Secret Service Comments on Denver McCain Protester Removal

Responding to backlash over the removal of Denver librarian Carol Kreck from a McCain town hall event Monday at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, the Secret Service has put responsibility squarely on the McCain camp.

"Contrary to some recent reporting, the Secret Service had no involvement in Ms. Kreck being removed from the area," said Malcolm D. Wiley Sr., spokesman for the Secret Service. "It was not done at our request or suggestion. Any assertion to the contrary is inaccurate and inconsistent with our established policies and procedures."

And who was the man that originally approached Kreck? None other than a security guard for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts itself. According to the DCPA,

A representative of Senator John McCain's staff respectfully asked that the venue for its July 7 Town Hall Meeting, The Denver Center for the Performing Arts, not allow persons to display signage within the Arts Complex . . .

. . . and the DCPA complied, with a little help from Denver's finest.

As for whether free speech was hampered on taxpayer-funded property, the Post article reports that "A previous federal appeals court decision determined that the galleria area where Kreck was standing is not necessarily a public spot and that protests can be curtailed there."

Emphasis mine. Not necessarily? So that suggests it still might be. Interesting. I'd be curious to learn a little more about that previous decision and how the law will be applied in Denver's public spaces over the coming months, especially August 25-28.

Unconventional Denver

Something to keep an eye on, maybe:

"We don't want history to remember the Democratic National Convention in Denver as something that went smoothly," said Tim Simons with the self-described anarchist group, Unconventional Denver.

I say "maybe" because the word anarchist always sounds so scary, but the truth of the matter may be much more, er, conventional. The group is in Denver this weekend to hold a "secret action camp to learn about medical training and legal rights and to practice nonviolent tactics," according to the Denver Post.

Sounds pretty warm and rootsy, actually. Which may not be far off the mark.

"The streets will be a wild and creative place," said Simons, a 25-year-old graphic artist who grew up in Boulder and lives in San Francisco. "We don't want to see a dark, evil atmosphere descending on Denver . . . . We want a festive atmosphere that celebrates grassroots movements."

From his mouth to Sonny Jackson's ears. The Denver police spokesperson says "We respect everyone's First Amendment rights . . . . We hope that the citizens will come in and conduct themselves in a law-abiding and responsible manner."

The newspaper further reported that local and federal law enforcement for the convention will be subsidized in part by a $50 million federal grant. Protest groups, I suspect, will not be so well funded, but could wreak havoc none the less by blocking intersections and staging protests outside of convention venues and popular Denver businesses. Should be an exciting time through and through.

Voter Registration at the Denver Black Arts Festival

The Denver Black Arts Festival will be at City Park this weekend, July 11-13, and a group of Obama volunteers will be there registering voters. A table or booth--or canvassers wandering the park--will be present all three days of the fest. I'm planning to take a turn answering questions and guiding voters through the registration process on Sunday afternoon.

Come out and take part in the storied, annual event. If you're not registered to vote, or if you are registered to vote and you want to get more involved, stop by and ask for information. Hope to see you there.

Denver Librarian Carol Kreck Removed From McCain Town Hall

I'm so absorbed in my own little world editing high school curriculum--what can I say?: to date it pays better than poetry and blogging--that I wouldn't know anything about the 61-year-old, Denver librarian who was given a ticket yesterday for exercising free speech outside a McCain town hall event on city grounds if it wasn't for my friend Michelle who just sent this link.

The video is pretty galling. I am especially chagrined that the city cops actually escorted the woman off premises, acquiescing to the demands of event organizers and Secret Service, rather than standing up to the absurdity and appropriately refusing to diffuse a situation that wasn't a situation. The city cops should be the ones standing back from the political process where no threat to public safety is concerned, not carrying out the will of the candidate's zealous staff.

Obama at Invesco, and My $5

Have you heard yet that Obama's on for the big acceptance speech at Invesco? Well how about this?

If you make a donation of $5 or more between now and midnight on July 31st, you could be one of 10 supporters chosen to fly to Denver and spend two days and nights at the convention, meet Barack backstage, and watch his acceptance speech in person. Each of the ten supporters who are selected will be able to bring one guest to join them.

