by Rachael Wright

Thirty-Five Years Ago This Week: “I had forgotten about the Ku Klux Klan,” said Ann Downing Schmidt, The Colorado Statesman’s Washington, D.C., correspondent.

In a commentary piece published in The Statesman, Schmidt described trying to make the ten-minute drive from her home to take a visiting friend to the Vietnam Memorial. That day the main roads around the Capitol Building were blocked off because 27 Klansmen and women were scheduled to march from the Washington Monument to the Capitol.

The 11-block march would cost the city nearly $800,000. Over 2,000 city policemen, 800 Capitol Police, and 325 National Park police were assigned to the march. 

Riot fences were erected to keep the 1,200 protesters away from klan members. The day saw 70 police officers injured, the majority of whom were Black, and over 40 people were arrested for their part in the violence.

Issac Fulwood, Washington, D.C.’s Black police chief, said that he stood second to none in his dislike of the Klan and what it stands for, but said that he would continue to defend the need to deploy troops to protect the Klan members. 

Schmidt wrote that while ignoring “these hateful people” wasn’t possible, protesters should have turned their backs or laughed aloud as “Klan Klowns walked by.”

“That kind of action would have … resounded to the credit of the protesters,” Schmidt wrote. “The elaborate preparations for protection would then have been an albatross around the Klan’s neck. Instead of looking heroic in the face of danger, the ‘klowns’ would have been shown up for what they are — downright silly bigots.”

In other news, “It was a trivial kind of event,” said Republican Don Bain of his recently discovered — and increasingly controversial — $250 donation in 1988 to Democratic U.S. Sen. Tim Wirth.

“It seems to me that Tim called up asking for a contribution to help him cover his deficit. So I helped him out,” Bain said.

Bain, who was considering running for Denver Mayor, said that he’d been a friend of Wirth’s for years but that the friendship didn’t translate to election support.

“I certainly never contributed to him while he was running against Kramer,” Bain said. “And he certainly never supported me when I was running for mayor.”

Bain said it was ridiculous for people to assume that anyone who ever supported or voted for a person of the opposite party was a scoundrel.

“This isn’t a Latin American dictatorship where people resolve disputes through violence,” Bain said. “We we have to work within a two-party system.”

Colorado Republican Party chairman Bruce Benson said he “never liked Republicans to give to Democrats” but admitted that “nobody’s perfect.”

Benson said that the state party would not be favoring one Republican candidate over the other and “may not get involved with the contest at all.”

Twenty-Five Years Ago: “The state economy will experience slower growth in 2001,” said CU Boulder economist Richard Wobbekind in his speech delivering the annual economic forecast at the Brown Palace Hotel.

Wobbekind said that tight labor market fluctuations and changes in the high-tech industry would slow the rate of growth. Colorado’s unemployment rate was less than 3%, while the national average sat at 4.2%.

“We don’t have enough people to fill the jobs we’re creating,” Wobbekind said. “We are well below a comfortable rate of unemployment.”

The volatility of internet companies would also affect Colorado’s economy.

“Layoffs will occur, and people will be changing jobs,” the economist predicted. “But these people are highly employable and their skills are transferrable.”

Rachael Wright is the author of several novels, including The Twins of Strathnaver, with degrees in Political Science and History from Colorado Mesa University, and is a contributing columnist to Colorado Politics, the Colorado Springs Gazette, and the Denver Gazette.