The Battle for Michigan Ave '68

In this “compare and contrast” episode we look at the Democrat National Convention in the
tumultuous and radical times of 1968 and bouncing the event off of the upcoming tumultuous and radical times of 2024. Some of the historical events leading up to the two events line up in really weird "eternal reoccurance" ways and might let us check the “history repeats itself” narrative to a test. We might also want to play the lottery…

Featured Sources:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/vietnam-lbj-pleiku-haunts-democrats-115259/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJeLoMCF6Jo
https://www.history.com/videos/1968-riots-at-the-democratic-national-convention-in-chicagohttps://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/lyndon-b-johnsons-decision-not-to-run-in-1968
https://abc7chicago.com/1968-election-democratic-convention-presidential-national/4041989/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45226132

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Written / Produced / researched / Performed – Jon Towers

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
In the dark shadows, in the white cold. Fearlessly, we
search for knowledge new and old. We drink the strong
spirits and read the ancient tongs. The order of the Abercast.
We are the brave and the bold, The Abercast a

(00:36):
coult History, conspiracy and Violence.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Hey, welcome to the Evercast. I'm your host, John Towers.
We're going to be so this episode kind of got
away from me during the research phase, but we're going
to be talking about the Democratic National Convention nineteen sixty eight,

(01:39):
and we're looking at that in preparation for what is
sure to be a wild week in Chicago this week,
the Democratic Convention twenty twenty four. It's a little bit
of a compare and contrast kind of episode. So I
do have my weapon of mass distraction mixed up and

(02:00):
placed right here in my vessel of the art that teterature,
the GINGI hod. So let's get this party started. We
got a lot of shit to talk about today, oh god.

(02:20):
So in order to put some context into what happened,
you know, there's a lot of people talking about the
similarities between sixty eight and twenty twenty four as far
as the Democratic National Convention is concerned, and those compare
and contrasts have ramped up recently, not just due to

(02:47):
what people are right probably rightly guessing or there's going
to be a lot of violence, but also the comparisons
are piling up because of the LBJ step down and
deciding not to run, I choose not to run, and
what recently happened to Joe Biden. So we're gonna put

(03:09):
some of this history and context and just kind of
go through. We had a couple of audio clips to
listen to and some as always, some articles, you know,
as we are keeping track of and charting the the
death of Western civilization. So we're starting here at Politico Magazine,

(03:36):
and this was written in twenty fifteen by Michael Cohen,
How Vietnam Haunts the Democrats fifty years later, the Ghost
of Pliatku and LBJ linger over modern politics. We've done
some Vietnam episodes in the past. Probably the most recent

(03:58):
one and maybe the one that is most relevant, is
the Eternal Recurrence to Joe Biden, where we talk about
the completely botched and fucked up withdrawal from Afghanistan. So,

(04:18):
you know, let's get into it. February seventh, nineteen sixty five.
A company of three hundred Viet Cong gorillas armed with
Kalishnakoff's mortars and rifle grenades attacked an American helicopter base
named Camp haul Away in the town of Pliku, located
in the central highlands of South Vietnam. The raid, which

(04:39):
came just a few hours after the end of a
week long cease fire for the Tet Holiday, lasted only
five minutes, but it produced the highest single number of
US casualties in the war. Eight Americans were killed and
more than one hundred and twenty wounded. Crazy racist London

(05:01):
President Lyndon Johnson ordered an immediate military reprisal. Within fourteen hours,
US jets were flying bombing raids over North Vietnam. In reality,
Johnson and his advisors had already made the decision to
escalate US involvement in the war. Coup simply provided the
opportunity to do so. So I don't really want to

(05:22):
get into this whole you know, JFK was going to
de escalate the war. You know before that he got assassinated. Like,
that's not really what we're talking about. What we're talking
about is, you know, in the sixties leading up to this,
the I believe that the Vietnam War was seen as

(05:43):
a Democrat war, not democratic war. I believe it was
seen as a problem for or of caused by Democrats,
full stop. Period. That's it. Nixon got my office and
he's the one that actually started pulling the plug on
all stuff. And you know when you look at his
Nixon's response to the Pentagon papers, he We've talked about

(06:08):
this on an episode two if you go back. I mean,
we just have done so many episodes all linked to
all this kind of stuff. But one of the other
You're All Prisoners, that was another one of the good
Vietnam episodes, You're all POWs Now. Anyhow, when he heard

(06:29):
about the Pentagon papers getting leaked to the New York
Times and then publishing them, he was like, who cares, Like,
uh uh, this is all Jack and Lbg's bullshit, Like
he it wasn't until the machine started spinning did it
become a problem for for Nixon. And if you don't

(06:50):
know the Pentagon papers, there's just this internal study explaining
what happens from the beginning of World War two to
current to that current year. In the seventy seventy three
seventy two seventy five somewhere on that area. It's not
part of my studying. It's just shit, I know. So, uh.

(07:13):
They leaked to this to the New York Times, Ben Bradley,
ciasset Ben Bradley, and you know the reaction. The initial
reaction from Nixon was like, who gives a shit? Like
this is all just lays everything at Kennedy's Jack's doorstep,

(07:34):
and yeah, back to sorry for Babel, back to it.
The decision to retaliate Wood for all intentsive purposes, mark
the beginning of America's war in Vietnam, a conflict that
would last eight more years and take the lives of
fifty eight thousand Americans and million millions more Vietnamese at home.
And we create a permanent rift within the Democrat Party.

(07:55):
In the days after the attack, while while LBJ was
making the push for war warmonger, LBJ, one official inside
his administration vocally opposed the military escalation in Vietnam. Another thing,
just off the top of my head again is anti war.
The anti war movement in the sixties was a conservative movement.

