Part 19 (1/2)
”By late afternoon when this film was made, over ten thousand demonstrators were gathered in Grant Park.... The demonstrators resisted when police attempted to arrest a young man who tried to rip down an American flag.
”Police fired tear-gas canisters, demonstrators threw them back at police, and it was clear that Chicago's first real battle of the day was joined.... Chanting 'Kill the Pigs,' they began bombarding the police with cans, bottles, boards, firecrackers, tomatoes, and just about anything else they could find.
”Demonstration leaders, hoping to save all the energy for later tonight, used bullhorns to try to restore order.”
Screams, then upward of one hundred cops, a sea of blue (if you have a color TV) s.h.i.+rts and blue riot helmets arrayed in a wedge like a giant bowling-pin setup, carrying their clubs across their chests, Plexiglas s.h.i.+elds down, barreling into the crowd and beating anyone they can reach, kids tripping over the band sh.e.l.l's park benches in chaotic retreat, the closing image a man and woman desperately clutching each other.
”This night is far from over; demonstrators say they will still march, and if police try to stop them, they will sit down in the Chicago streets. This is Douglas Kiker.”
The transition that follows immediately upon those words: men in suits with pursed lips and rage in their eyes pus.h.i.+ng, shoving, swinging fists on the convention floor, Edwin Newman of NBC barking into a microphone but no sound issuing forth, at the borderlands between the New York and the Alabama delegations.
”Your microphone is broken, Ed!...
”There's a huge amount of pus.h.i.+ng-watch it, you're going to knock that over!-the man being pushed is a delegate, how this started, we don't know.”
A guttural screech in a full-on New York City accent: ”Check with our state chairman! He's an elected delegate! What are you trying to spring on us!” ”Check with our state chairman! He's an elected delegate! What are you trying to spring on us!”
”No one's springing-”
”You are! Check with the-where are the rules that say we must show 'em every minute? Who the h.e.l.l are you to-the rules! The rules!”
John Chancellor fights through with a working microphone: ”Are you the delegate they're trying to throw out?”
”Yes, I am.”
(”Check the rules of the Democratic Party!”) ”Why is that?”
”Because I objected to their behavior.”
Chancellor explains that the raid began with shouts of ”Secret Service! Pus.h.!.+ Pus.h.!.+” although the people doing the pus.h.i.+ng appeared only to be ushers, ”and n.o.body is showing the usual insignia of the Secret Service.”
(”They keep coming all day checking our credentials! And it's time they stop! There's nothing in the rules of the Democratic Party that says they have a right to check us every ten minutes! It's been like this every day!”) Chancellor confirms that the man they're trying to kick out, Alex Rosenberg, is indeed an elected delegate, who got sick of showing his credentials. A man fights his way to Chancellor's microphone, smirking, and drawls, ”Just another peaceful demonstration by New York trying to demonstrate in Alabama!”
Chancellor comments, ”The issue of law and order seems to be taking place in a rather active dispute on the floor of this convention,” and the Alabaman now grins like the cat who ate the canary. Chancellor pa.s.ses off to Sander Vanocur interviewing Colonel John Glenn of Ohio, then they cut back to Chancellor, looking startled: ”The Chicago police are now in the aisle with billy clubs, clearing people out!...They're dragging people right out of the aisle. One, two, three, four, five, six-some of them wearing the blue helmets.”
Photographers hoist their cameras above their heads and into the scrum: click, click, click. click, click, click.
”This is the first time in my memory of going to political conventions that the police have come in, on the floor, armed as they were, and taking out people who were disputing the checking of credentials.”
”First time in the United States, John.”
As Chancellor describes ”some very large men who came along with security badges,” a camera cuts to Chicago's implacable Buddha boss, and then the screen fills with a dozen blue helmets as an out-of-breath young man spins himself out of the scrum, looking as if he's just seen a ghost. ”I started getting shoved up against a wall, the crush just started, I got carried along by the wave...and finally the 'Secret Service' men just picked me up picked me up and carried me out.” and carried me out.”
He is a reporter for United Press International, and his hair is long.
More windy nominating speeches: ”At no time has Senator McCarthy recommended unconditional withdrawal from Vietnam. At no time has he recommended any move that would deprive our fighting men of full protection.”
NBC cuts to Daley, scratching distractedly, crossing his arms. But every time this show starts getting boring, something more astonis.h.i.+ng is thrown up on the screen. You're on your fourth beer by now, wondering what country you're living in, as they cut to taped exterior shots.
It's dark. A cone of TV light emerges, and out of the murk comes an endless rush of blue helmets, darting into a crowd sitting down in an intersection. The back door of a paddy wagon opens, at the moment the first crack crack rings out. It is all flailing nightsticks, a kid pulled by the scruff of the neck. Dark again. A halo of TV lights as he's thrown into the back, then another, then another, each with a superfluous whack of a nightstick. Door closes; wagon drives off; the sound of an explosion; darkness; line after line of cops awaiting their turn; the next wave into the wagon; a chant: rings out. It is all flailing nightsticks, a kid pulled by the scruff of the neck. Dark again. A halo of TV lights as he's thrown into the back, then another, then another, each with a superfluous whack of a nightstick. Door closes; wagon drives off; the sound of an explosion; darkness; line after line of cops awaiting their turn; the next wave into the wagon; a chant: ”The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!”
