Walking the Walk and Compassion for Campers Update for August 21 2026

Look for new opportunities for action, education, community, and solidarity in and around McHenry County here every week.  

                                                            Walking the Walk 

Rapid Response Training.  The McHenry Co. Rapid Response Team will be conducting Rapid Response Team (RRT) training on Tuesday, August 26, from 7 to 9 pm at the First Congregational Church of Crystal Lake, 461 Pierson Street, Crystal Lake. RRT (and KYR) training is required for those considering joining the McHenry Co. RRT. Community members that attend on Tuesday will also need to show proof of completion of KYR training to be considered for admission to the team. Registration is strongly recommended at http://bit.ly/47fD0Xh.

McHenry County League of Women Voters hold a series of Candidate Forums for races in the General Election. The non-partisan group invites all candidates regardless of their party affiliation.  This time hear directly from candidates for County Clerk, County Treasurer & Regional Superintendent of Schools. Learn about the candidates, their qualifications and priorities … and submit your own questions.  Can’t make it in person? Watch live on the Facebook page.  Tuesday, August 25, at the Luecht Auditorium of McHenry County College. 

Compassion for Campers

Our distributions are usually held on the first and third Fridays of the month from 10 am to 2 pm at the new McHenry County Resource Center (MCHC) at the McHenry County Mental Health Board offices, 620 Dakota Street in Crystal Lake.   Our next C4C distribution will be today, Friday, August 21 and then on Friday, September 4 

With at least a temporary home base, C4C can resume accepting donations of supplies including clean used sleeping bags and tents in their bags or cases, tarps and other basic camping gear, rain gear, and especially mosquito and tick repellents and sunscreen.  Contact Sue Rekenthaler at tomatos@mc.net or Patrick Murfin at pmurfin@sbcglobal.net for more information.

Financial support is critical to fulfilling our mission. The best thing you can do is offer your critically needed financial support. Money donations are always welcome at     https://tinyurl.com/3bz96axe.   Look for updates here.  Email compassionforcampers@treeoflifeuu.org .

 

The First Jew in the Colonies Claimed his Place by Volunteering in the Nieuw-Amsterdam Night Watch

 

A Dutch view of New Amsterdam nine years after it was conquered by the English and renamed New York.   Note the militia drilling.

On August 22, 1654 Jacob Barsimson became the first known Jew to take up residence in what is now the United States.  Barsimson disembarked a ship from The Netherlands that day in Nieuw-Amsterdam (New Amsterdam), the capital of the colony of New Netherlands.  The city was still a raw frontier trading post huddled next to the protective parapets of a fort for protection from both the local natives and the voracious English. 

Barsimson, an Ashkenazi, was sent as an emissary by wealthy Dutch Jews to check out the suitability of the North American colony for settlement by Jews being persecuted in earlier attempts to establish New World footholds in Brazil and the West Indies. 

A map shows early Jewish migration routes and settlements in the New World including Sephardi Portuguese Jews from The Netherlands at Recife, Brazil and Dutch Caribbean Islands like Curauo.

The Dutch Republic was a place of refuge for all sorts of religious dissenters and outcasts once it had finally thrown out the Hapsburgs and with them the Inquisition.  During the same years the Netherlands was harboring Unitarian refugees from Poland and other persecuted minorities.  Of course, no one in Europe was more persecuted than the Jews.

A sizable community, mostly from Portugal where the Inquisition was still going strong, had established itself in Amsterdam and was prospering.  But Jews had prospered here and there in Europe before and the tides of prejudice rose against them time and time again.  The merchants of Amsterdam were looking for escape routes for themselves, as much as for their cousins in Brazil.

Despite being less than welcomed by Governor Peter Stuyvesant, Barsimson saw promise in the new city.  On October 22 he was on hand to welcome the first group of 23 settlers from Recife, Brazil.  Together they started the first Jewish community in North America, four years before the founding of another enclave at Newport, Rhode Island.

Others joined them along with some from the Dutch sugar islands in the Caribbean.  Stuyvesant became increasingly alarmed by the influx and imposed harsh restrictions on their occupations and trade opportunities.

Barsimson frequently got the best of his nemesis Governor Peter Stuyvesant  by going over his head to the Governors of the Dutch West India Company.

Barsimson, the acknowledged leader of the community, found himself in an ongoing game with the governor to secure rights and privileges for his people.  Jews were barred from most trades, shop keeping, public office, conducting religious services, and participation in the militia.  When Stuyvesant turned down a simple request to allow Jewish burials on the grounds that it was “premature”—no Jews had yet died—Barsimson appealed over his head to the directors of the West India Company which controlled New Amsterdam and in which several wealthy Jews were large investors.  The company ordered their governor to reverse his decision.

