Marching, Charging Feet

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of 1968 day-by-day.

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Sunday,  September 1, 1968

Back in Chicago, the 5,600 Illinois National Guardsmen called out to guard the Democrats were heading home and the 11,-900 Chicago policemen who had worked 12-hour shifts returned to normal duty. Delegates and demonstrators have left town. “It’s unbelievably peaceful." a policeman said in a somewhat incredulous tone.  One group that—much to the surprise of city officials—did not demonstrate last week was the Blackstone Rangers, the large Negro Chicago street gang. A spokesman explained that they stayed away because the police "wanted us to make a move so they could shoot us down."

And President Johnson—much to the surprise of almost everyone—stayed away from a convention birthday party planned for him by Mayor Daley. He celebrated ip Texas after party leaders told him his welcome would be less than warm.

Meanwhile, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, warned the nation's police officials that the "revolutionary terrorism" of the New Left on campus "is a serious threat to both the academic community and a lawful and orderly society.”

The United States said yesterday that the Soviet Union had upset the long-standing military balance of power in Central Europe by massing an estimated 600,000 troops against Czechoslovakia and possibly Romania. The State Department also disclosed that the North Atlantic Treaty allies were reviewing counteractions that might be taken to insure United States and allied security.

Inside Prague’s high-domed Main Station there were many tearful scenes as members of families left for the West to avoid the feared restriction of personal liberties and persecution of secret police. They traveled with 30-day tourist visas, but many may not return. “It is getting bad here,” one traveler said.

In China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is believed to have waned and the power of the millions of radical Red Guards has dropped. “You have let me down,” Chairman Mao Tse-tung is reported to have said to five Red Guard leaders in July. “And what is more, you have disappointed the workers, peasants and army-men of China.”

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The Outlook After Chicago Violence

Anthony Lukas, The New York Times, 31 August 1968

CHICAGO, Aug. 30 — Just after 10 o’clock last night. National Guardsmen fired a new barrage of light irritant gas into demonstrators massed in Grand Park across from the Conrad Hilton Hotel.

For a moment the crowd retreated across the scarred grass. But almost immediately they began moving back around a young guitarist with a droopy mustache and a nubby blue sweater who sat on a stone bench under a tree. And with the white gas still swirling in the air under the bright television lights, the youths joined the guitarist in an almost exultant chorus:

This land is your land, this land is my land. From California to the New York highlands From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me.

A whiff of celebration hung with the tear gas over Michigan Avenue.

For the young dissidents who had been demonstrating in the streets and the parks here for the last week had succeeded far beyond their most exotic dreams of a month or even a week ago.

Numbers Held Down By last weekend it was clear that the Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, the Yippies and other protesting groups had failed to produce demonstrators in the numbers they had hoped for. Instead of the 100,000 the leaders had confidently predicted, there were at best 15,000 protesters here.

Moreover, the thousands of city policemen, National Guardsmen and Federal troops, who had evidently frightened many demonstrators away from Chicago, also seemed more than capable of containing any protests that did get started.

And at the International Amphitheatre in the Stockyards the Democrats were preparing to nominate Hubert H. Humphrey and adopt a strong plank on the Vietnam war.

But within a few days the actions of Mayor Richard J. Daley and his blue-helmeted policemen had turned almost certain defeat into a startling victory for the dissidents.

The victory, of course, must be seen in terms of the protesters’ own objectives. They never seriously sought to influence events inside the Amphitheatre. From the start most of them regarded the Democratic National Convention as rigged and the entire electoral process as bankrupt.

Instead, the mobilization committee and other groups saw the convention as an opportunity to advance their own ends:

To rally the radical and peace movement, dispirited by President Johnson’s withdrawal from the race and by the Paris talks on Vietnam.

To “strip the facade of liberal policies from the Establishment and expose the raw machinery of force and repression beneath it,” in the words of David Dellinger of the mobilization committee.

To “radicalize” thousands of young people who had given the electoral process “one more chance” this year.

In considerable degree they achieved all three ends. One may argue how much of this success was the result of their own shrewdness and how much resulted from Mayor Daley’s reaction to them.

When they demanded the right to sleep in Lincoln Park, with the cry, “the parks belong to the people.” the police drove them out with tear gas. When they requested permits for a protest march to the Amphitheatre, they were refused. And when they provoked the police by shouting “pigs” and “fascists,” the force took off all wraps, clubbing not only young people but newsmen and innocent bystanders as well.

New Yorkers here this week speculated on how Mayor Lindsay would have handled the same situation. They concluded that he would have invited the demonstrators to sleep in the parks (perhaps even going in to toast hot dogs with them) and then would have personally arranged a route of march for them to a demonstration spot near the Amphitheatre.

Sought a Confrontation This kind of stance would hardly have satisfied the young revolutionaries like Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden of the mobilization committee. Theirs is a strategy of confrontation. If they could not have got confrontation over the parks or parade routes, they would probably have got it over something else.

But granting the protesters their right to demonstrate and showing some concern for them might have deprived the small revolutionary core of some of its more moderate supporters. It undoubtedly would have softened the impact on thousands of Americans who watched the police tactics on television.

Ultimately, however, it must be asked how significant and how lasting the impact of the “battle of Chicago” will be.

Nobody who spent any time this week in Lincoln and Grant Parks, along Clark Street or on Michigan Avenue can doubt the short-run impact on the participants themselves. There was a “radicalization” process going on—if nothing else, a radicalization by bloodied heads.

"Cops Started Pushing" Take the case of Scott Vondran, an 18-year-old student. Late Wednesday night, Mr. Vondran told a newsman: “I was walking down Wabash Avenue when somebody yelled, ‘The cops are coming!* We went into a store and the cops started pushing, everyone in after us. They came in and arrested eight of us. I was never for all this peace stuff until tonight. Now I am.”

The militant mood of the young people in front of the Hilton yesterday was made particularly clear when former Gov. Endicott Peabody of Massachusetts, a convention delegate, mounted an upturned ash can to speak.

Mr. Peabody appealed to the youths not to let the “sickening violence” and Senator Eugene J. McCarthy’s defeat the night before drive them into the streets.

“Whatever you do, stay in, the political process,” he shouted, his hands outstretched to his young listeners, many of them neatly dressed young men and women wearing McCarthy buttons.

But he met chiefly stone-faced stares and cries of “Sit down, old man” or “Up against the wall!”

Yesterday afternoon speaker i after speaker talked of “going into the streets,” “spilling some blood” and “setting up an American liberation front.”

Angry and Proud But one can discount much of this talk, for these young people are angry. Moreover, they are proud that they have confronted some tough policemen and have come through. As Mr. Hayden put it, “We are beginning to fight for our survival, and if we can survive in Chicago we can survive anywhere.”

But for most the adrenalin is likely to subside in a day or two. Already some demonstrators are smiling about the sign that hung in Grant Park yesterday. “Today the park, tomorrow the country.” They believe their attempt to radicalize America will be very long and very difficult.

They also have found that what is called “the movement” coalesces only at times of great drama, like this week in Chicago or the march on the Pentagon last October.

At such times, as Mr. Hayden said, “the tear gas falls on all of us.” But as the air clears of gas, so the artificial unity of the widely divergent groups in “the movement” tends to dissipate.

Differences Are Great This is expected to happen after Chicago, too, for the differences between the groups that protested here are great.

The mobilization committee itself is a coalition of about a hundred groups that include some very militant organization, like People Against Racism, and some relatively moderate ones, like Clergy and Laymen Concerned and Women Strike for Peace.

And outside the mobilization there is great diversity, too. The Yippies (Youth International party) worked closely with the mobilization people this week, but most of the time the Yippies find the “mobs,” as they call them, simply too intense and humorless.

As for the former McCarthy supporters, there seems to be considerable question about how “radicalized” they have been. Many have started wearing a new blank pin to show their disillusion with all candidates. And when Dick Gregory told them in the park yesterday that he supported votes for 18-year-olds, many of them shouted, “Vote for who?”

Little Negro Support But few seem ready to follow Mr. Hayden and Mr. Davis into the streets. Like Mr. McCarthy himself, most of his young followers appear too cautious and conservative to feel comfortable on the barricades. Their radicalization may have begun, but for most it may be a long process.

Finally, it has been clear all week that there is little support among Negroes for the young radicals. There were few black faces visible in Grant Park or on Michigan Avenue this week.

