1968 (47 page)

But there was a problem: There were two pigs. Abbie Hoffman had gotten one and Jerry Rubin had gotten one, and a conflict arose over which one to nominate. Typical of their differences in style, Rubin had picked a very ugly pig and Hoffman a cute one. The argument between them over the pig selection almost became physically violent. Rubin accused Hoffman of trying to make the Yippies his own personality cult. Hoffman said that Rubin always wanted to show a fist, whereas “I want to show the clenched fist and the smile.”

The arguing continued for some time before it was decided that the official candidate of the Youth International Party would be Rubin’s very ugly pig. Hoffman, still angry from the dispute, stood in the Chicago Civic Center as Jerry Rubin said, “We are proud to announce the declaration of candidacy for president of the United States by a pig.” The police then arrested Rubin, Hoffman, the pig, and singer Phil Ochs for disorderly conduct but held them only briefly. The next day another pig was loose in Lincoln Park, apparently a female, supposedly Mrs. Pigasus, the candidate’s wife. As the police pursued the animal, Yippies shouted, “Pig! Pig!” for the fun of it, because it was unclear whether they were shouting at the pursuers or the pursued. When the police finally grabbed the pig, someone shouted, “Be careful how you treat the next First Lady.” Some of the police laughed; others glared. They threw the little pig into the back of a paddy wagon and threateningly asked if anyone wanted to go with the pig. A few Yippies said yes and jumped into the wagon. They closed the door and drove off. Some journalists took the bait and started interviewing Yippies. The Yippies said that they were unstoppable because they had a whole farm full of pigs just outside Chicago. A journalist wanted to know how they felt about losing their pig, and one of the Yippies demanded Secret Service protection for both their candidate and his First Lady. A radio reporter asked with great earnestness just what the pig symbolized. Answers were hurled back: Food! Ham! Parks belong to pigs.

The Yippies quickly found that there was so much media and they were so hungry that any put-on at all could get coverage. Their threat to put LSD in the Chicago water system and send the entire city on a “trip” was widely reported. Other threats included painting cars to look like independent taxis that would kidnap delegates and take them to Wisconsin, dressing up as Viet Cong and walking through town handing out rice, bombarding the Amphitheatre with mortar rounds from several miles away, having ten thousand naked bodies float on Lake Michigan. The city government seemed to understand that these threats were not real but followed through on them as though they were. Unfortunately, there is no record of the police response to Abbie Hoffman’s threat to pull down Hubert Humphrey’s pants. Each Yippie threat, no matter how bizarre, was reported to the press by the police. The
Sun-Times
and
Daily News
talked to the New Left leaders and knew the threats were put-ons, but the
Tribune
papers, after having spent years uncovering communist plots, reported each plan with menacing headlines that only scared the police. The Yippies were gleeful about the media attention that police precautions drew. In truth, of the few thousand demonstrators who were in town, with probably fewer than two thousand from outside the Chicago area, most were not affiliated with the Yippies or anyone else, so that the Yippie presence itself was somewhat mythical. The law enforcement presence, however, was not. Twelve thousand Chicago policemen were being backed up by five thousand soldiers from the army and six thousand National Guard. The military were closer in age to the demonstrators and many were black, and the demonstrators expected them to be more sympathetic. In fact, forty-three soldiers were court-martialed for refusing to be sent to Chicago for riot duty. Generally the military had a calming effect, as opposed to the Chicago police, who from the beginning were prepared for war. Had it not been for the police response, the Chicago demonstrations would have been noted as a failure, if noticed at all.

Chicago Sun-Times
columnist Mike Royko wrote, “Never before had so many feared so much from so few.”

The convention had not yet begun, and already the talk and the reporting was of the clash, the violence, the showdown. This language was used to refer to the convention itself, where the Humphrey forces were meeting McCarthy and the peace delegates, but also to the thousands of demonstrators and police in downtown Chicago, kept miles away from the convention.

At 11:00
P.M.
Tuesday night, August 20, Soviet tanks made their move across the Czech border. By Wednesday morning Czechoslovakia had been invaded. Television images of Soviet tanks in Czech towns were being broadcast.

In Chicago, the Soviet invasion was immediately seized as a metaphor. Abbie Hoffman gave a press conference in which he called Chicago “Czechago” and said that it was a police state. It looked like one, with police everywhere and the barbed-wire-ringed Amphitheatre awaiting the delegates. Hoffman invited the press to film the day’s “Czechoslovakian demonstrations.” John Connally of Texas argued that the Soviet invasion showed that the party should support the Vietnam War effort, but Senator Ralph Yarborough, also of Texas, argued to the credentials committee that political power should not be misused by them to crush “the idealism of the young” the way the Soviets were using military power. The demonstrators had started referring to Chicago as Prague West, and when they heard that Czechoslovakian protesters were walking up to Soviet tanks and asking, “Why are you here?” they began walking up to Chicago police with the same question. Incredibly, the police gave the same answer: “It’s my job.”

The New Left was so parochially fixated on the fight in Chicago that some even argued that the Russians had deliberately timed the invasion of Czechoslovakia to ruin the McCarthy campaign, because what the Soviets really feared was a United States that was truly progressive. Few Moscow decisions have ever been dissected more carefully and no evidence of a wish to sabotage McCarthy has ever been unearthed, but the invasion was bad for the antiwar movement in the same way it ruined de Gaulle’s idea of a Europe “to the Urals.” It reinforced the cold war view of hegemonic communists bent on world domination, which was in fact the justification for the Vietnam War. This did not stop David Dellinger and a handful of other antiwar activists from picketing the Polish tourism office, it being the only office in Chicago they could find that represented the Warsaw Pact. But McCarthy made it worse for himself by attempting to defuse the crisis with his classically tin ear for political orchestration. He insisted that the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was no big thing, which only served to reinforce the suspicion that the senator was a strange one.

