The Steamboat Pilot & Today

Denver — Protestors aren’t early risers.

As the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and the weather, heat up in Denver this morning, two major protest sites at City of Cuernavaca and Civic Center parks were largely deserted. But with marches, concerts and other protest events scheduled, both the Recreate ’68 and Tent State University groups promise to catch the attention of plenty of Denver’s 50,000 visitors as the day and the week roll on.

Seemingly as plentiful as the protestors are the police assembled in Denver this week. Officers from Aurora, Colorado Springs and other communities across the state are augmenting Denver’s force. They can be seen traveling in large packs via foot, bike, horseback or automobile, sometimes in full riot or SWAT team gear, checking flower pots and newspaper boxes for bombs and flashing peace signs off the back of a Hummer. At an antiwar march through downtown Denver on Sunday, the number of officers ringing the march rivaled the actual number of marchers.

Kevin and Katie Hall, who waited patiently at City of Cuernavaca Park for their chance to enter a lottery for Rage Against the Machine tickets, were turned off by the heavy police presence.

“It seems like the manifestation of a police state,” Kevin Hall said. “It just seems a little over the top.”

Other Denver natives reveled in the injection of energy to their city, such as a man at the Rock Bottom Brewery who promised convention goers, “I’ll vote for Obama if you buy me a beer.”

Willie Theaker, 17, and Lucy Piccochi, 23, drove all the way from Connecticut to “have their voices heard” in Denver this week. They spent Sunday night in the “Freedom Cage,” the sarcastic moniker protestors have applied to the city’s barricaded free speech/protest zone outside the Pepsi Center.

“We’re just tired of the way things are being done in this country,” Piccochi said. “All talk and no action. We’re here taking responsibility for our lives in this country.”