Writer: R!68 not violent, just misunderstood

In a Speakout column in the News, Ryan Voss of Fort Collins sets us straight on !Recreate!68:

I'm writing to try to correct some very serious misconceptions I've been seeing lately. The Democratic National Convention protest organization Re-create 68 has been getting a very bad rep in the media, and I'd just like to submit my own experiences for consideration.

What I've seen has been worlds apart from how the group has been portrayed in the Rocky Mountain News and elsewhere; a wide variety of people from many different backgrounds, coming together to find an effective way to voice their opposition to, among other things, the complicity of the Democratic Party in the Bush administration's war and other wretched policies, and all totally committed to nonviolence in doing so.

I haven't seen any trace of the violent, destructive troublemakers that the group has been made out to be. Just the opposite; much of the organizing I've witnessed has revolved around such "troublemaking" activities as feeding the displaced homeless, training first-aid responders in case other groups or police become violent, arranging speakers and bands, and the like.

Funny, that's exactly what Tent City honcho Adam Jung said roughly 13 seconds before the group severed ties with R!68 because of (he said) the violence of its rhetoric and its inability to work with other anti-war groups.