Hi, Ed and Martha,
Just thumbed through the latest issue, which was a delight as always. Thanks for letting us continue to subscribe even though we're only part-time residents of your coverage area these days. Think of me as the Central Colorado ambassador to Colorado Springs, if that helps.
Speaking of which, the Ku Klux Klan's most recent recruiting drive in Colorado was not in the 1920s, but in the late 1970s, right here in the Springs. As a young general-assignment reporter for the Gazette Telegraph I met with a few of the local hoods for a chat at a Denny's on South Circle and interviewed their patron, David Duke, by phone. The one march they tried, down Tejon, if memory serves (the clip file's back up in Weirdcliffe) drew more protesters than Klanspersons.
Also, as a freshly reinvented part-time resident of El Paso County, I felt it incumbent upon me to attend that Palmer Park peace rally which encouraged the local badges to break out the heavy artillery. A handful of self-styled anarchists had broken out of the main bunch to act the black-flagged fools at the intersection of Maizeland and Academy, about a half-mile from where we used to live back in the early '90s, and one of the most heavily traveled stretches of tarmac in town. The 3,000-odd other attendees mostly stayed on the sidewalks, many of them shouting, "Get out of the street!"
As a grizzled veteran of many a Vietnam antiwar gathering in Alamosa, Colorado Springs, and Denver, I foresaw that the law would soon be cracking a few hats, and so I beat a strategic retreat, undiminished by Taser, 40mm rubber bullet or tear gas. The antiwar crowd has its beanballers, just as the other side does, and I saw no point in leaning into that particular strike zone to take one for the team. There was some Monday-morning quarterbacking regarding the rally-goers' inability to control its fringe element, but I suspect that had we started thumping a few of these knotheads, the "measured response" from the police would have started that much sooner.
Regards,
Patrick O'Grady
Colorado Springs and Westcliffe