A tight security net enveloped Denver as the city braced yesterday for the arrival of tens of thousands of supporters and protesters for the Democratic Party’s political extravaganza.
Some 45,000 people are expected in the city, nestled on the edge of the Rocky Mountains, with an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 police and security personnel to be deployed for the four-day convention which opens today.
But the security plans for the party convention coordinated by the secret service along with some 55 other agencies including the FBI and the US military have been denounced by civil rights groups as draconian and over-arching.
PHOTO: AFP
The first demonstrations were set to kick off early Sunday with a march outside the convention center called “to end the occupation” in Iraq.
“The fascist direction this country has taken should be brought to a halt and it can only be done by conscious activism, by people living in this country saying we will no longer go along with the things done by the Bush administration,” activist Debra Sweet, director of the World Can’t Wait activist group, said.
Yesterday’s march is just one of many planned over the four days as Democrats meet to nominate Illinois Senator Barack Obama as their White House candidate for the Nov. 4 elections.
On the sidelines of the political jamboree, Hollywood stars and top pop bands will rub shoulders with lawmakers and a host of activist groups eager to publicize their messages.
For a country which has been traumatized by political assassinations, and still scarred by the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, events such as conventions pose a huge security headache and conjure up nightmarish scenarios.
The Denver gathering also falls on the 40th anniversary of the 1968 Chicago convention which erupted in violence when anti-Vietnam war protesters fought running battles with police.
Obama’s White House bid has already been overshadowed by fears for his safety and he was given Secret Service protection much earlier than any previous presidential candidate.
In an added complication, Obama suddenly decided to break with tradition and give his acceptance speech in Denver’s 75,000-seat Invesco football stadium, throwing up in the air arrangements in the planning since April last year.
“That was a last minute change and it does present a challenge in that it came about at the last minute,” said Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the Secret Service.
“It’s really just a matter of relying on the partnerships that were already in place ... using the same resources to put the event together on somewhat short notice for Invesco field,” he said.
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper has vowed that despite the tight security, transport links will keep running and residents should see little disruption to their daily lives.
But activists have complained they are being given little opportunity to openly protest outside the convention center, and will be hidden from delegates behind a chain-link fence.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sought to challenge the security arrangements before a Denver court, but was overruled by the judge who said protesters’ rights to freedom of speech had not been infringed.
Activists however have dubbed the rally area “Guantanamo on the Platte” linking the river which runs through the city to the US military base in Cuba where “war on terror” detainees are held.
And the ACLU, which has posted an emergency number on its website for anyone needing legal help during the convention, is also concerned about a police holding center for those arrested during the demos, set up in a warehouse.
“The future of the next few days is unwritten. But the level to which the secret service the federal government and the city of Denver have already gone to interfere with the free speech rights of protesters is unprecedented,” Sweet said.
But Wiley denied the security measures were over the top.
“It will not look like a police state or a war zone, but there will certainly be an increased presence that is just a hallmark of the necessary security,” he said.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to