Interestingly, either the City of Denver or the DNC itself, or both, are trying to sweep away all the homeless people during the week of the Democratic National Convention in August by handing them tickets to movies, the zoo, and the Denver Museum of Nature. More here.
Can you imagine the outrage if the GOP pulled something like this? And rightful outrage it would be, indeed. I suppose it makes sense though. You have to hide all the poor people so they don’t mess up all the hope and change that’ll be occurring at the convention, non?
From the comments:
In 1968, Boss Richard J. Daley, the Democratic Party strongman of Chicago, erected large plywood fences along the routes from the airport to the convention center so that the Democrats wouldn’t have to see the black squalor in his Democrat-run city.
If this isn’t history repeating itself, I don’t know what is.
Hmm. Certainly seems like a new kind of politics, doesn’t it?
Tags: Denver, DNC, Homelessness
Posted in general | Comments (3)
July 27th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Kev-o,
Actually, by virtue of being in Denver and reading the paper and seeing the local news, this story got a little over-reported and mis-informed.
Various homeless groups in Denver do this all summer (not just at the DNC) and do so in order to get the homeless out of the heat, a compassionate reason for sure. They will just also be doing this during the DNC, which sparked all the controversy. It’s been 95 degrees here and much much more for 3 weeks now.
All that said, Denver does have an inexplicably large homeless population, but they are already barred from panhandling in all the places the DNC would be anyway bc its barred year round (remember the 16th mall?). Plus, Denver’s mayor cooperates with churches and groups all over the city in his 10 year plan to end homelessness, which basically amounts to adopting a family and teaching them how to spend money wisely (and various other mentoring activities).
So in all, I don’t think anybody is trying to hide anybody because homeless people wouldn’t be seen anyway. They don’t frequent around the Pepsi center anyway.
July 27th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Good to know. Glad to see it’s not the problem I could only assume it was given the national news. You know, I’m really hating the national news more and more each day.
July 28th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Yeah, gotta read newspapers, magazines, and foreign sources for the best well-rounded take on any given issue. What a task!