It was a pattern Barsimson would repeat.  He shrewdly observed that among the many restrictions placed on Jews was service in the militia and taking their turns at arms guarding the walls for the fort.  He understood that the rights of citizenship were tied to the responsibility to defend the colony.  Despite the continued threat of Indian attack and the growing menace from the English and from a new Swedish colony established in what is now Delaware by former New Amsterdam governor Peter Minuet, Stuyvesant refused the appeal for Barsimson and another Jew, Asser Levy for the right to take their turn at guard duty.  Once again, an appeal was made to the Company and once again the Governor was overruled.

A 20th Century illustration of Barsimson on night watch on the walls of New Amsterdam.

Barsimson and other Jews proudly took their turns on the walls and in Militia musters, thus securing the rights of citizenship in 1655.

In 1658 the Governor drew charges against Barsimson and had him summoned to court.  The Jewish leader refused to attend because he had been summoned on the Sabbath.  The court, in a curt slap in the face to the Governor ruled that, “though defendant is absent, yet no default is entered against him, as he was summoned on his Sabbath.”  It was the earliest court case in any colony establishing any level of religious acceptance for Jews.

Asser Levy was Barsimson’s close friend and associate and with him won the right to stand guard.  He would go on to purchase an estate near Albany and become the first Jew to own land in the colony.  He was Barsimson’s frequent partner in lawsuits to secure and expand Jewish rights.

When New Amsterdam fell to the British in 1664, the thriving community of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews retained full citizenship in the newly named colony of New York.

In My Chicago Summer of '68 Winding Up and After--Part X of a Murfin Memoir

The National Guard rolled out their barbed wire cage Jeeps to block marcher on Michigan Avenue on Thursday.  I was not there to see it. 

Note—I bail out before the final confrontations, head home, discover the fate of someone I sent into harm’s way, and get on with my life.

I doubt I got any sleep after getting back from the Battle of Michigan Avenue.   I ran across the street Thursday morning to get copies of all the papers from the boxes on the corner and started making breakfast. 

More than half of our charges were missing.  Some had enough of adventure and wisely gone home.  Others left sleeping bags and personal stuff leading us to suspect they were either in jail or in the hospital.  In those long ago days before cell phones and Twitter there was not good way to check their whereabouts.   Hell, we didn’t even know the real names of most of the kids.

By mid-morning a couple of them had staggered in.  Plans were being made for the last big event—one last stab at a big march down Michigan Avenue to the Amphitheater.  Everyone knew it was doomed to failure and would end badly.  And frankly, I didn’t have the stomach for it.  I told the SDSers that it looked like there were enough of them to wind things down at the Movement Center.  I was going home.

After his campaign offices in the Conrad Hilton were raided by club welding police early Wednesday morning Eugene McCarthy crossed Michigan Avenue into Grant Park where he spoke to a mixed crowd of battle-weary demonstrators, convention delegates, campaign staffers, and the press.  He was greeted warmly even by the most hardened leftists.  It took some courage.  Word was that the Police would try to stop his appearance by any means necessary.  Broad daylight, too many cameras, and his sudden and unexpected foray from the hotel probably saved his ass.

That afternoon Gene McCarthy came over from the Conrad Hilton to address the crowd in Grant Park.  Some of his Delegates and former Robert Kennedy Delegates tried to lead a march but were no more successful that Yippies or Mobe organizers.  Dick Gregory instead invited everyone over to his South Side home not far from the International Amphitheater for a barbeque.  He told everyone to stay on the sidewalks and headed south on Michigan.  As the crowd stirred someone bumped into the French writer Gene Genet who declared, “A Black has told me to march.  I must follow him!” 

They got as far south as 18th Street where they were met by the National Guard which had barbed wire cages mounted on the fronts of Jeeps and plenty of tear gas.  It was the last major confrontation of the week.  And I missed the whole damn thing.  Not at all sorry I missed it, but I felt like a deserter.

By mid-afternoon I climbed on the L at Diversy, made connection to the Skokie Swift at Howard and was home before dinner. I never saw Amy Kesseleman, my companion for much of the events in Grant Park and in front of the Hilton, again.

My mom in Skokie wouldn’t speak to me.  I had violated the admonition she gave me every time I left the house since I was 12—“Don’t disgrace the family.”  When Dad got home from work I handed him his World War II utility belt, canteen, and ammo pouch/first aid kit.  There were still a couple of his purloined, now blood soaked, handkerchiefs inside.  “It saw some action again,” I told him.  The old combat medical officer just nodded.  We never spoke of it again.

Network cameras zeroed in on Mayor Richard A. Daley's enraged face as delegates denounced the ongoing police violence.

