“Your mama told you never to eat your friends with your fingers and hands. But I say you ought to eat what you will. Shove it in your mouth any way that you can.” From Silver Spoon, written by Grace Slick (before she went Vegan)
Do you know where you were 56 years ago? Statically speaking, most of you folks weren’t even zygotes back then, but I remember where I was in August 1968. I was in Sweet Home Chicago, specifically in Lincoln Park and in Grant Park, and I was pissed.
Compared to today, America was as different as Earth-616 is from Earth-1. You’ve probably heard a lot of noise juxtaposing the Democratic National Convention in Chicago back then and the Democratic National Convention that started today. Most of the comparisons I’ve encountered are bullshit.
We were protesting America’s War in Vietnam and similar issues involving freedom and truth. We didn’t like the policies of candidate Hubert Humphrey, a failed, phony progressive who became President Lyndon Johnson’s top toady. LBJ was a man whose ego overwhelmed his sense of decency and honesty. “Dump the Hump” became Hubert’s epitaph. The only major difference between Humphrey and his opponent Richard Nixon was that the latter was less cheery and more creepy.
Nixon won anyway by seven-tenths of one percentage point. The Vietnam War didn’t skip a beat, plodding on until Saigon fell on April 30, 1975. By then, Nixon had been forced to abdicate by his own political party, and Gerald Ford continued to steer the ship of state into the iceberg.
Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, a true-blue Democrat who was almost as powerful as he thought he was, believed the best way to support Humphrey was to dress his police force up in riot gear and beat the shit out of the more than 10,000 protesters who were marching peacefully. I know; I’ve seen just about every minute of television coverage both aired and unaired (I can explain that, but I’m in full-babble mode). Many of us, including myself, were beaten by the police for committing the crime of existing while belligerent. One was killed.
Our well-broadcast chants evolved from “Stop the war” to “The whole world is watching.” The turmoil expanded to the press corps and to the floor of the Democratic National Convention itself where some credentialed reporters and delegates also were harassed, gassed, and beaten. Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo: Existing While Belligerent”
