Occupy Denver Invades Conservative Blogger Conference

On Friday afternoon, a small group of Occupy Denver protesters trespassed into the hotel where a group of Conservative bloggers were holding an event.

The bloggers from the event met the invading group to ask them questions, although through all the chanting from the Occupy protesters, the dialogue took some time to develop.

At least one arrest was reported of an Occupy Denver member and no bloggers were injured in the stand-off.

According to the Denver Post:

Attendees of Blogcon said they knew Occupy Denver was coming because the group had advertised its 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.

When the 15 or so Occupy Denver protesters neared the FreedomWorks blogger event, about 30 of the conference attendees came out to greet them. As the Conservative blogger response grew in size, they completely surrounded the disorganized protest group and started chants of “Mic Check”, “we pay for your student loans”, “Breitbart” and “we want the dog” a reference to the Occupy Denver’s leader Shelby. It wasn’t long before the ill-prepared protesters retreated to the street.

After the initial face-off, Kira Davis from CDNews talked with a few Occupy Denver protesters to understand why they were protesting. Here’s the cell phone video. It’s a little low resolution, but the audio is what’s interesting.

And Kira’s discussion with an Occupier when they returned at 5pm Denver time.

and… another interview by Kira: