Tom Hayden, shown narrating this video provided by Rocky Mountain News in Denver, CO, is a well-known activist from the 1960s student movement. Once a founding member of Students For a Democratic Society, Hayden is now a writer, journalist, former politician, and adjunct professor. But in 1968 he and hundreds of other activists participated in the protests around the ’68 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He was arrested there as part of the Chicago Seven, a group of seven ‘ring-leaders’ charged with conspiracy to incite the riots.

As Hayden explains, what happened in Chicago in 1968 was not a violent protest, but rather a “police riot,” the term used by the Walker Commission, a body appointed by the Nixon administration to investigate the events surrounding the Chicago convention. That violence was made all the more shocking by the fact that it was often inflicted upon persons who had broken no law, disobeyed no order, made no threat. These included peaceful demonstrators, onlookers, and large numbers of residents who were simply passing through, or happened to live in the areas where confrontations were occurring. Reporters and photographers were singled out for assault, and their equipment deliberately damaged.

This year’s Democratic National Convention, fifty years after 1968, shares several similarities with the ’68 convention. A large number of what the mainstream press considers “would-be” Democratic voters, are fed-up with the politics of the Democratic Party. Just as during the Vietnam War, when a Democrat-controlled government continued to wage war on a country which posed little threat to the ‘American way of life’, so too the Democratic-controlled Congress today has done little to stop the occupation of a country which (at least in hindsight) posed little threat to America’s national security. This is perhaps the biggest similarity. But there are others.

The Denver Police are preparing for major street confrontations with protesters, just as in 1968, stockpiling various crowd control weapons, such as a sound-emitter which incapacitates demonstrators. A half-dozen military helicopters were recently spotted flying low over the Denver skyline. The Army is conducting exercises in accordance with their training for the Global War on Terror, said an Army spokesperson. And the City of Denver was recently granted $50 million in Federal grant money for security alone at the convention.

Scholars and writers this year are particularly interested in the parallels between 2008 and 1968. A Time Magazine special edition was recently dedicated entirely to the events reported by Time Magazine during 1968. Nineteen Sixty Eight is the year on everyone’s mind. But the notion that this year’s Democratic National Convention will be just like or very similar to the 1968 convention is misleading. Those parallels can only be carried so far.

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Today marks the one year anniversary of the Port of Tacoma Police Riots that thrust the issue of war resistance to the forefront of civil discussion across the Pacific Northwest. The well documented barrage of rubber bullets and gas-canisters ultimately became the unfortunate climax of a multi-day anti-war protest that initially drew support from city leaders and citizens of all walks of life before ultimately falling victim to conflicting accounts and unresolved questions of the parties’ intent. One year later, neither side has admitted fault nor failure for their cause.

Yet many questions remain, and the most interesting tend to be less contextual than conceptual. So The Melon would like to ask its Tacoma readers to contribute their thoughts on what happened and how their views on the War in Iraq have either changed or been confirmed by what happened a year ago at the Port.

TIMELINE:

March 2: Demonstrations begin.

March 5: Three members of the Olympia Chapter of the PMR (Port Militarization Resistance) are arrested “on suspicion of third-degree assault.”

March 6: Free-lance-journalist Joseph La Sac, who while filming tense but still relatively tranquil anti-war demonstrations at the Port of Tacoma, is handcuffed and forcibly removed from public property for failing to obey a policeman’s order to “shut off the camera.” An edited video of La Sac’s experience is later broadcast over KING 5 News and on YouTube, where it generated widespread resentment and anger across the South Sound area…Another member of the Olympia PMR is arrested after refusing three requests to conclude his statements at a Tacoma City Council meeting.

March 10: Protestors and Police clash.
(see video: http://tacomasds.org/node/337)

March 14: The 300 Stryker Vehicles finally leave the Port of Tacoma for Kuwait. This effectively ends the port protests.

April 1: A five-member “citizen review panel” with limited oversight, is commissioned to investigate and assess the response of the Tacoma PD during the March protests.

July 18: Tacoma Municipal Judge Karl D. Haugh dismisses cases against thirteen defendants taken into custody during the March protests. Those whose cases are dismissed include: Charles B. Bevis, Leah
E. Coakley, Dennis H. Dutton (Tenzing Karma Wangchuk), Patrick A.
Edelbacher, Somerset D. Fetter, Elizabeth (Liz) Rivera Goldstein,
William (Wes) W. Hamilton, Thomas McCarthy, Phan Nguyen, Gloria (Sasha
Crow) J. Norton, Matthew W. Reiss III, Jody L. Tiller, and Karen
Weill.

Oct 3: Tacoma News Tribune reports that the City of Tacoma will pay a $621,489 bill for miscellaneous police costs related to the March protests.

Today: At least 87,451 people have watched the March 10 riot on YouTube alone.

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