[News] CHI-Town Lowdown: The 1968 Democratic Convention

[Anti-Imperialist News]

CHI-Town Lowdown: The 1968 Democratic Convention

By Nancy Kurshan

I am writing this during the presidential 
nomination of Barack Obama at the 2008 Democratic 
National Convention.  Because this is 40 years 
after 1968, there are references by mass media 
personalities and others to what happened in the 
streets of Chicago during that historic 
time.  Much of what has been written is often 
inaccurate, superficial or misleading.  I know 
this because I was one of the people who 
initiated the call for the demonstrations and 
planned them.  But the story behind these events, 
the political issues that we dealt with and the 
state repression that we faced are as relevant 
today as they were 40 years ago.  What then 
follows is my attempt to explain what happened 
and why.  I hope these words will help clarify 
some historical reality and provide some helpful 
observations for those of us who continue to 
organize against U.S. injustice today.

On the 35th anniversary of the sentencing in the 
Chicago Conspiracy Trial (February of 2005) I was 
interviewed by a public television reporter for a 
retrospective piece on the Chicago 8.  As he and 
his cameraman entered my house, he quipped, “I 
just interviewed Richard Schultz (Assistant 
Prosecuting Attorney).  He insists that you came 
to Chicago to overthrow the American government. 
He knows it sounds silly but that’s what he 
believes to this day.”  Without missing a beat, I 
retorted, “It doesn’t sound silly at all.  That 
was in fact what we wanted to do.  And in 
hindsight, it appears even more compelling today 
then it did at the time.  Who wouldn’t want to 
overthrow a government that was in the process of 
murdering 2 to 3 million Vietnamese and 60,000 US 
troops? Who wouldn’t want to overthrow a 
government that had launched a joint FBI/police 
force campaign to destroy the Black Liberation 
Movement which resulted in scores of dead black 
revolutionaries and many others imprisoned for life?”

Back Story

To understand those events and what motivated us, 
you have to know something about the 
extraordinary times preceding them.  Our small 
circle of friends, the Yippies, had come together 
around the October 1967 anti-war demonstration 
where we first successfully levitated the 
Pentagon.  That is, we encircled the building and 
with drums, incense and incantations we caused it 
to rise, allowing the evil spirits to flee.  My 
friend Abbie Hoffman, one of the original 
Yippies, would later complain that we only 
managed to get it ten feet off the ground.  The 
levitation was followed by about 1000 arrests of 
people trying to shut it down altogether.  It was 
the first time I had been arrested but far from the last.

We came together to shut down the Pentagon in 
particular but more generally in response to 
everything that was going on around us.  We had 
by now been marching and demonstrating and 
participating in teach-ins for several years and 
felt our efforts fell on deaf ears.

In 1967 the U.S. pounded the Vietnamese people 
from the air in what was called Operation Rolling 
Thunder.  In response the Vietnamese people 
continued to down American planes with 
anti-aircraft artillery.  In fact it was during 
Operation Rolling Thunder that John McCain was 
shot down over North Vietnam.  Perhaps it was by 
the group of young women I later met in 1970 who 
were operating anti-aircraft artillery out in a 
field in order to defend their small village in Thanh Hoa province.

But on January 30, 1968, at the time of the lunar 
new year, the Vietnamese launched an enormous and 
completely undetected popular uprising in South 
Vietnam known as the Tet offensive.  The whole 
world was amazed by their ability to mobilize 
their entire nation right under the noses of the 
American military.  A small country challenging 
Goliath, the most powerful military force in the world.

In February hundreds of people protesting a 
segregated bowling alley in Orangeburg near South 
Carolina State University were fired upon by the 
police.  Three young men were killed and 27 
people wounded.  There was little of the 
publicity that later surrounded the Kent State 
shootings because most, if not all, of the people 
involved were Black.  This was known as the Orangeburg Massacre.

On March 21st we experienced a small taste of 
that violence directly.  The Yippies went on WBAI 
New York radio and called for a Yip-In at Grand 
Central Station.  It was to be a peaceful 
gathering complete with costumes, music and 
incense.  10,000 hippies and yippies showed 
up.  The police over-reacted and it turned into a 
police riot.  Abbie Hoffman was shoved through a 
glass door after I threw myself on top of him in 
an unsuccessful attempt to stop the police.

