Last night I watched "The Trial of the Chicago 7," a fine movie written and directed by the magnificent Aaron Sorkin. Those events, too, were during a time of great national division over the war. Johnson was vilified, the mounting deaths were on the minds of the tens of thousands of demonstrators in the streets of Chicago. The "Justice Department" illegally plotted against the demonstrators; the Chicago police gave brutality a face seen by the whole world. The Kerner Commission would later call it a "police riot." (I watched some of it as a reporter and was chased through the streets by baton-wielding cops. I can testify that it hurts to be hit by those "batons.")
Black Panther Bobby Seale, who began the trial of the "Chicago 8" got a mistrial declared after Judge Julius Hoffman had him bound and gagged in the courtroom. So the eight became seven.
The Seven - Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellenger, John Froines, and Lee Weiner - went on trial allegedly for inciting a riot, but it was actually a part of a revolution of opposition to and disgust for the Vietnam war. Some were rude, profane, disruptive, impolite and sarcastic. They had been such since the beginning of the Chicago demonstrations, except that Tom Hayden was a more "moderate" voice seeking "political" solutions rather than social revolution.
My point is that it was the rude, sarcastic, profane, impolite, and revolutionary tactics that "won." Even Tom Hayden, later a "conventional" politician in the California Assembly and Senate recognized the need to be disruptive, loud and impolite. William Kunstler, generally considered a "radical" lawyer said he became even more radical as the trial progressed and the government misuse of power became more and more evident.
The focus then was Lyndon Johnson, the Democrats (except for the anti-war Democrats, and there were many), the Justice Department and the unending expanding of the war. The trial in 1969 was a turning point in solidifying opposition to the war. And the trial itself revealed the depth of the government's misuse of its powers.
The seven, Bobby Seale, and literally tens of thousands of others risked much, even death, to oppose the injustice of the war. They went after an entire administration from the President on down. And, though it took some more years, they prevailed.
I make no apologies for being angry with those who gloss over the errors of President Trump, his trashing of our democracy and the attitudes of his aides who supported him as he brought us to the brink. This president has spent more time massaging his ego and seeking re-election than he has in caring about the people who have died or the virus that was killing them.
On that last matter, there are parallels between 1969 and today. People are dying in a war and the president and government won't admit they are losing it.