“I can’t take these white cats too seriously,” one young Negro said. “This isn’t like the black fight. We haven’t got a choice. We’ve got to fight But these middle-class white kids can walk away from the fight any time they like. They just ain’t ready for revolution.”

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 1968

Chicago appeared to be returning to normal after four nights of violence and its citizens appeared to be both relieved and perplexed in the wake of the Democratic National Convention. Reactions to Mayor Daley and the strong tactics of the Chicago police in clearing demonstrators ranged from condemnation to support. 

Responding to a request from the Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago, which said objects were being thrown from windows, the Chicago police entered McCarthy headquarters on the 15th floor before dawn Friday and ejected about 30 of the Senator's aides. Three McCarthy workers were injured seriously enough to require hospitalization. 

Dissident Democrats, seriously divided on issues among themselves, met in Chicago to lay plans for political activity this fall and beyond. They could agree on one point, however—that they would not support the Democratic ticket in November. 

In his first speech since the close of the national political conventions, President Johnson referred last night to rumors that the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia might be repeated elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Although he did not expand on the rumors, he seemed to be pointing to Rumania as a possible target for Soviet troop movements and a take-over. 

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The Beatles, “Hey Jude” b/w “Revolution” (Apple R 5722) Released: 30 August 1968 Chart Position: #1

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POLICE BATTLE DEMONSTRATORS IN STREETS

Anthony Lukas, The New York Times, 29 August 1968

CHICAGO — The police and National Guardsmen battled young protesters in downtown Chicago last night as the week-long demonstrations against the Democratic National Convention reached a violent and tumultuous climax.

About 100 persons, including 25 policemen, were injured and at least 178 were arrested as the security forces chased down the demonstrators. The protesting young people had broken out of Grant Park on the shore of Lake Michigan in an attempt to reach the International Amphitheatre where the Democrats were meeting, four miles away.

The police and Guardsmen used clubs, rifle butts, tear gas and Chemical Mace on virtually anything moving along Michigan Avenue and the narrow streets of the Loop area.

Uneasy Calm Shortly after midnight, an uneasy calm ruled the city. However, 1,000 National Guardsmen were moved back in front of the Conrad Hilton Hotel to guard it against more than 5.000 demonstrators who had drifted back into Grant Park.

The crowd in front of the hotel was growing, booing vociferously every time new votes for Vice President Humphrey were broadcast from the convention hall.

The events in the streets stirred anger among some delegates at the convention. In a nominating speech Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff of Connecticut told the delegates that if Senator George S. McGovern were President, “we would not have these Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago."

When Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago and other Illinois delegates rose shouting angrily, Mr. Ribicoff said, “How hard it is to accept the truth."] Crushed Against Windows Even elderly bystanders were caught in the police onslaught. At one point, the police turned I on several dozen persons standing quietly behind police barriers in front of the Conrad Hilton Hotel watching the demonstrators across the street.

For no reason that could be immediately determined, the blue-helmeted policemen charged the barriers, crushing the spectators against the windows of the Haymarket Inn, a restaurant in the hotel. Finally the window gave way. sending screaming middle-aged women and children backward through the broken shards of glass.

The police then ran into the restaurant and beat some of the victims who had fallen through the windows and arrested them.

At the same time, other policemen outside on the broad, tree-lined avenue were clubbing the young demonstrators repeatedly under television lights and in full view of delegates’ wives looking out the hotel’s windows.

Afterward, newsmen saw 30 shoes, women’s purses and torn pieces of clothing lying with shattered glass on the sidewalk and street outside the hotel and for two blocks in each direction.

It was difficult for newsmen to estimate how many demonstrators were in the streets of midtown Chicago last night. Although 10.000 to 15.000 young people gathered in Grant Park for a rally in the afternoon, same of them had apparently drifted home before the violence broke out in the evening.

Estimates of those involved in the action in the night ranged between 2,000 and 5,000.

Although some youths threw bottles, rocks, stones and even loaves of bread at the police, most of them simply marched and countermarched, trying to avoid the flying police squads.1

Some of them carried flags the black anarchist flag, the red flag, the Viet Cong flag and the red and blue flags with a yellow peace symbol.