On April 4the the King of Peace, Martin Luther 
King, was assassinated in Memphis and urban 
centers around the U.S. went up in flames.  There 
had already been major rebellions in Detroit, 
Newark, LA and Cleveland.  It was at that time 
that the “Rap Brown bill” became law.  Rap Brown 
was the fiery leader of the Student Nonviolent 
Coordinating Committee, an extremely popular 
organization that was becoming more militant in 
response to the times.  The U.S. passed this law 
stating that it was now a “crime to cross state 
lines with the intent to riot.”   It would carry 
a five-year prison sentence with conviction.

Also in April students at Columbia University in 
New York occupied several buildings in opposition 
to war and racism.  I joined them and when the 
cops cleared the buildings, that was my second arrest.

In May French students triggered a national 
strike of students and workers.  In Mexico City a 
huge protest ended with the murder by police of 
probably hundreds of unarmed students.  The world 
was in turmoil and it seemed like people were resisting everywhere.

In June Robert Kennedy was assassinated.  But 
honestly, that month preoccupied us in more 
personal ways since the New York Police 
Department broke into our tiny apartment and 
ransacked it.  Upon finding 3 ounces of 
marijuana, they arrested my partner, Jerry Rubin, 
for “felonious possession with intent to 
sell.”  Additionally, the cops had thrown him 
around and he fractured his coccyx.  I was 
tricked into coming down to the station and 
detained in an unsuccessful attempt to get me to 
testify against him, and then later released when I refused to comply.

Those were just some of the influences that were 
fueling our anger and commitment.

Small Circle of Friends

First let me tell you a bit about the Yippie cast of characters:

Stew Albert, from Brooklyn, New York, had quit 
the Progressive Labor Party, a Maoist 
organization.  Stew was an important part of the 
political movement in Berkeley, a full time 
activist and campus non-student “outside 
agitator” when he and Jerry Rubin became good friends.

Judy Clavir aka Gumbo, Canadian born, left 
academia to be a fulltime organizer, and became 
the girlfriend and later wife of Stew 
Albert.  She and Stew moved to New York to join 
the Yippie activities and lived in an underground 
cellar below Abbie’s Liberty House.  Together 
they later published The  Sixties Papers, a political anthology of the period.

Abbie Hoffman had been active in the civil rights 
movement in the south and went on to establish 
Liberty House, on outlet for poor people in the 
south to sell their crafts.  Abbie was incredibly 
comical, charming and intelligent with 
connections to a world of artists, poets, and musicians in New York.

Anita Hoffman had a Masters in Psychology.  She 
became politically involved when she met Abbie 
and they were married in Central Park in a hippie 
wedding.  She later published several books, 
including a fictional account of their early days together.

Paul Krassner was a standup comedian in the 
spirit of Lenny Bruce.  He was an irreverent and 
raunchy satirist and the founder and editor of 
“The Realist” magazine.  A little known fact is 
that early on he had also been involved in 
attempts to set up networks that would assist 
women in getting safe, illegal abortions.

Nancy Kurshan had been involved with 
anti-nuclear, Northern civil rights 
organizations, and Students for a Democratic 
Society.  She was a graduate student in 
psychology at Berkeley when she met Jerry Rubin 
and they moved in together.  They moved to New 
York to help organize the Pentagon demonstration.

Phil Ochs was one of the best-known folksingers 
of the era.  He was a media junkie and many of 
his songs reflected actual events.  His songs had 
a wide emotional range and included searing 
anti-war songs like  “I Ain’t Marching Any More” 
and songs about the civil rights struggle such as 
“Too Many Martyrs.”   They were full of anger, 
love and exquisite lyrics.  At every political 
protest, there was Phil with his guitar.

Jerry Rubin, son of a teamster, became a 
journalist, traveled to Cuba after the ’59 
revolution and returned to the US to become a 
full-time political agitator.  He was the leader 
of the Vietnam Day Committee in Berkeley, 
California which tried to physically obstruct 
troop trains, held enormous teach-ins and 
organized thousands of people to march several 
times on the Oakland Army Terminal.

There were many others in our New York circle as 
well­Ed Saunders of the Fugs music group; Kate 
Coleman who worked for Newsweek; Robin Morgan 
before the male chauvinism drove her to quit; the 
pacifist Keith Lampe also known as Ponderosa 
Pine; Sharon Krebs who butt naked delivered an 
actual pig’s head on a plate to a meeting of U.S. 
senators; Wali and Sam Leff who became Yippie 
archivists and life-long friends of Abbie and 
Anita.  Most of us had come together around the 
levitation and siege of the Pentagon, and on New 
Years Eve 1967 while sitting around stoned, some 
of us decided to form the Youth International 
Party (known familiarly as Yippie!!) and plan for 
protests at the Democratic Convention that coming August.

Intent

So what was our original intent for the 68 
Democratic Convention?  I know what my hopes were 
and also those of Jerry because during those 
years we beat with the same heart, politically at 
least.  On New Years Day of 1968 we planned to 
organize an extravagant Festival of Life in the 
parks of Chicago as an alternative to what we saw 
as their Festival of Death.  There would be an 
extravaganza of musicians, poets, guerrilla 
theater, a union of hippies and political 
activism.  This kind of grand production was not 
completely new.  It evolved out of all we’d 
experienced in the last two years.  The Vietnam 
Day Committee teach-ins while very educational 
were also extremely theatrical, as was Black 
Power Day in the Berkeley Greek Theatre where 
many leaders of the Black liberation movement 
spoke, to the dismay of the Governor of 
California who tried to stop it.  The Be-In in 
Golden Gate Park involved every major rock group 
of the day.  And then there was Jerry’s response 
to a subpoena from the House Un-American 
Activities Committee.  Ronnie Davis of the San 
Francisco Mime Troupe suggested that he go 
dressed as an American revolutionary war figure, 
tri-cornered hat and all, which Jerry 
enthusiastically did.  HUAC refused to let him 
testify.  Jerry was not known as the PT Barnum of the left for nothing.

Yes, a Festival of Life would be good.  But if 
that were not possible, then a confrontation on a 
scale that would capture the attention of the 
whole world would also be great.  If it could not 
be a Festival of Life, so be it.  But let it 
be.  If the confrontation became physical that 
too was okay.  Any traces of pacifist thinking 
were disappearing.  After all, they were raining 
terror and violence down on the whole Vietnamese 
nation, and then the whole of Indochina.  There 
was intense repression on the Black Liberation 
Movement.  Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had 
been assassinated.  Others had been arrested, 
beaten, killed.  We were just drawing out the 
violence that was right under the surface and for 
the first time it would be directed at white U.S. 
citizens.  We knew that in its most overt form 
such violence was usually reserved for people of 
color both here and abroad.  Only if it were 
directed at white people would there be enough 
cognitive dissonance to get Americans thinking.

Jerry later described himself as an “armchair 
guerrilla:”  “I never shot a gun or planted a 
bomb, but I supported the Vietcong and selective 
violence here at home.  Though I am a white 
middle class American who enjoys a good meal and 
the luxury of comfort, I nevertheless share the 
feelings of extremist revolutionaries.  My 
country had brutalized the red race and the black 
race and now we were dropping bombs on brown and 
yellow people.  I felt my position was morally 
right.  Anything any of us could do to stop 
genocide was O.K.  As a child of America I had 
been taught that the Good Germans who did nothing 
to stop Hitler were also morally responsible for 
his crimes.  I felt anger at the gap between our 
ideals and the cold reality of our power 
system.”  Those were my sentiments exactly.  Still are.

Before the Nightstick: Shoot to Kill, Maim or Cripple

In response to the Black rebellion in Chicago 
that followed King’s assassination, Mayor Daley 
had earlier that year issued his infamous “shoot 
to kill, maim or cripple” order and those words 
were reiterated over and over again in the months 
leading up to the Convention.  Then it was 
announced that 6000 National Guardsmen and 7500 
members of the US Army would be there as 
well.  The Commander of the Guard warned that his 
men would “shoot to kill
 if there is not another 
way of preventing the commission of a forcible 
felony.  The troops will be carrying . . . 30 
caliber ball ammunition.  This kind of ammunition 
is made to kill.”  Those of us who were not 
planning on committing felonies did not feel comforted by those words.

