America's Red Guard: Born in a Denver Park

On Friday, September 4, 2026, students from more than two hundred Colorado schools walked out at noon and converged on a park southwest of downtown Denver. Wayne Laugesen went to cover it. So did his wife and his son. He and his son came home bruised, with their equipment stolen.For the first hour it was a party. A DJ, food trucks, kids dancing, homemade signs. Around the edges of the grass were folding tables stacked with communist newspapers and copies of The Communist Manifesto, and coolers full of water bottles that had been frozen.By two o'clock: five assaults, three hospitalizations, and a woman punched to the ground on a public sidewalk while a stranger lay across her to take the blows. Two citations were issued. Both were for graffiti.This is a reporter's account of who built that afternoon. What a sitting Denver school board member said into the microphone. Why the district told parents nothing in advance, and why it sent staff anyway. What a Colorado statute says about adults who point children at a target and then stand back.It ends with a date, and one thing parents can do about it.