If it shames the cops, they aren't showing it. TV techs flash lights in their faces, then darkness, then bobbing seas of blue helmets, a camera flash; a kid with a mustache squirms free and a cop follows him off into the inky maw.
”The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!”
The next wagon drives off, medics in white coats attend to the fallen; SUPPRESSING DISSENT IS FASCISM SUPPRESSING DISSENT IS FASCISM-scrawled on a sc.r.a.p of corrugated cardboard; inky black; camera flashes; screams; more knots of blue helmets pus.h.i.+ng into another crowd; a strobe-light effect, a dull hum of screams, it doesn't look like TV. A man wriggles free from his windbreaker. A cop pulls him down with a wrestling move.
”Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”
The next cop wave arrives in formation. Finally the sonorous voice interrupts, ”We're at the Conrad Hilton, where peace demonstrators have blocked the intersection, and now a phalanx of police has come through...right outside the headquarters hotel of the Democratic convention...police swirling all around us.”
One more supernova flash of light, and an immediate cut to Julian Bond, seconding the nomination of Eugene McCarthy: ”All over the world, 1968 has been a year in which people have been rising up and demanding freedom! From Biafra to Georgia! From Czechoslovakia to Chicago-”
Huge applause.
”...Don't tell me we're going to win that freedom from the leaders of the past, because those leaders don't even understand what we're talking about!” tell me we're going to win that freedom from the leaders of the past, because those leaders don't even understand what we're talking about!”
The biggest cheer of the convention so far.
”He is the only only candidate who can win, because he is the candidate who can win, because he is the only only candidate the American people can believe.... candidate the American people can believe....
”Americans realize there is one one candidate who has never spoken on the side of repression and violence- candidate who has never spoken on the side of repression and violence- ”One candidate who has spoken steadily of bringing together black and white people-” candidate who has spoken steadily of bringing together black and white people-”
In the hall, some people are watching tiny portable TVs. And the word from the streets is out, for the next thing he says is ”Fellow delegates, the whole country is watching us now. As indeed, the whole world whole world is watching us.... is watching us....
”It is not too late.”
”Here is a little more on the action downtown.... The guardsmen have bayonets at the end of their rifles, they're wearing gas masks; part of the central hallway of the Hilton Hotel has been made into a first aid station, sort of a receiving hospital. McCarthy volunteers are now going out in the streets to find injured demonstrators.... There's now a report that some guests in the hotel are getting mixed up in it and are throwing gla.s.ses and other things out of hotel rooms at the police.”
”Here's one more, Chet: Mrs. McCarthy, Mrs. Abigail McCarthy, is not here in the convention hall because she is staying in her hotel room under Secret Service guard. They have decided it is not safe for her to leave the hotel because of all this rough stuff outside.”
”We'll be back after this message from Gulf.”
(”Let's take a trip into the world of Gulf chemicals!...Lids for your coffee, detergents for your dishes, plastic bags of all sorts, toys, luxurious carpeting...tires...fertilizers that help good things grow!”) Brinkley, sardonically, before they show the donkey/elephant pin commercial again: ”We are told that the Chicago police are under orders that if they come into the hall to arrest delegates or otherwise do their duties, they are not to wear helmets. Presumably because it doesn't look very good.”
Huntley, holding a headphone to his ear: ”David, I think we can establish this without fear of contradiction: this is surely the first time policemen have ever entered the floor of a convention.”
Brinkley, with a weary, slow shake of the head: ”In-the-United-States.”
Bald-headed Joseph Alioto, mayor of San Francisco, is called to the podium to nominate HHH. The band plays on: ”San Francisco, open that Golden Gate...” ”San Francisco, open that Golden Gate...” Huntley breaks in: ”Well, the news media has taken another casualty. NBC News reporter Don Oliver reports that Mike Wallace of CBS was being detained by the Chicago police in a command post trailer on the second floor of the amphitheater after a disturbance on the floor of the convention. There is a report that Wallace has been struck by a security guard.” Huntley breaks in: ”Well, the news media has taken another casualty. NBC News reporter Don Oliver reports that Mike Wallace of CBS was being detained by the Chicago police in a command post trailer on the second floor of the amphitheater after a disturbance on the floor of the convention. There is a report that Wallace has been struck by a security guard.”
Mayor Alioto intones, ”Hubert-Horatio-Humphrey!” Mayor Daley is shown clapping and grinning like a schoolboy.
Alioto: ”It isn't enough, I say, to mouth to the youngsters, that you mouth this talk about 'New Politics,' and the inflexible status quo, because here is a man who has done more in the last twenty years than any discernible man to bring America not only to a recognition of what is old and good, but what is new and good as well.”
”To John Chancellor on the convention floor.”