We had been negotiating for months for a permit 
to sleep in the park.  We knew that young people 
would arrive from all over the country without 
money or resources and would need a place to 
stay.  The city stalled and stalled.  The Chicago 
Yippies, on the flower power end of the 
continuum, encouraged us to keep negotiating and 
assured us we’d get the permits in the end.  They 
were wrong.  Mayor Richard Daley refused to issue 
any permits to sleep in Lincoln Park and he 
waited until the last minute to let us know with certainty.

Many movement people began to say it was crazy to 
go to Chicago.  Eugene McCarthy, the peace 
candidate, warned people not to come.  Even our 
fragile Yippie cabal was fracturing.  The folks 
from the Chicago Seed, an alternative newspaper, 
were our Yippie allies in Chicago, but they 
became fearful of the consequences.  They said, 
reasonably enough, that they would have to live 
with the aftermath of repression that Daley would 
rain down on the locals after the rest of us left 
for home.  Up until the end, we were divided 
about whether we’d be allowed to sleep in the 
park.  With or without permits, we thought that 
if enough of us arrived in Chicago, the city 
would relent, preferring us to sleep in the park, 
rather than be pushed into the streets and cause 
a major confrontation. At least each of us 
thought that some of the time.  At other times we 
thought we might die in Chicago.

I am sure that thousands of yippies and other 
antiwar people were frightened away.  Of the 
scheduled Festival of Life performers, in the end 
only Phil Ochs and the MC5, a band out of the Ann 
Arbor/Detroit area associated with the White 
Panthers, actually made it to Chicago.  It was 
rumored that Country Joe and the Fish showed up 
but that Joe had been threatened by some beefy 
Chicago police in an elevator, and headed out of 
town ASAP.  Musicians were especially reluctant 
to bring all their expensive equipment to such an iffy scene.

But our small circle of friends knew we all had 
to go no matter what.  Otherwise we would be 
acquiescing in the implementation of a police 
state.  It would have been a done deal and we 
were not ready to concede that kind of defeat.

A Fractured Bunch

On the opening days of the Convention, a few 
thousand stalwarts arrived at Lincoln Park.  The 
personal experience left a lot to be desired.  I 
am not talking here of the police presence.  Not 
yet.  Although all us hardcore Yippies were 
there, we weren’t speaking to each other.  Jerry 
and Abbie had been feuding for a while, and 
although I can remember most political arguments 
for years afterwards, I can’t for the life of me 
reconstruct what they were fighting 
over.  Through the years of their collaboration, 
they were often fiercely competitive with each 
other.  Jerry always felt inferior to Abbie.  He 
wasn’t as funny.  He wasn’t as clever.  He wasn’t 
as good a writer or as good a speaker.  He wasn’t 
as charming.  And he always felt neglected by 
Abbie.  He obsessed over his approval.  Abbie, 
for his part, was extremely individualistic, 
almost in essence.  He would inadvertently slight 
or exclude Jerry.  So there were constant 
estrangements and reunions.  This period was one of estrangement.

When Jerry and Abbie were estranged, so were 
Anita and I.  We “stood by our men” in those 
days.  Women’s liberation was just beginning to 
invade my consciousness.  It would be over a year 
before Robin Morgan would unleash her “Goodbye to 
All That,” declaring her break with the 
male-dominated left, including of course the 
Yippies.  In it she would shout, “Free Anita 
Hoffman!  Free Nancy Kurshan!  Free Gumbo!”  And 
although it didn’t take the sting out of it, she 
in all fairness included herself--“Free Robin 
Morgan!”  But that was later and in this August 
of 1968 we lined up with our men.

Other Yippies were pulled into the fight as 
well.  No matter how hard people tried to remain 
neutral, it was generally Stew, Judy and Phil 
that were Jerry’s pals with Krassner at Abbie’s 
side.  Had it been different, the whole personal 
experience would have been a lot better.  But we were a fractured bunch.

