We didn't want to provoke any such thing. The Police RIOTED. It was a brutal crackdown by the establishment against the people of this country and is a black week in American History
Paul Peterson Thank you sir for standing up for peace. How do you feel about the shameful pro war pro corporation democratic party of today? Do you think there's a place for us younger generations to stand up against the establishment or would you advise we move on to create a new party that would stand up for the principles you helped us fight for in 1968?
I think we do what the Tea Party did, and take over the Democratic Party. The current election system really only allows for two parties. It is a mathematical artifact of the "first past the post" election system. Republicans from my era, like Bob Dole and Jack Kemp would be perfectly at home in the current right-leaning corporatist Democratic Party. There is no popular support for their Corporatist, Republican-lite, soft-supply-side economic policies. It may take a couple of election cycles, but much the way Corporate Republicans caved in to their base, the Corporate Democrats will cave in to us; or, they will be primaried out of office. The difference between Progressives and Tea-baggers is that we are fighting for social justice and the tea-baggers are fighting for white-supremacism. Carry on, my wayward son.
Paul Peterson - As in the actor, Donna Reed, A Minor Consideration etc? If so, I enjoyed your work and that of your peers and you would be in the age group, as am I, to remember those times. If you just happen to have the same name, you are still right in your views IMO. History does repeat.
I'm really into history and I have never heard of this riot/convention. It shows you how much they teach in school... or perhaps how much they exclude in the history books. Anyways I enjoyed the lesson! Thank you.
My Dad was there. He was 20 years old. Was hit over his eyebrow with a Billy club that caused a blood clot and he temporarily lost his vision for a few weeks. It seems history may be about to repeat itself.
- That’s very interesting. Where did you go to school? Are you still studying? Now in 2020, we have protesters and police clashing in ways that are similar and also different from 1968. What is your perspective on that?
I was only 6 years old, but the images are disturbing - especially the police actions. I have memories of Walter Cronkite reading the daily death toll in Vietnam on the news
IMO, you shouldn't have five additional guests on a panel with the likes of Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather, especially when the topic is something they were a part of 50 years ago. I see how TV news hosts like to inflate their importance by surrounding themselves with as many panelists as possible, but a little respect is due here.
Ty, history should always be reviewed, over and over. There were things I'd forgotten, and things I didn't know. For instance I didn't know Humphrey didn't campaign in any primary. That tells me that this business of cherry picking their own candidate in spite of voter wishes, i.e. Bernie, is not new. It's the one thing I really hate about the Demacratic party. It's what they use Super Delegates for.
I under, why people were angry. Humphrey didn’t run in the primary and was basically handed the nomination whilst McCarthy ran an actual campaign and won states.
@@him12672 its it's always been a rigged system in amerikkka, even before July 4,1776. amerikkka was founded as a white supremacist kleptocracy, and it still is.
I was 8 years old in 1968... we walked home from school every day singing a song... "Nixon Nixon hes our man, Humphreys in the garbage can"... I didn't even understand what I was singing about. Sigh. I remember the shootings at Kent State. Remember an entire summer... we could get three channels on our black n white TV (with NO remote control) and all that aired all summer long... was Watergate hearings. My older sister wore a metal ID bracelet that had a name of a U.S. soldier that was Missing In Action or had been captured and imprisoned (P.O.W.). The point was to wear it and pray for that soldier and when they returned home, you turned the bracelet over to the person who's name was on it.
