Antiwar Protests

After graduating from high school, I spent a year and a half or so hitchhiking around the country, going through most of the lower 48 states, with the exception of some of the ones that scared me, like Mississippi and Alabama.

I also took part in several antiwar protests during this time. Actually, even before I graduated from high school, as I was at the Democratic Convention protests in 1968, although I was arrested shortly after arriving in Chicago, so it's probably fairer to say that I had traveled to Chicago with the intention of taking part in the antiwar protests but was arrested while waiting for a crossing light within a half hour or so of arriving in Chicago, and shut up in a cell with people who looked like murderers until my father came to get me. He wasn't pleased, since Chicago is about four hundred miles away.

In all, I was detained thirty-four times during antiwar protests, although I was actually charged only once, and that with criminal trespass. Oddly enough, that time I had just returned to Menominee, Michigan from California to find a large crowd of people at the Menominee Marina. Since I had an apartment that overlooked the Marina, I could hardly miss it.

I walked down to see what was going on, and found some friends who told me that it was an antiwar protest, and that this was the second day of it. It was strange to find so many people coming out for an antiwar protest in Menominee, since the city was hardly a bastion of radical politics.

We were hardly raging against the machine holding signs and shouting epithets. Rather, we were sitting on the lawn catching up on things when the police came and told me I was being arrested for inciting a riot and criminal trespass.

Inciting a riot? I hadn't even known that anything was going on until a couple of hours before. Besides, it was hardly a riot, and I certainly didn't incite it.

By the time I got to court, they had dropped the crazy charge and I pled guilty to criminal trespass, although I hadn't even known that they had made the Marina off-limits the day before. I was given thirty days probation the District judge, whose son was a friend of mine, and at whose door I didn't even have to knock when I visited.

Under the terms of my probation, I was supposed to not be on the grounds of the Menominee Marina, although my rooftop overlooked the Marina. I wasn't supposed to leave the county, and I had to keep a diary of sorts, which I would turn into the judge each month.

I began my diary with words to this effect: "Got out of jail, went down to the marina."

I actually had fun writing that diary. I included poetry, short stories, and tried to be as clever as I knew how. I even included an account of a trip that I made, hitchhiking to Washington. D.C. The judge loved it, and told me I should consider a career as an author.

In May of 1971, I took part in what was known as the Mayday Demonstrations in Washington, D.C. As a member of the War Resisters League, I had even had a part in planning the events, and the plan worked very well.

As many of you know, there are not very many routes in and out of Washington, D.C. A few people were assigned to drive junk cars to the District, and abandon them on bridges leading into the city, leaving the hoods up. In a short time, there was no traffic going in and out of Washington, D.C. except by helicopter.

Participants were also encouraged to leave their identification at home, and several people even traded IDs.

I was detained three times during the Mayday Demonstrations. Neither time did they even get my name, let alone officially charge me with anything. The first two times, they walked us to a police station, I think it was, and then told us we could go. Traffic wasn't moving very well.

There were motorcycle cops circulating around the city and, I don't know what that was about, but at one time, a whole group of cops came along on what looked to be tiny little dirt bikes with rubber shield on the front, like the cowcatchers on a railroad train. That was amusing because most of them were well over two hundred pounds, and they looked plain silly driving around on minibikes running into people.

The last time that I was detained, they had gotten traffic moving somewhat, and they had hundreds of us in the old Washington Senators baseball stadium, with what looked to be soldiers in the stands watching over us. Rather than feeding actual meals, they would throw fruit into the field every now and then.

There were kids there who looked to be no older than eight or nine, and a woman who seemed to be very old, and who was furious because she had simply been shopping when they hauled her in.

Now and then, they would come over the loudspeakers, naming people whose parents or other concerned people were there to get them. Since the idea was that they didn't have room to hold anyone else, everyone would start cheering as soon as they began reciting the names so that no one would know that they were being sprung.

Then they offered to release anyone on their own recognizance, as long as they would give them accurate information as to who they were. Very few people did, and meanwhile they were bringing more people in.

I don't know how long I was in there because the lights were on the whole time, so it was hard to follow days and nights.

Then they herded us into buses, and brought us into court for arraignment, as John Doe 1-50 and Jane Doe 1-50, since they still didn't know who we were. There were people throwing frisbees back and forth in the courtroom, and a few people had balloons.

Some lawyer was there representing all of us. The prosecution wanted to introduce film that they had made of the protests, with the idea of picking us out one by one. The judge said that was insane, since they had several more busloads of people after us, and he wasn't about to spend the rest of his career watching this stuff.

Whenever our lawyer, whoever he was, said something, everyone would cheer. Whenever the prosecutor began talking, everyone would boo. It was fun. In the end, the judge refused to entertain any of the charges, and we were all allowed to leave. I assume that they didn't bother bringing anyone else in, and very likely the only ones who were actually charged were those who agreed to identify themselves.

There, that's it. I worked for the McGovern campaign during the primary. Then I grew up, and that was the last time I voted for a Democrat in a presidential primary.

 

Many years later, I was watching a special that one of the networks (CBS, I think) was playing on the Vietnam War protests, and they showed me getting arrested on the steps of the Justice Department. My hair was down to the middle of my back, very blonde at the time, and I was wearing a brown leather jacket. They showed me very clearly on the newscast. Somewhere else, there is also a clip that I saw after I got home from the Mayday Demonstrations, where I was interviewed by a news crew. I was on a bench in the National Mall, where everyone camped out during the protests, reading a newspaper. I was asked what I hoped to accomplish in Washington, D.C. and I answered, "I'd like to finish reading the comics." I thought it was funny, and I guess they did too because they aired it.

As a historical tidbit, Boone's Farm wine became famous on college campuses after the Mayday Demonstrations because it was free in Washington, D.C. during the protests. The National Mall was littered with Boone's Farm apple and strawberry wine bottles, nasty stuff.

 

Of course, I'm serious.