Stayed Defiant Although clearly outnumbered and outclassed by the well armed security forces, the thousands of antiwar demonstrators. supporters of Senator Eugene J. McCarthy and Yippies maintained an air of defiance throughout the evening.

They shouted “The streets! belong to the people,” “This land is our land" and “Hell no, we won’t go," as they skirmished along the avenue and among the side streets.

When arrested youths raised their hands in the V for victory sign that has become a symbol of the peace movement, other demonstrators shouted "seig heil or "Pigs” at the policemen making the arrests.

Frank Sullivan, the Police Department’s public information1 director, said the police had reacted only after "50 hard-core leaders" had staged a charge into a police line across Michigan Avenue.

Mr. Sullivan said that among those in the charge were Prof. Sidney Peck, cochairman of the Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, the group that is spearheading the demonstration. He said Professor Peck had struck James M. Rochford. Deputy Superintendent of Police, with hi* fist. Mr. Peck was arrested and charged with aggravated assault.

As the night wore on. the police dragnet spread from Michigan Avenue and the area around the Hilton throughout downtown Chicago.

On the comer of Monroe Street and Michigan Avenue, policemen chased demonstrators up the steps of the Chicago Art Institute, a neoclassical Greek temple, and arrested one of them.

As in previous nights of unrest here, newsmen found themselves special targets of the police action. At Michigan Avenue and Van Buren Street, a young photographer ran into the street, terrified, his hands clasped over his head and shrieking, "Press, press."

As the police arrested him. he shouted. "What did I do? What did I do?"

The policeman said. "If you don’t know you shouldn’t be a photographer."

Barton Silverman, a photographer for the New York Times, was briefly arrested near the Hilton Hotel.

Bob Kieckhefer, a reporter for United Press International, was hit in the head by a policeman during the melee in front of the Hilton. He staggered into the UPI office on Michigan Avenue and was taken for treatment to Wesley Memorial Hospital.

Reporters Hampered Reporters and photographers were repeatedly hampered by the police last night while trying to cover the violence. They were herded into small areas where they could not sec the action. On Jackson Street, police forced a mobile television truck to turn off its lights.

Among those arrested was the Rev. John Boyles. Presbyterian chaplain at Yale and a McCarthy staff worker, who was charged with breach of the peace.

“It's an unfounded charge," Mr. Boyles said. “I was protesting the clubbing of a girl I knew from the McCarthy staff. They were beating her on her head with clubs and I yelled at them 'Don’t hit a woman,’ At that point I was slugged in the stomach and grabbed by a cop who arrested me.’’

Last night’s violence broke out when hundreds of demonstrators tried to leave Grant Park after a rally and enter the Loop area.

At the Congress Street bridge leading from the park onto Michigan Avenue. National Guardsmen fired and .sprayed tear gas at the demonstrators five or six times around 7 P.M. to hold them inside the park.

However, one group moved, north inside the park and managed to find a way out over another bridge. There they met a contingent of the Poor People's Campaign march led by their symbol, three mule wagons.

Chase Youths The march was headed south along Michigan Avenue and the police did not disrupt it, apparently because it had a permit. But they began chasing the youths along Michigan Avenue and into side streets.

The demonstrators were then joined by several thousand others who had originally set out from the park in a "non- violent" march to the amphi-1 theatre led by David Dellinger, national chairman of the Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, and Allen Ginsberg, the poet.

The climactic day of protests began with a mass rally sponsored by the mobilization commiitee in the band shell in Grant Park.

The rally was intended both as a mass expression of anger at the proceedings across town in the convention and as a "staging ground” for the smaller, more militant march on the amphitheatre.

However, before the rally was an hour old, it, too, was! interrupted by violence. Fighting broke out when three demonstrators started hauling down an American flag from a pole by the park’s band shell where speakers were denouncing the Chicago authorities, the Johnson Administration and the war in Vietnam.

Four blue-helmeted policemen moved in to stop them and were met by a group of angry demonstrators who pushed them back against a cluster of trees by the side of the band shell. Then the demonstrators, shouting “Pig, pig,” pelted the isolated group of 14 policemen with stones, bricks and sticks.

