It was 40 years ago today ... Chicago 10

Go Ron Paul

I was 17 in 1968 and working for the rights of 18 year olds to vote. Our complaint was that 18 year olds were getting drafted to die in Viet Nam, but did not have the right to vote.

It was very frustrating.

I think it was in 1971 that the 18 year old vote was legalized, because I was already 21 when I first voted.

Also, our demonstrations were constantly being infiltrated by the FBI or CIA. We were considered "traitors" and "subversives" for having an opinion that the war was wrong.

One of the problems with the past is, whom do you believe? I put a lot of stock in people I know personally who were eyewitnesses or who participated, as well as in written accounts that are documented and contain evidence of intellectual honesty and internal consistency.

At Chicago, and throughout the period of anti-war demonstrations in the late 1960's and early 1970's, the ranks of the demonstrators were thoroughly infiltrated by police agents and informants, whose goal was not just to spy on the plans of the protesters, but to disrupt and discredit the demonstrations or other protests.

For instance, during the 1968 Democratic convention, a man named "Bob" volunteered as a bodyguard for Jerry Rubin. This "Biker Bob" turned out to be Robert Pearson (sp?), a police officer, who later bragged about his own role in throwing objects at the police. The constant claim that "bags of human waste" were flung at police always puzzled me, because I myself took part in dozens of demonstrations and several actual riots, yet never did anybody even think of or suggest throwing human waste at cops---I never heard anyone advocate that or do that, and I at times associated with elements of both the Yippies and the Weatherman SDS, the most extreme protesters. I can only conclude that this was a fake claim that the cops made up themselves, to discredit the protests.

A night or two before the National Guard shot dead four students at Kent State University, the campus ROTC building was set afire. Photographs and testimony of witnesses established that this action was committed by a squad of husky young men, unknown to the leaders of the campus anti-war groups, and unrecognized as students from that campus. The preponderance of evidence is that these were police provocateurs at work.

In Madison, Wisconsin, a radical group staged some abortive firebombing attacks on local military targets, before assembling a truck bomb and demolishing the Army Mathematics Research Center, causing the death of a grad student trapped in the Physics building. The group of bombers had been infiltrated for months by two FBI informants, one a local ne'er-do-well named Sandy Nelson, the other a sinister character who used the pseudonym "Pete Bobo" and who claimed to have been a pub-bomber for the IRA. The agencies running these informants allowed the perpetrators to continue their activity for months, until the final fatal culmination.

In Minneapolis, Minnesota, there were campus anti-war riots in May, 1972. A photographer for the student newspaper took pictures of the action. When the film was developed, one picture clearly showed a burly male individual throwing an object at the police. The motion of throwing had lifted his jacket, so that his police holster and pistol were clearly visible.

These examples could be multiplied by the thousands, across the nation. The peace demonstrators started out as naive American citizens, expecting that their exercise of the right to petition the government for redress of grievances would be respected by the upholders and enforcers of the law.

Instead, they were as often as not, dispersed with violent riot sticks and choking tear gas---sometimes without provocation, other times with provocation, all too often supplied by their own undercover agents. In response, many of the protesters dropped their pacifism and reacted with violence themselves in future confrontations. Tear gas radicalized more young people than any rabble-rousing impassioned speeches ever did.

Congressional investigations revealed that there was a federal program of disruption, spying, and interference with citizens' first amendment liberties, code-named "COINTELPRO." Locally, my hometown enjoyed a change on city administration, and the new mayor discovered that city police had infiltrated and spied on almost every peace and anti-war group in town. And among the habitual, hard-core street radicals, it turned out that every fifth or sixth person was an agent or informant.

In spite of all this illegal and highly unethical governmental repression, the protests, along with the Watergate scandal, ultimately brought an end to the US adventurism in Southeast Asia.

There are four or five reasons why a similar mass protest does not exist now: first, there is no draft, so the war doesn't involve as many unwilling soldiers nor does it affect as many families; second, there is a concentration of ownership of the news media, whose concentrated corporate ownership is far more willing to parrot the government propaganda line than their predecessors who were actual journalists, were forty years ago; third, we do not have as many courageous political leaders as we had forty years ago; fifth, public opinion is powerfully shaped now by the ultra-right, super-nationalist domination of 95% of talk radio and t.v. opinion shows; and finally, the technological advances in surveillance technology and the radical curtailment of civil liberties under Bush-Cheney have significantly curbed any American impulse to express dissent.

