How Do I Meet the Director of Denver’s Streets? Protest!

On Sunday, February 2nd, due to some bureaucratic failures on the part of the city and the RiNo Business Improvement District, one of Denver‘s few post-pandemic, pedestrian-priority streets in Denver ended. The block in particular was activated between 29th and 30th Streets along Larimer Street. At the time, the collapse of this space was so sudden and shocking, we did an “Emergency” Podcast on it. (Listen here to what that was like and how mad people were on the day that public space went away, but suffice it to say) the community has not forgotten the great public space we had nor how we lost it. On the day that the street devolved into a car-first street, there was a pretty considerable protest with a lot of media coverage. I spoke to the crowd, a guy who I hadn’t met before named Spencer spoke to the crowd, and a woman associated with the Denver Fringe Festival spoke. The object of our anger was the city and its supposed “process” for people-first streets that had clearly failed on Larimer Street, just as it had failed on a dozen other streets across the city. As the crowd grew, some of the advocates who came out laid construction cones strategically at both ends of the block to shut down the street temporarily, trying to reclaim the people-first status quo of the prior four years. There was a group ride up and down Larimer, we were joined by skaters. It was genuinely a spontaneous action. We learned about the end of this people-first street only 36 hours before RiNo BID staff moved away the barriers.

After a large, successful protest action on the 2nd, advocates supposed that with only a little work/planning, the street could be temporarily returned from vehicles to pedestrians at the drop of the hat. We had proved as much. In February, on the last Sunday of the month, advocates held a block party/protest of the car-first 2900 block of Larimer. Over the course of several hours, almost 150 people turned up to play lawn games, ride their bikes, meet new friends, and remind the community that it is not difficult for a street to go from cars-first to people-first. I was unable to attend in February, as I often work weekends. I understand, however, that there was one incident in which a driver got angry and vocal with advocates about their closing the street. Still, as a peaceful demonstration for people-first streets, it was considered a success, and advocates removed the cones at the end of the day to plan for a short stint of car-free protest on the last Sunday in March, from 12–3pm.

I wasn’t working on March 30th, so I was available to come down and lend my support. I posted about it on Bluesky, on X, and most of the people that I spoke to seemed to hear about it on Instagram. To be clear, though there are a number of really enthusiastic advocates who care about this space, they’re isn’t one group who took this on, no one sole organizer. I saw a flyer for the street action on March 30th and reposted it, as I believe it is valid free expression to protest in the street as much as it is to protest on the sidewalk. I recognized someone there from Denver Critical Mass, some participants in a big urban roller-skating group, some stalwarts with the loose affiliation that is the Denver Bicycle Lobby were there, as were some people with Colorado History Rides. There was no sign-up form, there was no one group that controlled the microphone and gave speeches. We didn’t give a speech on March 30th. I met at a lot of people on March 30th who I had never seen at any sort of action for people-first streets. But none of these groups are a 501(c)(3) with an email list.

The last weekend in March was a rainy weekend, and much colder than the week that preceded it. That Sunday morning, I played with my dogs, read a book for the evening’s book club, drank too much coffee, and biked down the street to pick up some seedlings from a neighbor for my garden. I cleaned and lubed the chain on my bike and got down to the 2900 block of Larimer at around 12:15. By that point, some advocates had already broken out construction cones, and placed five at each end of the block. There were plenty of cars parked via the (new) street parking spaces, so a bigger gap was left between cones at the northernmost point of 29th and Larimer to allow for parked cars to leave the block whenever drivers wanted.

Slowly, the crowd of people grew. Most people came on wheels: skates, skateboards, or bikes. There wasn’t really a need to lock every bike to a bike rack, so we just put them on kick stands and left them in the street. Someone brought some folding chairs, a frisbee, a couple tennis balls. I think at our largest, we boasted 50 people, including three dogs, a young child, a dozen roller-skaters, and yours truly. Probably around 1pm, that’s when it felt most like a community gathering and not just a bunch of grumpy people with orange cones. Skaters and cyclists were doing laps of the block, and people were mingling and getting to know each other. As I introduced myself to people, I learned one guy from my old neighborhood didn’t know my other friends there who play a prominent role in the neighborhood association. I introduced the neighbors to each other. I biked in lazy, wide circles up and down the block. I chatted with a guy waiting for the bus. We had been waving at the buses and moving cones for them all afternoon, and I reassured him we wouldn’t be the reason he missed the bus. He told me he lives in the area and still doesn’t understand why the street reverted to vehicle traffic, it was worse that way. I continued biking. At one point a skater I didn’t know gripped onto the back of my bike; I sped up, did a lap, and after a countdown they slingshotted off my bike. It was a moment of such spontaneous fun that I felt genuinely like a kid again, just biking in aimless, sometimes-fast, sometimes-slow circles and waving “Hi,” to all the adults walking up and down the sidewalk, encouraging people to cross the street wherever they wanted, not just at the sidewalk.

Around 2pm, I was talking with an advocate who used to live in my old neighborhood, and it turned out he lived 5 houses up from another guy at the street action. We were having a nice time when a tall, blonde woman in athleisure-wear walked up to a circle of people talking on the street. Lots of people had joined in the last 20 minutes, so it didn’t strike me as odd. Then a friend tried to catch my eye and waved me over, waved me again. So I broke off my conversation and walked to their circle. He said to me quietly, “Do you know who this is?” And I said, “No.” He said, “This is Amy Ford, the Director of DOTI.” I think I said, “Oh, that’s cool.” She shook my hand in a quick and firm way, “I’m Amy Ford, Director of the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure.” I said, “Nice to meet you, my name is Andy.” I then listened for a minute.