(08:19):
It just was because the Democrat start start all this shit.
So that makes sense, right, It wasn't until CIA and
Hippies and menium manipulation, culture creation. Go back, listen to
those episodes. Hubert Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Days after ple Q, Humphrey,
Humphrey would submit a memo to the President that is

(08:41):
perhaps the most persistent document on the disaster that awaited
the United States in Southeast Asia and the president at home,
Johnson ignored it. Fifty years later, the events surrounding Who
offers an invaluable lens into not only Johnson's disaster stewardship
of the war, but also what might have been had

(09:04):
he heeded the advice of his vice president. Two days
after the jfk assassination in Dallas on November twenty second,
nineteen sixty three, Johnson met with his key foreign policy advisors,
where he made it clear and not only would there
be no change in US policy in Southeast Asia, but
also that he was not going to lose in Vietnam.

(09:28):
At the time, there were sixteen thousand US military advisors
read Special Forces Green Berets assisting the South Vietnamese government
in a war against communist insurgents, but the full nature
of the American involvement in the war remained undermined. Over
the next fourteen months. However, as Johnson refused to countence

(09:49):
a political settlement to the conflict, the direction of US
policy moved, in one inexorable decision, towards greater and more
direct military involvement. Finally, on January twenty seventh, nineteen sixty five,
only a week after Johnson's inauguration, national Security Advisor George
Sorry Advisor McGeorge Bundy, with the support of Defense Secretary

(10:15):
Robert McNamara, submitted to Johnson the so called Fork and
the Y Memo. The two men agreed that the US
political or the US policy in Vietnam had reached acrossroads
that the continuing on the current path can lead to
only disastrous defeat. The president must choose, Bundy wrote, between

(10:35):
two alternatives, to use military power in the Far East
and to force a change in communist policy, or deploy
all of our resources along a track of negotiation aimed
at salvaging what little can be preserved with no major
addition to our military president military risks. Both Bundy and

(10:57):
McNamara favored escalation, as did Johnson, who responded to the
declaration that a stable government or no stable government will
do what we ought to do. We will move strongly
the wheels Johnson, famous huge egotist as well in my

(11:20):
humble opinion, I'm not a psychologist. That's not where my
doctor is from. The wheels were set in motion. The
dependents of the US advisors were ordered home. Naval operations
were launched off the coast of North Vietnam with the
objective of baiting Hanoi into an attack, and on February seventh,
that plea coup. The Communists complied. The attack was hardly

(11:44):
out of the ordinary. The Vietcong had been hitting US
and South Vietnamese targets on a fairly regular basis, As Bundy,
who happened to be in Vietnam at the time and
would later note ply, coops are like street cars. Now
the administration had the excuse it needed to move strongly.

(12:04):
In a National Security Council meeting on the evening of
the plic coup attack, Johnson's aids uniformly supported retaliation, including
lbj's in house dove George Ball and the Deputy Secretary
of State and the administration's most prominent war skeptic. Only
the lone voice spoke out against the president's preferred action

(12:29):
Democratic Senate Majority leader Mike Mansfeld. Mansfeld, who was considered
to be an expert on Asian affairs, argued caution would
be our watchword. According to a summary memorandum of the meeting,
there was no stable government in South Vietnam, said Mansfield.
There had yet been another coup in Saigone just a

(12:51):
week and a half before. He urged Johnson to consider
the consequences of using force. There was, he said, the
possibility of sparking a large scale conflict with China, and
there was no clarity on the position of the Soviet
There was no clarity on the position the Soviet Union
would take. The results, warned Mansfield, could be worse than Korea,

(13:15):
packed full of Seinfeld references.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
Today, according to meeting notes, lbj tersely responded that he
had kept the shotgun over the mantle and the bullets
in the basement for a long time now, but that
the enemy was killing his personnel and he could not

(13:38):
expect them to continue their work if he did not
authorize them to take steps to defend themselves.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Falling back on the much abused analogy of the supposed
Western appeasement of Hitler, at Munich in nineteen thirty eight.
He said cowardice has gotten us into more wars than
response has, and that we would not have gotten into
World War One if we had not been courageous in
the early stages, nor world War two. The moment was

(14:07):
of crucial So here's an important thing to know about LBJ.
His political hero was FDR. I mean, I mean, yeah,
the Great Society, the you know, whatever, the new Deal,

(14:28):
it's all right there. The moment was of crucial importance.
It sent a clear signal that Johnson would accept no
criticism of his policies in Vietnam, even from a coequal
branch of government. Mansfield would subsequently tell the President that

(14:49):
he would keep his doubts about the war private, which
meant that as the war began to escalate, Johnson would
face a little pushback from the Congress. One had to
be careful about expressing doubt about either the prospects of
victory or the wisdom of our Vietnam policy, later wrote
Chester Cooper, a member of Johnson's National Security Council. Even

(15:12):
more worrisome, however, were Johnson's comments justifying his decision to
retaliate US involvement. Was not necessarily about protecting South Vietnam
from the Communists takeover, but rather demonstrating the American resolve.
The next day, Mansfield met again with Johnson and told
him he believed the US operations were intended to impress

(15:35):
Ho Chi Minhen. Johnson's perspective was much broader. According to
the minutes of the meeting, he noted that he also
intended to impress Soviet Premiers Jin Hmm. Sorry about that,
and a number of others in the world, including its
own citizens. The report for the President that Bundy wrote
on his return in the United States after the attack,