In addition, there were police everywhere.  Not 
just in uniform but also undercover.  Everywhere 
we went we were followed by tails, cops whose job 
was to stick with us like glue.  They made little 
attempt to camouflage their task.  They followed 
us as we walked down the street.  They followed 
us into restaurants.  One time we went into a 
restaurant in Lincoln Park and three cops sat 
down at the counter.  We waited for them to 
order, and when their meals arrived, we got up 
and walked out.  They also got up and walked out, 
leaving all their food behind, uneaten.  We got 
some satisfaction out of ruining their lunch.

A tall, burly, dark-haired biker presented 
himself to us shortly after we arrived.  He said 
he knew that Jerry would be a target and he was 
offering his services as a bodyguard.  Why not, 
we thought.  We were actually quite an open bunch 
since we didn’t feel we had anything to hide.  We 
said pretty much what we believed and what we 
wanted to do. Anyway it never occurred to us that 
he was a cop.  What sense would that make?  We 
already had cops that followed us everywhere we 
went.  We would later find out differently but we 
were still naïve in too many ways.

By Light of Day

 From August 25th through 27th, Lincoln Park had 
one character in the light of day and another at 
night.  During the day, the weather was hot and 
humid, typical Chicago summer.  I wore a short 
sundress and two long pigtails to stay cool.  The 
park was filled with a few thousand people doing 
their own things.  Some were practicing a group 
activity that Japanese youth had been using when 
faced with belligerent lines of police.  It 
involved rows of people, several deep, with arms 
linked, moving forward together and shouting 
“Washoi.”  Our friend Wolf Lowenthal was teaching 
people tai chi.  Jeff Shero, later known as Jeff 
Nightbyrd, the editor of the Rat, NYC’s 
underground newspaper, was there publishing a 
daily rag.  Ramparts magazine was producing wall 
posters, newspapers that gave information about 
what was going on and were pasted up onto walls around the city.

Scores of activists from Students for a 
Democratic Society (SDS) were there as 
well.   They had criticized us (the Yippies) for 
various reasons­too frivolous, not really 
organizing on a local level, etc.­but were now 
full participants, even leaders, since the 
situation had changed.  They were disenchanted 
with the standard civil disobedience of the peace 
movement and had formed small groups to engage in 
the newly popular “mobile tactics” that were 
springing up around the country.  We were glad to 
see them there.  They seemed more prepared than 
we were for the actual situation.

There were small groups of medics with white 
armbands, carrying first aid supplies, on the 
ready.  They were associated with the Medical 
Committee for Human Rights.  There were legal 
observers with their armbands, attorneys and law 
students from the National Lawyers Guild.  Some 
people were learning how to monitor police 
radios.  Others were riding around on bicycles 
bringing news from one place to the next.  People 
were reading, sharing food, hanging out.  Both 
the days and the nights were free form in 
nature.  If you couldn’t “go with the flow,” it would be rough.

I ran around with Jerry most of the time, not 
quite sure what to do with myself, moving at 
different moments from exhilaration to fear to 
occasional boredom.  I can’t remember why I 
decided to drop THC, but I did do that one of 
those days.  It was bad enough to imbibe any 
“controlled substances” in such a chaotic scene 
but the stuff turned out to be really awful and I 
got quite sick for a half a day or so.

Although no permit for sleeping was granted, we 
thought we had a permit for a concert. That 
turned out to be irrelevant.  As the Motor City 5 
started playing, a conflict with the police 
ensued over the flatbed stage, and the 
performance ended in confusion as the cops
cut the power.

Well-known cultural figures who understood the 
importance of this historical moment were 
present.  Celebrities like Norman Mailer, Jean 
Genet, Terry Southern, and William Burroughs 
could be spotted walking around, mingling with 
the crowd and sharing in the anxious anticipation.

