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Perlstein writes: "We're haunted - and yesterday haunted us, too. We gathered at the Petrillo Bandshell, scene of the most harrowing images from the classic 1970 movie Medium Cool, which combined fiction and documentary footage of the '68 brutality for the best portrait of state violence against protesters ever committed to film."

A Chicago police officer prepares to punch a protester. (photo: Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
A Chicago police officer prepares to punch a protester. (photo: Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)



Chicago History Repeats Itself As Cops and Protesters Clash

By Rick Perlstein, Rolling Stone

22 May 12

Occupy Wall Street: Take the Bull by the Horns


n 1972, writing in Rolling Stone about a looming confrontation between protesters and police in the streets in front of the Republican National Convention in Miami, Hunter S. Thompson described the moment he slipped off his watch. "The first thing to go in a street fight is always your watch, and once you've lost a few, you develop a certain instinct that lets you know it's time to get the thing off your wrist and into a safe pocket." Times have changed: Few people wear watches any more. So when the first objects starting flying in Chicago yesterday night on the corner of Cermak and Michigan, I buttoned my cell phone into my cargo pants pocket instead.

I'd begun marching, four hours earlier, from the bandshell behind the Art Institute of Chicago to a temporary protest zone with 2,000 people (by city estimates) protesting NATO's role in the Afghanistan war. Our destination was a half mile east of the NATO summit taking place at the south-of-downtown McCormick Place Convention Center; it had been an awkward traipse. I was following legal observers from the National Lawyers Guild; they were watching the police, who were everywhere: thousands were deployed for the summit, plus ringers from forty other agencies from as far away as North Carolina. At least a few hundred were in my field of vision at all times. Volunteers surrounded the parade column with yellow cord; just outside that perimeter hundreds of officers kept stride, all of us starting, stopping, slowing up at a pace dictated by the police wagons inching along ahead.

Up ahead, from sidewalk to sidewalk, marched another row of cops, walking backward, sometimes joining hands red-rover style. Flying squadrons of riot police in those fearsome security-visored blue helmets, chest-protectors that make them look like black turtles, and massively bulging shiny shin guards sometimes appeared, then disappeared down abandoned side streets. Then, at the march's culmination at a makeshift stage 800 yards and innumerable eight-foot-tall steel security barriers west of where 65 world leaders were gathering to talk, largely about the course of the war in Afghanistan, they were suddenly among us, en masse: black turtles, row upon row, arrayed on the elevated median strips that afforded them the high ground for whatever battle might ensue.

This was Chicago in May of 2012, where all week citizens have been cordially invited by authorities to savor what it would feel like to live in a police state - 7.5 miles of street closings; several "maritime security zones"; the thwukthwukthwuk of helicopters and the continuous scream of jet fighters overhead; those infamous "Long Range Acoustic Devices" that make it too painful to stand, poised at the ready; and, in one particularly surreal touch in my tranquil Hyde Park neighborhood, a misplaced suitcase that shut down the 57th Street train station as well access to the two adjacent nerdy used bookstores, a full forty blocks from the NATO zone. (An email to every University of Chicago student, staffer, and faculty member: "Police activity 57th Street at Metra. Avoid area. Additional information to follow." Thirty-nine minutes later: "All clear 57th Street and Metra. Will resume normal operations.")

Just as intended, the city thrummed with fear, uncertainty, and doubt, the most effective tool the powerful possess to keep the rest of us in line; so pervasive was the dread that people working downtown wore jeans on Thursday (no one showed up to work on Friday), lest they be randomly attacked by "self-described anarchists" - in the news media's odd formulation - mistaking them for members of "the 1%."

That night, it all came to a head with the warrantless violent police raid of an apartment in the gentrifying neighborhood of Bridgeport, followed by the "disappearing" - no other term for it - of three anarchists, Jared Chase, 27, Brian Church, 22, and Brent Betterly, 24, for over twenty-four hours. They resurfaced Saturday in a Cook County courtroom, where they were charged with "conspiring to commit domestic terrorism during the NATO summit," including "plotting to attack President Obama's Chicago campaign headquarters, the Chicago mayor's home and police stations." �What the suspects said was home-brew equipment the city insisted was the makings of Molotov cocktails. Bail was set at $1.5 million.