(15:57):
he took a similar line. There is ungrave weakness in
our posture in Vietnam which is within our power to fix,
and that is a widespread belief that we do not
have the will and force and patience and determination to
take the necessary action and to stay the course. Of course,
the issue for Johnson was much bigger than how his

(16:20):
actions would be perceived by foreign capitals. His greatest fear
was that a failure to contain Communism in Southeast Asia
would open him up to the same sort of who
lost China attacks that were lodged against the Democrats in
the fifties. For Johnson's strength and waging the Cold War
was a political imperative and the surest way to maintain

(16:42):
political support for his ambitions, his ambitious domestic agenda. It
was precisely the notion of an American credibility and a
determination to show no weakness or uncertainty in dealing with
the North vietnames that would so try magically extended to
the conflict. The United States was placing itself in the

(17:04):
mercy of the enemy's will to withstand American military pressure.
As long as the Communist kept fighting and the US
was unable to defeat them militarily, Johnson would find it
harder and harder to disengage from the conflict for fear
of the political fallout both at home and abroad. Backing

(17:26):
away with anything less than total surrender of the enemy
became virtually impossible. But the most important decision that came
out of the plic WU response was Johnson's endorsement of
Bundy's recommendation of sustained reprisals airstrikes against North Vietnam. On

(17:51):
February thirteenth, LBJ authorized Operation Rolling Thunder and aerial bombarding
campaign that would begin on March twenty sixth, nineteen sixty five,
and continue for more than three and a half years.
Once the air war began. Next came the need for
ground troops to protect the airfields from which the US
planes took off. Less than a month after the attack,

(18:13):
three thousand, five hundred US Marines came ashore at Danang,
the first US combat troops to arrive in Vietnam, and
thus beginning the cycle of escalation and fighting that would
continue for eight years. Yet the American people, who according
to polling at the time, strongly preferred negotiated outcome in

(18:36):
Vietnam to a major US military commitment, there were no
more the wiser. During the nineteen sixty four presidential campaign,
Johnson had famously pledged not to send American boys ten
thousand miles away to do what Vietnamese boys should be
doing for themselves. In the wake of Plicou, Johnson continued
to keep them in the dark about his plans for Vietnam.

(19:00):
His aids not to discuss the reprisal attacks as though
they were represented a change in policy, and he disregarded
advice from Bundy, who told him it was imperative that
the American people understand that the prolonged fight in Vietnam
would be long and arduous, and when his press aid
Bill Moyers recommended a major presidential statement, Johnson shot him down. Indeed,

(19:24):
a few Johnson's inner circles were willing to throw themselves
in front of the escalation train on Vietnam. Vice President
Hubert Humphrey would prove to be the exception. All Right,
I'm losing time here. I'm gonna skip down to the end.
During the summer sixty eight Democratic droves demanded peace offering

(19:44):
from the likely nominee, who is Hubert Humphrey at the time.
Part of the part that I skipped over as Johnson
announced that he wasn't going to run for re election,
and we're going to get into that a little bit
more depth. Humphrey stuck with the White House, even embracing
the administration policies at the raucous riot torn Party convention

(20:05):
in Chicago. It was only at the end of September,
six weeks before the general election, in a speech in
Salt Lake City, Utah, that Humphrey finally declared independence, albeit tepidly,
and called for a bombing halt in Vietnam. But it
was too little, too late. After launching a furious comeback
post Salt Lake City, he fell short on election Day,

(20:27):
losing to Nixon by five hundred thousand votes. Republicans would
go on to win four of the next five presidential elections.
More important, Nixon's victory would spur the GOP's political ascendancy
and the birth of the conservative anti government populism that
has become the lguina franca of American politics. Just as

(20:50):
Humphrey Want warned in February of nineteen sixty five, the
war would become a mine field for Democrats. It claimed
Humphrey himself as its greatest victim. The war wrecked political
coalition that had allowed the party to win seven of
the previous nine presidential elections. To be sure, the Democratic

(21:10):
coalition of Southerners, the urban ethnic whites, labor blacks, liberals.
It was always fragile, but the fight over civil rights
crime and the role of government that took place in
the sixties exacerbated longstanding regional racial and ideological divisions in
the party. The fights over civil rights crime and the

(21:36):
role of government that took place in the sixties exacerbated
long standing regional racial and ideological divisions in the party.
I felt that that sentence baared rerating. But Vietnam was
the kill shot, an easily preventable circumstance that, at a
time of maximum peril for the party, created division between

(22:00):
Hawks and Doves that tore the party asunder. Those divisions
would manifest themselves four years later, when McGovern, running on
a peace platform and with the strong support of many
of the same activists who had backed McCarthy and Kennedy,
won the Democratic nomination. Many in the anti communist wing
of the party, which is non existent anymore, particularly in

(22:22):
label in Labor, turned its back on him, helping pave
the historic landslide re election for Nixon. For the next
two decades, the left would hold sway within the Democratic Party.
Jimmy Carter would make human rights the centerpiece of his
foreign policy. The Democrats in Congress strongly opposed to the Reagans,

(22:42):
the Reagan arms build up of the eighties, the proxy
wars fought in Central America and the Gulf War. Eventually,
in the nineties, the Hawks would return, convinced in part
that the best antidote to the McGovern like dubvishness was
Republican like hawkishness. In some respect, this foreign policy divide
was never truly, never truly been bridged, and there is

(23:06):
perhaps no wider a gap in the party than the
one between the duvish Democrats grassroots and the hawkish elite party.
This was written in twenty fifteen, pretty insightful from the
author the hawkishness that has driven, in some measure by
the same political considerations that led Lyndon Johnson to resist
de escalation in Vietnam fifty years ago this month. As

(23:30):
it turns out, half a century later, Democrats are still
haunted by the ghosts simply coop.

