By Joel Thurtell
If cops start raining billy clubs on your car, don’t yell insults.
I learned that on a visit to Chicago’s Loop.
Forty years ago.
I approached the anniverary thinking I’d write a long essay to run on August 28, the day the cops went crazy and whaled on us. But I put it off. I decided to wait for the actual day, then see what emotions I had.
Now, here’s the weird thing — at some point in the last 40 years, I misremembered the date of our arrest. Not the day, but the date. It happened on Wednesday, and I thought it was August 26. As I read Norman Mailer’s book, “Miami and the Siege of Chicago,” the events he described weren’t tracking for me. If we were arrested on August 26, that would have been a Monday. I thought the police attack on us happened on a Wednesday, sometime after we decided Grant Park was not a good place for people who wanted to stay healthy.
As I read Mailer’s book, I became confused. He described what happened in Grant Park on Wednesday in detail. But that was the 28th. Wednesday? Yes, that seemed right. His description of what the cops were doing, even if he gave the impression he was watching from high up in the Hilton Hotel, matched my recollection. Had I mixed up the date? Who could help me?
Barry!
I dialed my old friend, now living and teaching in New York. No, Barry said, he didn’t recall the date. But he was sure it happened on Wednesday — maybe Thursday — but most likely Wednesday, because it was the day Hubert Humphrey was nominated for president.
I celebrated the 40th anniversary of our arrest two days early. I filed my first column a day early, not a day late. What kind of correction would this require? Well, this is a blog, so I can fix things quite easily. But I’m letting you, my readers, know. I make no apologies. It’s not hard to figure out how I might have confused the date, given the trauma of getting whacked by cops, spending a night locked up, charged with nonsensical crimes, released on bail to come home and be harassed by the FBI while preparing for a kangaroo court trial and studying history at the University of Michigan.
What about Mailer? Does my error soften my judgment of him? In fact, my poor opinion has only hardened. I realize now that the man who I thought was a hero was in fact playing a game with us. And with his readers. On the one hand, he addressed the protesters in Grant Park, giving encouraging words though he made it clear he was heading to the convention because to him that was the story, not the anti-war message we were delivering on the street. Mailer was a participant that day when he spoke at Grant Park with the cops bloodying heads in plaint sight of him. Yet in his book, he insists on being “the reporter.” How could he be a reporter if he gave a pep talk to the protesters?
Moreover, how could he encourage protesters to their faces at Grant Park and then in his book refer to them — us — as “kids” and “boys and girls” and dismiss us as tactically infantile? Hey, guess what, Norm old pal, the message we delivered on the streets got through. Yes, it took years, but it made it to the brains of politicians. What was your message at the parties and on the convention floor?
As I say, I was off by two days, but when the day — the wrong day — came, I got busy with projects that had nothing to do with politics. I visited a pal and spent time talking about boats. I thought it was the 40th anniversary and nothing was happening, no feelings at all.
But something did happen. It doesn’t matter the day. That’s a residue from my days of newspaper-think. Chicago happened 40 years ago and lingers in me not just on the anniversary of that police disorder, but every day of my life. It has molded the way I regard government, authority, corporations. Profound distrust. Take no one’s word for anything. Prove to me, you governmental creatures, that you are honest and forthright, because I regard you with utter distrust, or as I.F. Stone said, I regard you as liars until you prove otherwise.
The repercussions of our arrest have not ended. Earlier this year, I learned of a government effort to keep me from joining the Peace Corps in 1973 based on police lies from Chicago in 1968. Oh yes, and I have the federal paperwork to prove it. These things never end. More about that later.
Now, back to that Chevy Nova. Barry had the car stopped on Michigan Avenue because of all the pedestrians. When the cops, and I don’t exaggerate when I say there were 15 or 20 of them, started banging on the car with their clubs, Barry shouted, “Don’t dent my car, you motherfuckers!”
Not to be outdone, I shouted a sentence containing the word “cocksucker.”
Suddenly, those motherfuckers and cocksuckers were yanking the car doors open and pulling us out into the street.
Needless to say, Norman Mailer’s boxer friend, the one Mailer feared would have wasted a bunch of cops, affording him an excuse to leave impending violence in a wave of bullshit, did not come to our aid. Nor was feisty Norman there to help us. No doubt he was at another of his parties.
With their wooden batons, the cops whacked Barry’s head. They whacked my head, too, but then they made wisecracks that I didn’t understand: “Whatcha got down there?” I understood when they aimed their truncheons at my crotch. They pulled my glasses off my face, threw them onto the pavement and stomped on them. They grabbed the classy Bulova watch my parents gave me for high school graduation, threw it onto the ground and stomped on it. That watch is still stopped. They smashed the lenses of my glasses. They muscled us onto a Chicago city bus, where we sat alone for some time until a cop who hadn’t taken part in the attack came to babysit us.
It was a long, long night. Eventually, some cops who seemed perplexed about what to do with us — as in, what had we done? — took us to, I believe, the 13th Precinct lockup and marched us down a row of cells. Suddenly, Barry was excited. Now at the time, Barry was studying for a master’s degree in political science at the University of Chicago. But soon he would move to New York, enrolling in film classes at New York University. Barry is big into movies. He took me to Citizen Kane for the first time and explained the meaning of Orson Welles’ line, “Ah, Rosebud.”
So as we walked bedraggled and dazed past a row of cells, Barry peered into one and saw an idol — Dustin Hoffman.
Couldn’t prove it by me. I mean, I saw “The Graduate,” but right now I was in a Chicago jail, having been knocked around and scared crapless by a band of hoods with badges.
“That’s Dustin Hoffman,” Barry said. He was excited. A silver lining, it seemed.
It turned out he was right. Next day, as we were being moved to a court so some city lawyers could cook up some ad hoc charges, Barry checked it out with the precinct cops. Sure enough, they had Dustin Hoffman — and Abbie Hoffman, too.
What a catch. Remember Abbie Hoffmann? He wrote teh book, “Steal this Book!”
Just don’t steal any of MY books, Abbie!
By the way, Dustin Hofman was sprung soon after we spotted him in that cell. We assumed he had powerful connections. We didn’t. Many hours later, having made a call to I can’t remember who, bond was posted and and we walked out.
Our trial took place around the time Mailer’s book came out sneering at us war protesters. We had a top Chicago criminal attorney, but he wasn’t accustomed to working in municipal court, where Mayor Daley ruled the roost. The trial lasted two and a half hours and drew many lawyers who came to watch Chicago machine justice.
Three cops were there as witnesses. They were strangers. They were not the guys who whacked the Nova and banged our heads. Our lawyer, George Howard, had them sequestered, meaning they had to wait outside and testify one by one. They had to tell their stories without hearing their buddies’ lies.
The cops couldn’t identify either of us. One by one, they gave wildly different stories. After the cops finished their stories, Judge Richard Samuels found Barry guilty of reckless driving. He found me guilty of aiding and abetting reckless driving. He sentenced each of us to 10 days in the Cook County Jail.
We posted appeal bond and waited for our case to wend its way through the courts. Forty years later, we’re still waiting for that appeal to be heard.
There truly was a silver lining, though. Guess what Judge Samuels did do our draft worries? The Army can’t conscript you if you’re waiting for a court appeal.
So I’m 63 and still waiting to be drafted.
To be continued.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at0gmail.com
