1968

[G_j]

a little history while remembering Eugene:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Democratic_National_Convention

The 1968 Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago, Illinois from August 26-29, 1968, by the United States Democratic Party, for the purposes of choosing the Democratic nominee for the 1968 U.S. Presidential Election.

The decision was particularly difficult for the Democrats that year, due to the split in the party over the Vietnam War, and the assassination of popular candidate Robert F. Kennedy. On one side, Eugene McCarthy put forward a decidedly anti-war campaign, calling for the immediate withdrawal from the region. On the other side, Hubert H. Humphrey called for a policy more in line with President Lyndon Johnson's policy, which focused on making any reduction of force contingent on concessions extracted in the Paris Peace Talks

Anti-war demonstrators protested throughout the convention, clashing with police all around the convention center (in the streets and at Grant Park). Mayor Richard J. Daley took a particularly hard line against the protesters, refusing permits for rallies and marches, and calling for whatever use of force necessary to subdue the crowds. When Abraham Ribicoff delivered a speech nominating George McGovern for President, he infuriated Daley by saying, "with George McGovern as President of the United States, we wouldn't have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago." While Daley claimed that he was yelling "You fink, you!," lipreaders and eyewitnesses contend otherwise. Some of the more famous protesters, including Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, and Dave Dellinger, were collectively known as the "Chicago Eight" (later "Chicago Seven") as they were charged with conspiracy in connection with the violence. On February 18, 1970 they were found guilty of conspiring to incite riots, but the charges were eventually dismissed by an appeals court. The Walker Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence pinned the blame for the violence in the streets on the police, calling it a "police riot."

The Democrats eventually settled on Hubert H. Humphrey, but would lose the election to Richard M. Nixon. A significant number of Democrats were so enraged by the War in Vietnam that they failed to see differences between Humphrey and Nixon. (however for a more accurate understanding of this read the next article)

..more..


-----------
November 13, 2000

Who Should Concede?
The Secret History of Modern U.S. Politics

By Robert Parry

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/111300a.html
(it was very hard to convey this story in four snips)

<snip>
For the past four decades, the Republicans have built a record of dirty tricks and October Surprises in presidential contests. And typically, it is the Democrats who stay silent after learning of the schemes – to avert constitutional crises and avoid public disillusionment with the political process.
<snip>

The Vietnam War was raging and was creating deep divisions within the Democratic Party. In October 1968, President Lyndon Johnson was maneuvering to achieve the framework for a peace settlement with North Vietnam and the Viet Cong through negotiations in Paris.

<snip>
Journalist Seymour Hersh described the initiative sketchily in his biography of Henry Kissinger, The Price of Power. Hersh reported that U.S. intelligence “agencies had caught on that Chennault was the go-between between Nixon and his people and President Thieu in Saigon. … The idea was to bring things to a stop in Paris and prevent any show of progress.”

<snip>

“In the end, though, Johnson’s advisers decided it was too late and too potentially damaging to U.S. interests to uncover what had been going on,” Summers wrote. “If Nixon should emerge as the victor, what would the Chennault outrage do to his viability as an incoming president? And what effect would it have on American opinion about the war?”
<snip>

A late Humphrey surge fell short. Nixon won the election.
<snip>

[orpupilofnature57]

1. 1963 Was bad, 1968 solidified it! The Genesis of the Evil Empire that

has brought us to ShrubCo.

[H2O Man]

2. "The Beatles"

also known as "the White album," was released in 1968. The double album says a lot about 1968.

[orpupilofnature57]

3. Thank God for the White album ,and all the necessary poetry of the day

Bob Dylan, Buffalo Springfield , The Doors , Jimi and Janis , proof necessity is the mother of Invention.

[G_j]

6. and the next year: Woodstock

wow

[chat_noir]

4. 1968 Timeline

January 5
Dr. Benjamin Spock; William Sloan Coffin the chaplain of Yale University; novelist Mitchell Goodman; Michael Ferber, a graduate student at Harvard; and Marcus Raskin a peace activist are indicted on charges of conspiracy to encourage violations of the draft laws by a grand jury in Boston. The charges are the result of actions taken at a protest rally the previous October at the Lincoln Memorial. The four will be convicted and Raskin acquitted on June 14th.

February 1
During police actions following the first day of the Tet offensive General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a south Vietnamese security official is captured on film executing a Viet Cong prisoner by American photographer Eddie Adams. The Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph becomes yet another rallying point for anti-war protestors. Despite later claims that the prisoner had been accused of murdering a Saigon police officer and his family, the image seems to call into question everything claimed and assumed about the Amrican allies, the South Vietnamese.

February 4
Martin Luther King Jr. delivers a sermon at his Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta which will come to be seen as prophetic. His speech contains what amounts to his own eulogy. After his death, he says, "I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody... that I tried to love and serve humanity,. Yes, if you want to, say that I was a drum major for peace... for righteousness."

February 7
International reporters arrive at the embattled city of Ben Tre in South Vietnam. Peter Arnett, then of the Associated Press, writes a dispatch quoting an unnamed US major as saying, "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it." The quote runs nationwide the next day in Arnett's report.

