Protesters crowd the streets during the 1968 convention.
If I recall correctly. David Horowitz and Peter Collier had a lot to say about Chicago '68 in "Destructive Generation". As they were allied with the thugs at this period in time, their recollections can be considered as authoritative.
In the late 70s, my father used to tangle with the idiots at Carter's OSHA a lot (he was one of the first to force them to get warrants for their fishing expeditions). One of the higher officials in that agency: Chicago Seven member John Froines.
-Eric
Democratic National Convention 1968 Chicago
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Democratic+National+Convention+1968+Chicago
As the 1968 Democratic National Convention approached, events throughout the nation combined to create a tense atmosphere in Chicago. Rising sentiment against the war in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and the failure of the Democratic Party to apply its civil rights policy had an effect both inside and outside of the International Amphitheatre, where the convention delegates gathered.
Months before the convention, political activists planned demonstrations in Chicago to share the spotlight with the Democratic political leaders. Some groups, such as the Yippies, came to Chicago determined to challenge traditional political process and authority. Tensions increased and turned into violence when police refused to allow these groups near the main hotels and the conventional hall.
As the riots escalated, Mayor Richard J. Daley called in the troops. In total, 11,900 Chicago police, 7,500 Army regulars, 7,500 Illinois National Guardsmen, and 1,000 FBI and Secret Service agents were stationed in the city. Police and other authorities used force to keep the demonstrators away from the delegates' headquarters at the Conrad Hilton Hotel and the Amphitheatre. At the end of convention week, police announced that 589 persons had been arrested and more than 119 police and 100 demonstrators injured.
Inside the Amphitheatre, tension was also brewing. Antiwar delegates supporting Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern opposed the controlling Humphrey faction, not just over the nomination, but in virtually every aspect of the convention. They challenged the credentials of 15 delegations, a record number. Debate over the inclusion of an anti-Vietnam War plank in the platform lasted two days. Connecticut senator Abraham Ribicoff, in a speech nominating George McGovern, stated that "with George McGovern as President of the United States, we wouldn't have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago." Television viewers throughout the country witnessed Mayor Daley's furious response.
Although the turmoil would take its toll on the Democratic party, Humphrey's supporters retained control of the convention. He won the platform fight and was nominated on the first ballot. Humphrey selected Sen. Edmund S. Muskie of Maine as his running mate.
1968: A Convention in Crisis
http://www.chicagohs.org/history/politics/1968.html
This isn't to excuse the acts of demonstrators. They clearly needed to be stopped once they decided to move from the area they'd been given for protest. On the other hand, it's clear that some Chicago cops did go apesh** on some non-violent demonstrators. Understandable, perhaps, but not to be condoned, in my opinion.
The media burned these images of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago into our consciousness at the same time Americans came to realize just how much the Vietnam War was tearing the nation apart.
Troops Braced for Battle
Anti-war activists had planned a peaceful, six-day festival of alternative lifestyles in the city’s parks, with free food, music and theater to augment protests of a war that was sending 500 American soldiers home in body bags each week.
But protests were escalating nationwide. Catholic priest Phillip Berrigan and other war resisters had recently received six-year sentences for pouring blood on draft records in Baltimore. Martin Luther King Jr. joined 300,000 people in a New York anti-war march, noting that black men without college deferments were being drafted in dramatically disproportionate numbers to whites.
“We spend $322,000 for each enemy we kill, while we spend in the so-called war on poverty in America only about $53 for each person classified as ‘poor,’” King told a Los Angeles audience in 1967.
The Establishment grew particularly alarmed when Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin talked of spiking the Chicago water system with LSD during the convention, even though experts said it would be impossible. The two Yippies also joked about seducing delegates and their daughters, so they too could be drugged.
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, known for his heavy-handed ways, was not about to let his city host the unraveling of the Democratic party by unruly protests. So he called in 7,500 U.S. Army troops and 6,000 National Guardsmen to back up his 12,000 police officers to fend off any perceived threat. All the troops were well armed and braced for battle.
Democrats Divided
But Democrats were already fatally splintered. President Johnson, who committed the first 21,000 combat troops in 1965, was sending almost 500,000 soldiers to Vietnam by 1968.
And after Johnson decided against running for re-election because of divisions over the war, peace candidates Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy received a combined 80 percent of the primary votes. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, meanwhile, relied on entrenched party interests — including Daley — for his support.
After Kennedy’s assassination that June, anti-war advocates struggled unsuccessfully to forge a winning coalition. In the end, Hubert Humphrey cornered the nomination, but lost by narrow margin that November to Richard Nixon, who claimed to have a secret plan for ending the war.
‘The Whole World Is Watching’
In Chicago, protesters chanted “The whole world is watching,” while taunting police, and television helped define the scene.
While film clips of combat in Vietnam were usually several days old by the time they were broadcast, video of the Chicago riots was transmitted within an hour. Infamous moments, such as Mayor Daley shouting obscenities at Sen. Abraham Ribicoff, who accused the police of “Gestapo tactics,” reached America in real time.
Chicago Seven Mock the System
After the riots, the battle shifted to the courtroom of Julius J. Hoffman, who presided over the trial of the demonstration’s organizers. Known as the Chicago Eight before the case of Bobby Seale was separated, they dressed in judicial robes, wore diapers, and tried to hold birthday parties in court. When the opportunity presented itself to make headlines, they called the judge a “pig” and “fascist.”