Speaker 4 (23:41):
With America's future under challenge right here at home, with
our hopes and the world's hopes for peace and the
balance every day.

Speaker 5 (23:53):
I do not believe.

Speaker 4 (23:56):
That I should devote an hour day of my time
to any personal partisan causes, or to any duties other
than the awesome duties of this office, the presidency of

(24:34):
your country. Accordingly, I shall not see and I will
not accept denomination of my party for another term as
your president. But let men everywhere know, however, that a

(24:58):
strong and confident and a vigilant America stands ready tonight
to seek an honorable peace, and stands ready tonight to
defend an honored cause, whatever the price, whatever the burden,

(25:19):
whatever the sacris that duty may require. Thank you for listening,
good night, and God bless all of you.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
All right, So that was the man himself LBJ. He
tacked that on to a speech he was giving, I
think from the Oval Office, and he just kind of
threw it in there at the end the end of the speeds.
So now we're gonna skip to, Oh, I have this

(25:54):
in the wrong order. Here, hold on a little bit
in say baseball. The Bill of Rights Institute Lyndon B.
Johnson decision not to run in nineteen sixty eight, written
by Robert McMahon Ohio State University. As sixty eight dawned,
President Lyndon B. Baines, Johnson had every expectation, notwithstanding the

(26:17):
growing unpopularity of the Vietnam War, that he would easily
receive the Democratic Party's nomination that summer to serve a
second four year term and then cruise to reelection against
his Republican opponent in November. He had pushed through his

(26:39):
ambitious legislative agenda to create the Great Society at the
beginning of his term, he presided over a booming economy
due to the large nineteen sixty four tax cut for
business and taxpayers. What would his party say about him?
Right now? Then? He received authorization from Congress to send
troops of Vietnam to fight the communism, and he was

(26:59):
confident that the country was winning the war. Senator Eugene
McCarthy who recently announced that he would challenge Johnson for
the party's nomination, but the Minnesota bid struck the President,
his chief political advisors, and most observers as inconsequential and
even unrealistic. Johnson's decision to run was easy because he

(27:20):
sought to become a great president like his political hero
Franklin Roosevelt. However, the ted defensive launch January thirtieth by
America's North Vietnamese and Vietcong enemies, an aim that toppling
the US supported Saigon regime, upset Johnson's optimistic assumptions and

(27:42):
tragic fashion, Oh dramatic fashion. It was probably also tragic.
It was set the stages for one of the most
tumultuous presidential elections in modern history. Hold my beer. The
North Vietnam Vietnamese forces regular Vietnamese army and the Viet
conguerrillas failed to achieve their more ambitious goals with the

(28:05):
TET attacks. They were unable to rally significant popular support
for the uprising they wanted in South Vietnam, and they
could not hold any of the city's towns they had targeted,
and they failed to overthrow the South Vietnamese government. North
Vietnam's bold gamble did succeed, nonetheless, and spectacularly so, in
puncturing the illusion of progress that the Johnson administration had

(28:29):
been holding before. The American public support for the administration's
policies began to erode steadily in the wake of TET.
Before the offense of fifty percent of those polled believed
the United States was making progress and bringing the war
to a successful conclusion. After TET, only thirty three percent

(28:49):
held the view. A remarkable forty nine percent expressed the
opinion that the United States never should have intervened in
Vietnam in the first place. February eighth, New York Senator
Robert F. Kennedy, sworn political enemy of Johnson and an
increasingly outspoken opponent of the war, offered a withering critique
of the administration's policy that resgnated with the glowing ranks

(29:13):
of skeptics. Our enemy, savagely striking at a will across
all of South Vietnam, has finally shattered the mask of
official illusion, which we have concealed our true circumstances, even
from ourselves, he declared. In a major public address, Kennedy
called for an immediate negotiation aimed at a peaceful sentiment,

(29:35):
emphasizing that the United States appeared unable to defeat our
enemy or break his will, at least without a huge, long,
and even more costly effort. Johnson's own political party, dominant
since the New Deal of the thirties, was by then
profoundly split over the war. The point was driven home

(29:56):
on March twelfth when McCarthy nearly defeated Johnson in the
first present cindential primary in New Hampshire. Then, just four
days later, the charismatic Kennedy announced his bid for the
Democratic presidential nomination, confronting Johnson with much more formidable political
foe than the introverted, less well known McCarthy. Meanwhile, from

(30:17):
the other end of the political spectrum, Republican contender Tricky
Dick Nixon and Third party hopeful George Wallace, a former
Democrat governor of Alabama, ardent segregationist and supporter of the war,
were already or they were readying their challenges to the
globalism and liberalism of an increasingly fractured Democratic Party. The battle.

(30:41):
Johnson responded to mounting political pressures in those shifting political
opinion popular opinions by announcing on March thirty first hey
a major shift in US policy in the Vietnam War
and an address. In an address to the nationwide television audience,
President said he was ceasing nearly all bombing raids against

(31:02):
North Vietnam, and he called on hanoid interformal negotiations with
the United States to secure a peace settlement. Just before
the close of his address, Johnson shocked his listeners by
declaring that he would neither seek nor accept this party's
presidential nominations. We just heard this. Johnson's decision was not

(31:23):
easy because it was driven by the deep political ambition
that he was greatly troubled by the divisions and the
turbulence in American society, and by an increasing increasingly unpopular
war that he was so closely tied to. For formal
peace talks opened in Paris in sixty eight. But the

(31:43):
unrusted the United States enormously complicated. I think that's what
I think, that's all that we're going to get into.
Let me just check it. And here. The election of
nineteen sixty eight proved pivotal in the course of modern
American history and numerous respet It deconstructed the efficacy of
the backlash tactics pioneered by Nixon and Wallace to highlight

