DNC protest groups part company

By John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

A split has opened in the ranks of two groups organizing protests during the Democratic National Convention in August.

Tent State University, a group that hopes to bring college students from across the country to Denver, said Monday that it has severed ties with Re-create 68.

"Re-create 68 has demonstrated an inability to fulfill the needs of a growing list of individuals and organizations," Tent State organizer Adam Jung said in a prepared statement. "Our ability to effectively present our message to the delegates, the Democratic Party, and the public, is our number one priority."

The statement said that Tent City organizers felt their efforts would be compromised if they tried to maintain a relationship with Re-create 68. The two groups had been sharing the proceeds of concerts held as fundraisers such as one held in Fort Collins, said Tent City spokeswoman Jo Pease. That no longer will happen, she said.

Glen Spagnuola, an organizer with Re-create 68, described the split as a mutual one. Spagnuola said that his group had concerns over the images that the name Tent State seemed to convey, because it suggested Kent State, the university where four students were shot to death by National Guardsmen during a Vietnam War protest in 1970.

"There's been so much confusion over the last couple of months. People keep insinuating that we're going to be violent when we've been organizing for a nonviolent protest," he said. "We don't want the image of dead students on a lawn being associated with the positive message that we're putting forward."

Pease countered that Tent City's name has nothing to do with Kent State. It's so named because students taking part in the protest sleep in tents.

She called that fact that tent rhymes with Kent an "immature argument" and said it was not an issue that had come up between the two groups.