in an anti-war march Sunday morning, with a much smaller group parading up Colfax Avenue later in the day.

These protesters remind me of that guy in elementary school who said his dad worked for Nintendo and could get me a sneak peek of the Nintendo II, or the girl who said she had a diamond mine in her basement but we couldn’t go down there because her parents would get mad. “We will have a bajillion people marching with us! We will levitate the Denver Mint and shake the money out!” (That last one is, no kidding, an actual protest event.)

Good news, though – Denver Police have handled themselves so well that even a co-founder of Recreate 68, Glenn Spagnuolo, praised them in the Post article, “To this point, police have handled themselves well.”

Great, thanks Glenn. Good to know. Now about that Nintendo II…

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Colorado Independent’s blog-i-nist (blogger-columnist) Jeff Bridges has worked in Democratic politics for the last 10 years, serving as communications director for two congressional races in Colorado and two governors races in the Deep South. Bridges also worked for Sen. Ken Salazar as a legislative assistant in DC, and currently serves on the board of directors for New Era Colorado and the Colorado Conservation Voters.