Dissent debuts in downtown Denver

DENVER – If anything can be said about the members of CODEPINK, it’s that they are a restless lot.

Not satisfied with chanting anti-war slogans from a stationary position in front of Denver’s Union Station Sunday afternoon, the 200 or so adherents of the women-led peace advocacy group moved their message to the 16th Street Mall — and straight into a phalanx of helmeted, masked, and truncheon-toting police officers.

The CODEPINK marchers, which included a lively contingent from Boulder County, immediately went into a mass freeze with finger-formed peace signs above their heads as they faced off with stoic officers between Lawrence and Larimer streets.

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When they realized they could proceed no further down the busy thoroughfare, the protesters broke out into a pacifist sing-song.

“One, two, three, four, peace is what we’re marching for,” they intoned. “Hey, pay attention, this should be a peace convention.”

Anne Marie Pois, of Boulder, expressed disappointment at the “over-militarized” law enforcement response to CODEPINK’s peace parade, which was halted because participants were congregating in the road rather than the sidewalk.

“I guess it’s their first day doingthis,” she said of the black-garbed officers weighed down with weaponry, hanging off roving SUVs, and perched atop horses masked against potential airborne crowd control chemicals.

As her colleagues drifted back to Union Station, so concluded one of the first of many protests to come at the Democratic National Convention, which officially starts today and runs through Thursday night.

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