February 18
The US State Department announces the highest US casualty toll of the Vietnam War. The previous week saw 543 Americans killed in action, and 2547 wounded.

February 27
Walter Cronkite reports on his recent trip to Vietnam to view the aftermath of the Tet Offensive in his television special Who, What, When, Where, Why? The report is highly critical of US officials and directly contradicts official statements on the progress of the war. After listing Tet and several other current military operations as "draws" and chastising American leaders for their optimism, Cronkite advises negotiation "...not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could."


March 12
The New Hampshire primary election brings shocking results. The Eugene McCarthy campaign, benefitting from the work of 2,000 full-time student volunteers and up to 5,000 on the weekends immediately preceding the vote comes within 230 votes of defeating the sitting president Lyndon Johnson. These students, participants in what McCarthy refers to as his "children's crusade" have cut their hair, modified their wardrobes, and become "clean for Gene" to contact the conservative voters in the state.

March 16
Senator Robert Kennedy, former Attorney General and brother of former president John F. Kennedy (1961-63) ends months of debate by announcing that he will enter the 1968 Presidential race.

March 16 (same day)
Although it will not become public knowledge for more than a year, US ground troops from Charlie Company rampage through the hamlet of My Lai killing more than 500 Vietnamese civilians from infants to the elderly. The massacre continues for three hours until three American fliers intervene, positioning their helicopter between the troops and the fleeing vietnamese and eventually carrying a handful of wounded to safety. View the BBC Special Report on the incident.

April 4
Martin Luther King Jr. spends the day at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis working and meeting with local leaders on plans for his Poor People's March on Washington to take place late in the month. At 6pm, as he greets the car and friends in the courtyard, King is shot with one round from a 30.06 rifle. He will be declared dead just an hour later at St. Joseph's hospital. After an international man-hunt James Earl Ray will be arrested on June 27 in England, and convicted of the murder. Ray died in prison in 1998.
Robert Kennedy, hearing of the murder just before he is to give a speech in Indianapolis, IN, delivers a powerful extemporaneous eulogy in which he pleads with the audience "to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."
The King assassination sparks rioting in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Newark, Washington, D.C., and many others. Across the country 46 deaths will be blamed on the riots.

April 11
United States Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford calls 24,500 military reserves to action for 2 year commitments, and announces a new troop ceiling of 549,500 American soldiers in Vietnam. The total number of Americans "in country" will peak at some 541,000 in August this year, and decline to 334,000 by 1970.

April 23
A rally and occupation of the Low administrative office building at Columbia University, planned to protest the university's participation in the Institute for Defense Analysis is scuttled by conservative students and university security officers. The demonstrators march to the site of a proposed new gymnasium at Morningside Heights to stage a protest in support of neighbors who use the site for recreation. The action eventually results in the occupation of five buildings - Hamilton, Low, Fairweather and Mathematics halls, and the Architecture building. It will culminate seven days later when police storm the buildings and violently remove the students and their supporters at the Columbia administration's request.

June 4/5
On the night of the California Primary Robert Kennedy addresses a large crowd of supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in San Francisco. He has won victories in California and South Dakota and is confident that his campaign will go on to unite the many factions stressing the country. As he leaves the stage, at 12:13AM on the morning of the fifth Kennedy is shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a 24 year old Jordanian living in Los Angeles. The motive for the shooting is apparently anger at several pro-Isreali speeches Kennedy had made during the campaign. The forty-two year old Kennedy dies in the early morning of June sixth.

June 28
A bill adding a 10 percent surcharge to income taxes and reducing government spending is signed by President Johnson. The president effectively admits it has been impossible to provide both "guns and butter."

July 7
Abbie Hoffman's "The Yippies are Going to Chicago" is published in The Realist. The yippie movement, formed by Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Paul Krassner, all committed activists and demonstrators, is characterized by public displays of disorder ranging from disrupting the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange to the destruction of the Clocks at Grand Central Terminal, the main commuter station for workers in New York City. The Yippie's will be in the center of action six weeks later at the Chicago Democratic National Convention, hosting a "Festival of Life" in contrast to what they term the convention's "Festival of Death."

July 24
At the Newport (Rhode Island) Folk Festival singer Arlo Guthrie performs his 20 minute ballad "Alice's Restaurant" to rave reviews.

August 26
Mayor Richard Daley opens the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. While the convention moves haltingly toward nominating Hubert Humphrey for president, the city's police attempt to enforce an 11 o'clock curfew. On that Monday night demonstrations are widespread, but generally peaceful. The next two days, however, bring increasing tension and violence to the situation.

August 28
By most accounts, on Wednesday evening Chicago police take action against crowds of demonstrators without provocation. The police beat some marchers unconscious and send at least 100 to emergency rooms while arresting 175.
Mayor Daley tried the next day to explain the police action at a press conference. He famously explained: "The policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder."
Twenty-eight years later, when the Democrats next held a convention in Chicago, some police officers still on the force wore t-shirts proclaiming, "We kicked their father's butt in '68 and now it's your turn."