On Tuesday, the 27th, Bobby Seale, a national 
leader of the Black Panther Party, addressed the 
crowd in Lincoln Park. He had not been an 
organizer of the events but was an invited 
speaker.  Despite all the potential violence and 
the actual repression the Panthers had been 
experiencing, Bobby showed up, prepared to speak. 
For bravely exercising his right to free speech 
for less than an hour, he was later indicted on 
federal conspiracy charges along with 7 
others.  His appearance in the 1969/70 Chicago 7 
trial would electrify the world, as he did battle 
with the racist judge and prosecutors in the 
courtroom who bound and gagged him in an attempt 
to silence him.  Even the prosecutor Richard 
Schultz later admitted that the way Bobby was 
treated made him appear like a “slave in an American court room.”

Also during the day there were various political 
forays out of the park.  At the beginning of that 
week the Russian Army had marched into 
Prague.  In a theater of solidarity, we marched 
on the Russian embassy with signs that proclaimed 
the commonality between Czechoslovakia and 
Czechago.  Also in the prelude to the week, 
17-year-old Dean Johnson, a Native American 
youth, was killed while shoplifting in a food 
store.  He had come from out of town but he had 
drifted in to join us, and we felt an affinity 
with him.  So we marched for Dean Johnson as 
well.  We also marched to a bus depot over on 
Clark and Division in support of the striking 
Black Chicago Transit Authority workers.  We were 
in Chicago because of the war, but we were 
clearly not a single-issue movement.  We were 
concerned about everything, locally and globally, 
and wanted a total transformation.

Police Riot

“Children, and youths, and middle-aged men were 
being pounded and gassed and beaten, hunted and 
driven by teams of policemen who had exploded out 
of their restraints like the bursting of a boil . 
. . It was as if war had finally begun, as if the 
gods of history had come together before the 
television cameras of the world and the eyes of 
the campaign workers and the delegates’ wives and 
half the principals at the convention . . .” 
Norman Mailer in Miami and the Siege of Chicago

Let me be perfectly clear.  Yes our intentions 
were to confront and disrupt.  Yes our intentions 
were to overthrow.  But what took place in the 
streets and parks of Chicago was a police riot 
and the responsibility for the violence was clearly theirs, not ours.

It was at night that the real contest took place, 
from Sunday night August 25th through Tuesday 
night, the 27th.  As evening began to fall, 
people started to build barricades with anything 
we could find­picnic tables, garbage cans, 
etc.  Other people made bonfires and sat around 
them playing on drums and other instruments.

There were only a few thousand of us in Lincoln 
Park and we felt small and weak.  Some people 
wanted to take a stand and resist the police if 
they tried to force us to leave the park.  Most 
of us Yippies didn’t really want to fight over 
sleeping in the park, but we wouldn’t leave the 
park until the situation was resolved one way or 
another.  We felt responsible for all the people 
who had come and would remain with them if possible.

Once the 11 pm curfew came, the police forayed 
into the crowd and started clubbing people from 
behind.  One night I suddenly heard Stew cry out 
and turned around to see blood dripping down his 
face.  They had cracked open his head.  He and 
Judy took off for an emergency room.  Six 
stitches and a couple hours later they returned. 
The first night it was as if the cops thought 
they could just come in and club a few of us and 
end this pathetic gathering.  A good head-banging 
and it would all be over.  If so, they seriously 
underestimated our determination.

The whole time we were in Chicago it was like 
those hours in front of the Pentagon.  There were 
exhilarating moments.  I’ll never forget the 
image of Alan Ginsberg with a circle of people 
around him, in the midst of tear gas and police 
clubbing, sitting cross-legged for hours at a 
time “omming” in deep sonorous tones, attempting 
to drive away the evil spirits.

And there were moments of just waiting around, 
being bored.  And then there were so many moments 
when you just had to “go with the flow” because 
you had no control over the situation.  There 
were just too many factors that could not be known.

And yet we each felt we had to be there.  In the 
back of our minds were images of the Pentagon 
clubbings and arrests, the Oakland 7 action and 
trial, the assassination of JFK, Malcolm X, 
Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.  The urban 
rebellions and police 
retaliations.  Vietnam.  Prague.  Mexico. 
France.  We were very aware of the violent nature 
of the opposition, but we felt part of a 
worldwide movement for change and we were willing 
to risk our lives for that change.

