WYTS: Chicago Bears. Original post here.
Prior to the 20th century, the American political system was
allergic to direct democracy. We did not
elect our Senators, we had the Electoral College, and we did not even pick our
candidates. The party insiders and bosses and their business friends would
select our options in rooms that were literally smoke-filled. Primary elections
were a new thing in the mid-20th century and were only part of the story, really just theater. The bigwigs
had final say, and most states did not have proper primaries yet.
Conventions were not coronations like now, they actually decided who would be
the guy. Sometimes a dude would go to the convention, like James Garfield in
1880, and learn they had to clear their calendar for the rest of the year,
because turns out Jimmy G. is running for president.
1968 was going to be a rough year no matter what
happened. I’ve mentioned before how wild this year was, but more context is
always helpful. The Tet Offensive in January put a lie to claims that Americas has a “light at the end of the tunnel” in Vietnam, and thus the
anti-war protests become an unceasing furious scream. Really
the entire world seemed furious. You have a wave of college protests
everywhere, with students seizing their schools in NYC, in Italy, in Japan, in
Egypt, in Mexico, there’s a near-revolution in Paris, there’s the Prague
Spring, the Troubles are getting started in Northern Ireland, the Cultural
Revolution in China is still going on. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinatedin April and the entire country was hit by a wave of riots.
There had not been a year like this since 1848. I’m not sure
any year since has been this disruptive, this near-apocalyptic, not even 2020.
Even the Republican National Convention in early August had
a drama. The liberal Nelson Rockefeller briefly allied with Ronald Reagan
in a unified front against Nixon. And that’s a wild counterfactual: imagine President
Reagan in ’68, we’d be in World War III before the Beatles broke up.
The Democratic Convention at the end of August, set to
happen in Chicago, was doomed to pandemonium. Even with the Segregationists out, following George Wallace to his distressingly-successful third party
run, the party was deeply divided and had no obvious leader. President Johnson
had easily beaten Barry Goldwater in ’64, thanks to correctly implying that
Goldwater was going to start a nuclear war. But four years later, four years of
ugly Vietnam battles later, Johnson had completely destroyed himself as a
political brand. He was stung by how well Eugene McCarthy, governor of
Minnesota, had done against him in the first primary in New Hampshire. LBJ then
shocked the nation and the party by dropping out of the race entirely on Mach
31st.
Now, luckily there was another charismatic Democrat in the
wings, the brother of a sainted martyr of the nation, and he was anti-war.
Robert Kennedy was the man American needed in 1968. And, oh crap apples, some
guy just murdered him on June 5th... That left the Party without
either LBJ or RFK, not one titanic three-letter name to rally around. Instead,
the more hawkish faction was led by Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had not
bothered to run in the primaries, and he had the backing of the party
elites. The anti-war faction was split between Governor McCarthy and Senator
George McGovern, siding with the tens of thousands of furious protesters from
the Anti-War Movement outside. The crowds cheered for the other guys, they were
silent for Humphrey. But that did not matter.
To set the scene further, the Democratic National Convention
from August 26th to the 29th was taking place in the power base of Mayor
Richard Daley. Daley was a very powerful man, Chicago was his town, and he
reigned from 1955 until his death in 1976. There are urban legends that he
stole the election for JFK. He was an old-style party boss, maybe the last of
his kind. And Daley wanted his big moment in 1968 as a host to go off
spotlessly. This was televised and millions of Americans would be watching
Daley’s city, his kingdom. Months earlier, Chicago had been rocked by post-MLK
assassination riots, with 11 dead, also parts of the city were still in ruin. King
Richard I would do anything to not have a second egg on his face… that went poorly for
him and the city and really everybody.
There was a fear that maybe as many as 100,000 anti-war
protesters might storm Chicago. They'd be communist revolutionaries or
something. The actual number was way below that, only about 10,000, against
twice their number of police and Illinois National Guard. The convention floor, within
the International Amphitheater, was more heavily fortified than Saigon with
several lines of checkpoints and barbed-wire. Even on the floor, there were
delegates getting harassed by Daley’s thugs for not having enough identification.
An already tense convention was made all the worse with a sense of being under
siege the entire time, by the police as much as by the protestors.
As for the Convention itself, the protestors never got close
to it. Any chaos there was all self-inflicted by the Party, not the freaky
deaky hippie Yippie guys. (We’ll get to them in a minute.) There was little doubt
that Humphrey would win the nomination if he played his part. But there was a big question as to what kind of
candidate Humphrey would be. LBJ was at home in Texas, however he was at least
as in control of events as Mayor Daley. The FBI was even tapping Humphrey’s phones.
While Vice President Humphrey tried to find a more moderate pro-war stance,
basically the “Vietnamization” retreat plan taken by Nixon anyway, that was
never allowed to be the party platform. Instead the party plank would be full Hawk after a
very intense delegate vote. That made the Anti-War Delegates furious. New York’s caucus marched around the floor in black armbands, singing
“We Shall Overcome”, the Civil Rights protest standard.
Also, Johnson was secretly fantasizing about reentering the
race. He wanted the right moment to be the party savior, which never came.
Daley, meanwhile, wanted Ted Kennedy to run. Turns out there was no surprise
twist, no guest star reveal. It really was going to be
herby-ol' Hubert, and nobody was happy. Least happy was Daley, who got
to have his city used as a metaphor for oppression and imperialism. When
Senator Abraham Ribicoff said as much in his speech, Daley is reported to have
yelled out “Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch! You lousy motherfucker! Go home!”
