Martin Luther King Day Riot, Denver 1992

I know that many of you have been asking yourselves when someone was going to write an account of the riot that occurred in the area around the Capitol, in Denver, on Martin Luther King Day in 1992 and, of course, an accompanying ghost story to go along with it. Well, wait no longer, here it is.



“Our generation will have to repent not only for the words and acts of the Children of Darkness, but also for the fears and apathy of the Children of Light.”
--Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the autumn of 1991 the Ku Klux Klan legally suckered the visionary, however, naif State of Colorado in its ever impressive discretion into allowing them a rally on the steps of the State Capitol during the 1992 Martin Luther King Day celebrations that were to be held in Civic Center Park. The Klan and the King Day rally were a little more than two blocks apart. This resulted in a riot consisting, according to the Rocky Mountain News, of a thousand rioters—a conservative estimate in my opinion—five hundred cops, eighty Klan members and yours truly, although the Rocky Mountain News didn’t mention me personally.

This might have been a real Indiana Jones type cliff hanger with a meaningful plot, cleverly thrilling solutions to gravely threatening situations and a really sophisticated, sexy chick to despise, become endearingly annoyed with, poignantly understand and, finally, fall in love with our hero. But you don’t have Indiana Jones. All you’ve got is Tymar. At least, I can say, a few women I have annoyed.

The work does beg some explanation. It has nothing to do with the more than ten thousand people, that were at the other end of Civic Center Park, honoring a man who went into darkness himself in order that light might be shed upon a world. I chose to spend my time over at the Capitol. The problem was the people in Civic Center Park had no tear gas, though they would get some by the end of the day. The cops over by the Capitol had all the tear gas and they would refuse to part with any of it until the rioters demonstrated proper enthusiasm. These are accounts of only a few occurrences in the riot as most of it was relatively boring.

Also, the ghost story is in the third person narrative because the little girl and the transient are fabrications, but I did stand before the Capitol in that early morning fog and the ambience was a profound inspiration.



“Cry, ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.”
--William Shakespeare
Julius Caesar

Immediately outside of the west entrance of the Capitol, at the foot of the stairs, is a small mall area with a pedestaled, Nineteenth Century militiaman in the center. At the bottom of the staircase that runs down the west lawn is Lincoln Street and on the other side of Lincoln is War Memorial Park. The west side of the park is bordered by Broadway. West of that is Civic Center Park, Bannock Street and, finally, the Civic Center.

On the south side of the Capitol is a driveway and driveway street entrance that runs onto the intersection of Fourteenth Avenue and Sherman Street. Proceeding south from there, down Sherman, on the right is an auxiliary building of the Capitol complex with an utility garage on the south end of the building. The intersection at the south end of the block is Sherman and Thirteenth.

I entered the area, pen and spiral notebook in hand, on the north side of the Capitol and there, across the driveway entrance, were a cop line, the cops wore armor consisting of body armor, gas mask, shield, club and helmet, and, behind the cop line, a K-9 unit and mounted cops. As I walked around the west side of the Capitol, directly in front of the west entrance of the Capitol were the Kan sitting on graduating stands with speaker’s platform in front. Before them stood the petestaled, Nineteenth Century militiaman, then a cop line, fortified fence and, on the west, Capitol lawn, Lincoln Street and all across War Memorial Park, hundreds of anti-Klan demonstrators. The cop line and fence ran all the way across the west side of the Capitol. With all the jeering and the choppers circling over head, no one could hear anything the Klan were saying, but the Klan speakers didn’t know that, they were having the biggest orgasms of their mental masturbating careers.

I walked across the west face of the Capitol lawn and onto the intersection of Fourteenth and Sherman, at the south driveway entrance to the Capitol campus. Across the driveway entrance were the same armored cop line, K-9 unit, mounted cops, cop offering excuses to mother with two small children…What?

