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.