He had the Senator dragged out by his thugs.
Reporters Dan Rather and Mike Wallace got into infamous fights with security
guards. It was that kind of affair.
Anyway, then there’s the street riots. As mentioned, the Anti-War crowds were way below expectations. Mayor Daley seems to have believed the worst would indeed happen, taking at face value every ludicrous claim given by the clowning kids in the Anti-War Movement. For example, Humphrey’s other big candidate rival was Pigasus the Immortal, a pet 145-pound pig owned by the Youth International Party (Yippies). I'm not saying that Pigasus wouldn't have made a great president, but he kind of tells you what kind of absurdist politics were at play against Daley. I don’t have the greatest respect for these guys, they made real leftist grassroots political organizing look like a joke, or a phase young dudes did for grass and ass until they grew up. The Yippie leaders such as Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin made jokes about dumping LSD into Chicago’s water supply, or “seducing” politicians’ wives.
The planned protests were never violent or even had a
specific ideology, this would not end in a Chicago Worker's Soviet. And maybe
that's why the Boomer revolution never actually amounted to anything other than
partying – Rubin would end up a stock broker, for example, miserable fucking
generation. But just the idea of an ad hoc music festival and
some Alan Ginsberg poetry was too much for the Chicago PD.
If say, Chicago had done nothing, they might have proven how
weak the counterculture Anti-War movement actually was. It all started poorly when
on August 22nd, a 17-year-old hippie named Dean Johnson fired a revolver at the
cops and was blown away. The protestors planned some big demonstrations for
Johnson’s death but it amounted to nothing. Pigasus’ nomination only had 50
people attend. (He seems to have gotten a bigger crowd in the photo above.) On the 23rd, the Women’s Strike for Peace was also a dud. If
there was indeed a Silent Majority like Nixon would say, maybe this was proof.
However, CPD violent crackdowns would transform a disappointing turn out into
the trial of the century, and these comedians into freedom fighters.
For the first few days of the Convention, the Anti-War
protestors would encamp up in Lincoln Park, and were routinely beaten out of
there by the police, enforcing an 11 PM curfew with gas attacks and riot sticks.
On the 28th, the protesters were encamped in Grant Park, just three miles away
from the Convention, with intentions to march on, hopefully to affect an
Anti-War vote. The police fought back. Several skirmishes took place as
protestors kept trying to raise flags to half-mast or replace the American flag
with a red T-shirt. Finally, the protestors tried to break apart and leave, but
with thousands of people in the Chicago parks, they could not go anywhere without
appearing to be marching. They could not stay or go, without a police boot kicking
them down.
Some protestors decided instead to march upon the Conrad Hilton Hotel, which was the Democratic Party HQ was in the city, and where Humphrey was staying. It was luckily also right there by Grant Park, just a block away. This led to the single biggest brawl of the entire week, as protestors tried to get across Michigan Ave, and it all descended into chaos. The police, after days of beating up these hippies, snapped. They could not take any more. What followed was the "Battle of Michigan Avenue", 17 minutes of violence and total disorder right in front of the news cameras, many reporters caught in the Tasmanian Devil whirlwind of hatred, leaving the scene covered in blood. Vice President Humphrey was in his room and his eyes were hurt by the clouds of tear gas filling the city. He could hear the protestors chant “the whole world is watching” as the rioting police went mad.
In the aftermath of the police riots, the Democratic Party could have not come away looking worse. Only one person, Dean Johnson, had been killed, but hundreds were injured, hundred had been arrested, and 89 million people had seen it happen on TV. Indeed, the whole world was watching.
Eight protestors were singled out by a federal show trial,
in the infamous Trial of the Chicago 8. This crew included both Yuppie
Founders, Hoffman and Rubin, along with student protest leaders like Tom
Hayden, and most significantly, Bobby Seale, of the Black
Panther Party. Seale's part in this story was that he made a speech in Lincoln
Park and later his Panthers were attacked by police in improvised tanks. He'd
be gagged and bound during the trial, and then later tried separately anyway, reducing
the group to the Chicago 7. The whole event was an obvious farce of justice,
supported by a new President, Richard Nixon, and none of the convictions stood
for long. Seven Chicago PD officers charged of police brutality were acquitted.
You might have noticed, yeah, Nixon won. Humphrey was a
sauceless figure during the Convention and remained one through the general
election. It was very close so it could be that the chaos on the
streets of Chicago in fact ruined his campaign. Also, Nixon had been
treasonously sabotaging LBJ's peace talks behind the scenes with South Vienamese contacts. The Vietnam War
would drag on for another seven years. US troops left in '73, and South Vietnam
collapsed with shocking speed two years later. All of it was for nothing. Decades
of Republican rule in the White House later and the Keynesian liberal wing of
Democrats like Johnson and McGovern were gone forever, now turned into boogie men to scare away moderate politicians from daring to imagine they could affect major changes. No more Great Society,
just welfare reform.
The Boomers finally took power and turned out to be a
horrifically conservative generation in the end. They didn’t stop the Vietnam
War and only went on to go create new Vietnams all on their own. On that thought: fuck
Forrest Gump.
At least we have primary elections now to choose our
candidates… well, usually…
I don't know what happened to Pigasus after his failed presidential bid. The legends say that the Chicago PD ate him.
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