Five were convicted of crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot, and all seven were found guilty of contempt. An appeals court overturned the riot convictions and most of the contempt charges, ruling that Judge Hoffman had repeatedly made prejudiced comments to the jury.
Forever after, Daley would be remembered for igniting a “police riot” outside the convention, and the Yippies for their circus-like antics that ridiculed the justice system.
The Vietnam conflict also dragged on, for seven years more, outlasting even Nixon. But the divisions between hawks and doves that emerged on the convention floor left lasting wounds that took decades to heal.
ABCNews.com: REWIND to 1968
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/1968/Rewind1968_DNC.html
Yes, I was stranded at O'hara Airport, trying to fly out on military standby. Didn't really know what was going on in town and was afraid that I would be late in reporting back for duty.
That next summer, they had a hippy love-in at a state park in central Michigan. My parents drove us through the mini-Woodstock so we could see "The Hippy Freak Show". That sorta dispelled my fear because they looked like such losers.
But remember something, here; those hippies went apeshit because the Democrats wouldn't knuckle-under to their demands.
The cops falling-out to bust heads happened afterwards in an effort to quell the rioting.
The chronology is everything because the LAST thing Daily & Co. ("The Machine") wanted was bad press for THEIR party, Chitown, or themselves during that convention.
Capiche?
The Communist-inspired leaders of these (ANTI-Vietnam) demonstrators knew that damned well, too. OK?
So holding the city hostage; much in the same way the poverty pimps do visa vi threats of civil unrest et al IF demands aren't met?
That riot was planned from the get-go, using beaucoup numbers of lazy, longhaired useful idiots IMO -- using my 20/20 hindsight it's painfully obvious for me to see, today.
Not so easy to decipher back then, you must understand.
One other thing, my friend.
Those protest organizers and & their lieutenants never went away.
They went into politics; at every level you can imagine including most recently, POTUS. -Fact-
They're found permeating the 'Rat party, today.
No my friend, the Democrats would never tell 'em, "No" again; as today, they are the 'Rat party.
Lends a whole new meaning to, "If ya can't beat 'em; join 'em.
Only these SOBs took that saying to the next highest level when they they took over the 'Rat party lock, stock & barrel.
...I believe if you look at the backgrounds of the 'Rats today, you'll see precisely what I mean?
I was raised in a very liberal family
I distinctly remember riding in the back of my grandparents Chevy Impala down Columbus trying to get to Lake Shore Drive and running into the thick of the protesters and police at about Monroe Street. There were police cars with their blue flashers as far as the eye could see, parked helter-skelter all over the Grant Park area.
We were cut off by a cop car at some point that forced us over to the Drive; I'll never forget the look of pure terror on the cop's face as he hung out the passenger side window screaming at my grandfather to "move! move!"... but with the traffic and all the people running around... it was chaos.
As I recall, my grandparents had gone up to the Board of Education offices (my grandmother taught in the schools for 40+ years) and we'd encountered a traffic jam on LSD, so my grandfather, not knowing any better, had tried to go down Columbus without success.
By the way, my grandfather was a classmate of Mayor Richard J. Daley at de LaSalle and served on various civic committees.
(1) Issued long-requested permits for the protestors at the City parks (which is a constitutional right, is it not, for "peaceable assembly"?), and
(2) Cordoned off street traffic surrounding the convention district as a preventative measure..
Instead, whatever your view of the politics of the protestors, the Chicago Police utilized confrontational approaches like infiltrating the protestors with undercover agents, beating up attendees at a concert (this caught on film) without provocation, rushing and beating people on the street (including some journalists and bystanders), and finally rushing into the McCarthy office on the 15th Floor of the Hilton Hotel and beating his supporters there. You could rightfully view some of the actions of the protestors on the streets, as a righteous indignation to the provocative and violent actions by the Daley forces.
Bottom Line: '68 Chicago was more about Gestapo tactics than Policework!
A cousin of mine was a cop back then. He was on duty in Grant Park when the riots occurred. (I don't remember if the riots occurred over more than one day, or if one day the riots were particularly bad.) My cousin is and was one of the most honorable people I've ever known. After he was promoted out of uniform, he would serve many years as a plain clothes cop before retiring. He currently lives in retirement...
Anyway, a few months after the riots, my family had lunch with my cousin and his family and we got to talking about the riots. We asked him what it was really like.
He said it was horrible. He said that the "hippies" were presented as peaceful and non-violent in the media, but that throughout the crowds there were people throwing whatever they could at the cops, attacking the cops anyway they could, and that _all_ the hippies would spit on any policeman who came near them... He said the police did everything they could to keep the situation peaceful and orderly. It was only when the hippies went crazy that the police used what force they felt was appropriate.
[shrugs]
Believe me, my cousin had no reason to lie. Our families are pretty diverse, and did not pressure him to tell his side in one way or another.
Take it for what it's worth. It's just one brief memory, of one policeman's recollection. I believe it.
Mark W.
Royko was far from being a liberal.
Quite possibly, he is the greatest columnist of all time....
From what I've read about that time, it sounds like both Royko and your father are at least partially correct. There were some bad-apple hippies in the crowd, but there were also some bad-apple cops in the crowd as well. Some delegates and journalists, who had nothing to do with the protests, were beaten by the police.