There behind the cop line stood a cop and a woman with a daughter about ten years of age and a son approximately six. The kids were, of course, taking in the whole scene with calm regard. The mother, on the other hand, was bewildered by the repugnant fiasco unfolding before her as she heard not the apologies of a poor man who had no idea of how to accommodate her and who, as his words and countenance betrayed, was deeply regretting this rueful encounter. The best the perplexed bastard could do was to propose calling a cab for the three. Now an unsuspecting cabby was to be involved.

Nothing much was happening so I walked down Fourteenth, west toward Lincoln. As I proceeded down the hill a ways, the cops took the intersection of Fourteenth and Sherman, blocking it off on three sides, enveloping the driveway entrance to the Capitol. By now the Klan had concluded their rants and had entered the Capitol. This along with the movement on the part of the cops in securing the Fourteenth and Sherman intersection betrayed the exodus of the Klan so I moved right up to the cops lining the south side of the intersection.

Now debris consisting of snow balls, ice, rocks, bricks—I even saw a pool, cue ball—began raining down on the scene. There was a large group of cops in the middle of the intersection, they and the cops on the line all had their shields raised as debris descended, smashing against both shields and bodies, and all around me. I looked down the cop line, toward the Capitol, and about thirty feet from me was a video crew complete with camera, sound and commentator. About half way between us a cop from behind the line walked up and trust his club into the gut of a guy standing in front of the line. This was like some kind of signal for the line just disintegrated into a mass of flying bodies and threshing clubs. My gaze caught the eyes of the commentator, in those eyes I saw the startled awakening of a person whose reality had been shattered and the most disquieting realization pervading her disillusioned sentience was, “THERE’S NO WHERE TO RUN!!!” At that moment I realized that she was seeing the same thing in my eyes. The next thing she saw was me, as I was raising pen to notebook, being knocked on my ass by a cop. This guy just slammed into me with his shield. I flew a short distance and, falling on my back, I let the momentum carry my feet on over my head and rolled back up into a standing position. This was fortunate as I would have, no doubt, suffered a lot more at the discerning hands of one of Denver’s finest had I not. The cop was now advancing on me. I turned to run. Tear gas was exploding all around us. “I gotta get outa here!” engulfed my spirit. There was an undisturbed cop line running from a corner of the intersection to the corner of the auxiliary building on Sherman Street. I say undisturbed, but not unbroken. There was room enough for about two cops in the line and, for what ever reason, they weren’t there and what was even better, the cops on the line were standing with their backs to me. Needless to say, I was through that hole, baby, and onto Sherman Street.

I arrived on Sherman without event and ran half way down the block, stopping to write as I leaned up against a cop car. As I was writing, the glass in the back door window just disintegrated. What? Now a brick flew across my vision, shattering the door window next to it. Oh, shit! I ran from the besieged car. The cops were down at the Capitol end of the street “maintaining the integrity of the intersection” (doncha ya just love cop lingo?). People were running back and forth, shouting poignant epitaphs at the cops, debris was raining down in a gas imbued arena and I could RUN, DUDE!

As I turned to run a piece of debris caught me in the shoulder, but, again, I managed to remain on my feet. Running down the street, I approached the south end of the auxiliary building housing a utility garage and there sat a yellow school bus that looked like it had just been driven off the set of a Mad Max movie. The bus had been rapped in a steel mesh. The Klan had been escorted there through an underground tunnel and were now trying to make it onto the bus as they crossed a ten foot expanse. They were being hit by incoming debris, falling, now frantically crawling to the uncanny refuge, one standing in the doorway repeatedly screaming, “I’m not going out there!” His appeals falling on deaf ears as he was dragged to the bus.

I ran up to the side of the bus and began jotting down more notes of the vile episode playing out around me. All the glass had, by now, been smashed. I found myself staring up at a Klansman who was flipping me off and yelling, “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!...” The bus began to move, forcing me back as the driver turned the bus, running over the curb, in an attempt to dodge both rioters and rubble. As I watched the bus drive off in a hail of debris, rioters striking it with limb and club, a guy hanging off the side, his leg through a side window where the steel mesh had been breached, his arms flailing, in my mind the image froze into a Mad magazine cartoon. (Humanity, ya gotta love it.)