That night we silently watched coverage from the Convention in the living room.  There was chaos inside the arena, too.  Vice President Humphrey, McCarthy, and George McGovern, the fall-back choice of many of the Kennedy delegates, were placed in nominations to mixed cheers, jeers, and boos.  Delegates and journalists were accosted and arrested on the floor.  America became familiar with Mayor Richard Daley’s rage filled face.  Humphrey, the grand old liberal icon won the hollow nomination and tried to make the best of it in his acceptance speech.  But the Democratic Party was shattered.  He could never shake the long shadow of LBJ’s war or Daley’s police goon rampages.

I had already made reservation to fly to Ohio on Friday to spend some time with Jon Gordon, my best high school buddy at Antioch College in Yellow Springs.  I boarded the plane at O’Hare in pretty much the same uniform as I had worn all week—plaid shirt, red neckerchief, denim jacket, and soiled white Stetson, this time with the wadded-up newspaper padding removed. 

Down the aisle and a few seats ahead I recognized a familiar face—SDS honcho Carl Oglesby.  One arm was encumbered in a very heavy cast.  Before takeoff, I ambled up the aisle and asked him what had happened.  It took him a moment to connect me with the kid he met in the bar late Sunday night.  Then the light went on.  “Oh, yeah, remember how you told us it was quiet back in Old Town?  It wasn’t,” he said.

That fall, I returned to Shimer College in Mount Carroll.  I had stories to tell.  Helped keep me in pot and cheap beer at Poffenberger’s tavern.  It turned out to be my last semester there.

In December I came home and went back to work in the air-conditioning plant for six weeks. I raised enough money to get a very cheap apartment on Howe Street west of Old Town.  I started school at Columbia College as a creative writing major.  The major domo of the writing department was John Schultz who was working on his book about the convention, No One Was Killed.

In June I decided to join the IWW.  I had been thinking about it since encountering the old timers at headquarters.  To my astonishment the first Chicago Branch meeting I attended had almost a hundred members in attendance—most of them young.  I was in on the ground floor of a mini-renaissance of the old radical union.  By August I was coordinating IWW participation in the People’s Park project at Armitage and Halstead.  I spent the next ten or so years of my life with the IWW as an organizer, soap boxer, agitator, local officer, editor, and even my own term as General Secretary Treasurer sitting at Big Bill Haywood’s  desk.

This classic issue of the Seed was on the streets for the opening of the Chicago 8--soon to be Chicago 7--trial in September 1969 and so, again, was I. 

When the Feds put Hoffman, Rubin, Davis, Dellinger, Bobby Seale, and sacrificial lambs John Froines, and Lee Weiner on trial charged conspiracy and inciting to riot, I joined by old Shimer friends Bill Delaney and Sally MacMurraugh  on  a march from Lincoln Park to the Federal Building that turned into a kind of running battle with police.  My experience staying upwind of tear gas paid off.

The original Chicago Conspiracy 8 defendants--From top left Yippies Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis of SDS, Black Panther Bobby Seale,  low profile rank-and-filers Lee Weiner and John Froines, and Dave Dellinger of the New Mobe.  After trying to represent himself Seale was bound to a chair and gagged by Judge Julius Hoffman and eventually separated from the trial leaving the Chicago 7.

I also ended up joining the staff of the Seed in 1971, by then relocated to offices above Alice’s Revisited on Wrightwood.  The guys who had eyed me suspiciously when I wandered in on the at the LaSalle Street office were long gone by then.  It was my turn to be paranoid when strangers showed up at the office wanting to join the revolution.

I never turned in my assigned account of the Yippies during the convention to that Free University class.  I guess this is it.  Professor Lynd, will I be marked down?

 

In My Chicago Summer of '68 The Whole World Was Watching--Part IX of a Murfin Memoir

  

The crowd swelled around the Poor People's Campaign wagons heading south on Michigan Ave. late Wednesday afternoon.  Ralph Abernathy and the SCLC folks did not seem all that delighted with our company as they inched up the Avenue  from Jackson to the police blockade at Balbo.

Note—In Today’s episode I hook up with the Poor People’s Campaign Mule Train, Amy and I reunite at Michigan and Balbo, a short cab ride with “Thomas Jefferson,” and the Battle of Michigan Avenue.

Late Wednesday afternoon I was accidentally near the head of two or three hundred folks trying to find our way out of Grant Park when we finally found an open bridge over the rail tracks.  To our astonishment the Poor People’s Campaign Mule Train was coming down Michigan Avenue heading south.

If things had worked out differently in Memphis that April, Dr. King himself might have been in the lead wagon.  The Poor People’s Campaign was his dream to unite the poor of all races into a new movement for economic justice.  But he was dead and Ralph Abernathy was left to carry on.  He was on the seat of the lead wagon dressed in overalls.  The mule train was meant to recall the promise of 20 acres and a mule free and clear to Freedmen after the Civil War.  Their presence in Chicago was really just to publicize a planned encampment in Washington to pressure Congress for a whole new economic deal for the poor. 

