Less Than Zero

Ladies and gentlemen, Coyote proudly gives you your Denver Convention protest area.  The police there are like Maytag repairmen, the lonliest people in town.  I thought it was bad before, but this is, well, nothing. Absolutely nothing.  It isn't awful, or brutal, or humiliating.  It is simply nothing.

Imagine poor old Coyote walking a half-mile from downtown in ninety degree heat, slithering sweatily through the Auraria campus, excited to finally see the free speech zone.  Finally he makes a right turn, and there it is: the giant white tent.  All you can see is the tent.  The walkway where the delegates come in is a good three hundred yards away.  The "freedom cage" is small, isolated, and NOBODY IS THERE!  And Coyote doesn't blame them.  Any good protester worth their salt would never go there.  Honestly, it is a joke.  Nothing but a joke.

But this joke isn't funny.  Coyote could hear music playing as he approached, and it was coming from a Chinese band that was just finishing up.  They were playing and protesting about persecution in their homeland, and nobody was there to hear them.  How sad.  They went there, I'm sure, because that is where the protests are.  They did as they were told.

So Coyote is standing there, all by himself, and all at once he gets this crazy urge to drop his pack and make a sudden, insane lunge at the fence.  Maybe, just maybe, I could get over the first fence.  Maybe, just maybe, I could start climbing the second fence before I got tazered or shot with rubber bullets.  Maybe, just maybe, with a final rush of courage I could fall over the second fence and crawl to the media tent.  If I could just touch the media tent........ But who would see?  Who would know about my last act of profound courage?  Who would tell my story?  What an absolute joke.

But Coyote is more wise than he looks.  He knows this was done on purpose.  This joke was no accident.  In the end, however, the joke is on the city.  This cage at the end of the earth will only force protesters back into the streets, where the city would much rather not have them go.  If this cage almost made a protester out of Coyote, think what it will do to those already fired up and ready to go.

CoyoteJ, growling with canine anger. 

Coyote's first P.S.   Every citizen should go down and see this place, and then think long and hard about what it means.