Local news stations, of course, reported the arrests uncritically: no mention of beer-making, nor any indication of why these kids might have been singled out - for having dared to post this damning cellphone video on YouTube, in which three easily identifiable policemen (note the vehicle number) explicitly threaten to beat them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TudIyxxAboA

Michael Deutsch of the Nation Lawyers Guild, representing the three, says police infiltrators were responsible for the alleged illegal activity and illicit materials in the apartment where they were arrested. Reflected Don Rose, the 81-year-old dean of the Chicago left, who's seen it all before. "As history has shown us more often than not, it all could be a phony, rigged distraction. We must wait and see." Indeed, the relationship between the local constabulary and the Chicago left is haunted by such history. Old heads like Rose can never forget the infamous clubbing meted out by hoards of blue-helmeted cops at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. Neither can the cops.

"You guys know all about '68," one of the officers, straight from central casting, says in the video above. "What did they say back in '68?'"
"Billy club to the fucking skull," Officer No. 2 answers in that unmistakable Chicago brogue.
Adds another: "Now we'll beat your white ass."
Returns the first: "Wait for the protest day. Save it all up for that.... Can't wait. We'll come look for you, each and every one of you."

We're Haunted:

By December, 1969, and another raided South Side apartment, this one containing the sleeping Black Panther leader Fred Hampton: cops acting under the direct supervision of Cook County States Attorney Edward Hanraham claiming they were answering "a shotgun volley" from within, riddled the corner of the apartment in which Hampton was sleeping with almost one hundred gun blasts of their own, killing Hampton instantly. A subsequent civil trial established there were in fact no shots coming from the inside.

By 1996, when the Democrats came back to Chicago for the first national party convention in the city since, the cops wore T-shirts in their off-duty hours (I remember them) reading something like, "In 1968 we beat your parents' asses. Now we're going to beat yours."

By 2003, when smiling, accommodating police opened up Chicago's scenic freeway Lake Shore Drive to thousands of joyous protesters marching against the Iraq War�and then, when police decided enough was enough, instructed them to disperse to the west where they kenneled 886 happy, peacefully retreating protesters for arrests, singling out the ones they decided looked like punks for those patented Chicago police billy-club beatings.

Some of us are even haunted by 1886, when someone threw a dynamite bomb at police dispersing a peaceful rally for the eight-hour workday. That memory is still absolutely a living one in this city, a story of dueling narratives of martyrdom between the seven police officers who perished in the blast, and the seven anarchists sentenced to hang even though the prosecution acknowledged they had not committed the crime. The recognition of May Day as an international holiday for the left honors the latter; a statue of a Chicago policeman with an arm stretched high, victorious - the subject of literally violent controversy ever since (read that fascinating history here) - honors the former.

We're haunted - and yesterday haunted us, too. We gathered at the Petrillo Bandshell, scene of the most harrowing images from the classic 1970 movie Medium Cool, which combined fiction and documentary footage of the '68 brutality for the best portrait of state violence against protesters ever committed to film. We marched down Michigan Avenue past the Hilton Hotel at the intersection with Balbo, the spot where, on August 28, 1968, seated protesters were clubbed and tossed into paddy wagons, into which tear gas was sprayed, then the doors closed - all while witnesses chanted, "The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!" My heart raced at that intersection, and also when we came to this statue; and I was relieved when we passed both without incident.

Then we arrived at our final destination, and I was not haunted at all. Instead, I took in one of the most radiant spectacles imaginable: Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - and, a shocking number - echoed a 1971 ceremony in which Vietnam Veterans Against the War hurled the medals they had received back at the Capitol dome.

A twelve-year National Guardsman, throwing his medals east toward the NATO meeting: "... And all I have to say is this is not something I'm proud of!"

A 2002-08 Iraq War vet, explaining that the military was "where I learned what integrity meant," and "at this point I believe if I am to live with integrity I must get rid of these."

An Afghanistan vet who visited the 9/11 Memorial with some Afghan friends dedicated his medals to "33,000 dead Afghanis who won't have a memorial built for them."

Others:

"I'm returning my Global War on Terrorism medal and my National Defense medal because they are both lies."

"I choose human life over war."

"We don't want this garbage."

"For al those people who are wondering why we are doing this: do your homework."

"Because I want to live by my conscience rather than being a prisoner of it."

"This medal I'm dedicating to the children of Iraq who don't have mothers and fathers."

"In the last seven years I haven't been sure of anything. But now I'm sure, looking out over this peace-loving crowd, my daughters can grow up in peace."

