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<font size=3><b>CHI-Town Lowdown: The 1968 Democratic Convention
<br><br>
</b>By Nancy Kurshan<br>
<b> <br>
</b>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.<br>
<br>
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?” <br>
<br>
<b>Back Story<br>
<br>
</b>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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.
<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.
<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Those were just some of the influences that were fueling our anger and
commitment. <br>
<br>
<b>Small Circle of Friends<br>
<br>
</b>First let me tell you a bit about the Yippie cast of characters:<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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 <i>The</i> <i>Sixties Papers</i>, a political
anthology of the period.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
<b>Intent<br>
<br>
</b>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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<b> <br>
Before the Nightstick: Shoot to Kill, Maim or Cripple<br>
<br>
</b>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. <br>
<br>
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.
<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
<b>A Fractured Bunch<br>
</b> <br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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 naďve
in too many ways. <br>
<br>
<b>By Light of Day<br>
</b> <br>
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
<i>Rat</i>, NYC’s underground newspaper, was there publishing a daily
rag. <i>Ramparts</i> magazine was producing wall posters,
newspapers that gave information about what was going on and were pasted
up onto walls around the city. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.
<br>
<br>
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 <br>
cut the power. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.” <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
<b>Police Riot<br>
</b> <br>
“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 <i>Miami and the Siege of Chicago<br>
<br>
</i>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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
The well-known <i>Washington Post</i> reporter Nicholas von Hoffman did a
good job of capturing the nighttime scene:<br>
“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. <br>
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.’ <br>
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. <br>
. . . 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.”<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
<b>The Whole World Is Watching <br>
</b> <br>
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.
<br>
<br>
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.
<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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!<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.”
<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.” <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br><br>
<br><br>
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