(32:08):
and to condemn the perceived excesses of liberal permissiveness and
the welfare state, and the anti war movement and the
counter culture. And it also brought to the White House
a chief executive dedicated to extra citing the US from
the chaos of Vietnam, but to do so slowly and deliberately,

(32:30):
without compromising the credibility of the US commitments, without dismissing
America's commanding status as a global superpower, and without threatening
his plans for dealing with China and the Soviet Union.
In political terms, it heralded the high water mark of
the new Deal order and the onset of the new

(32:52):
Republican ascendancy. So imagine if we would have just took deliberate,
slow deliberate thought through steps and withdrawing from Afghanistan instead
of just going like, hey, bitch bye, you know what
I'm saying.

Speaker 5 (34:27):
Members of the Youth International Party, Hippies they called themselves,
converged on Chicago. They said they were there to protest
the war, poverty, racism, and other social ills. Some of
them were also determined to provoke a confrontation to draw
attention from the Convention to the streets. Mayor Richard Daley

(34:47):
vowed to keep it peaceful, even if it took force
to keep the peace. He was backed by twelve thousand police,
five thousand National guardsmen, seventy five hundred regular army troops.

(35:31):
Hundreds of marchers and dozens of policemen were injured. Restraint
was absent on both sides. This was later called a
police riot. During that frightful week, the demonstrators repeatedly tried
to march on the side of the convention the stockyards.
Repeatedly they were forced back, but even inside the convention hall,

(35:54):
the virus of violence was pervasive. Dan Rather and Walter
Cronkite CBS News. Take your hands off of men you
intend to arrest me. Don't push me, please.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
Couldn't happen to a nicer person. By the way, Dan
rather thank you all right, sorry for stepping on that
audio presentation that was actually from History Channel dot com.
We're about to get into a lot greater depth on
what actually happened. This is from ABC. I witnessed News seven,

(36:35):
the Chicago ABC affiliate. So this is Disney, so whatever,
take it for green with a green of salt. This
was written in August of twenty eighteen, and it's called
The Days of Rage, the Timeline of the nineteen sixty
eight Democratic National Convention. The nineteen sixty eight National Democratic
National Convention in Chicago has become one of the most

(36:57):
emblematic events of the decade, a calmon of years of
hope and idealism that spiraled into days of rage, causing
wounds to the party in the country that some scholars
perceive persist to this day. Divisions within the Democrat National
the Democrat Party over the War in Vietnam war on

(37:18):
display inside the convention hall, outside in the streets and
the parks of Chicago, anti war demonstrators were met with
violence from the Chicago Police Department and the Army National
Guard under the direction of then Mayor Richard Day. President
Lyndon Baines Johnson announced in March of sixty eight that

(37:39):
he would not be running for re election. A broad
array of politicians and organizers saw the opportunity to influence
the course of the war. Some, including Vice President Hubert Humphrey,
supported the war. Others, like Senator Eugene McCarthy and the
young political organizers of the New Left, were strongly against
the war and wanted to adopt in a official plank

(38:00):
opposing it. The Youth International Party or Yippies, Students for
Democratic Society read Communists, and other New Left read Communists
organizers applied for permits to hold protests in the city
parks during the convention. Daily delayed granting any permits, leaving

(38:24):
organizers in limbo and allowing frustrations to mount. Fed Up
with waiting, organizers decided their voice would be heard with
or without permission. August twenty third, nineteen sixty eight, three
days before so this would have been Friday, three days
before the official start of the DNC. The Youth International

(38:45):
Party holds their own candidate nomination in Chicago Civic Center
now called Daily Plaza. Daily Plaza not to be confused
with Day Plaza. There is a large police president presidence
as the Yippies nominate their own candidate for president, a
pig named Pigasus. Seven people are arrested along with Pegasus.

(39:10):
August twenty fourth, nineteen sixty eight, delegates begin to arrive
in Chicago at Lincoln Park. Protesters hold drills as they
prepare for their demonstrations. Mayor Daily deployed the National Guard
of The New York Times reports, he also implements an
eleven pm curfew for the park on that day, and
protesters obey the curfew. August twenty fifth, nineteen sixty eight,

(39:37):
the Yippies begin their Festival of Life in Lincoln Park.
They are about two thy attendees, according to the newspaper
reports at the time. Police sweep the park at eleven
pm and beat demonstrators who don't leave, punishing them out
of the park and into the Old Town neighborhood. In
the wake of the night's unrest, the New York Times

(40:00):
reports that the National Guard has once again been given
the quote shoot to kill unquote orders if protesters do
not obey them or if they see looting. I mean,
that statement is fucking wild. The first thing it reminds
me of is that video that's been making the rounds

(40:20):
during the COVID lockdowns in Minnesota with uh, you know
when Tim Walls was governor, and uh, it's the it's
like a squad of cops in body armor just opening
fire with paintball guns at people who won't get out
of go off their porch and into their house because

(40:41):
of COVID. It's a shocking it's a shocking video. And
you could say, yeah, they're just fucking paintballs, but I mean,
just what you like you're I mean, I mean, it's
it's fucking crazy. I don't even know if they were paintballs.