One was choking back tears so violently he could hardly get out the words "I'm sorry." Another said, "This is a Good Conduct medal," and we rocked with laughter, before adding that he was saving his humanitarian service medal from Hurricane Katrina, "because that's the only thing we should be doing."

We roared. We roared every time. "Do these medals represent a job well done?" "NO!!!" "Do they mask lies?" "YES!!!" "Do they mask injustice?" "YES!!!"

And then it was over, and most of us made to disperse to the west, though a column of Black Bloc anarchists lined up to march eastward, to the NATO meeting. Police batons started slapping palms: This was Chicago. A marshal announced through a bullhorn how people could disperse if they wanted to avoid arrest. A knuckleheaded Black Bloc kid screamed at him that he was "worse than the police." This is 2012, and people are very angry. Then began the standoff, things grew quiet, and I felt what Hunter S. Thompson described feeling when he wrote, "There was an awful tension in that silence ... an almost visible shudder ran through the crowd.... I felt a strange tightness coming over me."

Plastic bottles started flying. I buttoned up my phone in my pocket. When a thunderclap boomed I cut out, praying for rain. As Thompson would have put it, I'm too old for this shit. So I missed the m�l�e that soon broke out between anarchists and the police. Viewers of the local news that night did not, of course: If it bleeds, it leads. The glorious testament of the horror of war we had just witnessed was all but obliterated. The Lawyers Guild reports it was "indiscriminate violence," instigated by the police; that claim I cannot evaluate.

I can report, however, that walking to the train home I passed a Chicago city bus whose electronic sign read "CHICAGO IS MY KIND OF TOWN," and that upon reading that I was haunted again. My Kind of Town is the name of a masterpiece of a new play being performed here through July about Officer John Burge, the Chicago cop who came home from Vietnam and began torturing innocent suspects using the electroshock techniques he had learned in the war. For decades, Chicago officials including Ed Hanrahan's successor and future mayor, States Attorney Richard M. Daley, knew about the abuse and did nothing, even as false confessions elicited by Burge landed men on death row. War, torture, police abuse, global plutocracy: one and indivisible, from generation to generation. Never forget. Never stop fighting.


Rick Perlstein is the author of "Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus" and "Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America." He writes a weekly column for RollingStone.com.

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+63 # mwd870 2011-10-21 15:48
Please, please, please let this be Eric Cantor's last term in office.
 
 
+44 # MainStreetMentor 2011-10-21 15:52
 
 
+37 # Capn Canard 2011-10-21 16:17
This can't look good for Cantor, but given the past year is there anything that could make him look reputable? Pulling stuff like this makes him look like a two face snake. Is there any need of more evidence? Canceling a speech because he is afraid of college students? Pathetic
 
 
+30 # bubbiesue 2011-10-21 16:21
Poor, poor Eric. The ladder of which he speaks is broken and he doesn't know it yet. I wonder who will have the temerity to tell him--if anybody does.
 
 
+32 # Kayjay 2011-10-21 16:30
If I lived in Virginia, I would be very pissed at Cantor. I mean why is he running around the northeast addressing Ivy league elites on economic opportunities. Shouldn't he be back in Virginia, pow wowing with constituents on how to better their lives? i agree with mwd870. Yes, Virginia.... should us there really is a Santa Claus and give this rat the BOOT!
 
 
+37 # mainescorpio 2011-10-21 17:35
He's the snarkiest of all the pols I've ever seen...and an ignorant idealogue to boot. How in the world did he win over a majority of Virginia's voters?
 
 
-29 # Gungadin 2011-10-21 21:54
Let me get this straight.... Shutting down free speech is something to be proud of? Yet we want the OWS people to be given their right to speak....sort of hypocritical, isn't it?
 
 
+2 # RLF 2011-10-22 17:13
Free speech isn't freedom to tell lies while muffling desent. Give a real liberal equal time and we won't shut him down.
 
 
+4 # reiverpacific 2011-10-22 19:59
Quoting Gungadin:
Let me get this straight.... Shutting down free speech is something to be proud of? Yet we want the OWS people to be given their right to speak....sort of hypocritical, isn't it?


