An era defined by defiance (cop-killers were "revolutionaries")

It was 1968 when 17-year-old Larry Clark led about 400 students in a sit-in at St. Paul Central High School. Some sang, some played cards, some listened to transistor radios blaring the likes of Jimi Hendrix.

The era was one of defiance for many young people in the Twin Cities area and throughout the nation. But Clark and his friend Ronald (Ronnie) Reed went far beyond sit-ins, some say, to an extreme that allegedly included the ambush slaying of a St. Paul police officer.

Reed and Clark, charged last week with the 1970 slaying of officer James Sackett, came of age in the tumultuous '60s when many young people, black and white, distrusted the police and defied the "establishment." Those were days of rage, fueled by antiwar sentiments, oppression and poverty.

"These people all felt they were revolutionaries, and they wanted to change the status quo of the way things were," said former St. Paul Police Chief William Finney, who grew up in the Summit-University neighborhood near Reed's family. He also knew of Clark.

"All across the nation, police officers were being shot by a lot of people," he said. People could understand the act of shooting a police officer, as a symbol, on an ideological level, but when they thought of the individual officer shot, they didn't like that, Finney said.

I think thjose days were more fueled by the thoughts of partying and getting l**d. Days of rage, oppression, and poverty? Did they think they were living in the Soviet Union?

The left stands behind the cop killers in Iraq too. They luvs their their terrorists.

I agree. It's interesting to look at what's going on in Iraq now -- the fascists are killing police.

On the surface, the Islamo-fascists have a different ideology than our cop-killers from the 1970's. But under the surface it's the same thing -- banality and nihilism and old-fashioned evil.

I want this to be understood as nothing but an observation about what it was like to be 17 in 1968, not a statement of support in any way for these killers or their less lethal brethren. Since most posters were not that age at that time this should be received as illuminative.

Teen-aged males are tribal and rebellious by nature. They, in the large majority, will adopt whatever anti-establishment fashion, music, language is available. This concept of "teen-agers" being a seperate, pain-in-the-ass segment of American society goes back to Andy Hardy movies. It shows today at malls across the country.

In 1968 a 17 year old male who did not have a crew cut (about 97%) and who wore anything but country club clothes was seen by LEOs as scum. It didn't matter if your father was a cop or that in five years you would be one (or that in 14 months you might be in Viet Nam as a draftee to a war we had already decided to back away from), if you were 17 and a guy you were the enemy. You could be driving your mom's car to pick up your sister at four in the afternoon...if you crossed paths with a cop on patrol you could expect to get hassled, not all the time, but often enough to make you think about it every time. The vibe was so real that social commentators dubbed white teen males the "new Niggers".

Add any teen's dislike for any authority to the mix and you got a lot of stupid F-me/F-you attitude for no reason at all.

There was a confusion in the air in America that was palpable and felt most by those most affected, the teens who would get drafted.

Add the fact that drugs were just starting to leak slowly into the burbs, giving idiot teenagers a new alternative and gung-ho cops a new reason to get jumpy and you got a time that was ugly and out of the control of anybody who had to deal with it.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.