Miami, 1972: Protesting at the Republican Convention I got to meet Abbie Hoffman, encountered an elephant leading a Yippie March, heard thousands of people cry at the sight of the VVAW, saw a woman (maybe) die, and hid from the police in a tiny retirement house where I heard Yiddish for the first time. Now the FBI and CNN are conspiring to demonize the protesters at the 2012 Republican Convention by claiming that they might use IEDs and there have been conflicting reports about drones being deployed. But, except for the drones and the term IED, this is nothing new. The government and the mainstream media have often labeled protesters at political conventions dangerous to justify state surveillance and violence.
Forty years ago I hitchhiked from Palo Alto, California to Miami, Florida to protest at the 1972 Republican Convention. After that, I went on to Europe where I traveled for most of the next year. When I returned home the following summer, I wrote down my impressions of that year: 19th Year: A Memoir of 1972-1973.
I was actually a registered Republican at the time, having worked for Pete McCloskey who ran in the primaries as an anti-war Republican. He also had a strong commitment to the environment. So it isn’t just Republicans I protest. As an anarchist I have as much in common with sincere libertarians as real liberals. And as a pragmatic anarchist I vote and even work on electoral campaigns occasionally. Strangely though, sincere libertarians (against the Empire, against the banks, against government in our beds) are hard to find, probably because of basic problems with their assumptions. There are lots of real liberals out there, Daily Kos is thick with them, and I often agree with them and end up voting Democrat. But I think protesting is more important. After all, I’m not a millionaire and the voting system is their game now so they make the rules. Besides, protesting (revolution actually) earned us the right to vote, not the other way around. Protesting (revolution actually) will earn us the real democracy we need, not voting. Still, voting can prevent certain disasters, such as Romney/Ryan one hopes.
Street protests have changed some since the 60s (and 1972 was still in the 60s), but the similarities are striking. I still go to protests and “risk arrest” so I have seen that changes over time have mainly been tactical on the part of police. While protesters have become more organized (affinity groups, for example), less hierarchical (networks, consensus) and more committed to nonviolence (although this remains a contentious issue). As my memoir shows, the issues have not changed as much as we might hope, and the duplicity and dangerous violence of the authorities is remarkably unchanged.The full memoir is available in flippy book form or as a download. Right below is my experience of the 1972 Republican Convention in Miami, Florida, that nominated Richard Nixon for four more years as President, which he happily did not get to serve. We camped at Flamingo Park.
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Flamingo Park is a surrealist city. Those who claim that the counter-culture is as conformist in its own way as straight culture have never seen it at first hand. If we are accused of being uniformly different, uniformly creative, uniformly colorful, and uniformly alive I plead guilty. If we are accused of being uniform than it’s a false charge.
Many groups, activities, or locations produce their own mood, their own energy. You can feel it in the air. Sometimes it’s electric like a track team warming up, or it’s as acrid and oppressive as a courtroom. The atmosphere at Flamingo is a bizarre mix--the sexual electricity of inevitable danger sparks through gentle clouds of dope and the thousands of quiet personal charities that characterize the better side of the movement.
The fears and limitations come out when the Nazi’s occupy the sound stage. The word spreads quickly. A large crowd gathers. It’s amused and annoyed. Many of the Jews start getting angry though. The death of the six million is as real to them as the dying in Vietnam. For some of us this just isn’t the case. The leader of the Nazis, a short caricature of Hitler from the stray forelock and toothbrush mustache to the uncomfortable looking blackjack boots, steps up to the microphone and starts to spit and sputter. The stilted paranoid slogans stream out in machinegun bursts. The crowd polarizes. Many people are now furious. They scream back equal amounts of hate. The sound to the stage is cut-off after about twenty minutes. Another sound system is set up and we start debating the course of action we should follow. There are seventeen Nazis and they won’t leave the stage.
Some of us want to leave them alone. Eventually they’ll leave for sure. Their ideas are nothing to be afraid of, and since there are only seventeen of them they are no physical threat. But a large segment of the crowd wants them removed. The VVAW says that they can remove them peacefully. A vote is held. The Nazis will be ejected.
