Two years ago, I opened the door to the room of my oldest granddaughter, Kaya, peered into the entrance to her highly cluttered habitation. I saw a book of essays from Noam Chomsky lying on her bed. I remembered the brilliant professor, linguist and activist speaking in front of the MIT rotunda, ranting against the Vietnam War. I knew then it would not be a huge stretch for me to find common ground with this grandchild

This opened up a dialogue, which of course I embraced. We talked about the anarchist Emma Goldman, and how my mother had known Emma in Bristol, England, and in America. Emma had persuaded my maternal to grandfather to America to become a lecturer. Then there was a fleeting interest in Abbie Hoffman, the genius of political theatre. I told her I had spent an evening with Abbie, one hot summer night in New York City.

Now, from time to time, Kaya calls me from university, during her freshman year. The year of all the protests and occupations.

“Grandpa, in my learning to be a historian class, we are studying the counterculture. Do you know anything about that?”

I laugh heartily, “Kaya, I lived it. You had to have been there for it to make any sense.”

“Take me there. Got to go.” The line went dead.

*

I prop up my iPhone, take a deep breath, open my old journal book, the heavy musty record, place it on the table before me. The journal I kept on the Washington March. I press the red record button. I am not just reading, I am revisiting, re-experiencing this moment of history, part observer, part something else…

It is the fall of my junior year in college, October 20, 1967. A few weeks before my twenty-first birthday. A time when close to half a million American young men are sloshing through the rice paddies of Vietnam, a time when every young American male looks over his shoulder and sees the draft stalking him….

*

There is a full moon. It is ten o’clock at night. I am walking along Somerville Avenue in Medford Mass, a bike ride from Cambridge and Harvard University. At my college, Tufts, we had been occupying the buildings housing the military recruiters. We feel like we have taken over the campus. And now some of us are going to take over the nation’s capital. Maybe I will be one of them. On the fence. Just in case, I have my backpack, journal book and snacks. Part of me is drawn to the event, like bathwater to the drain and part of me knows I need to study for a calculus exam next week.

I hear music, long before I get to the Stratton House where the bus to Washington is parked. The Rolling Stones sing about their Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown. I see people from my dorm getting ready to board the bus, people like Joel, the campus rep for the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

*

A very red orange orb is slowly climbing into an almost cloudless clear blue sky. There are a few high-altitude streakers.

Joel, beside me, is sleeping. I get out my journal and wrote down, time, date, what is happening as we cross the Walt Whitman Bridge into Philadelphia. I see the newly risen sun, a golden doubloon, through the supporting wires of the suspension bridge. I think about the yellow yoke of a hard-boiled egg sliced through with a thin wire. I feel suspended over the river. Mist hovers above the marshes below.

A small station wagon with New Hampshire plates passes between the bus and the wires of the suspension bridge. I look at the men dressed in leather clothes, their long hair.

I silently mouth the words of a song that my childhood friend Alan had written, just before being committed to the mental hospital on Long Island. That was soon after Alan, his older brother, and the Brown twins, Steve and Chris, had dropped a cube of acid on the Provincetown dunes, this past summer. I was the straight man, the watcher, the one to prevent them from trying to fly off a cliff or taking a swim to Lisbon.

‘Moon, moon in the sky. Drifting by, drifting by. Sun, sun in the sky. Drifting by, drifting by. Tell me why I must die.’ I fall asleep, my journal book in my lap.

*

The bus is northeast of Washington, on Route 3, in the outskirts of Washington, D.C. The Beltway is filled with busses. Bumper to bumper. It is now a little after ten in the morning.

The bus is stopped by a motorcycle policeman in high leather riding boots, a bright white crash helmet, black sunglasses. The policeman hands the bus driver a set of instructions. The policeman then escorts the bus to Lincoln Memorial Park. There are hundreds of buses in front, behind, beside us. I am feeling part of something very powerful. I am glad I came.

