Regarding Chicago Blues by Douglas Brinkley; Vanities/Politics, July/August 2024, and the “hippie” who climbed the flagpole in Grant Park in 1968
Let me offer my insights regarding Chicago Blues by Douglas Brinkley; Vanities/Politics, July/August 2024, and the “hippie” who climbed the flagpole in Grant Park in 1968, and the events that followed. I should know as I was there, at the base of the flagpole. My friend, the late Angus Mackenzie, was less “a hippie,” and more a political activist deeply committed to ending the war in Vietnam and the FBI harassment of peace activists. “Give me a hand up,” he said, “I’m going to turn the flag upside down. That’s an international signal of distress.” The distress he was referring to was the state of our nation, not our immediate circumstances in Grant Park, which was peaceful at that moment. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I told him, but he would not be dissuaded. His arrest by a group of police officers, who batted me away and dragged him down from the flagpole, was what provoked the crowd to protest, precipitating the police riot that ensued. As Brinkley says, “Cops responded with mace, tear gas and nightsticks, clubbing activists unconscious.”
I will never forget the day before, when people gathered peacefully in Lincoln Park. I saw William Burroughs and Jean Genet walking arm in arm, Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers was conducting a teach-in, Allen Ginsburg was chanting, surrounded by fellow devotees. It was, to coin a phrase, a beautiful scene. And the whole of the protests in Chicago might have been that way if the voices for peace had been allowed to speak and democracy had been allowed to function. Instead we had a police state; Mayor Daley was unable and unwilling to tolerate any dissent. The Democratic Party nominated Johnson’s VP, Hubert Humphrey, the inheritor of Johnson’s unpopular war and a longtime Party functionary. Hubert Humphrey was not a candidate the youth or independent voters would support. “Dump the Hump,” we used to chant. Humphrey didn’t lose the election because of the protests in Chicago.
That summer in Chicago, it apparently didn’t occur to the Party bosses to tell the truth about Vietnam. If the Democratic leadership had repudiated the war, and the Party machine represented by Mayor Daley, and embraced Eugene McCarthy as the new face of the Party, that would have defused the protests and won over the voters, They just needed to do the honest, intelligent and humane thing, but I guess that was too much to ask.
To continue Brinkley’s narrative: “On election day Nixon trounced Humphrey. A few months later, an investigative panel blamed the Chicago chaos on ‘unrestrained and indiscriminate police violence… inflicted upon persons who had broken no law, disobeyed no order, made no threat.” In fact, people were just exercising their constitutional rights of free speech, freedom of assembly and the right to petition for redress of grievances. It was the police who were out of control, not the people.
In the context of the 2024 Democratic convention, Brinkley worries that, “Fear of pro-Palestinian protesters flocking to Chicago has led to amped-up security.” He ends his piece on this ominous note, “Rest assured: if there are any flare-ups against police, any mis-treated American flags, Donald Trump will instantly seize the law-and-order mantra, as Nixon did, in his efforts to reclaim the White House…” Back in 1968, Mayor Daley also didn’t want any “flare-ups” and we saw the result.
In Chicago in 1968, the brutal police response to the protestors was not warranted. How, Mr. Brinkley, do you propose that we prevent a police riot happening in 2024? I don’t think it’s the protestors we need to worry about.
Our sending arms to Israel is illegal under both national and international laws. If Kamala Harris were to say she is going to make it a priority to stop these illegal arms shipments, many planned protests would turn to expressions of support. Is it possible in Brinkley’s world that someone in power could make the sensible, intelligent, humane decision to tell the truth about the genocide going on in Gaza? Democratic values and our rights as citizens don’t just exist on paper, they must be exercised; you use them or you lose them.
Angus Mackenzie went on to become an investigative reporter and in 1997 his book Secrets, The CIA’s War at Home, was published by the University of California Press. Sadly, Angus passed away, untimely, at the age of 44, in 1994 .