DENVER—This was not your ordinary camping experience.
No breathtaking natural scenery to see here, more than a block from the Pepsi Center in downtown Denver, with a roller coaster in the distance and dozens of sleeping bags placed in a parking lot.
Here, in the designated demonstration zone surrounded by a black fence, was where more than two dozen protesters chose to spend Sunday night.
“This is the designated free-speech zone. We’re going to feign sleep here to protest the suppression of our freedom of speech rights,” said Duke Austin, 33, one of the members of the Alliance for Real Democracy, a coalition of protest groups.
The protest groups had hoped the city would allow them to camp overnight at Denver’s 314-acre City Park, about two and half miles from the Pepsi Center, headquarters for the four-day Democratic National Convention.
The city refused, citing an 11 p.m. curfew. The groups, which included Tent State University, then chose to move to another park closer to the Pepsi Center and said they would spend the night at the 50,000-square-foot parking lot they’ve dubbed the “freedom cage.”
Close to midnight Sunday, about 30 protesters arrived at the parking lot holding a white banner that said, “The Freest Cage of All.” In the distance, a Denver police officer filmed the protesters as they crossed the street into the lot.
As the protesters began taking off their backpacks and arranging their sleeping bags, a group of police officers approached them.
The officers said the protesters could sleep at the parking lot overnight, but there would be a couple of ground rules: No displaying any signs on the fence—meaning “The Freest Cage of All” sign had to come down—and no drilling any tent stakes into the concrete.
Austin said the groups would have preferred to camp overnight at a park, the way Tent State University has been able to do in other states during protest events.
“It’s the only place they gave us,” said 19-year-old Barry Freed, about his reason for walking from nearby Cuernavaca Park—where the groups held events during the day—for a night at the parking lot.
Austin, who brought a camping stove, said they would make “freedom toast” in the morning, a knock on the term “freedom fries” that was a symbolic protest of the French opposition to the Iraq war.
Activist and former Dead Kennedys vocalist Jello Biafra, who had promised spoken-word poetry and bedtime stories, began talking after everyone got settled. They sat on the ground around him.
Austin said the groups, who plan on staying overnight at the parking lot through the convention, might bring tents next time, now that they know they are allowed.
“We’re going to feign sleep really well,” he said.
