Sunday, April 26, 2009
April, 1968
I should post this before April actually ends. I don't recall much of the riots after King died, we had moved from Humboldt Park to Ashburn in 1966. What I DO remember is June of 1968, when the Democratic Convention was here and my father and all of his cop friends were mixed up in all kinds of stuff in Grant Park. It was a tough two-three months here. The cops have batons now that are longer, lighter, and I guess hollow. I have the one my father had in the 60s and 70s. Short, much lighter wood, and damn solid. And my father had to swing it at quite a few people 31 years back. I realize that quite a few cops are bastards now, and I certainly believe that my father and his partners did their best, considering they were all on the job four or five years tops.
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I remember the announcement of his death when I was a kid. I think they cut in in the evening or repeated it. I remember the announcement of Bobby's death and the news retrospectives afterward.
I can't remember the reports of the riots as much in the day. Years later ABC had a documentary called 1968 A Crack in Time covering the assassinations, the riots, the TET Offensive and the other major events of that year, bringing into better focus the incidents of the year I started school.
One thing that always has bothered me about the brief occasions when the dispossessed and the poor have taken to violence in this nation:
They always burn down the wrong neighborhoods.
That's no way to run a proper revolutionary action.
Oh, well.
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