Quickly the VVAW cordons off the stage and forms a passageway to the main gate. It reminds me of a bullfight. The Vets from the Midwest are chosen to do the actual evicting. I see my friends move on the stage. The Fuhrer has a bodyguard, a gigantic blond man with massive limbs. He resists. With a little difficulty he is immobilized and knocked unconscious. The Fuhrer resists as well, but he causes little trouble. A small vet from Chicago decks him and bloodies his nose. The rest leave sullenly but with no fighting.
The wounded Nazis are treated by VVAW medics, trained in Vietnam.
The crowd wanders off drained and depressed. Things have not started out well.
That night a number of bands play. Malo Santana, the brother of Carlos, plays with his group. He is good but an incredible chauvinist pig. The group after Malo is very political. They play a sort of opera with satires of well-known rock songs. “Street Fighting Man” becomes “Street Fighting Woman” for example.
The climax is a very acid rock number about My Lai called “The Calley Stomp.” Everyone gets up and screams, “Kill, Kill, Kill.” It’s like a nightmare. Frustration so easily turns to hate. The concert ends with much the same mood as the eviction of the Nazis. An outsider would claim that both these incidents reflect a fundamental hypocrisy, I don’t agree. Many people just cannot handle Nazis. They admit it’s a weakness, but it is just too much to ask. The Nazis were in the way.
The concert is something else. Music is the most powerful drug I have ever seen in action. But to mimic violent behavior, and to scream out in favor of death and destruction, and even to feel its wild pulse in your temples, is a far different thing than actually performing a violent act. I view it as a harmless release. The real test will come in the next few days. Will there be violence then? Will there be violence from our side?
There is a big meeting the next day and amplified music is banned as distracting and detrimental to the organizational work to be done. People who want music are told to go to the rock festival being held up in New England.
At lunch I help distribute free food, which has been collected by a group called Green Power. I’m also assigned a security watch on one of the gates. The VVAW is handling all security. I meditate with the Hare Krishna people after lunch. Meditation isn’t the right word since they chant to commune with God. It’s very mellow and moving. I get very high doing it. Four hours later when it stops I come down. Subjectively it feels like only fifteen minutes have passed.
A few minutes later a security alert is called. There is a busload of Blacks from Detroit. They have shaved heads and they all wear suits. They obviously want to fight. They call themselves, hard as it may be to believe, “Negroes for Nixon.” (It came out in 1973 that they were funded by CREEP, the well-named Committee to Re-Elect the President.) Black VVAW members and other radical Blacks talk to them. They are dissuaded from trying to force an entry. They promise to come back. Very strange to see them parroting Nixon slogans, imperfectly learned, as they fidget about in the mud puddles at the entrance of the park trying to keep the polish on their shoes from getting smeared or spoiled.
An elaborate plan is going to be used to shut down the Convention Hall the night of the nomination vote. Actually, all that is hoped for is that the starting time for the convention can be delayed for an hour or so. Presumably this will embarrass the Republicans and make the national TV audience at least take a moment to reflect that, “All is not right with America.”
The plan calls for three types of demonstration activity. There will be dike building right next to the convention on an approved (by police) lot. Trucks will bring sand in and demonstrators opposed to getting arrested or breaking any laws can rearrange the sand symbolically building dikes (this is in reference to the American bombing of several of the Red River dikes in North Vietnam). Then there will be several sit-ins at the gates of the Convention Center so that the entrance of the delegates will be delayed. For the heavy rads there will be mobile action groups that will try to gain temporary control of certain key intersections in between the Convention Center and the delegates’ hotels. Of course we all know that the police know every detail of this plan. Yet no one seriously discusses the possibility of police counter measures. So far the police have been very low key and almost friendly. But are they friendly enough to let us delay the starting of the Convention by three or four hours? Are they friendly enough to arrest a few thousand demonstrators so that we can make a media splash, or are they going to gas and beat us before we can even get near the Convention or the TV cameras?
…. [Several pages of 19-year-old pontificating removed here.]
