The activist returns
Michael James comes back to Grant Park for an hour or two
05/14/2012 10:57 AM
August, 1968, trying to turn over a police squadrol; Michael James is third from the right
Michael James is on the left, leading a South Loop history tour
Who better to lead a South Loop history tour last week for members and friends of the South Loop Historical Society than 70-year-old restaurant owner, 49th Ward democratic organization president and 1968 troublemaker Michael James? James met up with the South Loop neighbors in Grant Park to spin a few yarns, tell a few tales and reminisce.
He can't make it to NATO--because his daughter is graduating from Yale this weekend and of course he wants to be there, so he's leaving the NATO-related demonstrations to the new generation. James was born in Connecticut, but his father encouraged him as a young man to travel west and take jobs--to better understand the world. So he took a job in a California cannery--but ultimately ended up at Lake Forest College, wanting to join the Marines.
That didn't last long. He started to rethink the military and the Viet Nam war and the next thing you know, he was involved in the political machinations and ramifications of his time: he was an anti-war activist, a seeker of justice and a rabble rouser. He was attached to many of the groups and organizations in Chicago fighting for the poor--and against the Military/Industrial complex. He ultimately co-opened the famous Heartland Cafe in Rogers Park and has run the place for decades.
James couldn't remember all that much about all that happened back in August of '68; but vivid in his mind (and on the internet) was that one infamous night, the "shoot to kill," "whole world is watching" big night when anti-war activists came to Grant Park to protest the Democrats' ultimate backing of the war at their political convention, the violent confrontations with the police across from the Hilton--and being one of the rabble rousers who tried to upend a paddy wagon, but failed.
In honor of James' talk, and the NATO conference that our neighborhood is about to get involved in--by default, if nothing else--here is the text of a column (which garnered an award from the Illinois Woman's Press Association) I wrote for Chicago Journal four years ago--on the 40th anniversary of what we Chicagoans simply call "1968."
In ’68, the world was watching, and I was there
For 40 years I’ve been able to say, “I was there.”
There. At the Hilton. In the fray. In the thick of the protests and subsequent riot that went down on August 28, the penultimate day of the1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago.
I was 17. I had no idea that history was being made. But I was there. And for exactly 40 years I’ve been telling that to anyone who seems interested.
I’d been in Glenview that day, planning to sleep over at Judy Gerstein’s, my best friend and roommate at the University of Illinois in Champaign. Jud (her nickname) had a mother, Mama G (her nickname) who always treated us like her friends. She was spontaneous and ironic, had a little white dog and kept at least three bowls of M & Ms in every room of the house.
Mama G always wanted to be where the action was, so she packed us in her car and drove us to Balbo and Michigan on the night of August 28. “Come on, let’s go, let’s see what’s happening for ourselves,” she laughed. (Today, at 80-something, she admits she could have been arrested for bringing minors to a riot.)
Jud and I loved hippies and Students for a Democratic Society. And we hated the Vietnam War, and everyone over 30 except Mama G. But we were not into riots or violence or blood. We still kind of liked The Beatles and Bass Weejuns. M & Ms, too.
But Mama G said that’s what we were doing--going to where the action was. So that’s where we went. She was the adult, and we did what she said. But what’d we know? We wanted to go and see people like Jerry Rubin--who were like movie stars. Although we did look forward to getting home for our midnight snack: a bowl of M & Ms.
Exactly where Mama G parked the car I don’t remember. Today, she says she remembers parking right on the street outside the Hilton. But I’m sure parking was a problem that night—just as it is in the South Loop where I live today.
No sooner did I have my eye out for that dreamboat Abbie Hoffman, than there we were! Smack dab on Michigan Avenue in front of the Hilton--in the midst of The Battle itself. We could have been killed. We could have had our heads bashed in by billy clubs, our feet stomped on by storm trooper boots, our nostrils filled with poison, our hair drenched with who knows what.
But Mama G, being a glamorous 40-something—totally out of orbit in a spot where she wasn’t supposed to be—got invited into the Hilton by some kindly handsome gentleman (a plainclothes cop?) who took pity on her and her girls and probably wanted to ask her for a date.
We sat for hours inside the Hilton watching the reporters and activists, youthful adults and old nuts escorted inside for medical treatment and first aid (treatment was being administered in the Normandie Lounge, no less). The fight was on and the whole world was watching. Including my parents, who treated me with a mixture of disbelief and awe when they found out where I’d been the next day.
It turns out that a lot of the blood may have been ketchup—a little fact I just learned from a book I have been reading that contains the history of the Hilton, “Chicago’s Grand Hotels,” compiled by Hilton PR man Robert V. Allegrini. He claims that sympathizers hurled ketchup onto the Democratic Convention/Vietnam war protesters from the rooms above to make the wounds look worse.
Allegrini also claims that the Hilton tried to lock its doors that night to keep the protesters out, but found out too late that the doors had never been locked—no keys existed—and they weren’t about to start locking now. Thank goodness. Jud, Mama G and I may never have been where we were on that fateful night—safe and snug in the Hilton lobby.
Eventually we got back to Glenview--and the M & Ms. How and when I don’t know. But to this day, every now and then when I find myself in or around the Hilton, I go back to 1968. When I am walking through the main hotel corridor to Kitty O’Shea’s or to get to an event in the ballroom—or to use the ladies’ room on the way home—I can often see the blood (ketchup?) dripping from the heads of the guys beaten by the pigs.
There’s been a lot of talking and writing recently about 1968, because of the 40-year anniversary. About what it all means.
And I have gone to some of the talks and read some of the articles. But no one—not Tom Hayden, not Don Rose, not even Christopher Hitchens—really knows what it all meant. Or what it all means now. Or if it ever meant anything at all.
For what it’s worth—no poignancy intended, but with all due respect to Buffalo Springfield—to this girl who used to like a fluffy new pastel mohair sweater more than anything in the world, it will always mean one thing: Thanks to Mama G, I was there.
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By bow to the chicago machine liberals from chicago
Posted: 05/16/2012 9:27 AM
During the 60\'s it was \'down with the man, free love, govt help the poor\', then a 360 degree turn to running ward politics that screws the tax paying residents, to children attending Yale. May we all have the ability and means live with such hypocrisy.
By Judy Marcus from Palatine
Posted: 05/15/2012 2:40 PM
Fun to read your post about 1968 again and relive those moments! While the coming NATO summit reminds me of those days when we went down to the Hilton, things seem more dangerous today with the possibility of terrorism, etc. looming. Or maybe I'm just getting old.
By susan ohde from printer's row
Posted: 05/14/2012 5:06 PM
Gosh Bonnie, what a great piece. That Hilton Hotel has kindly rescued me so many times. I haven't thought of my mohair sweater in so long...