May 6th: March against police terror! March for Marvin, Oleg, and all the victims!

Friday, May 6 · 7:00pm – 10:00pm

Sunken Garden Park

8th and Speer

Denver, Colorado

The police are at war with the people.
It’s time for the people to be at war with the police.

9 months ago, jail guards in the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center in Denver, murdered a homeless street preacher, Marvin Booker. Videotape of his brutal murder exists, but has never been made public. The Denver District Attorney declined to file charges against the deputies responsible.

No one has faced any justice for Marvin’s murder.
…
On May 3rd, Denver will host city wide elections for a new mayor and new city council members. Though most of the mayoral candidates have promised a change in the local police forces, the results of this election will change nothing.

No matter who is elected, the police will still terrorize our communities.

High profile cases of police violence fill the headlines of local media. Officers beat, taze, and pepper spray residents of the Denver Metro Area with impunity. Though several tolkeinized terminations have recently taken place, these firings will ultimately not stop the police terror raging in our neighborhoods and streets. In Aurora, police execute Russian migrant youth merely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Denver, police raid homes and beat whole families.

This isn’t a case of a few bad apples. The whole orchard is diseased and rotten.

As the U.S. military occupies countries across the world to maintain control over a global economy that impoverishes billions, police forces across the United States occupy neighborhoods to maintain a social order that impoverishes millions in this country.

The poor and working class are beaten, murdered, imprisoned, evicted, raped, abused, and tortured in Iraq and Afghanistan by U.S. soldiers and in Denver by local police officers and other state agents.

We’ve marched three times in the last year, and our rage has become something that cannot be dismissed.

On May 6th, on a weekend that will see celebrations honoring the memories of struggles, revolutions, and people’s victories from centuries ago, we will fill the streets.

Whoever is elected on May 3rd, they will understand the power of the people they hope to control and govern after May 6th.

May 6th- Into the streets!
For Marvin Booker!
For Oleg Gidenko!
For all of us!

Fire of unknown origin damages Cherry Creek condos

GLENDALE – Firefighters worked on a fire at the Cherry Creek Village Condos in the 5300 block of Cherry Creek Drive South.

The call came in just before 6 a.m. Denver Fire was the only agency that responded.

The fire started on the outside of the building and did spread onto the roof. According to DFD, the blaze never got into any units. The units near the fire were evacuated.

No word yet on the cause of the fire or how much the condos were damaged.

Cop injured as driver rear-ends patrol car and drives away

A Denver police officer was injured Tuesday night when his patrol car was rear-ended on Federal Boulevard.

Just before midnight, the officer was stopped on Federal Boulevard near West 23rd Avenue when a car hit the cruiser’s back left side, said Sonny Jackson, spokesman for the Denver Police Department.

The car then continued south in the northbound lanes of Federal Boulevard and at one point drove onto a sidewalk.

Police caught up to the car in the 1700 block of Grove Street, where they arrested the male driver, Jackson said.

The officer was taken to an area hospital with back pain.

The driver, whose name was not released, faces charges of felony eluding and hit-and-run and other traffic-related charges, Jackson said.

Meeting points and times for day of action in Denver

1PM: Students at Hinkley High School held an occupation / sit-in, then they walked out of school and about 100 students have taken to the streets. They are reporting that all of the students who walked out have been suspended.

Denver, CO, April 3, 2011 – College students, union members, organization leaders, community activists and others will join together on Monday, April 4, 2011, to commemorate the 43rd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s march for sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, followed by his famous last “Promised Land” speech, and assassination on April 4th, 1968.

A Justice for Janitors (SEIU) march will begin at 17th and California streets at 11:30 and will conclude at Tivoli Square (SW corner of Tivoli between the King Center and the Plaza Building) in Denver for a “Teach-in”. An anti-capitalist radical workers’ bloc has been called for the march.

From 12:15 – 2:00pm, a panel of community leaders representing labor, immigration, education, civil rights, the inter-faith community, and other areas will speak about worker’s rights and social justice.

The Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) have coordinated a student “walk-out” to attend the events on campus, and to send a message of solidarity with workers.

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) will also hold a rally from 1:00-3:00 pm at 17th and Esplanade in City Park, near the MLK statue, to protest the Dex Corporation outsourcing American jobs.

