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Report from Colorado Springs
13 October 2002 From: |
The occurrence of a visit by Dick Cheney and a debate between Senate candidates Allard and Strickland turned the Keep Space 4 Peace weekend
into one of wall-to-wall protests in Colorado Springs.
Cheney arrived at Colorado College Friday night to a protest of about 100 students. On Saturday morning, we had about 75 in front of the Antlers Doubletree Hotel to protest his appearance at a fundraiser. Surprisingly, the Colorado Springs Gazette turned the story of the protest into a page 1 banner-headline story on Sunday, and barely mentioned Cheney's speech inside. (By contrast, the Denver Post wrote only about the speech and didn't even mention the protest.) From the Doubletree demo, about 25 of us went out to Peterson AFB for an afternoon bannering. On Sunday, we had 40 in Acacia Park for a rally, with a post-Australia speech by Bill Sulzman, and music from Malcolm Lucard and Greg Borum, and from Mary Sprunger-Froese and Lyn Boudreau (and now the four of them are talking about performing as a group). Then, several protesters went to the Allard-Strickland debate to denounce BOTH candidates' pro-war positions. The demos outside the Penrose Library turned into a free-for-all. Both Allard and Strickland supporters came with bullhorns and funny costumes, denouncing each other, and we peace demonstrators were in the center, denouncing everyone. It might have turned ugly if not for the fact that it was so comical. Sure was noisy, though. Anyway, that's quite a few demonstrations in a short span of time. We're all tired out, but we've got plenty more Iraq events planned
for the next few weeks. |