Beginning to See the Light: Sex, Hope, and Rock-and-Roll

Learning from Chicago

Learning from Chicago i The Chicago protest was one of those rare political events that is not merely attended, but lived. What was most remarkable about it was how much living was concentrated in such a short time; the week of the Democratic Convention summed up a period of movement history as no other action has done since the historic Mississippi Summer Project. Chicago was an emotional marathon; between bouts of rage and fear, exhaustion and boredom, pessimism and euphoria, we slept little and badly. It was an experience from which, as I write this, I am still learning. It started out badly. The Mobilization had never recovered from the confusion following President Johnson's withdrawal (was the war over? was Robert Kennedy going to lead us into the light?), while Mayor Daley's scare campaign was a triumph of reverse public relations. McCarthy and Lowenstein urged their supporters to stay home; SDS was noncommittal; hippies accused the Yippies of luring kids to a bloodbath instead of a "Festival of Life"; local radical organizers worried about repression that would make it more difficult for them to operate within their communities. Only a tiny fraction of the expected 200,000 people showed up, and 127 A M E R I C A N G I R L S W A N T E V E R Y T H I N G some of the local organizers even left town to make sure the police couldn't blame them for anything. Poor organization resulted in potentially disastrous gaffes: centering the protest in isolated Lincoln Park rather than a downtown site; staging an illegal march in the middle of a park, with the only escape routes a few easily blocked bridges. Yet sometimes a political demonstration (like a play, or a love affair) just miraculously jells. Chicago jelled. All our mistakes somehow turned into assets; all Daley's mistakes got him deeper in trouble. We succeeded in disrupting the convention—spiritually at least—and demoralizing the Democratic Party. But this was secondary ; like typical Americans, we got our biggest kicks from contemplating our image in the media. The publicity was graphic and slanted in our favor, and we obtained it at notably little cost: no one died demonstrating, and most injuries were painful rather than disabling. Instead of the bitterness, political infighting, and accusations of contrived martyrdom that would have followed killings , there was a feeling of community that almost transcended ideological differences; added to the comradeship that came from spending so much time on the streets of a strange city was the solidarity forced on us by the authorities, who treated us all—hardcore street-fighters, McCarthy liberals, and those somewhere between (me)—with equal animus. After Black Wednesday we walked the streets grinning, greeting strangers "Peace, brother," and meaning it, flashing the V sign at every opportunity. Our expansiveness was accentuated by the unexpected friendliness of local people. Blacks radiated especially welcome sympathy. I had not experienced such genuine interracial good will in years; genuine, I say, because looking suspiciously for sarcasm and secret glee at white injuries, I found only respect for kids willing to put their bodies on the line. But white workers (not necessarily under thirty) also gave us the V; even a young cop, directing traffic on Michigan Avenue, spread two fingers and winked and smiled. Then there were the Chicago kids. All week they had been coming up to Lincoln Park to play dialogue with 128 Learning from Chicago the weirdos—tensely polite high school footballers arguing solemnly with revolutionaries, teenies asking half-seriously how to go about breaking away from their parents. There wasn't much overt hostility from the public. I heard that a few demonstrators got beaten up in the white working-class neighborhood near the International Amphitheater. Thursday night some white vocational students lay in wait for Dick Gregory's march up Michigan and chanted, without much enthusiasm, "Hippies go home." But that was about it. I went to Chicago mainly for negative reasons. I thought that the movement could not, without looking foolish, allow the Democrats to play their game in a complacent, business-as-usual atmosphere ; further, to have panicked in the face of Daley's threats would have been to display weakness and invite a general crackdown on dissent. I left knowing that something very positive had happened to me. Specifically: never had I been so...