Now--as the cops proceeded in an archaic Centurion march, from the Capitol, down Sherman, clubs rapping the sides of their shields in unison with their pace, mounted cops out in front, astride prancing horses--a torrid, febrile wave of humanity swept down Sherman Street and breaking across three cop cars that were blocking the Thirteenth and Sherman intersection, it devoured all three, leaving one over turned, its cherry bar torn off and used as bludgeon.

A relative calm fell over the immediate vicinity as a few rioters, a few cops, different correspondents from the local media and myself all broke out in the most appreciated laughter. Being immersed in the gas soaked atmosphere, tears running down our faces, snot running out of our noses, coughing, spitting, there we were, all heeding the fact that we all were simultaneously lighting up cigarettes. So the cigarette served as the wafer of choice in this brief communion of levity. (Humanity, ya gotta love it.)

The avatars of evil had departed, but tides of odium were still surging across the tumultuous scene. Now there was no focus for the plague of outrage and hatred that had infected the environment. The execration was now turning on any target in a mindless display of fitful carnage. As I stood surveying the on going violence I began to realize that the Klan had succeeded in arousing what resides in the grim, foreboding recesses of the human soul. Were the rioters really morally opposed to these dark lords or had they become their eager, depraved brood? With the sardonic smiles of Stephen King’s “dark man” this odious aristocracy had gazed upon their febrile pages with fiendish delight and like the “dark man” they had left only when they were satisfied with the vehemence of the pervading rage.

And then from the dark recesses of my own subconscious came the remnants of, was it a nightmare? I could not discern clearly what it was. Into my consciousness stole shades of a fog, the mist, the thing unnamed. And as I stood there watching the odious, maddening contagian sweep across Sherman Street, I saw it come for me as it is now coming for you, dear reader.

What comes of phantasm?



“I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.”
--Edgar Allan Poe
The Fall Of The House Of Usher

There in the mist of a pre-dawn, January morning stood the Capitol. The Capitol dome emitted an eerie incandescence as the lurking fog engulfed it and shrouded the shoulders of the structure in a sinister, grayish white cloak. A barricade running around the west side of the Capitol completed an edifice that stood stern and repelling, evoking a foreboding effigy of a darker time when men hid behind stone walls that might save them from what lurked within the grayish white aberration outside. Stone walls against the thing that so balefully watched them.

“Excuse me, sir,” said the enchanting oddity that had suddenly appeared so stealthily beside him, drawing his attention from the scene at hand. The oddity came in the form of a blond haired, eight year old girl wearing a white, laced dress and black, leather shoes. Standing in the chilly gloom, she seemed only to complement the ambience fostered by the uncanny sight that loomed before them.

As the little girl complemented the ambience so surprise complemented confusion in the expression on his face as he struggled to apprehend the phenomenon.

“Yes,” he heard himself reply.

Looking to either side as she took a step closer, she would make a request that would only obscure any hope of comprehension.

“May I hide in there, please,” she asked in a disturbingly woeful manor as she pointed to the fortified Capitol, then pulling back her hand, she covered it with the other as if the hand itself had transgressed.

Bending down, one knee on the concrete, the other supporting his forearm, he, at last, managed, “What are you doing here?”

He could not determine if she was ignoring the question or answering it as she proclaimed, “They will fight here today.”

He looked in her eyes inquiringly.

“The people who will be here,” she explained, answering his gaze. “So will the ones who wave the bibles. The ones who wave the bibles will tempt the others until the hatred fills them and they hate each other and they hate the ones with the bibles and the ones with the bibles hate all of them.”

“Are you talking about the Klan,” he asked with an inquisitive smile.

“It doesn’t matter who they are,” she proceeded. “It’s the thing that makes them do it. That’s what they really love. They feel the hate, but they don’t see the thing.”

“What thing,” he asked.

“The thing that they all pray to, but they don’t know it. You know. The bad thing. The thing that does all the bad stuff. The thing that’s trying to find me. I can see it because it wants me to see it.”

Then her face took on a burden of shame and guilt.

“It makes me play hide and seek,” her head dropping, her voice beginning to crack. ”It wants to find me.”