(41:03):
They might be. They might have been millsims or something.
I don't know, I don't know what it was, but
they didn't the guns didn't have hoppers because originally I
was like, holy shit, they're opening fire and then so
everyone runs in the house and the I think it
was a female that got hit, was like they shot
me like right in my crotch and there's like a
big green paint mark like you know, you know where

(41:25):
you know what I'm saying, We're gonna see more of that?
Are we gonna see that? This week. That'd be fun.
August back to it. Sorry for blabbing, I'm so far behind.
August twenty sixth, nineteen sixty eight, Mayor Daily officially opens
the nineteen sixty eight Democratic National Convention at the International Amphitheater,

(41:49):
which closed in nineteen ninety nine, on the South side
of Chicago near the Union Stockyard. Thousands protest the start
of the convention in the South Loop and the in
Grant Park. The Festival of Life continues in Lincoln Park.
Inside the convention, tensions in the party become obvious as
delegates argue long into the night outside in Lincoln Park.

(42:12):
The police wind up using tear gas and a clear
to clear protesters. At eleven PM. Demonstrators are reported covering
the protests of the demonstrators, and reporters covering the protests
are beaten by Chicago cops. August twenty seven, nineteen sixty eight,

(42:33):
protests continue in multiple locations. In Grant Park, the protesters
are largely peaceful. They're only burning Minnesota down, but they're
largely peaceful in the In Lincoln Park, they are violent.
Tensions continue to rise inside the convention. Dan Rather, who
is a awful human being then a reporter for CBS

(42:57):
is roughed up by security as the attempts to intervene
or interview a delegate who's being escorted out of the hall.
The incident is broadcast live on television. Couldn't happen to
a nicer guy, Dan Rather? August twenty eighth, nineteen sixty eight.
The only permit issued by Mayor Daily for a protest
is for August twenty eighth. Approximately fifteen thousand people attend

(43:21):
the demonstration in Grant Park, Chicago. Cops form a human
barricade around the protest and prevent demonstrators from marching to
the convention. As a result, protesters end up on Michigan
Avenue and outside the Conrad Hilton Hotel. Police and National
guardsmen beat protesters in some reporters. Despite the large media presence,

(43:44):
a strike by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers prevent
the scene from being broadcast how convenient, but the television
networks shuttle the footage to the hubs at their convention hall,
from which the sh shocking images are then broadcast. The
riots become known as the Battle of Michigan Avenue. Hundreds

(44:07):
are injured and hundreds more arrested. August twenty ninth, nineteen
sixty eight. Inside the convention hall, President Vice President Hubert
Humphrey accepts his party's nomination for President of the United States. Outside,
hundreds of protesters try to march into the International Amphitheater,
and they were stopped with tear gas and more violence

(44:30):
from the cops. The convention officially ends. Chicago Police said
a total of five hundred and eighty nine people were arrested,
in one hundred nineteen police officers and one hundred protesters
were injured. A Medical Committee for Human Rights said more
than a thousand people, including protesters and members of the press,
were injured and treated during the Democratic National Convention. The

(44:56):
events of and around the nineteen sixty eight DNC he
exposed a deep rift in the Democratic Party and the
New Left read communists. Many organizers of the New Left
would point to the DNC as the moment the moment
the movement started to fall apart, especially as it failed

(45:18):
to affect the party's nomination. In November, Humphrey narrowly lost
the election to Richard Nixon. On December one, a panel
led by Dan Walker released its findings on violence surrounding
the DNC in a report called Rights in Conflict the
Walker Report, the nature of the response was unrestrained and

(45:43):
indiscriminate police violence on many occasions, particularly at night. The
Walker Report stated the violence was made all the more
shocking by the fact that it was often inflicted upon
persons who had broken no law, disobeyed no order, made
no threat. These included peaceful demonstrators, onlookers, and large numbers

(46:06):
of residents who were simply passing through or happened to
live in the areas where the confrontations were occurring. Well,
I mean you take that at face value, right, and
also consider the source. What is in the spins that
were unleashed? In response to an article in the Los

(46:28):
Angeles Times in nineteen ninety six, Walker himself wrote into
the paper to clarify his meaning what I wrote in
the personal summary of the over three hundred page fact
filled documentation of the tragic events in this a majority
of Chicago police acted responsibly. A minority engaged in violence
and can only be termed a police riot. Walker's letter reads,

(46:51):
no one reads objectively the facts detailed in Rights in
Conflict could reach any other conclusion regarding that a minority
of the police on duty. Those facts were taken for
many hours of movies, thousands of still pictures, and thousands
of eyewitnesses accounts, including those contained in over one thousand

(47:13):
FBI statements taken from participants. So I've survived something like
a riot, and I can tell you that it is
a terrifying situation. I mean wildly terrifying. I believe that
I defied death that day. And as a counterpoint to that,

(47:37):
or not as a counterpoint, but as to expound a
little bit, I've worked with cops for a long time.
I'm not saying that I was a cop, not a cop,
but I was in a situation. I was a security professional,
and I was in as many, many, multiple hundreds of situations,
were working directly with police officers. And I know that

(47:58):
they are not an infallible I know that they are
actually quite fearful people. Sometimes many times they are. There's
something about that. I believe it's something about their lack
of training that makes them fear fearful. I know that

(48:21):
a lot of cops, not all cops. I know a
lot of cops. Probably most cops lie. I know they
can lie right to your face. I'm not saying legally,
I'm saying like ethically and morally, they can look right
into your eyes and tell you things that are not true.
And so you know, I can believe that these guys

(48:41):
were scared shitless so they lashed out at the crowd.
I believe that. And I also believe that quote protesters
unquote protesters. You know, I mean, just look at videos
of protests. I think that a lot of them go
there and they want to get beat up. They want know,
relive this fucking thing. This thing is like like riot

(49:05):
and I wore riots and stuff, and protests in the
sixties and seventies are like a And also like we mentioned,
like depending on papers like Watergate in that that there's
something about that slice of time. It was like the
leftist like Golden Age. Uh, there's something about it where

