@maeve_bkk

#teargas #deja_vu

A chapter from my as yet unpublished book:

Dagwood

Saturday in the park, I think it was the Fourth of July. It was 1970 and the Nixon regime was throwing an extra special, really big, super duper event to celebrate, and for Americans to "put aside their honest differences and rally around the flag to show national unity," as if that were even possible. It wasn’t, not that year. Billy Graham was scheduled to speak on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The front cover of Time magazine predicted 50,000 people would come to hear and applaud him. Fewer than 5,000 actually showed. There were 20,000 plus anti-war protesters who showed up to meet them. We swamped the Graham fans. They took one look at us coming their way and scattered. We occupied the steps of the Memorial. We did this without any violence. We just outnumbered them, that's all. They'd heard bad things about us. They could count heads. They were afraid. They left. We had no intention of hurting any of them but they didn't know that. All they knew is what the media of the day was telling them. The media was calling us “communists”. It’s a uniquely American idiom that has gained traction around the world. It means something like “nun-raping baby eaters, lurking under your bed right now, just waiting for the chance to sink their scaly yellow fangs into the soft, pink flesh of your ankle”, so that's what they thought we were.

That wasn't how the day started, though. Earlier, there had been a smoke-in at the Washington Monument, at the other end of the Reflecting Pool. At least twenty thousand Yippies and a ton of weed showed up. My comrade Denny and I brought two shopping bags full of rolled up joints. We'd stayed up all night and rolling. I was working as a bag man for a mid-level dealer at the time, so plenty of weed was available. One French baguette stuck out each bag so at a glance or from a distance it looked like we too were bringing food for a picnic.

There were many dozens of straight people scattered around, picnicking to celebrate the holiday. As we approached the crowd at the Washington Monument, shopping bags in hand, one young couple caught our eye. It was a blazing hot day, but he was wearing a long-sleeved white shirt, a tie and an American flag pin. She wore a skirt that came half way down her calves, and a long-sleeved white blouse buttoned over a torpedo bra. Her hair was up. They had a baby in a basket. They didn't like the look of us at all. We thought they looked like characters from the long-running comic strip, Dagwood and Blondie. That's what we called them when we were out of earshot. We waited till then because we didn't want to offend fellow workers, even Republicans.

We proceeded to the Washington Monument, where we got a lot of people high. Then we swarmed the Lincoln Memorial steps and displaced the Graham fans. Even though we were totally peaceful, the cops were having none of it. One thing led to another and the cops thew up a wall of gas and swept through it, clubbing people at random. My affinity group broke out and retreated to Georgetown, pelting the cops all the way. As we were retreating we passed Dagwood and Blondie. They and their baby had been gassed. The baby was red as a beet and screaming at the top of its lungs. Dagwood and Blondie were taking turns dipping it in a fountain and splashing water on it with their hands. They were trying to wash the gas off. They both were frantic and distraught. Tears ran from their eyes. Snot drooled from their noses. They reeked of CS gas. They were shaking with anger and fear. Dagwood was cursing profusely.

We retreated, regrouped in an air-conditioned bar, and rested till dark. Later than night we went back there and fought the cops. It was a furious brawl because they couldn't use gas. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction, so the fight was all clubs and shields and we outnumbered them. In those days metal garbage cans with tight fitting lids were common. The lids were circular with handles in the middle. People had collected a bunch of them and were using them as improvised shields. Some people had collected pieces of scrap lumber and conduit from nearby construction sites and were using them as clubs. Rocks and bottles flew like hail.

That night there was a live TV broadcast of a concert that featured many contemporary stars. Our plan was to provoke the cops into using their gas while the star-studded revue was being broadcast live just downwind of our position. Thousands of us did our level, sweaty best to force them to use that gas. It would have blown over the concert and the whole world would have seen on live TV that American opposition to the Viet Nam War was serious and unrelenting. It would have been a major propaganda coup for the anti-war movement so they couldn’t use gas till the show was over and they knew that we knew it.