I smile, remember what my father told me about the Veterans Bonus Expeditionary Forces March to Washington in May of 1932. I visualize his sketches, his experience sleeping on a stair beside the grizzled veterans, how he was beaten and roughed up by the police. I sense that, I too, will be a witness to history. I feel close to my father, the painter.1

1 Lewis Rubenstein’s sketchbook documenting a hunger march to Washington, D.C. | Smithsonian Institution (si.edu)

We disembark from the bus. I see the vast pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the dome of Congress at the other end of the long avenue. The spaces on either side of the long rectangular pool are starting to fill up with protesters. They are mostly white, a lot of college kids. The crowd is impatient, waiting for something to happen.

But nothing seems to be happening. There is no marching. Yet, a message is passed from protester to protester as we stand beside the Reflecting Pool, “Take off your earrings.” Perhaps, a portent of things to come.

I sit in the sun, beside Joel.

The smell of pot. A few protestors strip off their clothes and take a swim in the Reflecting Pool.

Joel points to a raised stage, beside the pool, about midway between Congress and the Lincoln Memorial. “See that distinguished bald guy in the starched white shirt, dark blue worsted suit and the blue tie.”

I nod. “That’s Dr. Spock. The good doctor wrote the gospel our mothers consulted when we were late to use the big boy potty.”

Dr. Spock, an elder of my parents’ generation, gazes at the vast crowd that that fills the walkways from the Lincoln Memorial to the dome of Congress. He inhales the power of the moment, rises higher on his black leather shoes.

“I accuse the President, Senator. Everett M. Dirksen and House Speaker John McCormack, of trying to stifle dissent by accusing dissenters of impeding the war. We are not impeding the war; we are exercising our rights of free speech. And now we are at a crossroads. Today, we will move from protest to resistance.”

The distinguished elder statesman, pauses, again surveys the gathered crowd. I follow his eyes, whisper to Joel, “There is a football-afternoon mood here. A few vets and aging pacifists. Most are college or high-school students like us.” I gaze at the banners unfurled from Harvard, Radcliffe, Tufts, Southern Illinois University, the University of Georgia, and many other campuses. “Joel, dig it, there were a few veterans from the International Brigade.”

Dr. Spock continues, “We consider the war Lyndon Johnson is waging as disastrous to this country in every way. The enemy, we believe in all sincerity, is Lyndon Johnson, who we elected as a peace candidate in 1964 and who betrayed us within three months….” The crowd cheers, whistles, claps.

The next speakers denounce the war and President Johnson. There are vague calls for ‘active resistance,’ a new phase of protest. John Wilson, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) leader, says “White people in America are just finding out what it means to confront ‘white honky cops.’ Welcome to the club.” Two men with swastikas on the back of leather jackets, rush at John, but the crowd surges forward, stops them.

A speaker proposes a moment of silence for Che Guevera. Peter, Paul and Mary sing for the crowd. Phil Ochs belts out his song, ‘I Declare the War is Over.’ A big cheer. The sickly sweet smell of pot hangs over the pool. There is no breeze.

I look at my watch. Two in the afternoon. A stall stocky white man rises to the podium. He looks more like a linebacker than a protest leader.

Joel says, “That’s David Dellinger, the national chairman of the whole thing, the Mobe. The brains.”

Dellinger clears his throat, “Fellow Americans, this tailgate party is now going to change. We will begin a gigantic teach-in to ‘educate’ the troops guarding the Pentagon. We will bring the war home.”

The crowd starts chanting “Hell no, we won’t go!”

“Those of you who wish to commit civil disobedience may do so, now. In the next few hours, we will move on from a simple protest, here at the Reflecting Pool. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara is now a captive inside the Pentagon. Originally, we were going to encircle the Pentagon–but its already encircled by people in uniform. So, we will non-violently confront them.”

“We will start moving. No pushing, no shoving, no violencia. Those who so desire should now proceed to the walls of the Pentagon for civil disobedience.”

I look at Joel, “What do you say? Once we commit, maybe no turning back, caught in the mob.”