We had one channel living in a small Canadian mountain village. I too remember that year as a 9 year old watching black and white TV coverage of the Martin Luther King funeral after his assassination April 4, and the Bobby Kennedy funeral, after his June 6 killing. So by late August the political energy was supercharged. Vietnam was the first war to be televised and 'embedding' reporters hadn't been invented. There was footage of impacts to civilians and combatants. I saw bullet to the head executions on late TV news, a famous photo of a young girl running, covered in burning Napalm. From that young age , awareness of the insanity walking the earth has remained. What I saw of the DNC event were ongoing coverage, and news segments. Specifics of the politics and issues weren't clear at all but I saw police clubbing unarmed people, even after submission. Historical perspective resonates through trauma. These young people were radicalized by JFK trauma just 1 Presidential term before in 1963. I was too young to be involved, and by the time I grew old enough everyone was going out to Disco. I resented the shallow tendencies of my generation after the much slandered Anti-War, Civil Rights, Women's Liberation cultural upheaval. The population of the Boomers was largely tilted to the youth who resonated horizontally by social affiliation on one side of the gender gap. It displaced or shattered the Parent to Child Social Identity with Age Group, or GENERATION Identity. The father/son (mostly male) occupation transfers were the rope in the social fabric, holding bonds of economic class. Occupations defined by Family for generations, like coal-miners, bankers and financiers, garment districts, farm families and ranchers, even Military traditions and Politics down through family lines. They self-defined by economic classes, neighborhoods, and political world view. This vertical affiliation was mostly swamped by the horizontal boomer energy. Kids from all classes, races and backgrounds dropped out of the vertical transmission of values and congregated together in an entirely alternative culture. Some carried it to extremes, experimenting with communes, others got on with regular life sort of cheering from the sidelines and wearing the paraphernalia, liking the music and going to festivals marches or rallies from time to time. All classes and cultural groups were intersected by the main issues: Women's liberation, Racial Equality and the Peace movement/Anti-war Activism cut through the culture, though in some circles less than others. Social mobility was active as inexpensive colleges and university campuses became swollen with radical intellectuals providing the narratives and analyses and forethought for an organized movement. Since then the vertical affiliations are reasserting. Class mobility is stifled through prohibitive tuition and shrinking faculty. The child again is likely to remain in the same economic political tradition as the parent. Though some issues like CLIMATE perhaps have cross cultural appeal, still the political alignments remain "lively-hood" traditional, inter-generational. But the new GENERATION GAP appears to be the frothing cascade of social media and all the hyper-transmissions and GROUP AFFILIATIONS the young generation have grown up with, were weaned on, and indulge in to levels that astonish and alarm their TV watching elders. For some reason this incredibly intense avenue of potential equality, where Presidents daughters and urban school kids can interact in common accessible forums, seems more fractious and divisive in ways not experienced previously. Influencers and distractions lead attention "riding madly off in all directions". Many groups isolate in self-affirming reflection pools, mesmerized into a trance, not capable of interacting with opposing or wider views. Activism becomes a matter of being bothered to click likes. Far from the intense commitment of these young cohorts, putting their bodies on the line for an Anti-war platform ,spawning frustration and division, where the Democrats failed to embrace the Peace Movement for whatever reason. The damage was enough to give Nixon an express pass to surf to the White House. Nixon didn't start the war but continued it with various surges of enthusiasm, until it finally ground to a halt in 8 more years. The Peace movement felt a huge disconnect with the ESTABLISHMENT and never returned in great strength to a major party. What are the lessons for today? What did the Democrats learn from this event? What can they learn from it now?
'In the beginning was the Word' is the beginning of the Gospel According to John, which is in the New Testament, NOT the Old Testament! C'mon, Petty Noonan, speechwriter for President Regan! You should know better!
A translation of a translation of a translation of bits and pieces of 2000 year old parchments transcribed from hundreds of years of oral storytelling.
What do you think it feels like for us today. When I watch this I see me! Occupy Wall st., #BlackLivesMatter, The woman movement, Ferguson with Michael Brown. It's like the establisment ignores the reality.
Richard Daley should have been a Republican. He certainly behaved like one. Daley's name lives on in infamy. Good grief, are there still people who believe America has the greatest democracy? Give me a Scandinavian democracy any day over this first past the post anachronism.
In a way, it is there are more opportunities than any other country. The GDP is better than most, if this country was so bad, than why so many people come here (even illegally)?