By the time James Brown hit the stage there was a major riot in progress, a real mêlée. It looked medieval. Just upwind of the concert a few hundred cops had formed a circular perimeter with what appeared to be reserves in the center of the circle. It was easy to tell who the ranking brass was. They had walkie-talkies. They seemed to be rotating individuals in and out of the main defensive line on their perimeter to rest them in the interior reserve position.

In this, it reminded me of sports. Getting benched for a few plays to catch a quick breather in the midst of a strenuous game is always refreshing for the player in question. For the team it potentiates collective stamina. In fights between individuals, it’s always advantageous to pace yourself so that the other guy gets tired first. Muhammad Ali called this his rope a dope strategy. It’s as good a name as any. It can be very effective. It also works in group conflict situations. Guerrilla warfare depends upon it. As Irish nationalist Terence Macswiney once put it, “It is not those who can inflict the most but those who can endure the most who will conquer.”

Despite superficial similarities, riots are not sporting events. While they both require similar speed, agility, endurance, and grit, different rules apply. In sports, all the rules stay the same for the duration of the match, and usually for the season. In a riot, some rules are constant while others can change on a whim. Either side may invoke this rule change rule at any time. It keeps the game interesting. However, it's not really a game. It's deadly serious, sometimes literally. The Kent State and Jackson State Massacres were only two months in our rear view mirror that night. They were never far from our minds.

The DC riot squad was the best disciplined riot squad that I ever fought. They stood their ground and fought well. Their unit cohesion was superb. Clearly, they’d practiced. I’m sure they really, really would have preferred to gas us sooner, but obviously the brass had declared it verboten while the live TV cameras were rolling downwind. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Just following orders, as the saying goes, so the cops held back, no matter how hard we beat on them and pelted them with rocks and bottles.

At one point we locked shields and drove a wedge through their line. They immediately deployed their reserves, who technically at least, were as trapped and surrounded as any of the cops defending the perimeter. They pushed us back and reformed their perimeter line. In the meantime, I was on the left side of the wedge, three or four places from the point. We had just broken through their line. I glanced over my shoulder to see how we were doing. There on the other side of the wedge, about three or four places from the point, was Dagwood. His tie was loose, his hair was mussed, his sleeves were rolled and he was beating on a cop with a 2x4. The cop was beating back and had a better shield with which to protect himself but Dagwood was getting the best of him anyway. Dagwood fought like a berserker. It was such a fascinating sight that I didn't see a club coming and got knocked out. Some people dragged me to safety.

Medical science agrees that someone who has been knocked unconscious for any reason, should not be moved at least until they come to and can be evaluated for concussion and spinal cord injury. There's an established protocol for dealing with this. I've been through it several times, but not on this night. On this night I came around pretty quickly on my own. Back on my feet, I thanked the strangers who had dragged me out of harm's way. I could have gotten trampled. Getting trampled is nowhere near a much as fun as it sounds.

I shook off any assistance and got back in the fight. By that time it was pretty chaotic. It was becoming a classic fur ball. The cops finally got permission to gas us and we had to disengage and fall back. I never saw Dagwood again. I don't know what happened to him, but I seriously doubt if he ever went back to the pro-war side of America's long national nightmare, or if ever he respected cops at all again, ever. I seriously doubt it. Police brutality, tear gas in particular, is a radicalizing force. It must be addictive, too, because even to this day, people who get a taste of gas keep going back for more. Back in the day, we'd pick up the fuming canisters and throw them back at the cops. They're really hot. You needed welder's gloves, or at least Moe and Joe brand work gloves. In Portland in 2020, the Wall of Dads made all that obsolete when they dispersed tear gas with with leaf blowers. It was a stroke of genius, but it was fifty years too late to help us on that Fourth of July, 1970. We came back for more, anyway.