November 5
Election Day. The results of the popular vote are 31,770,000 for Nixon, 43.4 percent of the total; 31,270,000 or 42.7 percent for Humphrey; 9,906,000 or 13.5 percent for wallace; and 0.4 percent for other candidates.

November 14
National Turn in Your Draft Card Day is observed with rallies and protests on college campuses throughout the country.



http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/1968/reference/timeline.html

[G_j]

5. Isn't it amazing!!

all that happened in 68?

certainly one of the most pivotal years in American hisory

[NoPasaran]

17. 1968 was quite a year all around the world

The "Prague Spring": Czech leader Alexsander Dubcek announces "socialism with a human face", attempting to reform a Soviet-bloc society a generation before Gorbachev's glasnost. The Czech experiment is crushed by a Soviet-led invasion in August.

May in Paris: Massive student protests and a wave of strikes shake DeGaulle's regime to its foundations

October in Mexico City: Student protests end in a massacre of hundreds when police and troops open fire.

[calico1]

16. I was 10 and remember most of it

but as a child it didn't hit me in the same way as it did adults of the time.

[whalerider55]

7. the sight of Mayor Daley

shouting anti-semitic epithets from the floor of the convention as Senator Abe Ribicoff from Connecticut tried to describe the police riot outside the convention center will always remain seared in my memory.

watching my art teacher break down in tears during the day of June 5th because our Senator and her presidential candidate was dying in the hospital...

the feeling that the death of MLK had robbed us of a leader whose committment to peace and justice was unmatched in the US...

volunteering as a 13 year old for Gene McCarthy

making everyone uncomfortable at my own bar mitzvah "speech" by arguing against the war in viet nam...

i have powerful memories of that year.

whalerider

[Maestro]

8. It was an amazing into which I was born. (bit much for dial-ups)

Do any of ya'll remember this. This is what comedian, Dick Gregory, was passing out.





Ironic that we are still demanding the same in 2005.

[chat_noir]

9. 1968 TV Highlights

Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee reflects on how in 1964, LBJ promised we would not send our boys to a land war in Asia, and won by a 64% landslide. But within a few months, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is passed by Congress giving the Administration a blank check to rapidly escalate the Vietnam War. Gore reminds the delegates how costly this has been.

http://kronykronicle.com/1968/SenAlGoreSr.html



Paul Newman explains why he is for Gene McCarthy.

http://kronykronicle.com/1968/PaulNewman.html


More here:

http://www.e-pix.com/1968/

[orpupilofnature57]

18. COOOL!!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. "It was the best of times and the worst of times"

I was 3 years out of the marines and an anti-war activist and proud to be called a "radical", an "outside agitator", a "commie", and all the other labels the establishment put on me and my comrades. There was a real feeling that we could change the world into one that sought peace and social justice. It was an exhilirating and hopeful time.

It was also the time of repression, of betrayal, of shattered dreams.

'68 was the year that people still believed in the American ideal of freedom and justice. The assasinations of MLK, RFK, and the victory of the corrupt at the Chicago convention followed by the election of Nixon. But, we felt that all of that was the death throes of a failed system.

We were proved wrong at My Lai and Kent State. Followed by Reagan and "Morning in America" and the rise of nationalism.
And, it has continued to this day.

1968 was the highwater mark of the revolution that didn't happen.

[G_j]

11. the revolution that didn't happen.

driven underground
The struggle for peace and social justice never ends of course.
Though it has been so disheartening to have seen our peaceful warriors brought down by violence.

here is to never giving up! :toast:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. Age and experience has kept me hopeful but humbler.

I know longer believe in the "American ideal". I now look to the rest of the world for the necessary change. There is a revolution going on. The "have nots" have become weary of carrying us on their backs and are either ignoring us, or fighting us.

An agnostic, socialist, woman is set to win the presidency in Chile.
Hugo Chavez and others like him are moving SA to the left.
Asia is no longer an American protectorate
Europe is defying us.

The American Empire is crumbling. The idea that capitalism and the "free market" is no longer seen as workable in a practical or moral sense.

The revolution continues and there's even some (small) signs that it may catch on here.

[G_j]

14. ironically

SA moving to the left appears to be partly due to Bush.
He has scared a whole lot of people and stirred them. This gives me hope also in that sometimes an aggressive push will create an opposite reaction.
There are some forces which cannot be controlled or steered by even the most oppressive fascism and violence. Out of these things are born powerful movements and passions for peace and justice. I guess this can even be called a natural law.

[TahitiNut]

13. Yep. I was drafted and inducted in March ...

... did basic training at Fort Lost in the Woods (Misery), was stationed at Fort Sam, came down on orders to Viet Nam in October, was married in November, and celebrated the '69 New Year by arriving at Bien Hoa and then got assigned to USARV HQ at Long Binh.

It was one helluva year. The best thing about that year was the music.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

15. In '65 they asked me to extend my enlistment to go to Vietnam.

I rather foolishly refused in a youthful burst of vociferous idealism. Told the gunny sergeant what I though of the war and killing. Got 30 days mess-duty as a reward. I'd do it again even more vociferously. A couple of months after I got out, they were no longer asking. They were ordering. A couple of my comrades names are on the wall as a result.