True peoples' commemoration denounces police brutality

Published Jan 18, 2007 1:12 AM

On Martin Luther King Day, the temperature in Denver was forecasted to be in the teens. Early in the morning, when people were gathering to remember the great slain fighter who fought against war and racist repression, the temperature was in single digits and the ground was covered in snow, in what has been a near record of snowfall in the Denver metro area.

Communities United Against Police Brutality, a coalition of leftists from the Black, Mexican, Latin@, Arab and Asian communities, had called for a separate commemoration and feeder march to the city’s benign rally and parade, that has for the last several years been sponsored by none other than State Farm Insurance—an insurance company being sued for millions of dollars for refusing to pay out damages after hurricane Katrina.

The rally before the “Marade” drew nearly fifty people, while the city’s rally drew hundreds more. The CUAPB event attracted a lot of attention and many community members dropped by to use the open mike. Many people followed behind the CUAPB banner, and when the rally got to its destination, at one point more than 100 people stopped to rally with the true peoples’ commemoration and to condemn the rampant police brutality in the Metro area, the closing of schools and the building of a half-billion-dollar jail.

—Larry Hales