Grenade Hurled Back Snapping their Plexiglass shields down over their faces, the police moved toward the crowd. One policeman threw  or fired a tear-gas grenade into the throng. But a demonstrator picked up the smoking grenade and heaved it back among the police. The crowd cheered with surprise and delight.

But then, from the Inner Drive west of the park, a phalanx of policemen moved into the crowd, using their billy clubs as prods and then swinging them.The demonstrators, who replied with more stones and sticks were pushed back against rows of flaking green benches and trapped there.

Among those injured was Rennie Davis, one of the coordinators for the Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which has been spearheading the demonstrations in Chicago.

As the police and demonstrators skirmished on the huge grassy field, mobilization committee leaders on the stage of the baby-blue band shell urged the crowd to sit down and remain calm.

The worst of the fighting was over in 10 minutes, but the two sides were still jostling each other all over the field when Mr. Ginsberg approached the microphone.

Speaking in a cracked and choking voice, Mr. Ginsberg said: “I lost my voice chanting i in the park the last few nights. The best strategy for you in cases of hysteria, overexcitement or fear is still to chant 'Om' together. It helps to quell flutterings of butterflies in the belly. Join me now as I try to lead you.”

So, as the policemen looked out in astonishment through I their Plexiglass face shields, the huge throng chanted the Hindu "Om, om,” sending deep mystic reverberations off the glass office towers along Michigan Avenue.

Following Mr. Ginsberg to the microphone was Jean Genet, the French author. His bald head glistening in the glare of television lights, Mr. Genet said through a translator:

”It took an awful lot of deaths in Hanoi for a happening such as is taking place here to occur.”

Next on the platform was William Burroughs, author of The Naked Lunch. A gray fedora on his head. Mr. Burroughs said in a dry, almost distant voice:

"I've just returned from London, England, where there is no effective resistance at all. It's really amazing to see people willing to do something about an unworkable system. It’s not evil or immoral, just unworkable. And they're trying to make it work by force. But they can’t do it.”

Mailer Apologizes Mr. Burroughs was followed by Norman Mailer, the author who is here to write an article on the convention. Mr. Mailer, who was arrested during the i march on the Pentagon last' October, apologized to the 'crowd for not marching in; Chicago.

Thrusting his jaw into the! microphone, he said: "I’m a little sick about all this and also a little mad. but I've got a deadline on a long piece and I'm not going to go out and march and get arrested. I just came here to salute all of you.” 

Then Dick Gregory, the comedian and Negro militant leader, took the platform. Dressed in a tan sport shirt and matching trousers with a khaki rain hat on his head. Mr. Gregory said: "You just have to look around you at all the police and soldiers to know you must be doing something right.”

Many of the demonstrators in Grant Park had drifted down in small groups from Lincoln Park, where 300 policemen had moved in at 12:15 A.M. yesterday and laid down a barrage of tear gas to clear the area. About 2.000 young protesters had attempted to stay in the park despite an 11 P.M. curfew.

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THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 1968

Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey was nominated for President on the first ballot by the Democratic National Convention early this morning after a day of bandwagon shifts to his candidacy, a disavowal of a draft movement by Edward M. Kennedy, and a night of turmoil in convention hall. Mr. Humphrey received a total of 1,761 votes. Senator Eugene J. McCarthy got 601. and Senator George McGovern got 146. IPage 1, Columns 1-8.1 After a climactic floor crash between Administration supporters and critics, a deeply divided convention adopted a White House-dictated Vietnam plank supporting Administration policy by a vote of 1,567 to 1,0414. 

National Guardsmen and the police used clubs, rifle butts, tear gas and Chemicat Mace as they battled young protesters in downtown Chicago. About 100 persons were injured and at least 178 were arrested in the violent climax to the week-long demonstrations against the convention. The clashes between demonstrators and the police in Chicago's streets were viewed as deeply hurting the Democratic party, politically. The convention presented to a vast nationwide audience a picture of division, olf old-fashioned city bossism. of events out of control and of a party unable even to govern itself or maintain order. The main hope for a Democratic victory in November was seen as a cease-fire in Vietnam in the next two months or some other major development. 

Senator Eugene J. McCarthy indicated he would not campaign for Mr. Humphrey if the Vice President was the Democratic candidate because of his “total defense" of the Administration's Vietnam policy. 