(49:28):
leftists today want to reenact that. Like every leftist reporter
really wants to be Woodward and Bernstein, Cia Assets. Every
person that shows up at like a stupid BLM protest
or whatever, like they really want to like be you know,

(49:48):
h like have a hippie vibe from the from the
sixties or something like. It's just something that you could
see if you're looking at it. You could see it,
you know, like I mentioned as there some of my
cot buddies like under the bus just then. But I'm
being truthful with you, and the riot situation that I

(50:09):
was in was I don't even want to tell you
where I was at. I'm so embarrassed. All right, I'll

(50:45):
come clean. It was at an oz festy. It was
at an oz fest and my dirty white ass was
in danger. I could have died. Fred Durst almost killed me.
I could tell you the whole story. If I hadn't already,

(51:06):
I might have even told you that I don't know
NPR nineteen sixty eight Democratic National Convention A week of hate.
More than fifty years ago, the Democratic Party. The Democratic
Party's National Convention nineteen sixty eight continued to haunt the
party in cast shadows over US politics rights James Jeffrey

(51:28):
the signs before the Democratic National Convention convened in Chicago
from August twenty sixth to twenty ninth in nineteen sixty eight,
they were never good. Anti war protesters began arriving in
the city a week before, vowing to change the party's
policy towards the increasingly hated Vietnam War. They included new

(51:51):
left radicals, long haired hippies so called yippies, members of
the Youth International Party, a radical youth oriented counter culture
offshoot of the sixties free speech and anti war movements
fomaining against the US government. Some were bent on disrupting
the convention by whatever means necessary, while others focused on

(52:14):
more left field tactics such as holding counterculture convention offering
the likes of a nude grope in for peace, prosperity,
and workshops on joint rolling, guerrilla theater, and draft dodging.
Rumors were floated by some of the more imaginative protesters

(52:36):
that they were going to insert LSD into the city's
drinking water and send out stud teams to seduce the
wives and daughters of the delegates delegates, all designed to
unnerve the Democrat delegates and to keep the Chicago police
and investigative agencies guessing the city's tough talking Mayor Richard

(52:59):
Deey wasn't our daily, wasn't taking any chances. He mobilized. Okay,
we just did that. Not all protesters are angry. They
have a point to make. But these protests regarded the
police as pigs, who in turn regarded them as draft
dodging hippies, says a journalist Dennis Brack, who covered the convention.

(53:19):
The International Amphitheater hosting the convention was encircled by barbed
wire and a long, high chain link fence, while at
eleven PM curfew was imposed across the city. It was
worse than expected by the city's authorities, and before the
convention was over it had happened a chaotic, bloody shambles

(53:40):
from which the Democratic Party never fully recovered, changing and
influencing the American political landscape up into this day. This
picture is fucking wild man. This is BBC World US
Canada News again. It's called the eineteen sixty eight Democratic

(54:01):
National Convention, a week of hate. This picture that's in
this part of the article is amazing. It's an army guy.
He's dressed in an army like uniform. He's got a
helmet on, he's got an m one with a bayonet
affixed to it, and on the he's over the ground.

(54:22):
There's these two dudes. I think one's a one's a
black guy for sure, and he's just bleeding from his neck.
And there's a guy laying next to him in the
street with boot bloody bootprints stuck all over his back.
Like this picture is amazing? How did this never get
used as a like the cover of a punk rock album,

(54:44):
bro or like a wow wow wow wow, come with
it now, this is Taylor May. It might even be fake.
It's so good. It was the most intense week of
hate I've ever experience against, mister Brack said in an
oral history interview given by the Donald Brisco Center for

(55:05):
American History in Austin, Texas, which houses Bras Archives. Combat
heat is different. This was a plain old one group
hating another, and it always stay closer to the older cops.
They were safer, but the younger cops could really hurt you.
As delegates checked into the Conrad Hilton Hotel in the

(55:30):
convention center, organizers of the protests were placed under electronic
and direct personal surveillance. Roadblocks, bar avenues of centuries, jeeps
and barbed wire on their bumpers took armed troops to
expected trouble spots. It was a city under siege. It
was this sort of thing that you would find in
a third world city. Some would argue that twenty twenty

(55:53):
four Chicago is a third World city, says Stephen Shames,
who attempted to come the invention both as a journalist
for the underground press and a protester. America was on
the edge. The decade appeared ensnared and unending. Violence both
abroad and at home. In Detroit had been torn apart
during the long hot summer of sixty seven by violent

(56:16):
and bloody confrontations between Blacks and police. Riots had broken
out at the Capitol Washington, Washington earlier in nineteen sixty eight,
following the April assassination of doctor Martin Luther King, which
was followed in June by the assassination of Bobby Kennedy.
We'd be covering confrontations and riots for two to three years,

(56:38):
mister Brack says. All the journalists had their own riot gear.
Was expected to happen back then. It was just another
day at the office. By Sunday, twenty five August, the
day before the convention started, the city in city's Lincoln Park,
had been taken over by anti war demon's traders, waving

(57:01):
banners and shouting obscenities about President Lyndon Johnson and chanting hey, hey, LBJ.
How many kids, have you killed today? That night, about

(57:21):
one thousand demonstrators defied curfew, resulting in an estimated five
hundred police wading into the park and waving truncheons. They're
predominantly young. Prey fled or turned and hurled rocks, bottles,
and profanities at the officers. As reported, and the cameramen

(57:43):
captured the scene, Jules would cover a Journalists covering the
convention later wrote in his book The Year the Dream Died,
revisiting nineteen sixty eight in America. So I think we
get the I'll do this part and then we get
the picture. The animosity found its way to the International

