Occupy Denver ALEC Protest, Part 5
Channel: Jasmine Sailing
Date: 2012-03-03

Occupy Denver on February 29, 2010. The end of the tour of Alec corporations for the Occupy national day of protest against ALEC corporations.

This final part features the one arrest of the day (arrested for pedestrian in roadway and whatever they managed to look up in the book, this is stated by a police spokesperson on the video), plus my incident of being rammed/shoved with a bicycle.

It was a good march, intended to be educational (as you'll see in parts 1-4, if I ever finish them).  The downfall at the end was that walking into a street, notably an empty one with no traffic, appears to be an extremely serious matter.

It was almost immediately after I began filming the arrest that I was hit with the bicycle.  I was on the sidewalk.  I had my camcorder zoomed in a bit, and thought I was far enough out of the way (protestors were in front of me).  I was close to the street, and therefore most likely the first and easiest person to hit with a bike.  (The officer isn't on the bike when I film him immediately afterward, so my best guess is that he was on foot and manually rammed it into me.)

I was shoved very hard with the bike, stumbled forward into people, twisted my left ankle while regaining my footing.  The back of my right leg was hit by the tire, and has a scrape and swollen bruise (about 1.25" wide x 1.75" tall).  A small bruise has formed in the center of my lower back, and the area is sore.  There seems to be deep bruising in the upper tailbone area.  My left hip hurts, I can't figure out how that happened (possibly when I twisted my left ankle).

Note that I didn't say a word or otherwise retaliate (aside from aiming my camcorder at the offending bicyclist for a long time). I was startled and angry, and I'd already been grabbed by my arm and shoved aside earlier in the march (which I was also angry about), the main thing keeping me focused was that I needed to keep recording until the entire incident was over.  I did finally have an outburst when we walked away, and then I was too frazzled and exhausted to film anymore until we were sitting down at the very end.

Bruce found me right after I stopped filming (he had turned on the livestream, seen me in the midst of a lot of police, and literally ran to meet up with us). When we went to a nearby restaurant so I could recover, my face was bright red and I was sweating considerably.  I wasn't as calm as I may have sounded on video.

Do I fight police?  No, I haven't so much as yelled at them.  I'm a 40 year old with Multiple Sclerosis and other health issues, it would be a bit suicidal of me.  Because I'm somewhat frail I always try to stay out of the way of trouble.  I didn't succeed this time, but I don't think standing on a sidewalk filming an arrest warrants getting battered out of the way with a bicycle.  There was no warning, or I would have moved.  The bike caught me completely off-guard, from behind.

A livestreamer seems to have also been hit with the bike right after me (judging by our camera angles, he was in the same row as me but closer to the wall... he reacted out loud in his video, but I can't hear him in mine).

I didn't edit out any footage, but I do turn my camcorder off whenever I think nothing significant is going to happen (missed some significant things by thinking that this time) because I only have about 2 hours on my battery.

PS: "Happy" 15th anniversary to Bruce and I, on the day I commented and uploaded this video.