The well-known Washington Post reporter Nicholas 
von Hoffman did a good job of capturing the nighttime scene:
    “The attack began with a police car smashing 
the barricade.  The kids threw whatever they had 
had the foresight to arm themselves with, rocks 
and bottles mostly.  Then there was a period of 
police action before the full charge.
     Shrieks and screams all over the wooded 
encampment area while the experienced militants 
kept calling out ‘Walk! Walk! For Chrissakes 
don’t run.’ There is an adage among veteran kids 
that ‘panicky people incite cops to riot.’
    Rivulets of running people came out of the 
woods across the lawn area, the parking lots 
toward Clark Street.  Next, the cops burst out of 
the woods in selective pursuit of news 
photographers.  Pictures are unanswerable 
evidence in court.  They’d taken off their 
badges, their names plates, even the unit patches 
on their shoulders to become a mob of identical, 
unidentifiable club swingers.
    . . . There is the scene at Henrotin Hospital 
with editors coming in to claim their 
wounded.  Roy Fischer of the Chicago Daily News, 
Hal Bruno of Newsweek. Television guys who took a 
special clobbering waiting in the anteroom 
describing what happened and looking angry-eyed 
at the cops hanging around with the air of guys putting in a routine night.”

The nights were characterized by crowds of young 
people trying to figure out what to do, with 
continuous sporadic violence and tear gas.  We 
streamed out of the park, along with the tear 
gas, and pursued by police cars and cops on foot. 
Who could have imagined that tear gas could be 
delivered in so many different ways­from 
sanitation trucks, from flame-throwing devices, 
from the usual canisters.  We tried vaseline and 
wet handkerchiefs to deal with the gas.  Groups 
of young people roamed through the streets, as a 
consequence blocking traffic.  The whole area was 
in turmoil.  There were helicopters flying close 
overhead and on the ground there were cops with 
gas masks using their rifle butts as clubs.  Dragging.  Chasing.  Slamming.

We were out on the streets until late every 
night, one night making it all the way downtown 
to the Hilton, which was the center of the 
Democratic Party.  The tear gas followed us and 
reportedly wafted into the hotel, spreading its 
ugly fumes to the delegates lodged inside.  Each 
night when things died down in the early morning 
hours, and we were bone-tired, we wound our way 
back to a Lincoln Park apartment and fell into 
bed to catch a few hours of deep, exhausted sleep.

The Whole World Is Watching

Wednesday, August 28th held the promise of 
something different. After all, it was easy to 
marginalize the Yippies.  Just a bunch of scruffy 
longhairs who needed showers.  But this day was 
organized by the National Mobilization Committee 
to End the War in Vietnam, better known as The 
Mobe, and the Mobe was a respectable peace organization.

In reality, those distinctions were blurred all 
the way around, on our side and on the side of 
the police.  The dynamics that had been set in 
motion in Lincoln Park with the cops and the 
yippies set the tone for the entire week.  There 
had been an interplay the last several days 
between the yippies and the Mobe, between Lincoln Park and Grant Park.

The Mobe was the sponsor of the rally that day at 
the Grant Park band shell but by now we were all 
in this boat together.  Every yippie who had come 
to Chicago was now part of the Mobe.  Daley had 
given us a permit to rally but not to 
march.  I’ve read accounts of the rally but I 
don’t remember a single speech.  It was hard to 
concentrate and I felt totally on edge, steeling 
myself to deal with whatever would happen 
next.  Fully armed police were arriving in flying 
wedges, shoving and pushing and clubbing people 
from behind.  It felt like we were sitting 
ducks.  This time they got Rennie Davis and blood 
was dripping down his face.  Somehow the rally 
continued despite the attacks, and then we tried 
to move into a line of march, to head towards the 
amphitheater where the Convention was taking place.

