The 1968 RNC in Miami had what I later found missing in Chicago — authorities willing to listen to the community and an explosive situation ably defused.
A young anti-war demonstrator confronts National Guardsmen who formed a barricade to keep protesters in Grant Park during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968.Felled by a rock thrown from ranks of protesters, a bystander lies on the ground bleeding from a head wound as other protesters rushed to his aid during the Democratic National Convention rioting in 1968.
The first article Buckley commissioned from me in 1957, while trying to hire me as replacement for his theater critic Willi Schlamm, was to report on the Kennedy brothers’ congressional questioning of Jimmy Hoffa. I objected, as I knew little about trade unionism. He said, “Just think of it as a play you are reviewing.” It was not bad preparation for the conventions of 1968.
Miami showed me what I would find missing in Chicago — authorities willing to listen to the hopes of the community, trusted celebrities lending their support to reconciliation and an explosive situation ably defused.On Sunday, the day before the Chicago convention opened, Grant Park was a stage for middle-class kids to play at being arrested. They had been rehearsed the day before in Lincoln Park by veterans of earlier protests, to prepare them for minimum injury when their turn came.
Don’t make early arrests, except of prominent leaders. During riots in Watts and Detroit, it was believed, police did not realize early on how rapidly crowds would aggregate. Cops making arrests, booking and transporting their prisoners were drained off the street just when their numbers were needed to match the growing mass of rioters. But what could you do with resisters if you could neither bargain with them nor arrest them? Daley had disastrously answered that question during.
The beatings were so prolonged that clergymen tried to place themselves around the victims. I talked to some of them. They were not priests. The city’s Cardinal Cody — “Minnesota Fats” to his critics — did not like activist clergy. The peacemakers were pastors and rabbis who had bought Roman collars to give themselves a clerical look for the cameras.
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