Every day is built around a march. The day I arrived there was a third world march. The day before that there had been a gay liberation march. The women’s march comes on the 21st. As the end approaches, as the last futile days loom over us closer and closer, everything turns back to the one issue that started it all. The thing that had opened so many minds at such a cost: Vietnam. On the 22nd of August 1973, 600 Vietnam veterans and another 600 supporters march to President Nixon’s hotel. President Nixon, who spent World War Two shuffling supplies in the Pacific, rationing gas in the U.S., getting rich off the black market, and planning his first congressional campaign. President Nixon who ran for president and won with his secret plan (still secret) to end the war. President Nixon under whose first administration more Americans died in Vietnam than under Johnson’s or Kennedy’s. President Nixon, the invader of Cambodia, of Laos, the builder of Vietnamese prisons, the secret bomber (and yet to come, the Christmas bomber of Hanoi).
The Viet vets carry their discharge papers and their medals to prove that they are real veterans, because once Agnew had claimed they were all fakes. He did that when at a demonstration in Washington D.C. almost a thousand turned in their decorations. They paint their scars bright red. Almost all the vets I get to know are grunts: combat soldiers. There are few fliers (helicopter mainly) and a stray swabbie or mechanic, but the vast majority were dog faces, foot sloggers, the ones who kill and die. It is not a coincidence. The regular army soldiers are basically in technical areas or are officers. It is the draftees that fight. And for those, regular or drafted, who don’t end up on the front, Vietnam is a luxury duty station: high pay, cheap women, lots of drugs, and all the comforts of home.
In the bush they come face to face with the war. In the jungles of Vietnam they come face to face with America.
It is a silent march in loose ranks. No one says anything. There is plenty to think about. It is warm but very cloudy with some light rain. It is a long march and we pass a lot of people. No one says anything even slightly derogatory. There are three men in wheel chairs leading the march. Most people just stare curiously. Who are these strange green men? What do they want? Where are they going? But many also cry.
Of course at the hotel Nixon refuses to come out. Pete McClosky, my congressman, tries to help. The vets talk to him and he goes in. He comes out with the Nixon offer. The vets in wheelchairs can see some Nixon aides. He just delivers it and says it’s up to us. Many of us want to sit-in right there and get busted. The men in chairs decide to take the offer. We walk home empty and impotent.
There are sit-ins in from of the convention that night. It is not the big push but a start. The Republican platform is being debated and voted on inside.
I am willing to get arrested. About sixty of us are sitting in front of the gates. It’s mainly vets and their friends. Every now and then some other demonstrators will straggle in from down the street. Apparently the police are beating people up that they catch on the side streets. Gradually most of the demonstrators seek shelter near the Convention where the presence of TV cameras and newsmen offer some safety.
Delegates start coming in. We decide not to block them. Many people are yelling. There is some spitting. We form a human chain to screen the delegates from the more angry demonstrators. A line is formed about eight yards from the Convention Center fence and it extends about sixty yards. The delegates funnel into the end and walk down to the gate. The police just watch from inside the fence.
This has the effect of putting us in between the entering delegates and four hundred demonstrators. We allow people to talk and walk with the delegates but we don’t want them mobbed. People from the chain also take turns talking to the delegates. My chance comes and I am jazzed. This can make it all worthwhile. Here are the people who will actually vote. They must know what’s going on. That’s the only explanation for their continued support of the war and Richard Nixon.
My first delegates are a small group from the Midwest. Plump ladies dressed in fruity colors reminding me of tropical birds walk with large straining businessmen in blue and gray suits with bright pastel shirts and clashing ties. Their jowls quiver as they stride heavily down the corridor. Some of them wear too much makeup. I wonder if this is for the TV cameras inside. I feel so strange. I am easily 70 pounds lighter than any of them. I am tanned and dressed only in track shorts and tennis shoes. They move ponderously in a tight group like a school of whales while I run next to them trying to talk clearly and rationally.