SO.
How about the Tea Party violence and disruption of town-hall meetings prior to the last elections?
How about the Republican thugs who stormed and attacked the independent vote counters in Tallahassee, Florida during the stolen election of 2000 -flown there especially by Ken Ley's (Bush's buddy "Ken-Boy's") private plane.?
How about voter-suppressi on in Florida, Ohio and now in Wisconsin, and many others past and it seems, to come?
You want me to go on? There is much, much more!
It is people like the appalling Cantor who would take the opposition's right to dissent away and anyone else who doesn't march in lockstep with the reactionary extremes he represents, as would all of those -seemingly including you- who shout loudest about democratic freedoms.
There's a difference between suppressing free speech and showing up to speak truth peacefully and even loudly, to those who have held sway far too long over too many gullible voters.
If you can't get even this basic fact straight, then you're hardly "A better man than I am Gungadin"! -With apologies to Rudyard Kipling.
 
 
+1 # kelly 2011-10-23 11:56
They didn't WANT to shut him down. He shut himself down.He could have faced the crowd...just like all the other politicians do who have to come face to face with the people when they choose to make a stand on an issue. He is shutting down free speech when he disallows our right to be heard dissenting his opinion. If he does not hear a voice of opposition he does not remain a fair representative of ALL THE PEOPLE which is pretty much what you become when you're elected and not crowned. Not have you got it straight?
 
 
+22 # BLBreck 2011-10-21 22:26
He wasn't forced to cancel, he's what they would have called a lily-livered coward in the old west, by gum. Let's hope his constituents send him home with his tail between his legs in 2012.
 
 
+18 # BradFromSalem 2011-10-21 22:26
If Eric Cantor is so against the redistribution of wealth, then why isn't he out with the Occupiers? Wall Street took advantage of the US economy and have steadfastly been neck deep in wealth redistribution since 1980.

That was when the wealth of the Middle Class began to diminish. Their wealth didn't just disappear, it moved to Wall Street. We really saw this during the infamous Wall Street heist of 2008. The Middle Class had their already lowered wealth stolen from them.

We have redistribution of wealth in America, and we want it back. What could be more fair? Why do Republicans like Cantor believe that stealing our savings is OK, while when we ask the crooks to pay taxes on what was stolen, we are Commies?
 
 
+10 # giraffe 2011-10-21 23:03
Personal view: I think he is insane - mentally ill - screw loose - missing part of his brain -

If he gets re-elected, I'll personally send him a "get well" card.

VOTE DEM VOTE OBAMA -- if the GOP/TP get in we will be run by the evil Koch brothers et. al. And the Supremes will vote 6-3 when Gingsberg leaves.

I cannot stand another filibuster - on important matters while the house keeps passing the same bill on abortion.

Repugnuts have about 25% more registered now -- help the minorities / old etc registered in your area. Voting is free and if your state now requires IDs - for voting those IDs are also free. Phone, go door to door, email, fliers, drive them - anything - just get them registered and also ALL Dems should get mail-in ballots. Some Dem governors are also acting like GOP --

The Norquist Cult of GOP/TP will make us worse than slaves.

The GOP has this Cain up front for a reason. I think I know why! Cain is not even registered in most states (i.e. he won't be on the ballot). The racist GOP/TP are using this clown to hide their KKK reality beliefs.

VOTE DEM VOTE OBAMA - If we get a majority -- we will get Thomas/Scalia impeached. It's a coming.

2012 is the MOST important election of our time. GO OWS - awesome and OWS have changed the tenor of the country.
 
 
+11 # karlarove 2011-10-22 00:26
Clearly Eric is only worrying about the guys at the top of the ladder. How about those who want to get on the ladder? Oh, I just remembered....w e don't pay him enough moneyto represent us, the people of the United States. We need a elected offical, I mean a lobbyist who works for us.
 
 
+14 # Michael S. Cullen 2011-10-22 01:13
Pity Cantor couldn't speak. Now he'll run around spewing things like 'the mob won't let me exercise my freedom of speech'; and there'll be lots out there to cheer him on. Let Eric eat cake.
Michael S. Cullen, Berlin, Germany
 
 
+10 # jcdav 2011-10-22 03:53
So.. he is willing to speak to friendly, receptive audiences, but if there will be ANY questioning in the crowd he bails..What a sorry excuse for a man..if this is what passes for leadership.. and shows the political accountability we (don't) have it is indeed time for a change..COWARD
 
 
+3 # Diane 2011-10-22 17:58
The unwillingness to speak to a potentially unreceptive audience??? - does that remind you of someone else? A former president, I think. Let's see - his name, hmmmmm - "Shrub"? No, not quite. Ah, Geo. W. Bush, the one who always knew he would be speaking to adoring supporters because his pre-speech muscle cleaned the venue of dissenters.

