Including a short (but sweet) police chase.
Because of the recent trend in officers ticketing those who honk or stop in front of the occupation at Civic Center Park, quite a few people are wary of repeating the offense. One woman, however, doesn't give a flying flip about getting a ticket -- so she took on the police.
(Also read: "Jonny 5 of Flobots reflects on the Occupy Movement and talks about the act's new album.")
The whole thing went down at about 12:30 yesterday afternoon, when a lone donation ranger attempted to stop in front of the occupation to drop off Thanksgiving food to the gathering outside. Worried that she, like a very generous handful of others, might receive a $130 ticket for impeding traffic for her efforts, protesters tried to wave her around the corner, where they would walk to her, grab the donations and walk them back to camp. (This has since become the new policy for donations.) But the woman wasn't having it.
If you'd prefer to hear the story on YouTube instead, watch the video below:
Instead, protesters on the ground say she knowingly pulled a full stop -- and made a statement. The woman, whose name has not yet been released for her protection, pulled up in front of the camp, only to immediately be greeted by three police cars on her tail. The area is consistently monitored by at least three police cars on a daily basis, and any actions are quickly spotted by the group's DPD bodyguards. Again, though, the woman's answer was something akin to, "Ahhh, hell no."
Instead of taking a ticket quietly, she put her pedal to the metal and sped around the block, turning left on 14th, left on Colfax and back onto Broadway before she kept driving and then eventually parked down the street in front of the main library. At this point, awed protesters came to meet her and surrounded her car to block it from potential police intervention, says David "Beard," a former Westword profile subject whose last name has been withheld by request. "It was unbelievable," he says. "We had no idea what to do."
At this point, the story begins to die down. During the sound of cheers in the park, with at least twenty protesters gathered around her, she got off scot-free, at least for the time being. Because the event was captured on several camera phones, and her license plates were open to view from the police, she might be in line for one soon. In the meantime, the story developed into something of a holiday legend as the day progressed.
Early that morning, at about 12:30 a.m., the group experienced a different parking situation, this time the presence of an entire line of cars parked in front of Civic Center Park together in hopes that police couldn't ticket them all. The first round of food donations was captured in the video below (and again, no one was ticketed -- at least not yet):
Overall, Thanksgiving came in many forms for the occupiers, who were greeted by consistent rounds of food donations (though usually less animated) throughout the day. In the afternoon, two large luxury buses parked in front of Civic Center Park (again without a ticket) to pick up a large load of occupiers and transport them to the Absolute Word Church for a gospel service and a heavy turkey dinner. In the afternoon, a group of local donors gave their Thanksgiving leftovers to the occupiers.
More from our Occupy Denver archive: "Occupy Denver, David Lane sue City & County of Denver over First Amendment rights."
