RNC Parade Plans Disclosed; Still No Route For Denver

    Law enforcement officials in St. Paul, Minn., have released a parade route for activists to use during the first day of the 2008 Republican National Convention being held in early September.

    In contrast, Denver has yet to disclose any activist-related plans other than to state that a parade route will be made available sometime and somewhere during the Democratic National Convention in late August. From our sister site Minnesota Monitor:

    The St. Paul Police Department issued a detailed permit today laying out the parade route that protesters will be allowed to utilize on the opening day of the Republican National Convention. Marchers will be permitted to walk from the Capitol down Cedar St., proceed across 7th St. toward the Xcel Energy Center, and then circle back on a triangle of streets adjacent to the convention location.

    “We believe we have struck that difficult balance that we’ve been looking for between free expression and safety and security,” assistant chief Matt Bostrom, who is overseeing RNC security, told reporters at a press conference this afternoon. “I believe it’s unprecedented access to the event.”

    According to Bostrom, protesters will not be segregated from the Xcel center by barbed wire, as was the case at the Democratic convention in Boston four years ago. “If there is something there it would be a material that you can see through and you can hear through,” he said. “And we’re not going to mess with that.”

    A wide array of activist groups and the Colorado ACLU have filed a suit against the city of Denver and the U.S. Secret Service to get them to disclose information about parade routes during the convention.

    At this time it’s just not known when or where protesters will be able to hold parades during the Denver event, and those who have applied for parade permits have yet to hear from the city if their permits have been approved.

    Erin Rosa was born in Spain and raised in Colorado Springs. She is a freelance writer currently living in Denver. Rosa's work has been featured in a variety of news outlets including the Huffington Post, Democracy Now!, and the Rocky Mountain Chronicle, an alternative-weekly in Northern Colorado where she worked as a columnist covering the state legislature. Rosa has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for her reporting on lobbying and woman's health issues. She was also tapped with a rare honorable mention award by the Newspaper Guild-CWA's David S. Barr Award in 2008--only the second such honor conferred in its nine-year history--for her investigative series covering the federal government's Supermax prison in the state. Rosa covers the labor community, corrections, immigration and government transparency matters. She can be reached at erosa@www.coloradoindependent.com.