I guess they both needed to bail given that neither of them would have a sane answer to a sane question.
 
 
+12 # 666 2011-10-22 04:58
how dare they speak against "income redistribution" ! that's exactly what's at the heart of the GOP economic agenda: run up the debt - so that debt service takes up a bigger share of the taxes we pay (who benefits? the rich who own the debt [bonds]). ditto with wars and defense spending. ditto with the bailouts. Socialism for the rich! That's what the GOP (and Dems) preach and practice, because it's (real) socialism they fear the most. And just like in post-ww1 italy and germany, that fear was leveraged to seize control of government! Be afraid, be very afraid.
 
 
+9 # rofo47 2011-10-22 06:29
I live in Eric Cantor's district and the chances of him being defeated next November are about the same as the Phillies defeating the Yankees to become reigning world champions this year. We may be only 90 miles from Washington D.C. but we are in the DEEP South and at least 30 to 40 years removed from the 21st century.
 
 
+12 # J.Lindsley 2011-10-22 06:38
Corrupt people love weasels.
 
 
+8 # vadem 2011-10-22 06:56
I live in VA in Cantor's district. It has been Republican as long as I can remember. It is difficult to find a viable Democrat to oppose him. Believe me, many of us are as disgusted as the rest of thinking people but we can't get rid of him in a very conservative district! He is a leader due to the Republican takeover of the House in 2010.
 
 
+8 # in deo veritas 2011-10-22 07:49
Ship his sorry butt off somehwere like Afghanistan on a "fact-finding" mission and maybe he won't come back. He could join others working to destroy our country.
 
 
+14 # in deo veritas 2011-10-22 07:56
"on the staging of his presentation" is a very telling statement from the Wharton School at UPENN. Anything these fascist weasels do is staged just like the Nazi rallies in Nuremberg. If they can't have a hand-picked audience of supporters and fools they will use stormtrooper tactics like they did at the last Repug convention with their rent-a-cops.
 
 
+11 # in deo veritas 2011-10-22 07:58
When the day of reckoning comes, there will be nowhere in this country for Cantor and his criminal puppeteers to hide. What other countries would give them political asylum? What no takers?
 
 
+12 # angryspittle 2011-10-22 10:33
Nice to see the little twerp is heeding Truman's advice regarding heat and kitchens and such.
 
 
+4 # Kayjay 2011-10-22 14:57
Maybe we should regress in our dealings with Cantor and his TP ilk. Bring back tar and feathers.
 
 
+3 # DPM 2011-10-22 17:08
Kayjay. We need the tar for roads and feathers for..well for anything is more worthy than Cantor. The way to treat him is national distain. If he becomes a national embarrassment, like Palin, his big sponsors will abandon him. He may be reelected, in his district, but he will not have a national voice.
And, Gungadin. Were you this outspoken when Tea Partiers were interrupting and shouting down speakers at public meetings? Not allowing them to talk. Hmmm? Just curious.
 
 
+1 # Annalois 2011-10-23 09:16
Can you imagine what America will look like if The right wing GOP are re-elected to office? They want Obama to lose so much that they wont even pass the Jobs Bill knowing that the American people need work. Shame on these cold hearted men!
 
 
0 # amye 2011-10-23 12:35
Cantor, you are not very smart if you don't think the only way to level the playing field is to redistribute wealth! That IS the ONLY way to level the playing field!! We must redistribute the wealth! How do you think the rich got rich?? Uhh, because it was redistributed to them? YES! Now we need to redistribute it to the middle class and working poor!
 
 
+2 # 4yourinformation 2011-10-23 12:40
Screw Cantor's "it's all about upward mobility" schtick. It's precisely that we have too damned many wealth accumulating blood suckers vacuuming up massive profits, that result in the inequality in the first place. Meeting in the middle is exactly where we need to go. No more rich people and no more people. We CAN do it by creating a system that rewards WORK with REWARDING work and not tolerating drudgery at one end and massive opulence at the other.
 
 
0 # rose 2011-10-23 14:49
Calling Cantor a weasel is an insult to weasels! Not surprised he did not want to speak in front of people who might jeer him...after all, it's tough to speak spontaneously and in the moment when the only notes in front of you are the same "talking points" that you've been spouting ad nauseam for years!
 

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