I’d posted before how I’d ended up in Seattle in a snowstorm instead of San Francisco as my flight was diverted due to MLK’s assassination. I was settling in to my new assignment as RFK was killed and then a few months later we were wrapped up in the Chicago convention disaster. This is setting up to be another ’68 election.
This is looking like what both parties’ conventions will be like, the Obama/Ayers forces are polishing off the tactics of confrontational violence and just as they are attacking Trump in Congress the Left will be attacking his rallies as it gets closer to the convention. Everything old is new again.
You had that Mayor Daley thing but I really don’t think the police were prepared for that – who’d have predicted the huge mess it became?
Police are much better trained now, the Left adopted tactics no one expected and their planned riot overwhelmed the available resources. When they reacted like they did it was a gut reaction to nearly being overrun.
The police harassed people who weren’t doing anything other than walking down the street (my father in law and young brother in law, for example; they lived close to Lincoln Park – it was their neighborhood), kicked people out of the parks etc. Then there was that confrontation on Michigan Ave, where they pushed a group of people through the front windows of a hotel. I myself, later in the summer, was stopped and questioned by police just because I was waiting outside a store for my husband and friends. There was a lot of overkill.
That’s the Daley thing I mentioned, he used the police as his praetorian guard but they still weren’t real riot trained.
Cops then were different beasts from what they are now, they had far more latitude in their actions, far less training and not as much accountability – they answered through a political chain.
Big city cops back then were facing a threat they didn’t understand, weren’t prepared to face and were under pressure from those above them to ‘handle it’. Note that we still are arguing about what to do and how to do it.
Of course, the National Guard took part in a lot of what happened too – not just the Chicago police. I remember my father wondering why they didn’t just let people camp in the parks (which they did anyway).
Don’t even start me on the Guard – that was a hidey-hole for connected folks to hide their kids from the draft. We had cases of full-time Guard employees selling positions in the Guard (to be fair in the Reserve too) to kids trying to keep from getting drafted. As the entire accounting system was a mess due to the strains of the war some full-timers just let the guys slide and rarely show up and in reward for shielding the troops all around pocketed their pay.
The Guard was just something you used when you ran out of barricades and needed mass to block something.
Stella's Place 
I am of the opinion that many, if not most, of these “protesters” are from out of town and are paid.
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I’d posted before how I’d ended up in Seattle in a snowstorm instead of San Francisco as my flight was diverted due to MLK’s assassination. I was settling in to my new assignment as RFK was killed and then a few months later we were wrapped up in the Chicago convention disaster. This is setting up to be another ’68 election.
This is looking like what both parties’ conventions will be like, the Obama/Ayers forces are polishing off the tactics of confrontational violence and just as they are attacking Trump in Congress the Left will be attacking his rallies as it gets closer to the convention. Everything old is new again.
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I lived in the Chicago area in 1968, and had a new baby (born that February). It was a mess. The police could have handled it better, though.
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You had that Mayor Daley thing but I really don’t think the police were prepared for that – who’d have predicted the huge mess it became?
Police are much better trained now, the Left adopted tactics no one expected and their planned riot overwhelmed the available resources. When they reacted like they did it was a gut reaction to nearly being overrun.
LikeLiked by 2 people
The police harassed people who weren’t doing anything other than walking down the street (my father in law and young brother in law, for example; they lived close to Lincoln Park – it was their neighborhood), kicked people out of the parks etc. Then there was that confrontation on Michigan Ave, where they pushed a group of people through the front windows of a hotel. I myself, later in the summer, was stopped and questioned by police just because I was waiting outside a store for my husband and friends. There was a lot of overkill.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s the Daley thing I mentioned, he used the police as his praetorian guard but they still weren’t real riot trained.
Cops then were different beasts from what they are now, they had far more latitude in their actions, far less training and not as much accountability – they answered through a political chain.
Big city cops back then were facing a threat they didn’t understand, weren’t prepared to face and were under pressure from those above them to ‘handle it’. Note that we still are arguing about what to do and how to do it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Of course, the National Guard took part in a lot of what happened too – not just the Chicago police. I remember my father wondering why they didn’t just let people camp in the parks (which they did anyway).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don’t even start me on the Guard – that was a hidey-hole for connected folks to hide their kids from the draft. We had cases of full-time Guard employees selling positions in the Guard (to be fair in the Reserve too) to kids trying to keep from getting drafted. As the entire accounting system was a mess due to the strains of the war some full-timers just let the guys slide and rarely show up and in reward for shielding the troops all around pocketed their pay.
The Guard was just something you used when you ran out of barricades and needed mass to block something.
LikeLiked by 1 person