That's from an email the Obama campaign sent to my inbox (and tens of thousands more) today. The email seizes on two key issues: the excitement of this moment in history, and the real potential presented by small-donor contributions. By taking the buy-in price of supporting the candidate way down and putting a $5 pitch out there, and by attaching the possibility of such an alluring prize to the contribution, the campaign comes up with a winning hook.

The gamble is that the number of incoming, $5 contributions will easily cover the costs of flying 20 people to town and putting them up for a couple nights. Heck, maybe I've got a better-than-even chance of winning, since we're in Denver already and the campaign could save a little money by bringing us on but telling us we'll have to stay in our own place (I'm only partly tongue in cheek, here). Even though we're strapped, I bet I can find five bucks if it means I might win a chance to get on site and behind the scenes at the convention.

So how many others are thinking like me? I'm curious to see how much moolah the campaign can reap in the form of what amounts to an online, $5 raffle extravaganza.

Obama: Only One Anthem

The Rocky Mountain News scored a chat with the nominee in waiting, Barack Obama, and brought up the surprise switch that took place Tuesday at the mayor's State of the City address.

In a phone call, the candidate told the Rocky: "We only have one national anthem. And so, if she was asked to sing the national anthem, she should have sung that. Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing is a beautiful song, but we have one national anthem."

The controversy has stirred Denver and lit up the comments sections of local newspapers and blogs.

Rene Marie, the focus of so much attention since her Tuesday performance, responded on the topic of whether her actions--in an election year featuring the first black candidate to (presumably) enter the general election--might actually hurt the candidate's chances.

"Believing that would be a serious overestimation of my influence as an artist," she said.

Well put. And now that everyone from the mayor to the governor to the presumptive Democratic nominee himself has weighed in on the topic, can we please put this thing to rest and talk about, I don't know, the 2,000 Marines just extended in Afghanistan, or the fact that Karl Rove is, in effect, overseeing the McCain campaign?

Holiday Weekend

Jenna and I haven't been back in Denver very long, just over a month, and I've only been publishing on plavwriter again for a little over a week. So it's particularly encouraging to see the site's readership pick up again after such a long layoff as I recently took.

All this by way of saying thanks. I'm gonna step away for the weekend, trade the keyboard and mouse for a roller and brush and do some painting. There may be a post here or there the next couple days, but plavwriter will pick up again after the weekend.

As always, thanks for reading. And have a happy 4th.

Stand Up: Mark Udall for Colorado

I'm looking to learn more about Mark Udall and his race for the U.S. Senate. This video runs a little slow, I think, but strikes a pretty effective chord.

Taking Names (or, more importantly, deleting them)

In an effort to do my civic duty and help cut down on waste and inefficiency at the Town Clerk's Office of Brattleboro, VT, where I used to live, I called this morning to inform the office of my recent voter registration in Denver and to make sure that my name was off the voter checklist up there in the great northern wildlands.

I've just hung up the phone, and I'm completely sketched out by how easy it was to remove my name from the list. I was not asked for a social security number or any corroborating form of identification. I wasn't even asked my old mailing address, just to help support my story. I could have been anyone, pretending to be Matthew Plavnick.

Is it really this easy to remove names from lists of registered voters?! Is this what George Bush and Karl Rove have known for years?

A Select Group of Hillary Loyalists

A topic that spun off from the Unite for Change party last Saturday was the issue of Hillary Clinton supporters who won't vote for Obama. Who are they?, I asked, pointing out that these oft-mentioned loyalists strike me as a peculiarly Rovian construct.

One answer, however, made itself known when a guest spoke up. Janice, a woman in late middle age whose dialect sounds a bit more back east than mountain or high plains, mentioned that her aged mother was extremely uncomfortable with commentary made about Obama by some of her Democratic peers who were (are) Hillary supporters.

Before I go on I want to mention this: when Janice told me that afternoon that I looked familiar to her, I quipped that we must be in the same extended family. By which I meant that we are both Jews.