It was clear that she was very upset, and was struggling to make herself understood by the circle of people she was speaking to. She said that she had been on her way to the gym, but then had seen an email that there was an un-permitted event happening in the street, so she diverted to “take care” of it. As this was an un-permitted event, it could not go on, she said. It was not safe, not safe. This she stressed on several occasions. “This event is not safe.” We were having the conversation in the middle of the street, in a circle of drifting, conversing people who were all talking to one another with what you might call their “inside” voices. Advocates disagreed. The street parking was at that point only about half used, as people who had parked their car prior to our street action had slowly driven away. Not one private vehicle attempted to drive past or over the construction cones that have been put out that morning, and it had been very clear that returning the intersections at 29th and 30th to three-way intersections rather than four-way intersections was something that the drivers that morning had experienced many times before. She told us to break up the event, or she would call in right-of-way enforcement or the police to do it. She was pretty upset, and not receptive to our protests, which had always been aimed at the city’s process, not the businesses on the block. At that moment, I got a call from my husband, who was in Fort Collins driving from one location to another for a class he was on plant identification. I answered it, he asked how the event was going, I told him it had been really nice so far, but that the Director of the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure was here to break it up. He told me to be careful, and we hung up. When I walked back to the circle talking to Director Ford, I thought of my husband. “Be careful, stay safe, this is unsafe, etc.” At no point had anyone at that afternoon been taken by surprise or sideswiped by a vehicle on that block of Larimer. At no point on the block that afternoon had anyone driven with their phone in their hand, or pulled into the bike lane, hazards blinking, as they decided what they wanted to do. We hadn’t set up any dangerous equipment in the street, and communicated proactively to allow buses to continue to pick up the few waiting travelers. As we spoke to Director Ford, a kid and his mom were throwing a frisbee back and forth in the street and people were cheering them on. The skaters had broken out tennis balls and were trying to catch them on skates as they bounced at high speed.

To me, the previous two hours had been a pretty big success. We had met new people, made connections between friends, enjoyed the car-free street, and reminded passersby and businesses that the people-first nature of the street is still something that is so easy, trivially easy to reinstate. All it takes is some construction cones and a bit of communication on the part of volunteers. Our event was only scheduled to go to 3 PM anyways, so I figured that complying with Director Ford wasn’t a very big deal. I stepped away from the circle, and spoke to a few other advocates in small groups, explaining who she was and the apparent seriousness of her threat to bring down the police if we did not clear off. Some people scattered, because conflict doesn’t make for a very fun afternoon. Other people disagreed, and a new knot of people emerged around Director Ford trying to argue with her more forcefully.

As I spoke to a couple roller-skaters, Director Ford broke off from the circle with visible exasperation. She walked first to the intersection of 29th and Larimer and one by one stacked up the cones that had been placed to stop vehicles from impinging on the street action. Maybe the wrong side to start from, as this allowed east-bound traffic to come into the block, even though we were all together, conversing and lounging, roughly in the EB lane. She placed the cones down on the sidewalk and marched past the knot of arguing advocates. On her way past me and the two skaters, she said in a softer tone, “This just isn’t how you do this. If you want to create an event in the street, by all means, you’re welcome to apply for a permit and plan an event like this. But this is not safe, and this has to stop now.” She said something to the effect of, “We’ve watched the last few of these protests happen from a distance and been tolerant, but we won’t be tolerant anymore.” She marched on to the intersection of 30th and Larimer and picked up the rest of the cones, carrying them back to the mid-block point where a cargo bike waited with the other cones she had removed. I continued trying to persuade the skaters that, realistically, the event had been a success and we should defer to Director Ford, though I was a little less persuasive with her voice ringing in our heads. A cyclist who I’d spoken to earlier vocally disagreed with me, and the crowd was not pleased, but slowly the group drifted out of the street and into an empty parking spot. I pulled my bike off the street and locked it up to the bike racks, inviting people to join me and commiserate over a beer at Ratio. My friend was there with a city planner from Des Moines who was in town for the weekend. We got a drink together and talked about the event, the unceremonious ending. I watched through the fence on Ratio’s patio as the circle of advocates arguing with Director Ford reduced one-by-one. Eventually, it was just two people I recognized talking with her. The tone of the conversation seemed to return to civility, and the conversation went on for a long time. At turns I told my fellow beer drinkers that I half-admired and was half-confused by her personal involvement in breaking up the protest. Clearly what we were doing was important if an important person like the Director of DOTI came down herself to try to end it early. Finally at 3:07, she parted ways with the two advocates who had been speaking to her. “If she hadn’t come down herself, she would’ve been done already,” I said to my closest neighbor, pointing out that the event was supposed to end at 3pm.

A few questions linger after the experience that afternoon. What would’ve happened if we had disagreed and refused to break up our protest? Do Denverites have a right to free expression, and is that free expression valid when you shut down a street to cars? What if the subject of a protest is not Trump, not the police, not a war, but that you protest the City’s very designation of a street as a car-centric place, not a place for people? How did Director Ford hear about the protest, and what did she mean about how they have been aware of it and let it go on in the past? Why would the Director of Transportation and Infrastructure come down herself, and does she actually have the ability to write us tickets or pull up cones herself? At one point, she told us that the city doesn’t have the ability to just take over the street and turn it back into a people-first place; as she demonstrated, she clearly believed she had the ability to single-handedly turn it back into a car-centric place around 2:30 on Sunday the 30th. What is the path forward for the community that appreciated the people first nature of the 2900 block of Larimer, and how can advocates and community members continue to show their support for street closures if the only way street closures are allowed to happen is through a city-sanctioned process, not through a community action? I admit, my sympathies were with Director Ford in the moment. She seemed to communicate both the genuine need to have a permit in order to allow this type of activity to happen, but she also didn’t seem to understand that for us, the existence of a people-first space is not difficult to achieve nor difficult to enforce. It just takes people power.