“Doesn’t it bother you that war has never been declared in Vietnam? More Americans have died there than in any other war except for the Civil War, World War I and World War II. It is Congress’ duty to declare a war. You cannot force a war on the people without their consent. Don’t you see what this is doing to America? We love America as it’s supposed to be. Look at these men here protecting you. They’ve been there. They gave their blood and their friends to this dirty rotten war that has never been legal. 50,000 young Americans have been killed and a million…”
They slip inside. They never looked at me. They stare straight ahead.
I soon give up. They aren’t listening. At the end of our protective line, where it slants into the fence right past the gate, a policeman calls to a vet standing a few feet from him on the other side of the fence. The vet turns and the policeman maces him right in the eyes. He’s taken back to the compound. Since he didn’t have time to close his eyes, even reflexively, he will be blind for at least a week. We move the line away from the fence.
I look up and see a large black limousine coming. It is not a good idea. It has a cabinet flag flying from the hood. By now the crowd is furious. Many have been maced or beaten. As the car pulls up into the crowd it is at first surrounded. It continues nosing its way toward the gate. People start pounding on it with their sticks and with their bare hands. It continues forward. It is armored and bullet proofed. People start rocking it back and forth. There doesn’t seem to be any chance of turning it over. It sits wide on its tires and only rocks grudgingly, like a large ship on the open seas.
The car finally turns around slowly and we all relax knowing it’s going to leave. It is now about ten yards off to my left and not quite through with its turn. The engine screams as the accelerator is jammed to the floor. The tires grab on the road with a screech and the car lurches forward. Everyone screams and runs. The car’s right fender brushes my leg. Several people are hit, including the person whose hand I was holding. She lies on the pavement awkwardly, not moving. There is sticky blood all over the street. The car roars off.
An ambulance appears quickly to take off two of the injured. The rumor has it that one is dead. I am unable to find any information. The papers never report it.
The rest of the delegates trickle in behind our reconstructed line. They are as unimpressed with the story of the cabinet car as they are by Vietnam. We go home in the dark making sure to stay together. The police are out in force looking for stragglers. It seems that as the end of the demonstrations approach the police are being given a freer and freer hand. Tomorrow is the last day.
The big day dawns as warm and beautiful as all the others. I wander over to the fruit market near the beach and buy some yogurt, cheese, and fruit. The camp is awake by the time I get back. There is very little real organization. All information is dispensed and collected at the main gate by the information desk that is manned by volunteers. Now some of the movement celebrities might have information not known at large, or some of the groups like the SDS or the Zippies might know something everyone else doesn’t, but I doubt it.
I go over to the information desk to get some information that they don’t have. The woman there tells me to look through all the notes and announcements. While my back is turned she splits. People come up and start asking me questions. I answer them. I am now in charge of the information desk.
I have no idea of how it worked before so I decided to organize it. At first it is just lost and found, campsite location, and handing out leaflets on legal defense and tear gas protection. But soon people start coming in with reports of police activity. I don’t take any one person’s word. Most things are substantiated by several people at once. It doesn’t look good. The police have blocked Flamingo Park off from the Convention Center by putting old buses bumper to bumper across most of the width of the island. Behind the buses are hoards of cops. Only along the slough and on the beach and Collins Avenue is the blockade not airtight. They apparently ran out of buses. All vans and cars with longhairs or young people are being searched and turned back on the causeways and bridges leading from Miami to the Convention area. We have been completely out maneuvered. There is practically no way to even reach the Convention site.
There is no one to tell all this to who can make any real decisions. People from the different groups start coming to me in the early afternoon. I send them wherever I think they can do the most good. A young man comes up to me and claims he is a Republican delegate from Georgia and that he wants to help. “You’re a Republican?” I ask amazed.
“If you lived in Georgia you would be too,” he snaps back. Apparently the Democrats there are even more corrupt than usual. He tells me that the delegates have been told to come in early so as to slip in before the demonstrations.
When this is confirmed by some friendly media people I tell everyone to spread the word. Soon the camp is up and ready to march. Trouble has nowhere to go. Some people come to me and if they’re willing to swim the slough I send them off to do just that. (It is these people who stopped the few buses that did meet demonstrators).