But Daley had no intention of letting us march 
and blocked us so that there was no way to 
move.  The crowd was forced to disperse and 
spilled out of the park and over to Michigan 
Avenue and the Hilton Hotel where all the 
delegates were wining and dining.  The Hilton was 
surrounded by a huge phalanx of cops and 
military.  But people pressed forward and cops 
clubbed us back and lobbed tear gas into the 
crowd.  As night began to fall, the crowd 
thickened.  The police continued to beat and club 
people, demonstrators and reporters and 
“innocent” Chicagoans alike.  The Battle of 
Michigan Avenue was on.  But the crowd seemed to 
actually grow, or at least people held strong, 
chanting over and over “The Whole World Is 
Watching.”  At that point, we knew we were back 
on the world stage and it was exhilarating.  So 
this was the Festival of Life after all.  What 
had been happening for days in Lincoln Park was 
now being repeated in front of the Hilton; only 
this time it involved a broader swath of 
citizenry and THE WHOLE WORLD WAS WATCHING!

After a while, Jerry and I, along with Stew, Judy 
and others, left the Hilton Hotel and began 
running around the Loop, Chicago’s downtown area, 
blocking traffic and setting fires in garbage 
cans.  That was the most militant action I’d ever 
engaged in.  As we were turning the corner under 
the Elevator train, Jerry was surrounded by cops 
who dragged him off and arrested him.  It was not 
a random arrest.  It was a targeted arrest of 
Jerry.  He later told me that they brought him 
into the station where he was confronted by Bob 
Pierson, the biker bodyguard.  Pierson revealed 
himself to be an undercover cop, or a “pig,” as 
we were fond of calling cops, always reminding 
ourselves that we were maligning the real pigs in 
the process.  That was not the last we would see 
of Bob Pierson.  He would later appear as a key 
witness in the Chicago Conspiracy Trial.

The journalist John Schultz reports that there 
were 668 arrests recorded that week.  52.6% of 
the people were from the Windy City.  The rest 
came from 36 states and five countries.  550 had 
never been arrested before.  75% were 25 years of age or younger.

Later we would learn that inside the Convention 
Center, Senator Abraham Ribicoff, Senator from 
Connecticut, had condemned the “gestapo-like 
tactics” out on the street.  And Mayor Daley had 
been caught on mike responding, “You motherfucker 
Jew bastard, get your ass out of Chicago.”

The Chicago Corporation Counsel’s Walker Report 
concluded that there had indeed been a police 
riot in Chicago that week, suggesting cops had 
gone amok.  But calling it a “police riot” is a 
whitewashing of the situation and underestimated 
the cold-blooded calculations of the 
establishment in this country.  It is hard to 
imagine that Richard Daley, the 
shoot-to-maim-and-kill czar of Chicago, would 
have allowed such spontaneity from his 
officers.  No, the Battle for Chicago was 
orchestrated from on high.  The clubbings, 
beatings, and gas were all conscious decisions 
from at least as high as the Daley 
administration.  In fact, we later learned that 
there were about one thousand federal agents sent 
to work in Chicago that week, including FBI and 
military intelligence.  One can only wonder what 
exactly was the role of the federal government in the events that ensued.

The problem for them was that they underestimated 
they underestimated us.  We were frightened but 
despite our fears we persisted.  They may have 
thought their threats before the Convention would 
deter us.  They were wrong.  They may have 
thought the first round of tear gas would deter 
us.  They were wrong.  They may have thought the 
first cracked head would stop us.  They were 
wrong.  We would not be turned back.

It was an amazing few days and a yippie’s delight 
in the sense that we were always out to capture 
the media’s attention and in this case we 
did.  The media reported the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth, because they 
found themselves at the end of the same billy 
clubs and tear gas as we.  Even reporters as 
respectable as Dan Rather were attacked by the 
cops.  They were not embedded journalists.  For 
that moment in time there seemed to actually be a 
free press!  One reporter is quoted as saying, 
“This whole thing has moved me so far left, I can see the back of my head.”

The long-term impact of Chicago 68 has been much 
debated.  There are many layers to such an 
analysis and that is not the subject of this 
piece.  But there is no doubt that Chicago 68 
became an iconic moment in American history.

As I write this there are people outside both 
Democratic and Republican conventions chanting, 
“Let’s recreate 68.”  Of course history cannot be 
recreated.  These are very different times.  But 
let’s hope the determination to be part of a 
worldwide process for peace and justice persists.




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
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