Joel wavers, then says, “Be part of history.” I follow him as the crowd begins to mobilize. Most are heading for the bridge, or so it seems.

Three thirty in the afternoon. The march moves jerkily forward, toward the walking bridge across the Potomac. A man with a bullhorn shouts, “Twelve abreast across the bridge. Once we reach the other shore the man says, please remove all earrings, ties and link arms.” The crowd is well disciplined, quiet. I am feeling okay about the resistance part, so far.

An hour later we reach the outskirts of the Pentagon. Military Police (MPs), U.S. Marshals and thousands of Army troops with rifles and riot gear surround the Pentagon. Ready to defend the nation’s wartime command center against the demonstrators coming to storm it. Helicopters circle overhead.

I smell the acrid burning smell of tear gas, for the first time. Instigators with portable megaphones move through the crowd. Joel and I move to a spot under an oak tree. A Sergeant with a black leather attaché case whisks by. The tear gas is stronger. I am crying, coughing, rubbing my eyes, moved forward by guards with gas masks. I turn to Joel, “Joel, this is not peaceful resistance. This is something else.” He nods.

I need to take a pee. It has been a long afternoon. I approach the bushes around the granite walls of the five sided building. A dirty young man in dungarees, frizzly long hair and a striped T-shirt stands beside me, relieving himself on the stone walls. I look more closely at the young man’s face.

“Chris Brown, it that you?” I am incredulous. ‘What are the odds of this happening?’ Yet it is.

“Danny, that you.”

We finish up our business. Zip up our zippers. We hug. I say, “Is your brother Steve here too?”

“Somewhere. We were separated when the fence collapsed, the one by the parking lot.” Chris pauses, looks around at all the protesters. “That was a crazy night on the dunes. I mean dropping the acid.”

I nod. Chris and I turn to see a commotion. A young man with flowing brown hair burns some incense and rings Tibetan bells. A frizzly haired hippie with a shirt made out of an American flag starts dancing, in what could be an Apache war dance.

“Chris, buddy, what is this freak show?” I have moved from fear, apprehension, to abject fascination.

“The founder of the Yippies, Abbie Hoffman. Nuts. More balls than brains.”

“The Yippies?”

Youth International Party. Political pranksters who torment the military industrial complex. Mix of guerilla theater and pot fuelled mayhem.” I shake my head.

I gaze at Abbie, at white man with a dirty brown afro hairdo, the American flag . He takes a string of beads, gives it to another hippie. Abbie and the other hippie walk along the high walls of the granite building, measuring the distance, counting their steps, out loud.

A helmeted MP screams out “What the hell is going on here.” He races up to the two hippies measuring the distances along the granite wall. The MPs is perplexed, mystified.

Abbie, the man with the flag shirt chants, “One hundred and one, one hundred and two, one hundred and three….” The two hippies exchange positions with each number called, in a way that resembles a square dance routine. More MPs gathers around the two men chanting. Some have braided insignia on their shoulders and over their pockets, indicating rank in the military. There are also men in suits and ties, maybe PR men.

One uniform asks Abbie, “Just what’s going on here?”

“Well, corporal, as you know, five sided objects are evil. We have begun the exorcism of the Pentagon.”

“Now wait a minute. This is government property. And its Captain.”

The other hippy replies politely, “We’ll be done soon. We just have to measure one side and multiply by five. We need to see how many witches we need to circle the Pentagon.”

The captain turns to the Sargent beside him, “Circle the Pentagon? Sergeant what in God’s name is going on here?”

“We need to determine the exact number of witches required. See, as part of the levitation ceremony….”

“Levitation ceremony,” the Captain explodes.

“Don’t worry Captain, we applied for a permit. We want permission to raise the Pentagon three hundred feet.”

The man in the flag shirt says, “It’s all legal. Don’t worry.”

“Goddamn it, sergeant, arrest these lunatics.”

The two men are led away by MPs.

The crowd is momentarily calm. Chris and I are standing, side by side. A man with a megaphone shouts, “We are protesting a system that has brothers point guns at brothers.”