Janice answered my question about the Hillary supporters who might not vote by attesting that, in her mother's assisted living community, the vitriol about Obama was rank. Her mother has lately avoided the central gathering areas in her facility because of the coarse and racist speech fulminating from the mouths of these aged, Democratic voters. There were words being used, Janice said, that she would not repeat in our presence that day.

Yep, I thought. Sure. I could picture it all too clearly. I remember the first time I heard my grandparents use the term schvartze, the derogatory, Yiddish slang for African Americans. I grew up pretty far removed from the holdover mindset of my granparents' generation, and pretty far removed as well from the Jewish community of metro Detroit, so I was a little older already when I first asked my parents what the word meant.

Since hearing Janice's story about her mother's peers, I've learned that my own grandmother, as it happens, may not vote this year. According to my mother, my grandmother was "very gung ho for Hillary, and now she doesn't like either choice." It's unflattering to say so, but I suspect my grandmother and many Jews of her generation of holding yet to a deeply ingrained racism and mistrust of blacks, black culture, and black leaders today.

I don't kid myself that this type of closed-mindedness is limited to my grandparents' generation. Would that it were so. In an election year which has us talking about race as never before, as we dissect a candidate who may be neither "black enough" nor "white enough" to win over crucial voter blocs, when the words "biracial" and "postracial" have become as prevalent in the electoral idiom as "bipartisan" and "postpartisan," I strongly wonder if Barack Obama won't reveal more to us about ourselves and our communities than we might be eager to accept. Optimistically, however, perhaps the candidate will prompt us to review and more carefully question those very topics in our families, in our lives, about which we do not speak. Without dialogue, at the very least, there can be little progress.

When my mom heard that I will be actively involved in this election, that I hope to engage skeptics and win over undecided voters, she asked me to begin my efforts close to home. I believe I'll call my grandmother this 4th of July weekend, and ask if we can talk a little politics.

La Tinta Grita. The Ink Shouts.

Protest art from Oaxaca. I wish we had a few more images to add to the link. Instead, if you'll be near UCLA this year (exhibit runs mid-July until December!), swing by the Fowler Museum and have a look for yourself. Based on what we saw in the streets, cafes, and galleries of Oaxaca from July '07 until May '08, these artworks will leave a mark.

Gracias a JF por la informacion.

State of the . . . Anthem

UPDATE II: Gloria Neal offers another take on the issue, quite nicely.

UPDATE: I've been thinking about this whole thing a lot. The conclusion I've drawn, finally, is that I can see why many people are disappointed by the absence of the National Anthem from an annual, marquis event such as the State of the City address. At the same time, to borrow a phrase from a friend, the world is a big enough place--Denver a big enough place--to be able to work it all out.

__________

Courtesy of the Denver Post, here's documentation of our "meeting" with the mayor today (I took time off work to attend, so I thought it worth a blog post, at the least).

Most interesting isn't that you can see Jenna and me in the photo (left side, row 8, outside aisle, Jenna in pink top), but the mild kerfuffle, to put it nicely, in the 9News and Denver Post comments sections about the "Black National Anthem."

Of course, this thing has gone big time on account of the DNC coming in August. Michelle Malkin picked up on it at her site. And there's more snark at Slapstick Politics.

No mention of Denver's success using DNA testing to reduce private property crimes, nor the 4,000 Denver students enrolled in new child care programs this year, nor the 2,400 new preschoolers enrolled this year, nor the $15.7 million received by graduating DPS seniors on their way to college (and that figure before DPS scholarships were awarded this year), nor the fact that Denver boasts 30,000 more jobs today than the city did in January, 2003, nor that Denver features a new methane gas conversion unit at the local landfill.

I'm not looking to pimp for the mayor; I'll simply say I heard a lot of interesting things at the State of the City speech today (and yeah, I took notes). The alternative anthem? Surprising, but not upsetting, to my thinking. And Ms. Marie has a remarkable, beautiful voice.

Alright. That's enough of that. I've got to fact check those things the mayor said.