On Saturday night the demonstrators seemed particularly reluctant to leave Lincoln Park and chanted, “Revolution now!” and, “The park belongs to the people!” The police amassed their troops, and just as they seemed ready to attack, Allen Ginsberg mystically appeared and led the demonstrators out of the park, loudly humming a single note: “Om.”

On Sunday the convention began and Hubert Humphrey arrived in town. Humphrey had a progressive record on social issues, but he was associated with Johnson’s Vietnam policy and refused to break away from it. Even without the Vietnam issue, Humphrey, at fifty-seven, would have been a victim of the generation gap. He seemed almost cartoonish with his vibratoed, tinny voice, his corny midwestern wholesomeness, and his halfhearted good cheer; with the way he could in all seriousness use expressions like “Good grief”; and with his perpetual smile that looked as if he had just bitten something. This is how his biographer, Carl Solberg, described the politician nicknamed the Happy Warrior as he left for the Chicago convention:

On the elevator to the street he kissed his wife, danced a little two step, and punched his friend Dr. Berman on the arm. “Off we go into battle—and I can hardly wait,” he said.

This was not a candidate whom McCarthy and Robert Kennedy supporters could turn to, not a personality to calm the young demonstrators who had come to Chicago.

The Happy Warrior frowned, and not for the last time, when his plane landed in Chicago. Daley had sent a bagpipe band to meet him. There is no lonelier sound than bagpipes without a crowd. Few supporters were there to greet him, and even more upsetting, the mayor himself wasn’t there. McCarthy had been met by an energized crowd. “Five thousand supporters,” according to Humphrey, who was muttering about the contrast. An even bigger disappointment was that Daley was holding off on endorsing Humphrey. Daley found it hard to believe that Humphrey was a man who would attract all the voters who had gone for Robert Kennedy in California. Daley and a few other party bosses were last-minute shopping for another candidate, especially the last brother, Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. Humphrey was as terrified of taking on a Kennedy as was Nixon.

Sunday night the police started forcibly to clear Lincoln Park at 9:00. Abbie Hoffman went up to them and in a mock scolding tone of voice said, “Can’t you wait two hours? Where the hell’s the law and order in this town?” The police actually backed off until their posted 11:00 curfew.

Remembering the Paris students of May, the Yippies built a barricade of trash baskets and picnic tables. The police squared off with the demonstrators and ordered them and the media to leave the park. In a long line three men deep, the police looked ready to attack, so the television crews turned on their camera lights, making the flimsy barricade look more substantial by giving it deep black shadows. The newsmen had started wearing helmets. There were flags, the Viet Cong flag, the red flag of revolution, and the black flag of anarchy. The police were beginning to appear. The Yippies, though visibly afraid, held their ground. Suddenly a strange humming sound was heard, and Allen Ginsberg once again appeared leading a group in “Om.”

But the om, designed to render both sides peaceful, didn’t work this time. The police started pushing back the crowd, the crowd shouted, “Pigs!” and, “Oink-oink!” and the police began swinging clubs. As the police attacked they were heard shouting, “Kill, kill, kill the motherfuckers!” “Motherfucker” was everybody’s word that year. The police swung at everyone in sight. After driving the crowd out of the park, they beat them in the streets. They yanked bystanders off their steps and beat them. They beat journalists and smashed cameras. They roamed a several-block area around the park, clubbing anyone they could find. After that night’s battle, the police went to the Lincoln Park parking lot and slashed the tires of every car that had a McCarthy campaign sticker on it.

Playboy
entrepreneur Hugh Hefner emerged from his Chicago mansion and received a smack from a club. He was so angered that he financed the publication of a book on police violence during the convention,
Law and Disorder.

The police later claimed that they had been provoked by the obscenities being shouted at them, though Chicago police are not likely to be taken aback by obscenities. They also said that as soon as they were blinded by television lights, the demonstrators started throwing objects at them. But most nonpolice eyewitnesses do not back this up. Twenty reporters needed hospital treatment that night. When Daley was questioned about this, he said that the police were unable to distinguish reporters from demonstrators. But Daley often attacked the press verbally, and now his police force was clearly and deliberately doing it physically. Local Chicago reporters were becoming increasingly frustrated. They were being beaten and their cameras were being smashed, but these important details were being deleted from their copy just as the fact that the police had singled out McCarthy cars was deleted. In response, a group of Chicago reporters started its own monthly, the
Chicago Journalism Review,
which has gone on to become a noted critical review of the news media. Its first issue was a critique of the coverage of the Chicago convention.

The convention had to share the front page of newspapers with the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and added to this, the fights within the convention had to compete with the fights on the street. Every night for the next four nights, the duration of the convention, the police cleared Lincoln Park and went on a clubbing rampage in the neighborhood. The demonstrators began to feel that they were doing something truly dangerous, that these Chicago police were methodically brutal and no one knew how far they would go. The odd thing was that they would pass beautiful summer days together in the park. The sky had turned clear and the temperature dropped to the seventies. The police would sometimes bring lawn chairs and park their blue riot helmets on the grass. They would read the pamphlets about free love and drugs and the antiwar movement and revolution with amusement, or bemusement. Sometimes they even threw around a softball and Yippies would join in the game of catch. But when they left, the cops would ominously say, “See you at eleven o’clock, kid.”

Demonstrators in Grant Park, Chicago, during the August 1968 Democratic convention