On August 27th, 2008, Rage Against the Machine, joined by the MC5’s Wayne Kramer and opening acts State Radio, The Coup, and the Flobots, took the stage at the Denver Coliseum as part of the Tent State Music Festival to End the War. The free concert was one part of a new model of protest that would climax hours and miles later outside the Democratic National Convention. We termed it the “concert>action and double bind” model. It was effective. We won. And it should be used again.

For nearly a year a small group of us had been organizing for this day. The country was just ending eight years under Bush and we knew a protest outside the Democratic National Convention (DNC) would not be popular, regardless of our aims. We wanted Obama to take stronger stances against the war and to commit to withdrawal. We wanted our veterans taken care of. And we wanted reparations for Iraq. Practically though, our intentions were worth nothing without support and pressure. We needed a way to build both.

In March of 2008, following a concert by Tom Morello in support of Iraq Veterans Against the War’s (IVAW) Winter Soldier testimonies, a group of IVAW members were sitting around a table at an IHOP with Morello. Jeff Englehart, an Iraq combat vet and IVAW member was blunt. “Tom, if Rage Against the Machine is really a revolutionary band, they’ll play a free show at the DNC to support us.”

Tom looked at Jeff. “You’re right.”

Over the next few months we pulled together a rag tag bunch of organizers that encompassed the entirety of the left. Pacifists and progressive Democrats from the American Friends Service Committee, Green Party members, anarchists who were already organizing as Unconventional Denver, student organizers from Students for a Democratic Society and Tent State University, socialists from the International Socialist Organization, and old veteran organizers from Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The core of this coalition were the youth.

We organized together and independently. We entertained fantastical possibilities and created real ones. Most importantly, we respected each other, we allowed a diversity of tactics to be organized, and supported each others actions. We fought the state in the courthouses, with JoAnna “Jojo” Pease representing us, through the media, and in the streets. We developed medic teams under the direction of Zoe Williams and legal teams with the ACLU.

One of the more clever demonstrations was a press conference by Unconventional Denver where the city’s anarchists offered to call off their protests if the city redirected the $50 billion it had been allotted for security towards the city’s schools, infrastructure, and services.

Throughout the summer, a few of us were having weekly meetings with the Mayor of Denver, the Chief of Police, and almost daily meetings with a very sympathetic city official. I still think it’s important to engage the authorities. To seem (and be) reasonable while giving them nothing and agreeing to even less. We repeatedly denied to the Mayor and the police that Rage was going to play until we publicly announced it a couple weeks before the convention.