October 16, 2011 05:45 AM UTC

So I went down to the demonstration, to get my fair share of abuse

• 4 Comments
• by: allyncooper

Actually things were pretty peaceful.

I got to Civic Center at noon and strolled through the crowd encountering a whiff of Mary Jane (better than a whiff of grapeshot I suppose). Shortly thereafter we proceeded to head down to the 16th St. Mall with various chants like “We are the 99 per centers !” and “This is what democracy looks like !”.  

It was a pretty large crowd (someone told me maybe 5000, but I dunno). We assembled in front of the Federal Reserve and various speakers spoke, then it was on to 17th Street in front of Chase and up 17th back to Broadway and returned to Civic Center. I was carrying an anti-war poster that said “no more endless wars” and when passing by the Denver Post building saw the news ticker say US troops are now going to stay beyond the withdrawal deadline date in either Iraq or Afghanistan (didn’t see which). Oh well, looks like the “endless war” carries on.

The crowd was definitely a mixed bag, running the gamut from activist liberals, union types (someone told me there were a lot of teachers marching, but again I can’t confirm this), “greenies”, , some Ron Paul supporters, and the usual “hippies” and anarchists.

But the central theme tying the diverse crowd together was a vehement dislike of a political establishment perceived as firmly in the pockets of the corporatists , and a palpable contempt for the banks and the “too big to fail” crowd. Signs bemoaned the corruption of corporate money in the political process (one sign said “Who’s bitch are you today, Legislator?), an end to the wars, universal single payer healthcare, and an end to the war on drugs.

But make no mistake, something is happening here, although it’s still not exactly clear. Having come of age during the Vietnam War and getting progressively militant in my opposition to that war as time went on, I sensed the same “fuck the establishment” karma I felt back then. It’s just not the financial meltdown and the now 3 year old tanked economy with unemployment stuck above 9% , it’s a lot of shit going down that people are just fed up with and they are starting to see the connects between it all. In this sense, I thought of the path Martin Luther King took in the couple of years before his death, as he moved beyond the issue of civil rights and  came out in opposition to the Vietnam War and pushed for economic justice. King knew that “guns and butter” was a fallacy, that there could be no just society in our country unless the issues of the war and economic injustice were addressed. I believe the same “guns and butter” mentality got us into our current economic mess – that we could conduct two wars financed on our Chinese credit card and everybody could own a home (or move up to a bigger home) regardless of their ability to actually afford it.

As diverse as the crowd was over as many issues, the predominant thread was ” We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.”

Where this is going or how it plays out politically is hard to guess.  Although the  issues seem to play in favor of Democrats, this crowd had equal contempt for both parties (there were plenty of signs bashing Obama).  The younger people especially seemed to have no use for either party, and most likely are unaffiliated and if they vote at all, will vote for a candidate ignoring any party label.  I found the young speakers remarkably well informed about the fraudulent tactics the banks pulled off that ultimately brought the economy down, and the phrase “fool me once, shame on you – fool me twice, shame on me” applies here.  

They don’t intend to get fooled again.