David Dellinger, Abie Hoffman, and Alan Ginsberg come up to the desk and ask for the latest information. I give them my confusing reports and they are very kind and skeptical. Dellinger and a few others go to the sound stage and announce the early start of the Convention. I describe the blockades and the location of police concentrations. It is decided to have a march to some hotel to try and catch delegates there or something. I don’t understand what’s happening but nobody else does, except maybe the cops. A large number of people go tripping off behind Dellinger, Hoffman and a blessed-out Ginsberg, clinking his finger symbols.
I continue sending people out. By five o’clock the camp is practically abandoned. There are just a few people getting ready to go out and some others who don’t look like they’re going anywhere at all. Some of my friends from the convoy are going out with water for tear gas victims. Despite the large number of older people in the area the police have started tear-gassing and they are increasing the use each hour.
Many of the vets have left for Gainesville, Florida where some brothers are being held for refusing to testify to a grand jury about a supposed plan to violently disrupt the Democratic Convention that nominated McGovern. Of course it’s all a farce designed to distract the most together group at the Convention. Despite the fact that most of the vets see through it, it works all the same. More than half the vets leave before the Convention is over. The loyalties engendered by the shared experience of Vietnam are what make the VVAW such and effective organization, it also makes it vulnerable to tactics such as these.
People start coming back to the desk about an hour after the march leaves. Two young guys, obviously from Boston, come up breathless and bleeding about the face and hands. They say they had been at the front of the march. At first there were police lined up on one side of them. Then files of police moved in on the other side. The march continued for a few minutes until a column of police moved out right in front of the line of marchers and fired tear gas straight into the first ranks. They also threw something in glass containers and many people are cut. The police charge and that is all these guys see. They run like hell back to me.
More people come in to describe the attempts to run the police blockade on the beach and across the slough. Many people are now gravitating up toward Collins Avenue trying to find a way around the end of the bus barricade. The police are not content with waiting for us. They turn all of Collins Avenue into a battleground.
There is nothing else I can do at the camp. The SDS holds a bizarre meeting that ends up in a fistfight over the microphone. I help break it up and only get bad vibes in return. I figure all the good people are out in the streets. So I get my canteen and head out to help tear gas victims.
With me is a girl from New York who I’ve promised to hitch up north with, since she doesn’t know how to get home. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to get arrested. Or rather I haven’t decided if I am going to make sure I get arrested. Sometimes the police quite arbitrarily take this sort of decision into their own hands. But today the police are trying hard to hold the number of arrests down to a minimum.
We go out with our water bottles to Collins Avenue. The police are using hit and hit tactics to keep it cleared. Actually it’s hit and run. They hit and we run. The tear gas is bellowing back and forth in huge fog-like banks. Bands of demonstrators drift up toward the Convention area. When they get close flights of police cars, with their doors significantly ajar, screech into the intersections and vomit pale blue policemen out onto the asphalt. Then the tear gas starts blossoming like gigantic white flowers. Everyone runs like hell--shoppers, spectators, and protestors alike.
The local citizens, who are almost all retired New York Jews, are amazingly pro-demonstrators and anti-police. White haired and suntanned they sit on their porches with their fans and handkerchiefs and watch the riots. They hide us when the police charge.
“This Nixon, I never did trust him, such beady eyes, another Hitler.”
“The police are just like the Nazis, I know, I was in Germany.”
“Ach, it reminds me of Berlin.”
I find such comparisons more than a little frightening. I have never seriously worried about our actual liberties, at least not until tonight.
We return several times to the park for water. Once it is right after the police had made a tear gas attack on it. Of course, the police promised not to attack the park but what the heck, it is the last day. Besides tear gas the cops also use pepper gas and whatever is in the glass globes. This is my first introduction to these particular fruits of technology and I am quite impressed: packaged pain.
Around two in the morning we give it up and return to the park seeking sleep. But with nothing to do on the streets the police stage tear gas attacks on the park for their amusement. So there is no chance for sleep. The girl from New York and I lie next to each other and I kiss her a few times. She is young and boney and from a different world. At five we get up and decide to try hitching out. The 23rd of August was my birthday. Richard Nixon is now the Republican nominee for a second term and I am nineteen.