An evening Rally and Candlelight Vigil to honor workers, organized by Colorado AFL-CIO, will begin at 5:30pm at City Park Band Shell, on the east side of Ferrell Lake (near E. 17th and Steele Street entrance). An anti-capitalist radical workers’ bloc has been called for the rally/vigil.

Meanwhile, similar events will be held in Colorado Springs and other cities.

Call for anti-capitalist contingent at April 4th Denver labor actions

The following is a statement issued by the Denver General Membership Branch of the IWW calling anti-capitalists to converge on the April 4th labor actions in Denver. There will be an anti-capitalist and radical worker’s bloc participating in the march beginning at 11:30am at 17th and California as well as a presence at the later rally and vigil.

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NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO COMPROMISE

SEIZE THE TIME!

The uprisings in Europe, then North Africa and the Mideast, and in the United States are not a coincidence. They are, at least in part, a common rebellion against a common enemy that threatens to make working people pay for its plunder and failures: the neo-liberal policies of unregulated capitalism, croney government, and phoney “banking”. We believe the best of what workers have spoken so far is not reforming a crippled and crippling capitalist system, but for the working class to step in as replacements for bundling bankers and bungling politicians.
WE HAVE A CHOICE TO MAKE: WE CAN LET OUR MOVEMENT BE CHANNELED TO WEAK REFORM AND ELECTORAL MEASURES OR WE CAN PUSH ONWARD NOT JUST FOR WORKERS’ RIGHTS IN THE OLD SYSTEM BUT FOR WORKERS’ POWER to control our own work, our wealth, our well being. Early in the last century the newpaper The Messenger, founded by A. Philip Randolph, called for mass strikes and workers’ control as “the antidote for capitalist poisons”.

Drive-through bank robbery in Denver

Denver police are looking for a man they said robbed a bank through the drive-through window.

Police responded at 11:34 a.m. Saturday to a US Bank branch at 4930 Colorado Blvd. after a man demanded money through the drive-through window. A representative for the Denver Police Department didn’t know whether the suspect was armed or how he was able to get the money.

Statistics were not immediately available, but police said robberies through drive-through windows are uncommon.

‘Blessings Bandit’ has pulled off five Denver bank robberies

The FBI is looking for the “Blessings Bandit”, who is suspected in five bank robberies in the Denver area, including a Lakewood bank Saturday and a Centennial bank Monday morning.

The TCF Bank branch at 7595 West Colfax Ave. in Lakewood was robbed at about 9 a.m. Saturday, and the Chase Bank branch at 7490 South University Blvd. in Centennial was robbed just before 11 a.m. today.

In each of the robberies, his note demanding cash and threatening violence ended with “God bless,” authorities said.

Off-duty ICE cop stabbed

An off-duty immigration officer was injured in an altercation at a liquor store Saturday night, Denver police said.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer was not seriously hurt.

“The guy pulled out a knife and cut him,” police spokesman Sonny Jackson said.

The incident at 5135 Chambers Rd. was reported at about 8:39 p.m., said police spokeswoman Leslie Branchwise.

Two area bank robberies

At 8:10 on Thursday morning a suspect entered the Colorado Business Bank at 821 17th St., according to a news release from the FBI in Denver. The suspect presented a note demanding money. He then fled with an undisclosed amount of cash.

At 5:50 p.m. on Friday a suspect entered Academy Bank on 9901 Grant St. in Thornton and demanded money, according to a news release from the FBI in Denver. The man, who acted like he had a weapon, fled with an undisclosed amount of cash.

Three Denver-area bank robberies

On Feb. 18 at 9:41 a.m. a suspect entered the Wells Fargo Bank at 3333 S. Bannock St. and presented a note demanding money. He fled with an undisclosed amount of cash, according to a news release from the FBI Denver Division.

On March 1, a suspect entered the Key Bank at 2776 N. Speer Blvd. at 11 a.m. This man also presented a note demanding money, and fled with an undisclosed amount of cash.

On March 8 at 12:39 p.m. a suspect entered the Compass Bank at 4600 South Broadway in Englewood, according to a news release from the FBI Denver Division. The suspect presented a note demanding money and fled with an unknown amount of cash.