Recreate '68: Crash The DNC

To truly re-create it in all its splendor, you'll need thousands of violent, well-armed police, and then things will get really bloody and fun, with counterproductive political fall-out that could last for years.

Some say it directly led to the election of Richard Nixon, when middle America was made afraid of those scary, dirty, and now violent (as the media repeated) hippies. That, in turn, led to the largest escalation of the Vietnam War to date, and it was more than another half decade later with thousands more dead US troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of dead Vietnamese) before the US finally withdrew.

Be careful what you wish for...


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Outside the official convention proceedings, anti-war demonstrators clashed with 11,900 Chicago police, 7500 Army troops, 7500 Illinois National Guardsmen and 1000 Secret Service agents over 5 days.

The violence centered on two things: the Chicago police forcing protesters out of areas where they were not permitted to be; and protesters clashing with police, and their reinforcements, as they tried to march to the convention site.

The worst day of protesting was Wednesday, and was dubbed the "Battle of Michigan Avenue." Protesters were stopped in their march to the convention site and the media recorded graphic violence on the part of the Chicago police. Many innocent bystanders, reporters and doctors offering medical help were severely beaten by the police.

On March 20, 1969, a Chicago grand jury indicted eight police officers and eight civilians in connection with the disorders during the Democratic convention.

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I'd love to get my ass kicked for 5 days and turn the country, now with us, against the anti-war movement. How about you?

The previous comment is well taken but an alternative is needed. That alternative in California is the two peace parties on the ballot, the socialist Peace & Freedom Party and the Green Party. Neither the Democrats or Republicans are about to change and their two drinking parties, formally called nominating conventions, have nothing to offer the workingclass or building alternatives so we can finally put an end to the profit motive of capitalism that is the cause of these wars which only a serious labor movement can do. Most of the workingclass never votes and it is they who must be reached with socialist and Green Party candidates, preferablly the former. This endless marching around in a circle to protest what we all known is evil, and in fact, most Democrats refer to their candidate as the "lesser" evil, does not build anything and can make things worse if the regular voters are swayed by the reactionary propaganda on TV, as they usually are. We need to go beyond the protest politics of 40 years ago, easily remembered by this writer, and build alternatives to the current bankrupt social order. Neither humanity nor the earth has anymore time for endless protests; now is the time to organize the unorganized.

I seriously question whether the Chicago 68 demos ''turned the country against the antiwar movement ''.
I was in high school in Kentucky during those actions and i remember that when school resumed that fall even my pro-war football coach told us that the Chicago cops have ''overeacted, really went nuts ''. A cousin of mine , a very macho Carpenter who was working in Chicago told us that while he and his buddies intially went to Grant Park '' to pick up some of those free loving hippie chicks ' was shocked by the brutal tactics by the Chicago P.D. (One of his buddies actually punched a cop that was beating a crying, badly bleeding activist )
Sure these are anecdotal but the dramatic growth in the size of the antiwar movement isn't . The Oct. and Nov. 1969 Moratorium and demos against the war were the largest rallies/marches in US History up until that point.. And the reactions to the invasion of Cambodia and the subsquent murders at Jackson State and Kent State were historical .Not only did schools with a sizeable radical left like Madison. Ann Arbor, and Berkely shut down but very non radical campuses like the University of Kentucky had significant student strikes .

So the fact that one prowar candidate (Nixon ) beat another prowar candidate (Humphey ) doesn't at all indicate that demostrating in Illinois in August 1968 was a historical blunder .