Denver Direct: When Leadership Counts ….

“Madison, who lives across the street from the park, said one of her concerns is that an influx of people will descend on Denver to participate in a big sleepover.

“We could just get a lot of people just showing up to camp,” she said. “People from out of state, if they found out that we were going to open up free camping in the park, would say, ‘Hey, we can actually go to the DNC and stay for free. We don’t have to pay $500 a night.’ “

Madison said other protest groups could make similar requests if Tent State were given permission. “My concern is all the Re-Create ’68 folks who’ve been wanting to sleep in Civic Center Park,” she said, referring to the group that promised to make the bloody 1968 Democratic convention “look like a small get-together.” “If we say yes in City Park, I’m not sure how we could say no in Civic Center Park,” she said.

Madison also is worried about the precedent it could set. “Right now, we don’t even let the Boy Scouts sleep in the parks. It isn’t political. It doesn’t have anything to do with any message or anybody. It’s just that we don’t do that,” she said.

“Once you let one group do it, even though (the DNC) is an extraordinary circumstance and all that, I think that it opens up the door to a lot of people just thinking that they should be able to do it, and then if we say no, they can sue us for it,” Madison added.

The downside, she said, is that no one knows where the protesters will go at 11 p.m. “Everybody is batting around ideas and trying to confirm and calling around and things like that,” she said. “But there is nothing that’s even close enough to a possibility that I would feel comfortable to say.”