Chicagoslovakia
(1968)

by Doug Dowd

Someone once said that civilization is but a thin veneer covering the barbarism beneath. Chicago at its best has barely approached civilization: What happened there during Convention Week ripped away a thin veneer of barbarism covering an underlying savagery. The black people of Chicago have long known both barbarism and savagery in Chicago; seldom have they shared in what civilization Chicago has produced. And the whites who have been poor, and they have never been few in number in Chicago, had their story told mos vividly at the turn of the century, in Sinclair's Jungle. If there are fewer poor whites in Chicago than at an earlier day, those released from poverty have not yet reached civilization either; they take pleasure in holding down the black people. Their votes, middle-class timidity and cupidity, and the long tight rule of the crime syndicate in Chicago have combined to place and keep in power the likes of Mayor Daley. He holds great power, he knows it, and he glories in using it.

Chicago is not worse than most other large cities in the U.S. and it is better than some; and many of the smaller ones are worse still. And lest we come down too fast and too hard on Mayor Daley, let us ask ourselves if it is not true that the Vice-President of the United States, informed of all and observer of some of the brutality, present all the while — is it not true that the Vice President of the United States (to say nothing of LBJ), by lifting a finer, could have stopped it all? If it is true, then what? If it is not true, what then? But Humphrey wants the presidency so much he can taste it; and if the taste is blurred a bit with blood (as he said the beauty of his day was, a bit), there still remains the presidency, and after all, maybe the Mayor was right; maybe they were a bunch of Communists. (There was one in particular who struck me as being a Communist, when he was struck by a billy club. He was eight or nine years old. And the sixty-year-old woman I saw shoved against a wall by a cop may well have been his Communist grandmother.

There was much of deep significance in the week’s events, much to think through, and much to act upon; not least much we expect that worse is yet to come, and it will not be confined to Chicago. A few things to think about...Some people in the ghetto, when interviewed by a reporer, took a certain satisfaction in seeing cops and guardsmen taking swats and gassing large numbers of whites. They pointed out that nobody was being shot, or killed, however, as always happened to them. (It is not true, incidentally, that guns were not loaded, or fired. Machine guns had ammo belts on them, soldiers carried ammo belts around their shoulders — not many, but some — and shots were fired above the heads more than once.) With bayonets mounted, guns in their hands, bullets nearby and a steady loss of belief in the future sweeping the country, is it likely that those gassed and beaten will always and everywhere take it an run? And if they do not, will not shots be fired straightaway? And then where will we be, heading to what? We are not headed there, if we are white; we are there, if we are black, or white and poor.

Another thought: Those of us who simply wished to march peacefully for peace, but who were stopped, shoved, beaten, gassed, and treated with contempt and derision by the cops, soldiers, and the man in the street (or in the convention hall), could not help but be pleased to see those men in the street holding wet clothes to their faces as tear gas steadily mixed with the air in all of downtown Chicago; and one could easily believe, after the indiscriminate beatings and gassings of the Hilton Battle, that goodness of the system had at least momentarily suffered a flicker of wonder. Fine. But what about those who saw it on TV and nothing more? The news media helped a bit, but not much. Their concern was most often expressed for newsmen who were beaten, or who were arrested, chased, and threatened. And even there, a given newspaper was troubled mostly by its own reporter having been smashed, and said little about even the other reporters, and viewed the many hundreds more, non-reporters, with something never far removed from amusement or disdain. One was left with the feeling that those beaten were asking for it. (Although some asked for nothing, like that little boy; and those who asked for anything asked to be able to sleep in a park, or to take a peaceful march. It was significant that on Tuesday night, when the National Guard relieved or replaced the cops at Grant Park, after much violence, the General in charge said, if they want to stay in the park let them. He did so, and there was no more violence. But the next day the Guard was gassing. The next night they were using rifle butts.)

Have the spectators in Chicago and throughout the land learned that dissent will not be allowed in this country unless it takes place where and when it won’t count? There is much dissent, expressed in many ways, through marches, protests, and the McCarthy campaign. But at Chicago, Johnson evidently having made up his mind to hang tough in Vietnam, no dissent could be allowed on the floor, if it came close to being effective; and who knows what a large and peaceful march could have done in and out of Chicago?

Another thought: The patterns of cops varied, but two were prominent. First, a rush of a phalanx of about fifty cops (more than once chanting in unison: “Kill, Kill, Kill”), clubs swinging, knocking people down, arresting them (on what charge?). Second, someone caught for arrest is beaten, and beaten, and beaten — after being downed, while being dragged, and while being pushed into the paddy wagon (and sometimes afterwards, too.) Arrest is one thing, whether justified or not. But nobody has ever explained whether for Chicago or anyplace else earlier (e.g., the Pentagon, or June in Berkeley), what all the beating is for. Is it enough to say the cops like it? The patten is terribly widespread, and it looks like an attempt to terrorize — to terrorize peaceniks as the black and the poor have been terrorized through the years. Get out of line, and the nameless terror is yours.

Will all this be accepted? Not by the kids, you can bet your life. The kids know the war is on at home and in much the same form as abroad. They don’t believe much in this system, don’t think much about ten years from now (why should they?), and are fighting, in larger numbers. What of those of us who are older, who can’t shake away all shreds of belief in the system, or believe much as it must be changed, it can be changed; or who have gotten in the habit of believing in the future, in believing that “it” can’t happen here. We’d better pull ourselves together, recognize that we have to work with the kids, support the kids (and especially the rapidly growing draft resistance), begin to change our habits, and try to screw up some courage. We’re all going to need it. We could win, if there were enough of us.

June 24, 2003