(58:04):
International Amphitheater when the convention started the next day. Heated
arguments and even scuffles broke out of the convention during
a convoluted mess over what policy to take on Vietnam
and who should be the Democratic nomination to nomination to
run for president. Everything ran over schedule. Come Tuesday night,

(58:27):
even more protesters in Lincoln Park refused to observe the
eleven o'clock curfew. Police poured tear gas into the park,
eventually driving out about three thousand, mostly young protesters, were
arresting one hundred and forty of them. Police bust out
of the woods in selective pursuit of new photographers. Nicholas
Van Hoffman wrote in The Washington Post, pictures are unanswerable

(58:49):
evidence in court. They'd taken off their badges and their
name plates, even the unit patches of their shoulders to
become a mob of identical, unidentified, identifiable club swingers. God,
I have a great story about this. Sorry about that.

(59:09):
I have a great story about cops removing their identification
to deal with rioters. But I cannot tell you. I
just can't tell you if it's killing me. All Right,

(59:30):
let's wrap this fucker up. So what is the Democratic
National Convention in twenty twenty four? The presidential nominating convention
in which delegates the US United States Democratic Party will
vote on the party platform and ceremoniously report their vote
to the nominee Vice President Harris. I don't remember which

(59:54):
way to say her name, so I'm not gonna People
are getting called racists over that shit, so I'm not
gonna sure touch I don't remember, and to a firmer
choice of government. Tim Walls of Minnesota for Vice President
the twenty twenty four presidential election is scheduled to be
held August nineteenth to August twenty second, twenty twenty four,

(01:00:17):
at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois. Delegates nominated Harris
for president through online and phone voting at the What
that last died from August first to August fifth. Harris
is the first black woman and the first South Asian

(01:00:39):
person to be the presidential no knee of a major
political party in the United States, the first Democratic presidential
nominee from the Western United States. What all right, We're
just gonna skip to the most relevant part of this
Wikipedia article, security security. Fifty million in federal funding will

(01:01:07):
be fifty million dollars in federal funding will be provided
for security spending. As a major party presidential nominating convention
in twenty twenty four, Democratic National Convention will be designated
a National Special Security Event and will be the second
such event to be held in Chicago to receive this designation,

(01:01:29):
with the first having been the twenty twelve NATO Summit.
By June twenty twenty three, the United States Secret Service
had begun collaborating. Okay, we'll see how that works out
on preserving for the preparations for the convention with the
Chicago Police Department and other police departments will be involved
in the convention. Is anyone else just curious to see

(01:01:51):
what else what the Secret Service is going to fuck up?
It was like obviously the Trump attempted assassination thing, and
then last week like Secret Service broke into someplace so
they can use the toilet and eat all the free
mints on the desk That wasn't Atlena. What is that?

(01:02:12):
What are they gonna do this week? We'll see wish
I should make up a bingo card on what they're
gonna do. Protests and demonstrations related to the US government
support for Israel and their ongoing invasion of Gaza are
expected to emerge while the convention is being held. In
preparation for the event, party leaders demonstrated confidence in Chicago

(01:02:34):
police and federal officials to manage protesters, using such methods
as drawing set parameters for demonstrations to take place, as
well as initiating mass arrests in cases such as these
regulations being violated. As of April twenty twenty four, organizers
expect as many as thirty thousand protesters in Chicago during

(01:02:58):
the convention. Commentators have drawn comparisons between upcoming convention and
the nineteen sixty eight convention which we just talked about.
Someone also held in Chicago, in which protests opposed to
the Vietnam War turned violent when the city used extreme
levels of police brutality to suppress the protesters. May twenty

(01:03:22):
twenty four, Politico reported that party leaders were considering limiting
in person gatherings at the United Center to prime time
sessions only to reduce the possibility of disruption, which would
include holding official business to McCormick place. What's the rest

(01:03:44):
of this and possibly of the formal certification taking place
before the convention due to conflicts with deadline requirements in
Ohio and retaining elements of twenty twenty convention, including a
focus on pre recorded segments such as the virtual roll call.
We all remember that one way, you know the light

(01:04:06):
In the light of the assassination attempt on Orange Man
on July thirteenth, the Secret Service will secure the United
Center and the immediate area surrounding it, and the Detroit
or sorry Chicago Police Department will secure everything outside and
the inner perimeter, with both agencies securing rooftops of all

(01:04:26):
buildings that they may have a line of sight to
the United Center. On Monday, August twelfth, the first round
of parking restrictions took place in an effort for the
DNC in Chicago. Some residents, such as people at a
senior living apartment complex near major Democratic National Convention sites
in Chicago, are confused and frustrated with the no parking

(01:04:50):
zone restrictions outside and the Chicago DNC perimeter. They say
no parking signs have started appearing in their streets even
though they are outside the convey mentions car free zones.
These restrictions found it an unwelcome surprise to lose the
street parking, for which they claim is now interfering with
their day to day lives. Yeah, I imagine not being

(01:05:11):
able to park, Like, how is that not gonna agitate
your life? Interfere with your life? So organizations such as
Sammy Done, I'm unfamiliar with that one and it's not blue,
so I can't want it. To learn more, Code Pink,
the Answer Coalition, and several others are planned to demonstrate

(01:05:34):
and generate publicity. I believe the story that we're gonna
be talking about this week is gonna be what the
several others are. I'm John Towers. This has been the
advertasse to see you next week as we track our
the death of Western civilization. Here for all time on

(01:05:55):
the internet. The government's going to control next week. I
don't know, weird time bro. Oh god, I gotta start this.

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