Soviet commentators in Moscow warned that the reform leaders of Czechoslovakia were on a short leash under the vigilant eyes of the Kremlin, which had doubts they could or would cope with what was viewed as a counterrevolutionary threat.

North Vietnam, at the 19th negotiating session in Paris, scorned the Democratic party’s platform plank on Vietnam as a renewal of unacceptable demands for reciprocity and an indication that the Humphrey forces Intended to “continue neo-colonialist policies.” 

Federal enforcement officials are beginning to shift some of their concern from the South to Northern cities as school integration in the South is expected to increase steadily, if not spectacularly. 

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Programming: Ship of Ghouls

uncredited writer, Time, August 1968

The old radio soap operas liked to pretend that Portia really faced Life. But only since television has the soaper got right down to the nubby-grubby of everyday existence — suicide attempts (The Doctors), incestuous desires (Days of Our Lives) and various physical com plaints, such as "uterine inertia" (An other World). The trouble with such contemporary traumas is that no one does much about them onscreen; the folks just sit around talking about their problems and drinking black coffee in the kitchen. The only time there is any live action in the typical soaper, it seems, is Friday. That's when the writ ers always slip in the "tease" that will lure the listeners back on Monday.

Only ABC's Dark Shadows tapes as if every day were Friday. The 30-minute show is TV's first gothic soaper (Monday through Friday, 4 p.m. E.D.T.) and the first to star a vampire. Ex plains one of the directors: "If the char acters sat around and talked to each other about vampires, you would turn people off. It's the actual vampirizing that makes the show." No doubt about it. Dark Shadows has put the bite on a rapidly-rising audience that now aver ages 15 million viewers a week. When Barnabas the Vampire (Actor Jonathan Frid) goes on personal appearance tours, he is apt to pull 25,000 people at a time. At a Fort Wayne shopping cen ter, played by both Richard Nixon and Eugene McCarthy during the Indiana primary, Frid outdrew each of them—or so claims his pressagent.

That Certain Age. The rest of the cast is a ship of ghouls: a warlock, a 175-year-old witch (played by a nubile blonde), lab-made monsters whose ev ery part is a transplant, a ghost and an agent of the devil. One of the few nearnormal human beings is the matriarch of "Collinwood," the haunted manor that is the scene of the action. That role is filled by the show's top-billed star, former Film Actress Joan Bennett, 58, who says frankly: "You reach a certain age in Hollywood when there's a shortage of glamour roles."

Collinwood is located high above the Maine coast. The time is the present, though most of last winter was spent in a flashback to the 18th century when Barnabas first won his fangs. As for the plot, even Frid himself concedes, "There are times when I have absolutely no idea what's going on. I'm sure people get together to speculate on what the show is all about."

One of the more coherent of the multiple story lines concerns Barnabas' quest for a bride. Since he comes out of his coffin home only after dark, he prefers supper dates, and six times has mixed his fatal business with pleasure. "The whole essence of my character," says Frid earnestly, "is guilt over my hang-up—vampirism—and my bites suffer. I envy the bites of the two other vampires. They are positively erotic."

Plastic Bats. The show is far more dramatic in production than any of its competitors. Producer Robert Costello splices in occasional exteriors filmed on location, employs more than 100 sets in the show's Manhattan studio, com pared with the 30 or so on most soapers. Instead of the customary organ stings to punctuate the drama, he uses bridges recorded by an orchestra of 23 pieces.

Dark Shadows also has a recorded repertory of 3,000 sound effects and a few tricks that go back to radio days. The werewolf calls are authentic lobo cries, but for the squeak of bats in the night, a technician rubs a cork on the side of a bottle. The bats themselves are plastic and wired for flight. Coffins, cakes of dry ice (for eerie ground fog) and quarts of stage blood litter the studio. To spook up the manor with cobwebs, the crew flings chunks of latex into an electric fan, which scatters them authentically over the walls.

The latex first hits the fan at 6 a.m. most days, earlier if there is to be an extra-special effect, say a burning at the stake. About two hours later, the actors arrive for rehearsals, and then go through a technical run-through to test the special effects. At that point, the vampires with lines prerecord the dialogue: actors can't speak clearly with false fangs in their mouths. Later the lines are put onto the video tape. In the afternoon come makeup sessions, the dress rehearsal, and then the actual taping of the show that will be aired the following week. Since editing the tape is expensive, most fluffs are left in. One exception: Joan Bennett referred to her ghoul-ridden home not as Collinwood but as Hollywood.

