Update, 11:01 p.m. October 29: Twenty people were arrested during what has been Occupy Denver’s most violent day in weeks. All evidence of the Thunderdome and the front desk has been removed, and officers offered protesters the chance to claim their belongings one at a time as the area was…
Tony Song isn’t big on specifics. He moved to Denver “a few months ago,” he sleeps “wherever I can lay my head,” and he joined the city’s occupation “three or four days in, probably.” He doesn’t make plans. He’s not sure why he picked Denver, but he does “like traveling…
President Barack Obama announced last Friday that the vast majority of U.S. troops — about 39,000 of them — would be out of Iraq by December 31. But not everyone is happy about the imminent end of the ten-year-involvement, including Emad Hussain, a former member of the Iraqi Olympics Committee,…
Let’s recap: By this point, It has been firmly established that Mayor Michael Hancock, the Denver Police Department, Governor John Hickenlooper and the Colorado State Patrol have no intention of allowing Occupy Denver to use tents. Such encampments have been referred to as a “shantytown” by police, even though tents…
One of this weekend’s biggest downtown events — Saturday’s Denver Gorilla Run — features a route that crosses past the 16th Street Mall but doesn’t take place on it. That’s no doubt a relief to the RTD. Last Saturday’s events — including the Zombie Crawl and separate marches involving Occupy…
Occupy Denver and the Colorado Progressive Coalition combined forces for a civil disobedience tour de force today, with events taking on both Tom Donohue, the president and CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce, and Wells Fargo. The only problem: The police got there first. Both times…
In the classic 1967 drama The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s character is offered one word, just one word of advice from an avuncular businessman: plastics. “There’s a great future in plastics,” the man whispers. But that future is pretty much past in the Roaring Fork Valley — which, town by town,…
The last time Dwayne Hudson spoke to his children, it was October 2004. The next seven years were spent reading, working out, studying and thinking of the now fourteen-year-old Dwayne Jr. and his thirteen-year-old sister, Asenath, whose name stems from the Old Testament. This time was spent in a Denver…
Wednesday night featured the third round of busts involving Occupy Denver, although the arrestee list increases by only one man: Billy Reno, a 49-year-old homeless veteran and recent Westword profile subject. As increasingly colder temperatures drive the campsite toward more desperate measures to guarantee warmth, the group organized a movement…
Neil Therrell doesn’t know what day it is. More than that, even: He has no idea. His first guess is October 22, and when he is told that was last Saturday, he appears skeptical and asks what day of the week it is. Therrell is more behind than most, but…
Update, 3:11 p.m. October 26: Occupy Denver’s most recent report, via its Twitter account, is that a total of five people have been hospitalized within the past day. The group is urging people to contact Mayor Michael Hancock’s office to advocate on behalf of protesters using tents to stay warm…
Neither snow nor SNOBAMA could prevent President Barack Obama from taking the podium at the Auraria campus this morning. During his address, he touted his jobs bill and a restructuring of student loans — a topic calculated to appeal to a crowd estimated at 4,000. Photographer Chip Kalback captured the…
As the weather hit thirty degrees and the season’s first snow closed in on Occupy Denver last night, members turned once more to tents as a refuge from the elements. Because this was the reason the state patrol raided the camp two weeks ago, the four new tents lasted only…
Occupy Denver has launched a call-to-action in advance of Barack Obama’s trip to Denver. The plan is for the president, here for a fundraiser and a jobs speech, to receive a bag of letters from the local 99 percent. Although the details of that plan are under wraps, the group…
At about 9:37 this morning, Matthew Messina Velasquez finds himself one half of a strange, if typical, conversation about the occupation. “So, what are you guys doing?” a stranger in a Yankees cap asks at Occupy Denver’s front desk. “Protesting.” “Protesting what? Are you for Bush?”…
Occupy Denver clashed with the Denver Police Department again last night over a recently built cardboard shelter in Civic Center Park. Later dubbed “the Thundercube” because of the symbol the Thunderdome has become regarding the group’s rights, the small, ceiling-free fort was built from about 25 cardboard boxes that had…
In the beginning, Chad Duffy was a cynic. He still is, especially during the particularly hectic moments of his morning shift at the Thunderdome. But the 23-year-old politely promoting hand sanitizer used to be much worse. Only five months after Duffy moved to Denver from Orlando, a 180-degree turn finds…
Update, 1 p.m. October 24: We now know the names of the four Occupy Denver participants arrested in a Denver Police Department raid on a squat over the weekend, and two of them were recently featured in this space: Amelia Nicol, who saw murder charges against her dropped earlier this…
Mayor Michael Hancock and several Denver City Council members are talking up a potential overnight camping ban in public places, including the 16th Street Mall. Given the brouhaha over camping by Occupy Denver, which has been joined by numerous homeless protesters, is this notion a preemptive strike against a possible…
Update, 11:20 p.m. October 22: The close of tonight’s Occupy Denver concert was a completely different scene from only one week ago. Although it ended with police presence, the number of cops left is the same 10 to 15 who stayed from last night until about 5 a.m. to monitor…
Concerns about public education and the need to improve communication between city officials and citizens about everything from parking to park usage were hot topics this morning at Mayor Michael Hancock’s first community forum. Comments such as “City personnel need to be more available” drew applause from the more than…
Update, 4:28 p.m. October 21: The Denver Police Department has released the cost incurred by the DPD and the Sheriff’s Department to monitor Occupy Denver, particularly over last weekend’s demonstrations: approximately $365,000. The number also includes the costs of other city agencies that provided assistance to the two…