If you wish to live in a Scandinavian country, that is your choice, of course, Scandinavia is not what it used to be, they have extremely high taxes, they have an immigration crisis far worse than we are experiencing, they have experienced violence in a way very few people knew existed. A great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
Disgusting behavior by the police. And sadly, the actions of those who are paid today To Serve & Protect (now that's a laugh) protect, have not changed one bit. Little wonder the public, fifty years on still do not respect the Police.
Who’s here after Netflix movie? The more things change, the more they stay the same. The whole world HAS been watching...and right now we are alarmed. I hope that Chicago 1968 isn’t a warm up for November 3rd 2020.
Joe referenced Bobby Kennedy recently and I've referenced the turbulent 60's in some of my comments too. There was more violence then, much more. So bittersweet - to have gone from Camelot to chaos in a few years. Yet, I remember more optimism then. Perhaps it was just teenage naivete. But all over TV, films, and music there was "resistance" - intensity - that is somehow lacking today. Perhaps it will begin to catch up soon.
1:30 "Tom Brokaw, you were there; and now you're unemployed and apparently living on the street, so instead of talking to you, let's cut to the archive film."
They grew up, that's what happened. Look at Jerry Rubin, one of the ringleaders of the riots, he went from being a dangerous subversive, to being a respected lawyer & stockbroker, before being killed in a car accident in 1995.
@@erikwick Reagan helped to end the Cold War, he revitalized a crippling economy, & restored optimism to a country that was reeling from Vietnam, Watergate, & the inflationary economy of the '70s.
Isn't it interesting how, if you go up against the military-industrial complex, you always lose in this "free" country? Regardless, what happened in 1968 may look like a barn dance compared to what may happen soon.
I am fed up with Michael Beschloss as a favorite talking head. He isn’t a real historian: he has a business degree. He contributes nothing to an understanding of modern history. He just mouths trite inanities and probably gets paid too much for it. Aside from that: you need to remember some of the brutes in the party: Hale Boggs of Louisiana (then House Majority Leader), Wayne Hays of Ohio, John Connally of Texas -- all committed to the failed policies of Vietnam.
I understand the need for optimism, but 56 years later, the country is every bit as divided, America has all but given up on its space program and America is in more wars than ever.
Joe Scarborough is such a shameless liar. How can he possibly say he was at the convention? In 1968 he was 5 years old. What did he do? Go to the convention with his parents, or protest with all the other toddlers who were against the Vietnam war. He reminds me of Trump.
Stephanie Adams I’m simply smoking the sweet sweet air of a non communist government, protest all you like, especially so for the Vietnam war, but supporting the Communist side, the battons come out.
I took part in demonstrations at the 2004 RNC Convention, & I was arrested like many others, but thank The Lord, it was nowhere near what had happened in Chicago in 1968.
3:43 In the 1964 Republican convention, John Chancellor was arrested on the floor for refusing to cede his spot on the floor to “Goldwater Girls” and he signed off, “I've been promised bail, ladies and gentlemen, by my office. This is John Chancellor, somewhere in custody."
lindon Johnson told the nation have no fear of escalation, I am trying everyone to please. Though it isn't really war, we've sent fifty thousands more, to save the Vietnam from Vietnamese.
The unraveling of the Democratic Party as we knew it right there. By November, many working class citizens deserted the party in droves, especially in (what was) the Solid South. The Silent Majority of 1968 (and 1972). But the real crushing blow was the Reagan Democrats of 1980 and 1984. (And to a lesser extent, 1988). Reagan even said it himself when he became a Republican (in 1962) - "I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The party left me."
The radicals caused the riots, the police were right to use force, but they should have shown restraint by not indiscriminately attacking anyone in their way.
OMG! That NBC opening for the convention coverage was about the most awful network-produced sequence that I've ever seen (or heard). It was actually kind of symbolically prophetic. If you showed that horrible intro for that purpose, then kudos to whoever thought of it.