Chris asks me, “You know what’s happened to Alan, after the acid?” I tell Chris, give him a slip of paper with a number.

“You can call him.”

Chris nods, pockets the telephone number, “Poor bastard.”

Joel sees me, now stands beside Chris. We all stand together in silence, wondering what will happen next. Will there be more violence, will the crowd dissipate? What?

It is a beautiful sunset. A dark, clear blue sky, a faded yellow at the horizon. MPs with gas masks again drive back the marchers. The anger of the crowd is growing. Somebody falls off a balcony. MPs are told to hold their ground.

The crowd taunts the gas masked MPs on the lawn. An ambulance tries to push into the outskirts of the crowd. People surround the vehicle. In the distance I can see the lighted obelisk, the Washington Monument. The mood is spirited, defiant, determined. There is a sense of camaraderie among the marchers. Somebody starts chanting, “Black clad John.” I do not want to leave in an ambulance.

It is now seven pm. Lights flicker on the top of the high wall of the Pentagon. I see the flames of burning draft cards. There is a bonfire of burning American flags. There are more hippies, less students. The crowd cheers whenever a flag and a draft card is burned. I am getting more nervous, now.

A protester with a megaphone shouts “We need water. We may be here several days. We will hold our water, but we will need a toilet. Or we will piss on the walls of the Pentagon. It is our weapon. It will be a ‘leak in.’ I feel for these soldiers. I feel compassion. They are deprived of their freedom of choice.” I am thinking, ‘I’m not going to be here after tonight.’ I am ready to go back to calculus.

The MPs throw another canister of tear gas, into part of the crowd. From their perimeter positions on the ground and from perches on the roof, the officers watch as the protesters inch closer and closer, spill into the Pentagon’s parking lot and toward its entrance. The guns are pointed at the crowd. I look for an escape. I put my arm on Joel’s shoulder, “Let’s get out of here.” We move to the perimeter.

A surging band of about 30 demonstrators try to rush into the Pentagon. It is thrown back by armed men. One group of soldiers is surrounded, Marshals wade into the demonstrators and fists began flying. A Marshal repeatedly clubs one demonstrator. Friends fight back with fists. Others jeer, scream, and curse the military. I think, ‘This just pure anarchy. And we are stuck here.’

I scan the top floor of the Pentagon, search for the Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara watching the chaos from the safety of his office. A man on a bullhorn shouts, “We are protesting a system that makes brothers point guns at each other.”

A bald black man, on our flank says, “Sit in front of the door. Do not move. We will be passing out food and water.” I savour the feeling of cooperation. Beautiful.

Several hundred demonstrators now surge across boundaries that the Government has prescribed. MPs and Marshals club the jeering, rushing demonstrators who invade forbidden spots or push against defensive lines. The military police throw at least three tear gas grenades. The troops, carrying rifles with sheathed bayonets, use gun butts to force some outside and carry others away from the Pentagon. Blood is spotted on the steps of the Pentagon. I find it hard to breathe. I pull my T-shirt over my face. We push our way through the crowd.

But the big crowd surges forward again and begins throwing what they have at hand–picket signs, magazines, leaflets, sticks and at least one rock which crashes through a Pentagon press room window. Some in the crowd are carrying North Vietnamese flags. We are pulled with the crowd, like seaweed in an in incoming tide.

A protester beside us says, “Hey man, pass the bologna,” then continues to draw a guard in his notebook. The guards change. Some of the new guards let the protesters alone, let them move around.

A long-haired man moves beside Joel, “I walked here from San Francisco. You got some weed here?”

Joel shakes his head. The man continues, “I am going to walk to Panama. I have faith. I will touch fifty thousand people on the way. Thank God for good weed and good friends.” Then the walker speaks to an MP, “We are your brothers and sisters, not kids.” One guard seems to smile.

A protester says, “The whole town of Washington is supplying food.” He sits in front of the MP, unperturbed. “This is the spirit of the Oakies and we will stand up to a whole building dedicated to nothing but war and killing.” The crowd starts singing ‘Hold On.’

