I had the opportunity to photograph and hear Bernie Sanders speak to 34k people the other day. The openers including AOC had a clear message - The rich are running the country and taking money from everyone else. During this speech, I realized that he's been saying the same thing since the 1970s but he now has some faces to attach to "the one percent" and now we know their plan - Oligarchy
On May 25, 2020 another black man in America was killed by a police officer. This time it was a name we all know by now George Floyd. I don’t know if this was the straw that broke the camels back because there were just too many black men dying in the hands of police or if it was because people had been sitting at home for too long due to the pandemic or if it was the video that surfaced of him having a police officer knee on the back of his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds while he screams “I CAN”T BREATH” In my opinion it was probably all of the above. Either way, there was an unrest happening all over America. Peaceful protests were happening during the day and things were going up in flames after the sun went down. The next day I decided to head in Downtown Denver to see what was happening.
I parked my car about a mile away and road my bike up to the capital where I met an energized and peaceful crowd of people. There were signs and speakers and chanting but in a very civilized way.
The crowd around the capital building decided to march down
the street to the Denver Police Administrative Building. At this time I could feel tensions ramping up
but only in a handful of people. The
march was met by a makeshift chain link fence and a handful of police armed
with pepper ball guns separating the protesters from the building.
The march moved on and back to a place where cooler heads prevailed.
More rocks were thrown and more pepper lit up the crowd. It was like being in a war zone. Twice I got hit with clouds of pepper and/or
tear gas. The first time I ran and coughed
my way out of the 2 block radius that was smogged out with gas. The second time I couldn’t open my eyes for
more than a split second at a time. Somehow
I found a good Samaritan working as a “medic” at the scene who sprayed my eyes
down with a homemade concoction that quickly reduced the burn. Things were amping up quickly.
Fires were being lit and graffiti was going up all over the
area in record time.
The most interest thing to me was that when things started
to really get out of hand was the way the Denver Police moved the crowd. It was with precision and force that 75-100
police officers moved and dispersed a crowd of several thousand people out of a
4 block radius in a matter of 15 minutes.
Why Not Minot? The Magic City – North Dakota You might remember James Francis from my Wyoming travel story in 2021. He recently r...