This is too long, but it isn't long enough to do more than begin to refute the nonsense in an even longer post on this thread. I speak whereof I know, and you can sense the ring of truth in what I have written.

I was 17 and looks like history repeating itself. Peace

The 1968 Democrat Convention "demonstrations" weren't spontaneous, weren't patriotic, and weren't designed to end the Vietnam War!
The demonstrations were another form of warfare on the American people and on the American system of law and order. People like Hoffman, Rubin and the rest weren't anti-war heroes that dared to confront the "Establishment" to bring about better government and end the Establishment run foreign war. The modus operandi of the organizers behind the rioting at the 1968 Democratic National Convention had Establishment written all over it! It was designed to give the local police a bad image in front of the Establishment television cameras and pave the way for a national police force. The plan goes like this: Organize a demonstration paid for by Establishment money. Use the demonstrators to provke the local police to attack them. Catch all of this on establishment Media film. Make the local police look ugly. Then propose a national police force to take over the local police. You end up with a gestapo type police running thing from Washington. It ends up just as the organizers of the demonstrators and the establishment wanted it! This whole rioting business had nothing to do with fighting the Establishment.
It was the "Establishment" in operation.

Before you make heroes out of the "Chicago 7" or the 10 as the film is titled do some research into this Establishment run operation. don't allow the same Establishment to continue conning the American people by glorifying people like the Chicago 7. I've included some of that research here:

An excerpt from The New American Magazine article written 28 years after the 1968 communist inspired rioting. To read the rest of the article click here.http://thenewamerican.com/node/714
or go to www.thenewamerican.com and type in: Who Rioted in Chicago? in the search box.

photographers consistently portrayed his fellow officers with clubs raised, but "never showed what provoked it, that they [demonstrators] were throwing human waste in paper bags at the policemen, right at their faces. They would walk up to the line and spit in the policemen's faces. They would walk up and kick the policemen in the shins. But the only thing they [the media] would show is the reaction to the action. And it would show the policeman making the arrest, but they never showed what provoked it."

To Pecoraro, the behavior of the press "was amazing. Everywhere the press set up, that's where the action would take place." Recalling a fight that broke out at one intersection, he stated that "the press came three hours before and set up the platforms and everything and that's where the fight started. And at Grant Park, when [the demonstrators] climbed up the pole and tore the American flag down and … burned their draft cards, the press was already set up with their cameras, like they knew what was going to happen." Indeed, by listening to media discussions of where the reporters and photographers were going next, the police were able to learn where the next incident was likely to occur.

Biased Report
The Walker Report's use of the phrase "police riot" stands as a classic example of the Big Lie. Many Americans fell for it because they could not believe that a prestigious government task force would dare say it unless it were true. The phrase appeared in a brief summary at the beginning of the report, which predictably served (then as now) as the basis for many news accounts of the entire document. The summary also stated, "To be sure, demonstrators threw things at policemen and at police cars; but the weight of violence was overwhelmingly on the side of the police." The "evidence" cited to support that conclusion consisted of a handful of unsubstantiated, often internally inconsistent, "eyewitness" accounts such as one given by a United Press International reporter. As recounted in the summary:

Moving beyond the summary, the main body of the Walker Report actually confirmed that the revolutionaries planned a confrontation with the police far in advance; that the police in many instances acted with remarkable restraint even when under fierce, life-threatening attack; and that some reporters on the scene did indeed stage incidents and interfere with police attempts to maintain order.

The report noted, for instance, that David Dellinger, head of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam which coordinated the revolutionary mayhem, had "visited both Hanoi and Cuba twice and has organized a delegation of 41 members which met with North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front members in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, in September of 1967. During November of 1967, Dellinger was one of 14 War Crime Tribunal members who met in Denmark to hear charges of war crimes against the American forces in Vietnam." Dellinger, the report also noted, helped plan a violent October 21, 1967 attack on the Pentagon. And the November 1967 issue of the pro-Marxist Liberation magazine, founded and edited by Dellinger, included an article by another writer which, after referring to the "Pentagon siege" as a "tactical event to be analyzed and criticized as one possible model for future physical confrontation," observed that "there will be more occasions for physical confrontations and they ought to be much better planned than the Pentagon was. Can we do better at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago?" ......

Mob Initiative
The Walker Report described a January 26, 1968 meeting of the National Lawyers Guild* during which revolutionary Tom Hayden, a founder and onetime president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover once described as an advocate of "revolutionary communism," asserted: "We should have people organized who can fight the police, people who are willing to get arrested. No question that there will be a lot of arrests. My thinking is not to leave initiative to the police."

Tom Hayden was one of the "Chicago Seven" tried for violating the anti-riot provision of the 1968 Civil Rights Act by crossing state borders with the intent to promote the bloody disturbances at the convention. He and four others - David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Abbie Hoffman, and Jerry Rubin - were convicted of that charge, but the jury acquitted them of conspiring to actually carry out such acts. The convictions were reversed on appeal. Two others, John Froines and Lee Weiner, were acquitted of all charges. Hayden was married for a time to actress Jane Fonda and was elected to the California legislature. He is currently a state senator and will be attending this year's Democratic Convention as a delegate.

"Chicago Seven" defendant Abbie Hoffman was quoted as recalling: "In the original schedule [for events planned for Chicago], I wrote 'Wednesday - police riot' and that spooked them [the idealistic demonstrators]. I mean, they, these people were kids, you know, in Chicago. They did not have the experience that we had and they were not as tough." So a "police riot" was planned in advance, and the exact phrase employed by one of the key organizers of the riot ended up as the Walker Report's most widely publicized conclusion about the mêlée.

The report also quoted Hoffman as saying that he and others had been convinced "that we had to start talking about violence in Chicago and that it was gonna happen and that people oughta prepare for it and we oughta get a little more serious in our statements.... You know, we had to start setting up medical centers and we had to prepare, we had to start telling kids … about self-defense measures. We had to start working real hard on self-defense classes in the park and start building them up. We had to prepare for war."

Photographs included in the report showed demonstrators practicing karate kicks and being taught how to use rolled-up magazines as weapons. And a poster prepared by the SDS proclaimed that "we can close down and uptight the whole town.... When you seize a town, a campus, get hold of the power stations, the water, the transportation, forget how to negotiate … you are not demonstrating: you are fighting a war, fight to win … take what you need, it's free because it's yours."

One example of the "police riot" that did not make the nightly news was detailed in the Walker Report:

....Writing in The Review of the News (a predecessor to THE NEW AMERICAN) for January 8, 1969, investigative journalist Alan Stang analyzed the Walker Report and concluded that "the Communists undoubtedly saw in the convention a perfect excuse to attack one of our biggest, local police forces, on a stage on which every eye in the world would be fixed for a week. They saw a priceless opportunity to discredit the idea of local police by producing on that stage what [Abbie] Hoffman called a 'police riot' - and then getting such impressive reviews as the Walker Report, which called it the same thing. The purpose of such lies is to prepare the American mind properly for the planned seizure of our local police by the federal government … so that the conspirators can begin creating their gestapo. They wouldn't call it that of course. They don't speak German. But that's what it would be." The main value of the Walker Report for Americans, Stang asserted, is that "the publication by the government of such an obvious lie dramatically demonstrates that this conspiratorial control of the government exists - exactly as so many of us have been telling our neighbors for years."

Incidently, William Kunstler was a member of the National Lawyers Guild.

Why do we fight no win wars ? ? Who benefits ? ? When things happen on the world stage and you want to make sense of them ask yourself who benefits ? ? Ron Paul does not want to go to war in Iraq .. http://www.youtube.com/wa... ................. Barry Manilow singing One Voice and Ron Paul ... http://www.youtube.com/wa... ...............................

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I remember the trial very well, and there was a lot of outrage and humor. When Abbie Hoffman was on the stand and charged with conspiracy, he retorted, "Conspiracy? We can't even agree on lunch!"

One day Abbie wore an American flag shirt, much to the dismay of the Judge - also named Hoffman. He cited Abbie for wearing it, and this propelled Abbie into a spirited discourse about "decorum as a means of repression." He had a point.

Around 1995 or so,I had the chance to have a long talk William Kunstler, the attorney who defended the Chicago 7 (Bobby Seale was tried separately). He looked much the same; a shaggy-headed gravely-voiced man, very thoughtful and kind. Almost delicate. He told me how, many years after the trial, he was in Chicago and decided to visit the courtroom where all the legal firework occurred. It was lunchtime and the courthouse was nearly empty. He took the elevator up to the floor and stood in the doorway, just looking at the empty room which had been once so full of activity.

"Brings back memories, doesn't it?" said a woman's voice.

Kunstler turned around to see the woman judge whose courtroom it now was. Kunstler and the judge spent half and hour reminiscing. For him, he was a watershed moment.
Then he decided to visit the restaurant where he and the defendants ate lunch every day. As he entered, the owner - who was still there after all these years - remembered Bill Kunstler and gave him a hug. Then he said, "Would you like to sit at your old table?" Kunstler nodded. And that day, William Kunstler ate lunch alone in the Chicago restaurant he had known so well.

Many people do not much care for Kunstler. He always took on controversial cases and defended those individuals most others would not touch. But his view was, "Someone has to do it," and he was right.

The Chicago 7/10, my heroes at the time in my high school years of naivete, in retrospect and with a little bit more wisdom than 40 years ago, in my study and living over 40 years, were lawless revolutionaries, somewhat like the French revolutionaries, and very, very unlike the lawful, principled, founders who through off tyranny by righteous resistance and with a firm reliance on Divine Providence. Dr. Paul is in the latter camp, not the former. That's the camp I choose. I hope you do too.

IndependenceNotRevolution

I was politically radical and lived in Chicago at the time but was out of town during the convention; otherwise I would have been there. I watched on television as the young people pointed at the cameras and chanted, "The whole world is watching!"

I trust that our presence at the convention in St. Paul will be in much greater numbers and completely peaceful. For one thing, we have a committed constitutionalist who is a peace-loving Christian to emulate, not Yippies (not denigrating Abbie Hoffman, rest his soul, but he was certainly there to stir things up).

I have no doubt there will be hotheads, not to mention COINTELPRO agents by the dozens (perhaps I repeat myself), but I know that we can keep this mobilization - and the one in June also - at a much higher level spiritually, if you choose to call it that, than the one in Chicago in 1968.

For my part...

I was a hippie in The Haight. A draft-resistance activist in L.A. Got drafted 3 times before they got me in, was out in 91 days: conscientious objector.

In 1973 I became a state-level founder of the Libertarian Party because every other party out there believes that the state is omnipotent and WE pledged to challenge that cult.

We haven't exactly lost, because we've kept the fire burning.

But neither have we won, and there's the question: Why?

Because people have been lulled into the welfare-warfare state by socialist "political activists" who ultimately do not respect your rights as much as their own control, and who don't care how many generations they have to waste trying in vain to achieve their utopia. They own your schools and your tax system.

Because people have been taught to fear boogiemen by church AND state, who both have more to lose than gain from a free people. They own your children, your marriage and your genitals.

Because we haven't ever cooperated long enough to decide on a direction: the Constitution Party scares off a lot of people by putting Jesus in their platform while the Libertarian Party scares off a lot of people by allowing a few anarchists and atheists to pretend that they speak for all of us, and because everyone lies to everybody else that everything is okay "in my town".

As L.A. comedian Mark Whitney points out, Everything's fine at my house, it's when your little piece of shit comes over that things break down.

But those are all systemic reasons, not fundamental reasons. Ultimately there is only one reason things are bad and going to worse after never once having ever been truly good: irresponsibility.

So instead of freedom, the trend is toward legislated morality and stifling regulation and mandates.

Meet the new prospective babysitter government; always worse than the last.

During Gulf I and Somalia my Marine son saw Somalians sitting naked by the side of the road in their own feces, completely broken by the battles of the powers that be for control of the state. Some of them were already dead of starvation but no one had noticed yet because they just hadn't tipped over.

How much of your relatively cushy lifestyle are you willing to give up now to make sure you can't end up like those people later?

THAT is what is at stake here, and has always been.

Nothing new in any of this, except that now we have the internet to facilitate communication at a level of intricacy, which we have yet to demonstrate the aptitude to actually use.

Unfortunately we are still afflicted with crybabies and scatter-kittens jumping excitedly into the air over every ball of twine that comes by, sunshine patriots, Me-too egotists who won't play unless they are in charge, and a lot of people who even now, even on this list, do not realize that they are members of the cult of the omnipotent state. So we have not been a force to be reckoned with.

But we could be. The Libertarian Party maintains nearly 50-state ballot access, cycle in and cycle out, and a presence in every state and major county in the country, all with less than 15,000 members and $3million a year total, and more infighting and power-jockying than you can imagine.

Imaging what we could accomplish with 250,000 members, all cooperating and giving just $10 a month each to each of their county, state and national organizations.

We have the product: a path to responsibility and liberty through mutual respect and the free market. We have a plan.

What we need is those many people, all in action to some degree, taking control of legislatures and city councils and cutting off the feeder-chain for congress and in fact stepping into it ourselves. And that budget, a combined NINETY MILLION DOLLARS a year!

And we need parallel operations because the Party can't BE the movement, only its political wing. We need PACs and 527s, and we need meetups and social clubs to bind us emotionally so we can start creating that mutual respect free market society.

That's how we become the change we seek.

The first part of that action plan is why I co-founded the Nevada Libertarian Party, and why I'm on the national Judicial Committee*.

And the second part is why I founded LawfulGov.Org - an independent 527 organization to fund ballot access, social activism, organizational infrastructure and training, and lots more.

Check it out: www.LawfulGov.Org

Or start or join something else, whatever. Otherwise as always, we'll continue to not win.

Thanks for reading!

-0-

www.LawfulGov.Org
Your Nexus to the Freedom Movement

* Disclaimer: not speaking in an official capacity for the Libertarian Party.

I can't wait for June 21st. It's going to be a huge gathering of peace loving patriots......

The transcript of the Chicago 7 is documented in a book called "Tales of Hoffman", so named after Abbie Hoffman, one of the defendants, and the judge, Julius Hoffman. The transcript is very often amusing, but it is also terrifying as it shows just how far the US had come, by 1968, to a police state.

Failed? We didn't fail! If you/we learn from what we learned, from what we experienced 40 years ago, the Movement goes on! We learned 40 years ago that the elite had ALREADY decimated the Constitution, and that americans would happily see their sons and daughters slaughtered to protect the power structure. Remember THAT and those of us who died will not have done so in vain.

The national guard opened fire on unarmed students at Kent State University and murdered four of them. They weren't even protesters. I remember the day, thinking, "This is it. The revolution is here. It's open warfare on us." But, because the four dead were almost bystanders what it did was terrify the fringes of the Movement, it whittled us down to those who had made the commitment to die for the revolution..It was a very smart move on the part of the police state to murder whom they did..

Lots of us tried "to change the system from within" Sweet Abbie Hoffman was one. (Abbie actually won awards from the establishment for his work while he was hiding out. In fact, Abbie never gave up the fight, and was eventually murdered by the cia - yes, I know his death was ruled suicide.) And another of the Chicago 7, Tom Hayden, went into politics.

And listen, paulverize, Dan Rather and Walter Concrite weren't shills for the New World Order, they were dedicated journalists who were shocked by what they saw and experienced in Chicago, a police riot. (Don't forget what happened to Dan Rather 30-odd years later, either, when he tried to expose Bush..) The media in '68 was biased, racist, and controlled, but there were still some brave journalists, and you could then take photos of the coffins coming back from 'nam.

Learn this from the battle of Chicago '68 and Kent State: the elite will kill you. They will be the ones to open fire first. They will instigate an armed revolution, not you. Add to that what you have learned in the 40 years since - that the enemy is international, and that not just the domination of america, but the domination of the world, is their goal.