It is eight thirty-five and there are three fires going. At nine thirty a soldier gives protester a cigarette. There is loud clapping, cheering and everybody smiles. Real love. “It is beautiful.” A soldier, a protester, come out on the steps. The soldier throws down his gun and helmet. There is wild applause, hugging, jumping up and down, shouts of “Yeah for a brave man. Join us. We love you.”

Another says, “This is our first victory tonight.”

The moon is now bright. A clear night. It is getting cooler. The marchers settle in, a woman puts on a warm coat. It no longer feels like the verge of a revolution, to me, anyway. Some guards are even smiling, seem more relaxed Lollipops are being handed around, passed through the crowd. Someone passes one to a guard, who accepts it, puts it in a pocket.

Chris moves closer to me, “Danny, how you going to go back to college, after staring down a loaded rifle?”

“Did we really stare them down? Maybe. Don’t know, Chris.”

“Danny, my lot is with my brothers, the war babies. I am fighting for me, for you, the things I read about in books by the Americans who were men. The stuff we read in high school.”

A MP with a megaphone says, “You can stay here until Sunday night.”

A few minutes later an ambulance pushes into the crowd. Someone shouts, “Twelve beaten.” I see Steve, Chris’s twin brother, in the distance. Chris turns and hugs me. “Take care bro.” Chris and Steve push their way through the thinning crowd.

It is now 1:30 in the morning. The bus back to Boston is delayed for three hours by a police barricade. A marcher says to Joel, “One of the marchers died, four hours after being beaten.” They say the first casualty of protest is the truth.

*

At ten in the morning, on the way to Boston. Joel and I sit in in a Hot Shoppe drinking coffee. Around the lounge sit college students, young working men, a tall fifty to sixty-year-old man with long grey hair, a red plaid shirt, suspenders, floppy grey pants, and beat up black shoes. The man in the red plaid shirt looks at a newspaper on the counter, picks it and starts reading the front page out loud to the assembled crowd.

“The Potomac never ran red, no cherry trees burned and the Pentagon did not leave the ground. The hippies and Yippies who wanted to levitate the massive 3.7 million-square-foot building, they could not fully encircle with witches, it as planned. But, the steps of the Pentagon were streaked red, with the blood of protesters. Perhaps Secretary of Defense McNamara spent the night, sleeping on a sofa in his office. By dawn the next day, only a few protesters remained, huddled together, having burned their signs to keep warm.”

The narrator stops and sips his coffee. “Before the protest was over, at least 79 persons were arrested in connection with the demonstration. The Pentagon said 27 persons were injured—6 military men, 8 Marshals and 13 demonstrators. Among those arrested at the Pentagon area were author Norman Mailer; Dagmar Wilson, head of the Women Strike for Peace, and Dave Dellinger, the Chairman of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, sponsor of the rally and the march on the Pentagon.”

Joel shouts out, “We got pretty good coverage even with the censorship. Good organization, this, but we can do better, the next time.…”

*

“Grandpa, did you end the War?”

I smile. “I wish.” I pause, wonder how to explain what happened. “Kaya, you play pool? You know, the game with the triangular rack for the colored balls, some with numbers, the stick and cue thing.”

“A bit. You try to whack the balls, hard, put them into the pockets.”

“Right. The thing is, back then, we were intent on just whacking the balls. Less focus on whether the balls went into the pockets. By the summer of 1968, in Chicago, it was anarchy, violence in the streets outside The Democratic National Convention.”

“I saw ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7.’ It wasn’t anarchy, as in anarcho-syndicalism, Grandpa.”

I have to smile. “Point well taken. Anyway, the thing is, Abbie Hoffman, Dellinger and the Yippies and hippies; we knocked the black ball, the eight ball, the one for the silent majority, into the pocket of Richard Milhouse Nixon, the Republican Presidential Candidate. He won and the War went on for seven more years.”

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