No Kings Follow Up

Larger crowd than in June although by how much I can’t say.  Several people around me at my now-predictable spot at the top of the steps on the west side of the Capitol grounds who were there in June said the same thing.  With predictable milquetoasteneyness, the Denverite reporter said “in the thousands” when it was clear it was at least what it was in June which was around 20K.  Still not close to the 35K that AOC/Sanders drew earlier in the year.  Heaven forfend the media give an accurate account of a liberal outdoor rally.

Speakers at these things are usually white noise to me but the first one, a Native American female activist, really stood out because she said a lot of things, like all the “land acknowledgement” prefaces that are now in every local meeting, are nothing more than pro-forma exercises designed to make the “people out there” (referring to the people at the rally) feel good about themselves.  She then highlighted what real protests and struggle looked like when you represented a people being either killed or driven into invisibleness.  It’s one of the best speeches I’ve heard and I’m trying to track down who she is and if I can either get video of the speech or better yet, a transcript.

What I call the “Palestinian Protest Knot” (actually the Party for Socialism and Liberation) was, predictably there, at the base of the Capitol grounds, their big red pickup truck with a generator and speakers in the back, double-parked.  Much to my shock, they weren’t going at it from the gitgo and overwhelming the proceedings the way they have at every protest downtown this year.  Never fear, when the march started, they fired up the truck (it’s the only vehicle in the parade and how they manage to pull that off is beyond me), and the same person, I know her voice too well by now, started in on their usual stuff.  They were at the front of the march and given the crowd size, were way ahead of us unlike in June when we were literally next to them and by the end, us and everybody around us, had had beyond enough.  Nonetheless, the overall “face” of the march wasn’t dominated by any one pet-rock issue which was a plus.  It remained centered around many of the ‘No Kings’ memes and messages.

The crowd was probably 98% white and skewed younger than what you typically get in reports from other places.  It was well represented across all age groups but there were a ton of 20/30-somethings, which isn’t surprising since seemingly every 20/30-something white person moves to Denver.  Maybe all the frog symbolism with blow-up costumes brought them out because the onesie crowd was far more prominent than in June along with inflatable dinosaurs, dragons, etc.

Nobody was in any danger, which isn’t surprising given the whiteness of the crowd.  No ICE agents undercover trying to start shit because they don’t make their quotas arresting affluent white people in downtown Denver, that’s what Aurora is for.  Believe me, I was at the Denver BLM protests in 2020 and saw plenty of people there during the daytime who’s main goal was to hang around until nightfall to start shit, which is when the rioting and tear gas began.  Those people stay away from nice, polite rallies like Denver No Kings.