You only get to storm the Bastille once.

Then the Bastilles of the world are bulldozed into history or turned into museums.

If you’re calling your group Storm the Bastille Again or“Recreate 68,”the title has shock value, but the Recreate 68 group won’t be able to live up to its brash moniker at the Democratic National Convention in Denver because the circumstances here and now are so different.It’s simply not 1968. Attempts to compare Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper with former Chicago Mayor John Daly are laughable.

In 1968, Vietnam War protesters were denied permits they requested, so almost anything they did was a violation of the law. As if using the Chicago debacle as a blueprint for what not to do, Denver City Hall engaged the protesters early and often.

Recreate 68’s organizers were granted access to the west steps of the Statehouse, a popular venue for news conferences and protests, and they were given a wide berth in Denver’s Civic Center Park. There was no attempt by police to block a march from the park to the federal courthouse.

It’s true officials have created a fenced-in protest area 300 yards from the Pepsi Center, a place protesters refer to as the freedom cage. It will keep protesters out of spitting range of delegates.

But what did the protesters expect, an invitation to the convention floor to disrupt speeches? Or perhaps their own free air time on Fox News?

Activist Larry Holmes said using the Recreate 68 name was not intended as a threat for the kind of violence that occurred 40 years ago. Instead, he said, this year’s movement is an effort to restore “the spirit of struggle, the spirit of militancy.”

That’s nice rhetoric, but the truth is that most of America remembers the Chicago riots as a horrible chapter in the nation’s political history. The idea of re-creating that is taken as a threat, regardless of how it is intended.

In April 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. The same happened to Bobby Kennedy two months later. The anti-war movement was angry and the nation was torn – much more so than it is today.

Timetables for withdrawing from Iraq are being discussed. Polls show most Americans see the invasion as a mistake. There was not the same consensus in 1968. That consensus came somewhat later.

It all came to a head in Chicago, where an autocratic mayor’s poor decisions turned up the heat on a volatile situation.

Another problem for Recreate 68 is that in Chicago it was about the war.

In Denver, it’s about the Iraq war, the North American Free Trade Agreement, animal rights, racial profiling, immigrants rights, abortion rights, legalizing marijuana and freeing Native American Leonard Peltier.

It’s a muddled message in Denver, a congealed glop of fringe ideologies competing for the microphone.

Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, speaking on the Statehouse steps, said, “Our country has been hijacked and the Democrats were in on it. We can see clearly now who the real stick-up artists are, and that’s why we are in Denver.”

By calling itself Recreate 68, the group set itself up to fail, but not because this group doesn’t appear ready to overturn some police cars. It’s because it’s 2008, not 1968. It’s because the political climate is not the same.

It’s because you have only one opportunity to storm the Bastille.Contact Noreen at 636-0363 or noreen@gazettedev.gazette.com. He appears every other Friday on KOAA’s Comcast Channel 9 at 4 p.m.

Keely Shisler of Denver argues with Lonnie Pursiful of Duchesne, Utah, during the Democratic National Convention in Denver today. Shisler is pro-gay rights and Pursiful is anti-gay rights and the two argued during a rally at Civic Cente Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS