526
LEO WHALEN
Davis and other leaders of the Mobilization had hoped that 200,000
demonstrators would heed their call; they publicly predicted an influx
of 100,000; but Monday it was clear that only 5,000 - maybe not quite
5,000 - were in town.
If
Mayor Daley had played his cards right he would have defused
the demonstrators by letting them sleep in Lincoln Park and granting
them a sidewalk near the Amphitheatre. The nation would then have
seen a militant but meager protest, far smaller than ones it has grown
accustomed to. Hizzoner and Humphrey could have read from the
traditional script: the existence of this demonstration shows the open–
ness of our society, whereas its size indicates confidence that the
Administration is seeking peace.
The remarkable insight of the Mobilization chiefs was that the
Administration could no longer or would no longer roll with the antiwar
punch. Daley was too vicious and inflexible; Johnson would be off
somewhere muttering, "those bastards, they spoi led my years in office,
fuck 'em!" And therefore an ugly and
O"Ct't
repression could be evoked
in Chicago and etched into the national consc iousness. As Hayden put
it, "America is reaching a point of bankruptcy and decay so complete
that only military tools can protect the political institutions. Since the
rise of the black movement and the New Left in 1960, the federal and
corporate powers have been unable to create the social reforms which
are the key to gaining social peace. As reform has fail ed, the reliance
on police power has become more visible, now reaching a point where
even peaceful demonstrations are met with force and terror in all parts
of the
country.
.. .
Our victory lies in progressively demystifying a false
democracy, showing the organized violence underneath reformism and
manipulation."
Daley's first mistake - to use the gloating terms the demonstrators
adopted by the end - was to enforce a strict curfew throughout Old
Town and its eastern border, Lincoln Park - turf which Chicago's
young people have made their special hangout. It was at a curfew check
that the cops shot and killed Dean Johnson, a seventeen-year-old Ameri–
can Indian from South Dakota, several days prior to the convention.
(Since the police version of the killing had Johnson in town for the
convention, Daley's boast that no liws were lost is a flat lie.)
Starting the night of Johnson's murder, the police charged and
gassed the Yippies' Lincoln Park assembly area at 11: 45 every night.
These confrontations became dress rehearsals for nomination night. (It
was in Lincoln Park that many realized how good a gas mask a turtle–
neck shirt could make; you just pull the collar over your nose and keep
spitting into it.) People who had made other billeting plans joined the