That slip was edited out—although it is not clear why. After all, Hollywood's not exactly ghoul-free either.

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300 Police Use Tear Gas to Breach Young Militants’ Barricade in Chicago Park

Incident Follows March on Loop by Dissenters, Angry Over Leaders’ Arrest Sylvan Fox, The New York Times, 28 August 1968

CHICAGO, Tuesday, Aug. 27 —The police unleashed a tear-gas barrage early this morning to breach a barricade that hard-line antiwar militants had erected in the heart of a downtown Chicago park.

At 12:20 A.M., after warning the young demonstrators that; they must leave Lincoln Park, some 300 policemen, wearing plexiglass face shields, advanced on the protesters’ makeshift barricade, firing tear gas as they moved forward.

The tear-gas shells hissed through the air and landed with dull thuds, unfolding a large brownish white cloud that forced the young demonstrators to retreat, gagging and gasping., Some policemen, armed with shotguns, pursued clusters of youths out of the park and attempted to disperse them. Several youngsters were seen being clubbed and hauled away by the police.

At least 55 persons were arrested, the police reported, and at least 50 were injured, including one who was said to have been critically beaten about the head.

Almost 3,000 young men and women were in the park at the time of the tear-gas attack, which followed a tense hour-long confrontation between the police and the demonstrators. Most of the dissenters were massed behind a line of overturned picnic tables upon which three youths stood, holding Viet Cong, black anarchist and peace flags.

Police Cars Headed Off Minutes before the police began the assault a single police car flanked the barricade and approached the crowd from the rear. It was driven off by a hail of rocks and bottles, many of which slammed against the crowd.

“Kill the pigs!” some of the youngsters shouted, using a current New Left appellation for policemen.

It was the most serious confrontation thus far in the tense situation that has developed here with the build-up of military and police force and the massing of demonstrators drawn here by the Democratic National Convention.

In the crowd, as the tear-gas shells flew, was Allen Ginsberg, the poet, who led about 300 Yippies in a gentle chanting of “om”—a mystic Indian chant of peace and relaxation.

The protesters’ barricades had been erected by some 500 demonstrators who led the move to defy police orders to leave the park at 11 P.M., when the parks legally close. As the barricades went up, the police massed about a hundred yards from the crowd of Yippies, New Leftists and adherents of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

Most Serious Encounter At about midnight, as the confrontation unfolded in the park, Thomas Hayden, a protest coordinator and one of the leaders of the New Left, was arrested for the second time in less than 12 hours. He had been arrested in Lincoln Park in the afternoon, but was released on bail.

Spokesmen for the mobilization committee said Mr. Hayden’s second arrest occurred on a downtown street when policemen seized and hit him and a companion, Ronnie Davis, another committee leader. Mr., Davis was not arrested.

Mr. Hayden’s first arrest touched off a march through the downtown Loop area by about 1,000 of his supporters.

The confrontation developed shortly before midnight when the youths, who had been driven out of the park last night, overturned picnic tables, put trash baskets between the upturned legs, filled the baskets: with paper and wood and set them afire.

The result was a 20- or 30-yard-long flaming barricade behind which the 500 youngsters clustered, some waving Viet Cong flags and some shouting, chanting and clapping their hands.

At 11:40 a police car began moving through the darkness, its loudspeaker announcing: “This is a final warning. Please leave the park. The park is now closed. Anyone remaining in this park is in violation of the law. Everyone out of the park. This is a final notice.”

The warning was met by a loud chanting of “Hell no, we won’t go,” by the youngsters. 

As the police car moved through the park, its spotlight cut through the night to pick out the faces of youngsters standing defiantly behind the ^barricade or on top of it.

Across the no man’s land that had been created by the two opposing forces, the youngsters shouted taunts at the policemen.

“Why don’t you go home to your wife and kids,” one youngster called. Another added, “While you still have them.”

“Why don’t we go up and clear them out,” a policeman snapped.