Learn this too: In the midst of this epic battle there must be joy, and music. We must come together, not only in the grim realization of what we are up against, but for the brotherhood/sisterhood and pleasure of our fellows. Music inspires; it feeds the revolutionary spirit. (For instance, I'm blown away by http://www.youtube.com/wa... ) Take another lesson from '68, and see what music can do.

I am pulling for the success of the brilliant plan to infiltrate the republican party, but I know from experience that it will be far from easy sailing and will test our mettle far more than most of us expect. To make this plan work, we must also aggressively establish a network for news & communication so as to circumvent the mainstream media. That is also a priority.

God bless you brothers and sisters. Viva the revolution! Viva Ron Paul!

For anyone who is interested... Here is the bittorrent link:
http://torrents.thepirate...

I watched that video of Dan Rather a few times and I think he made that up about being punched. If you watch it, there is an older man in front of him just talking to him and Dan starts to go a little ballistic. Then it looks like Dan lunges at him, or perhaps the crowd around him begins jostling, and the man who Dan was yelling at gets the heck out of Dodge. Then Dan loses his balance and falls backward. When he's talking to Cronkite he's winded, probably from all the excitement, and he makes the excuse that he was punched when clearly no one punched him in the video. I think it was just a spur of the moment excuse to cover the fact that he was winded. No one seems to bother him after the incident. I think Dan was being a bit of a drama queen.

they failed because they tried to fight city hall instead of becoming city hall. if they would have taken all the support they had and figured out the political process like some of us have. they would have been successful.

just think what they would have accomplished if they would have learned about the power delegates have. unfortunately they didn't have the internet to help spread the message like we do.

waving signs will get you next to nowhere. only by direct involvement in the political process will we win

with a brother in Viet Nam as a Marine. I wrote a poem because I couldn't understand all of the injustice and insanity on both sides, remember I was only 12 so forgive the simplicity of the poem. Here are some phrases from it:

As I walked down the marshland road
the sun it glistened while I strode
I thought awhile about the war
and then I thought, oh what for
The bleeding hate that's been created
is a feeling that is never separated
the boys come back in their shiny dark skin
as they recall all of the sin....
The barracks are in such silence
as they read of all the violence
and back home they're crying out stop
as they beat and hurt the cop
The reminiscence of a soldier alone
makes him more anxious to get home
at home a war is just begun
a war between most everyone
Daddy gets a raise in pay
while his rival is fired that same day
mother is in need indeed
when little Johnny is on the speed
but bring the boys back home they say
it's better than Viet Nam any day
there's love and peace in our home
and you will never be alone.

So, the feeling of the time reached out to everyone. I saw the complete injustice in all of it and the hypocrisy all around.

Healthnuttie for Ron Paul

The protestors at Chicago were largely Socialists, and so their ideas of government were not anything like the founders. Many thought they were in league with the communists. They had libertarian (some might say Cosmotarian) ideals regarding civil liberties, and behavior, but their economics was not libertarian at all, as many even rejected the notion of private property. Many are the Hillary supporters of today (Hillary Worked for Antiwar senator Eugene McCarthy during the primary - wonder where she was during the convention ? )

Add to that that violent terrorist acts in those days were much more common than today. You had the black Panthers, the Weather underground, the symbianese liberation front, and the Manson gang to name a few. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been shot that spring. There were at the time plans for putting the black panthers, and other groups into detention camps, if they became too violent.

Of course, the Al Queda threat is today's boogie man, but compared to the Soviets, they are a joke.

This splashed across everyone's TV screens, every night. It was nuts.

But there was a military draft back then, so these people were literally fighting for their lives. Vietnam was almost a decade old, and it was a Democratic party affair.

The conditions today, with the propaganda media outlets, a protest would never see this type of news coverage. The gov't has done away with the Constitution, so today's protesters are painted as terrorists.

Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather were new world order goons and people sucked up the fear they spread.

I think maybe people still do not understand the purpose of what they did.

Never underestimate the power of the media, you can downplay it but people still suck it up and live in fear.

I wonder how many times they showed the footage of soldiers getting spit on to the pecentage of soldiers spit on. How many did you see spit on?

was that they made the fatal error of attacking the soldiers.
It was a horrible time..soldiers came home to be spit on and ridiculed.