These last articulations disquieted him. Was there something else the little girl was not divulging? Was she being stalked by someone?

“Where are your parents,” he asked, his question arriving more in the form of a plea than a request. A plea he found himself not wanting answered.

At this the little girl’s face began to reveal what looked like the painful reminiscence of a nightmare forgotten. She looked up at him, her eyes pleading, now closing tightly, her mouth straining to form words her throat dare not let pass.

“For God’s sake,” he said, taking hold of her arms.

“There is no god here.” The pronouncements came from a park bench across the lawn. The voice was unclean, uncanny as though something devoid of all grace was attempting to imitate humanness. His gaze fell upon a countenance that was revulsion incarnate. Lying there in ragged, worn attire, with head raised, its sardonic smile displaced a canvas of lesions and the focal points of the bane portrait on this pestilent canvas were the eyes. In its eyes lay a lost, odious hunger, it was the total deprivation of a soul.

Backing away in numbing dread, she turned toward the ghoulish thing that now commenced a depraved laugh, her hands raised in tense fists, screaming she pleaded, “Please! I promise to be good! Please! Please! OH, PLEASE, DON’T!”

As her screams rose in the accursed night, he looked back at the hideous abomination, its mockingly defiant laugh now reaping an obscene delight. With this his blood ran cold. His face was at once a pallid mosaic of pain, terror and dread. Desperately, he turned back to the terrified, wilting child.

She was gone.

“Oh, no!” he breathlessly whispered, his eyes hopelessly searching. “NO!!!” he cried as he turned and charged the profane, unspeakable thing that lay on the park bench. He knew not what he was about to do. He did not care. Unbearable pain had now been transformed into mindless, hungry rage. He was NOT going to let this happen! He must STOP this thing! Reaching the park bench, he brought his knee up and, landing with his shin across the lower torso, with one hand raised in an eager fist, the other grabbing worn, tattered lapels in order to pull the rancid thing up only to beat it down again and again and again, he meant to kill this malignancy.

“AAAAYYYYY! Wha! Wha! Wha. Whaaaaah.” His victim gasped, the arms rising and then dropping as the head, too, fell back.

Now his eyes were wide with astonishment. He was no longer looking at the hideous thing he had just seen from across the Capitol lawn. Gone were the lesions that had pocked the diseased face. This was not the demonic thing that he had so ruthlessly come to destroy. It was now just an old derelict possessed by nothing more than wine. It was now someone too drunk to know or care about anything.

He released his grip, letting the incoherent form fall back on the bench as he, himself, stumbled backward, his face still frozen in shock, his chest waxing and waning. He was finally able to pull in a deep breath and force it out in a symbolic exorcism. Then with his knees giving out, his body twisting as he collapsed, in a gloomy mist that clouded both his milieu and his soul, he sat with head bowed and wept.

He had been seduced into a theatre of pain and cruelty where scripts tell of shattered dreams, prostituted loyalties and nightmares mortgaged with souls, a stage on which innocence is desperately desired and dearly paid for. The subject of this theatre is at once its inspiration, play write, director and producer.

It is the “thing” the little girl spoke of. Its celebration is war and it gazes upon greatness, mercy and hope through the scope of an assassin’s rifle. It heralds no mantra, it displays no banner, it waves no flag though its finger print can be found on gallows, guillotines and crosses. Its breath can be felt on the still, musty air of Auschwitz gas chambers and in the grim cacophony emanating from Guantanamo Bay torture cells and its trophies lie torn and broken in shallow graves along lonely, back roads. It will not be named, it prefers anonymity, but it can be known.

--Tymar

 

That is fantastic writing Tymar!! I really dig that---the first part about the riot reminded me of the writings of People's Park. But then you turned it into something much more. That last part is fantastic-----you are published, right?

 

Actually, I am only published in a few "letters to the editor" of various periodicals. This is my first attempt at publishing anything anywhere. However, I'm glad that you enjoyed the story. I've certainly enjoyed your posts, Wolf, and your appreciation is truly valued.

 

I never knew this happened

 

Smart ass. I like you.