The-confrontation came after a day of high tension in which thousands of Yippies and other antiwar activists marched through the streets.

Medical volunteers working with the protesters reported that about a dozen demonstrators had been struck with Chemical Mace, an antiriot spray, and several others had been struck by policemen’s clubs. The police department said it had no reports on the use of Chemical Mace.

About 2,00 young antiwar militants roamed the streets under the tense surveillance of the police during the early hours of the evening, as the Democratic National Convention got under way. None of the demonstrators attempted to go anywhere near the convention site, which is several miles from the downtown section of the city.

Another group of Yippies and protesters massed outside the Conrad Hilton Hotel, a focal point of convention activities, for a time. Later, this group moved to Lincoln Park, Smaller bands of youngsters wandered the streets late into the night.

At one point In the afternoon a march of protesters was halted by a solid line of policemen as the marchers attempted to move toward the Loop. The marchers then reversed their course and headed back to Lincoln Park and Old Town, which have been their principal bases.

Earlier in the day some 1,000 of the protesters, angered over the arrest of two of their leaders, marched through the downtown Loop area, disrupting traffic and adding to the tension that besets this convention city.

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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 1968

Shouting, jeering and worn out delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, virtually forced Representative Carl Albert of Oklahoma, the convention chairman, to adjourn the convention early this morning until noon today. The second session broke up in anger and confusion just after the start of the debate on the Vietnam plank of the 1968 platform. Many delegates believed that if a minority report critical of President Johnson’s Vietnam policy could be adopted, it would lead to a “draft of Senator Edward M. Kennedy for President and possibly stop the nomination of Vice President Humphrey. Mr. Kennedy, however, let advisers know last right that he would not be available for such a draft. 

Mr. Humphrey and Senators Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, the three leading Democratic Presidential candidates, met face to face before the California delegation for the first such encounter of the campaign.

 The Democrats, amid the chaos and passion that is their fashion, are drumming out the bigots, beckoning to the young and imposing some profound changes on the party’s future processes more rapidly than most had ever thought possible

The Czechoslovaks seemed to conclude that the agreement her leaders reached with the Soviet Union was a compromise bordering on capitulation. The Moscow accord, in effect, gave the Russians the right to station troops indefinitely in Czechoslovakia in exchange for the maintenance of the Dubček regime and a slightly restricted continuation of the liberalization process.

Well placed European Communists still loyal to the Soviet Union described the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact forces as a “bad mistake.” 

The Administration has advised the Hanoi delegation in Paris “to stop miscalculating or trying to interfere in internal American affairs and get down to the serious business of making peace.” 

A nationwide survey by Louis Harris made Saturday put Richard M. Nixon 6 points ahead of Mr. Humphrey, or Senator McCarthy, or President Johnson in public support for the Presidency.

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TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 1968

The 35th Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago unsettled by a brush-fire movement to draft Senator Edward M. Kennedy for President, fights impending on rules, credentials, the platform and the Presidential nomination. Just before the delegates arrived at the convention site a spokesman tor Senator Kennedy said in Washington that he has asked that his name not be placed in nomination. The nascent “draft Kennedy” movement is like n pile of tinder in a very dry season but it would take some kind of spark to ignite the delegates. But the Senator, at least for the moment, was not lighting any matches. 

The Democratic platform committee, reportedly on direct orders from President Johnson, adopted a pro-Administration Vietnam plank calling for a bombing halt but on conditional terms. Compromise with the doves having been dismissed, a bitter floor fight is expected when the platform is presented tonight 

Associates of Mr. Humphrey said he would choose a running mate if he wins the nomination later this week who will add political strength to the Democratic ticket rather than prevent loss. Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine, Mayor Joseph L. Alioto of San Francisco and former Gov. Terry Sanford of North Carolina are those most prominently mentioned. 

Mr. Humphrey’s supporters demonstrated a precarious grip on the Democratic convention by beating back a formidable challenge to the delegation of President Johnson’s home state of Texas. By a vote of 1368 to 955, the delegation led by Gov. John B. Connally Jr. was approved.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that the number of serious crimes rose by 16 per cent in 1967 over the previous year. The crimes rise was spread evenly between violent crimes and property offenses and was consistent in all areas and geographic regions.

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