When Justice Failed--and Conventions Counted

Two weeks ago, after four nights of blather and ballyhoo, the Republicans finally did what they went to San Diego to do: officially anointed Bob Dole as their nominee. Tomorrow, the Democrats convene in Chicago to demonstrate that they, too, have all the choreographed excitement needed to embellish President Bill Clinton’s certain renomination.

No one who has watched one of these made-for-TV bashes has to be told that the political convention has gone the way of the garter belt--it once had a useful, uplifting function but is now only a vestigial decoration. The problem is that a generation of Americans may have reached voting age unaware that, not long ago, it was just such a rubber-stamping sideshow of a political convention that actually changed the course of history. As political time is measured, it was only yesterday . . . .

“You elected Nixon. You elected Nixon.”

The scolding, sing-song chant from 15 or 20 scruffy kids claiming sanctuary on the red-carpeted stairway in the grand foyer of Chicago’s Hilton Hotel was being hurled both in anger and in sorrow at two passing police officers. The staircase refugees were among the thousands who had converged in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. They had come to demonstrate against the Vietnam War, and demand that official delegates abandon their commitments to politics-as-usual, in general, and to Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, in particular, and nominate the people’s peace candidate, Minnesota’s quixotic Sen. Eugene McCarthy.

The chant from the stairs meant their mission had failed--that the party had lost its moral power base and would now forfeit the election. The country was reeling that year from the tragic assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy and the terrible riots that had left dozens of cities in flames. On the political side, the anti-war movement had forced an incumbent president, elected by a landslide in 1964, to decline to stand for reelection.

Unsure of how to deal with threatened disruptions, Democratic Party leaders had gratefully accepted the promise of Chicago’s longtime boss, Mayor Richard J. Daley, that he would never let the “peaceniks” and their revolutionary “yippie” pals interfere with a convention in Chicago’s International Amphitheater, known familiarly as “the stock yards.”

But when the Democrats convened, the spotlight quickly shifted from the foregone conclusions on the convention floor to the streets. There, on almost every corner, dissidents clashed with the symbols of authority, the Chicago police. The political dialogue of the streets consisted of the slogans of the moment, shouted over and over like cheers at a football homecoming: “Hell, no, we won’t go.” “F--- the draft.” “Dump the Hump.” “What do we want? PEACE! When do we want it? NOW!” “Join us,” they urged the world at large, “Join us.”

By Wednesday evening, the inevitable happened. Ignited by some unseen spark, Daley’s police charged into an unruly crowd outside the Hilton, riot batons flailing. Soon the dissidents had new rallying cries. “The whole world is watching,” they chanted for the networks’ cameras, while inside the Hilton, the few casualties and caregivers who made it to the stairs were taunting official Chicago for bestowing the presidency on the Democrats’ worst enemy, Richard M. Nixon.

Standing nearby, I saw that the kids were shouting at two impeccably attired “white shirts”--ranking, supervisory level officers--walking toward the hotel lounge. The officers looked at the ragged chorus briefly, as if considering whether to order their dispersal, but, after a private word together, their mood seemed to lighten, both shrugged, waved to their antagonists with an indulgent smile, and walked away.

I sighed with relief, thankful that I would not have to witness and try to describe for my bosses in Washington yet another confrontation between Chicago police and dissidents. As a Justice Department civil-rights attorney sent to observe the street action, I had happened on this mini-drama on my way back outside, after making a report on the Washington hot line in Dep. Atty. Gen. Warren Christopher’s suite.

It had been hard to capture the flavor of what I had just witnessed on the streets. The assignment was to provide an “attorney’s eye view” of the fast-moving action. I tried to describe for Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark how, for no clear reason, a phalanx of police had charged from a static line on Balboa Street directly into the boisterous crowd of protesters sardined into the Michigan Avenue intersection in front of the Hilton. The recoil from the charge on one side of the dense crowd forced people on the other to move into the police line on Michigan Avenue. Unaware of the reason for the abrupt surge, the police on Michigan seemed to feel they were being attacked by the crowd, and they immediately countered with their own charge. Soon, in full view of reporters, hundreds of witnesses and TV cameras, police on all sides were clubbing and arresting everyone within reach--demonstrators, media, sightseers, even official observers.

Something had to give. With all other egresses blocked, the police charge pushed some people through the Hilton’s plate-glass windows and trampled over others. Whether because of exhaustion, frustration, antagonism toward the protesters or sheer meanness, a few cops acted as if war had been declared. The signature shot of the TV coverage, played over and over, showed the gratuitous clubbing of completely unresisting people, as they were dragged to paddy wagons. (As an observer, I carefully copied into my note pad the name tag of the offending officer. However, the FBI could never find the victim, and the cop, whose name I keep for Judgment Day, denied it all.)

During my phone report, I was so upset that, for the first time, I addressed an attorney general on a first-name basis and invoked the most vivid civil-rights imagery I knew--the infamous 1965 police beating of peaceful demonstrators marching to Montgomery, Ala.: “Ramsey,” I said, “it was worse than Selma.”

I remember these events as I hear that nothing ever happens at political conventions and because, after a 28-year hiatus, the Democrats are about to risk a return to the Windy City. Looking back from today’s perspective, it seems that the anguished kids on the Hilton staircase had it right: Nixon was elected president at 7:54 p.m. (CST), Aug. 28, 1968, when the Democratic Party imploded at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Balboa Street.

The agencies of law enforcement tried to bring to justice anyone--cop or demonstrator--whose part in Chicago’s convention violence transgressed the law. And, we all failed. The justice system flopped from the streets, where Daley’s semi-pro cops flipped out, to paneled federal courtrooms, where elaborate, balanced and “principled” federal prosecutions achieved nothing.

With scant national attention, the Civil Rights Division and the Chicago U.S. attorney prosecuted eight cops who were either filmed beating the innocent or incriminated by other compelling proof. Chicago juries shrugged them off--acquitting every cop in every case in near record time. Two charges involved the unnecessary police abuse of reporters (Newsweek’s convention edition headline called it, “Beat the Press”), but jurors found no crime in that. A young McCarthy supporter, hitchhiking home miles from the Hilton, was picked up by an off-duty cop, smacked around and dumped sobbing at the family home, with the admonition to his mother, “Here’s your hippie kid.” Cop acquitted. Photographs showing three cops working over a black pedestrian who had no connection with the Democrats failed to move yet another jury.

But, when it came to the eight protest leaders indicted by the same federal grand jury for various interstate riot conspiracies, public interest was intense and the jury pool was more aggressive. Coached by flamboyant counsel, “the Chicago Eight” soon became seven--Bobby Seale, the only black defendant was severed after court-ordered ropes and gags failed to keep him in order. Not only were the “Seven” convicted and sentenced, their lawyers received serious fines and jail terms for contempt. The appeals dragged on through Nixon’s first term, but by 1972, all convictions were reversed.

While there may have been many law violations in Chicago, there was no justice.