Occupy Denver protesters attempted to "occupy" a conference of conservative bloggers Friday afternoon, but failed miserably.
BlogCon 2011, a conference held by FreedomWorks at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown Denver, is scheduled to continue through Saturday.
The Denver Post reported that protesters first arrived at 2 pm, three hours earlier than originally scheduled.
One man was arrested after he reportedly pushed a police officer.
The Post adds:
Attendees of Blogcon say they knew Occupy Denver was going to try to disrupt their conference because the group had advertised their intentions on Twitter.
Tabitha Hale, new media director of the conference, said Blogcon was prepared for the onslaught and had purchased Milk Bones earlier in the day for Occupy Denver's elected leader, a 3-year-old Border Collie named Shelby.
But the protesters got more than they bargained for.
John Hawkins of Right Wing News wrote:
They succeeded — but, not in the way they expected because after they started chanting, bloggers poured out of the conference to take pics and videos. Soon, there were 30 bloggers surrounding 15 Occupy people and chanting things like “We love Koch money” and “Breitbart, Breitbart!” There was lots of chanting, lots of yelling, and Steven Crowder got shoved by one of the female Occupiers.
According to Ed Morrissey of Hot Air:
The clash erupted before I had a chance to get too close to the Occupiers themselves. They were briefly in sight, but got swallowed up by the BlogCon attendees. Frankly, the BlogCon response overwhelmed whatever the protesters tried to say — with chants of “Mike check!” and “We paid for your student loans!”, among others, the Occupiers got roundly shouted down. At one point, the entire BlogCon contingent in the lobby started chanting, “We want the dog!”, a reference to the elected leader of Occupy Denver — a pooch named Shelby.
Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit wrote that conference attendees "bought bars of soap to hand out as gifts."
According to Hoft, conservative columnist "Michelle Malkin brought face masks for disease protection."
In a separate report, Hoft said a teacher brought her students to the protest, allegedly to teach them about democracy:
A Denver high school teacher brought students to an Occupy Denver event for a field trip today where they joined Occupy Denver activists as they storm the BlogCon conference. The teacher said she was showing them how democracy worked.
The teacher was too ashamed to give her name or the name of the private girls school she teaches at.
Morrissey adds that as the protesters left the lobby, bloggers began singing “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.”
But the protesters returned and began chanting outside the hotel. Hawkins reported:
Occupy Denver came back and again, I don’t think it came off like they expected. There were more of them this time and it was outside the hotel instead of inside. They did their chants, bloggers came out, we mixed in. They chanted, we chanted, someone offered them soap and it was quasi-friendly as we started. Emily Zanotti and I even got a pic in the middle of the scrum. But, as they moved on, some chick shoved Steven Crowder and bellied up to him like she wanted to fight, which was perfectly ridiculous. Then there was a threat to kill him and a bunch of angry comments as they stormed off.
Tina Korbe of Hot Air added:
Personally, my favorite moment of the conference counter-protest came when one blogger shouted over the crowd, “Who here gets Koch money?” To which another blogger responded by raising a Coke can high over the crowd. Laughs all around — although I’m pretty sure the Occupiers didn’t get the joke.
A post at Ace of Spades concludes: "What they are angry at is, ultimately, the universe itself for giving them life but not giving them ability."
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