Most importantly, the Poor People’s Campaign had secured what almost no one else had—a permit to drive their wagons right up to the doorstep of the International Amphitheater.

We surged over the bridge and joined the procession.  Others were already with them.  More joined as we inched north filtering in from the Park or coming from elsewhere in the city. 

To tell the truth Abernathy and his people did not look exactly thrilled to find their wagons suddenly engulfed by disheveled youth, many of us still reeking of tear gas or nursing wounds.  They had good reason to believe that their permit would not be honored if we were with them.  And these folks who had themselves endured so much police violence in the South, worried that we would draw the same response down upon them again.

It is only a few blocks south from Jackson to Balbo.  But at the methodical, plodding pace of the mule drawn wagons and as we clogged the street with swelling numbers it seemed like an hour, or so to reach it as the Chicago Police scrambled to get a large force in front of us and redeploy the forces from Grant Park and other sites in the city.

When we finally reached Balbo, the cops had enough massed force to block the march further south.  The marchers pushed up tightly, filling Michigan Ave and spilling into the edge of Grant Park.  It looked, as best as I could tell in the press and confusion, that the crowd stretched back a block or more, but there were probably no more than a couple of thousand folks.  It was a standoff.

As the crowd went into a chant after chant, Abernathy and his people negotiated with the police.  Eventually, they were allowed to pass, but the cordon of cops quickly closed and blocked the rest of us. 

I was getting uncomfortable in the crowd. I noticed that the sidewalk was clear right around the corner on Balbo across from the Conrad Hilton.  I stepped over there to get my bearings. 

The light was fading to dusk when I heard my friend Amy Kesselman’s voice.  She found me again after we were separated earlier at the Band Shell.  At six foot two and wearing the only cowboy hat around, it was a lot easier for her to find me.  I would never have picked all five foot nothing of her out the crowd. 

We tried to decide what to do.  Amy wanted to try and find other staffers from the Movement Center.  She thought that they were well back on Michigan.  Since there was no way to push through the crowd on Michigan, we decided to head north on Wabash then cut back to the Avenue.

There were some cops forming on Wabash, so we went on to State.  It was amazing.  Life seemed to be going on as normal.  The sidewalks bustled with ordinary folk going about their evening as if nothing at all extraordinary was occurring two blocks over.  We cut back to Michigan and sure enough found ourselves to the rear of the crowd.  But a glance made it clear that it would be unlikely that we would connect with the others.  Now Amy wanted to go back where we started because she was sure things were going to get interesting.

She spotted a cab coming down Michigan.  She grabbed my hand and said, “come on!”  We hopped in the cab.  Amy asked to go to State and Balbo.  The driver looked disgusted, whether at the short fare or our appearance.  But just as he was getting ready to pull away from the curb, the door of the cab flew open and two guys tumbled in, both looking the worst for wear.

Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, and Jerry Rubin--almost half of the eventual Chicago 7.  By Wednesday night Davis's busted head was swathed in bandages, and Hayden popped into a cab convinced he was Thomas Jefferson.  I don't know where the hell Rubin was.

One of them was Tom Hayden.  He was babbling a non-stop monologue that didn’t seem to make much sense.  “He thinks he’s Thomas Jefferson,” the other guy explained.  I’m not sure if he had gotten bopped in the head at the Band Shell like Rennie Davis or if maybe Abbie Hoffman had shared some dope with him.  Anyway, the second guy said, “We gotta get him to safety.”  He mentioned the name of a hotel. 

After delivering Hayden and his pal to safety, we took the cab back to Balbo.  Amy must have paid, because by this time in the week I was down to pocket change.

It was full dark by the time we got back to where we started, on the Balbo sidewalk directly across from the entrance to the Hilton’s Haymarket restaurant.  Bright TV lights shined down from the upper floors of the Hilton, the official convention headquarters hotel where the media and many delegates were encamped.  We could barely make out a line of blue helmets across Michigan.  Protestors surged against them from time to time.

Suddenly, a large phalanx of cops appeared from Wabash and massed on Balbo.  They had their batons out and looked like they meant business.  They marched in military formation right down the street sweeping passed us on the sidewalk and plowed into the mass of demonstrators, clubs flaying.  The cops along Michigan joined the fray.  I am told that another unit hit the crowd on Michigan from the rear.

Chicago's Finest slam into the crowd of demonstrators at Michigan and Balbo.

If you were alive and sentiment in the ‘60s you probably remember the scene, which was broadcast live on network television shooting the action from Hilton windows.  The police violence that had largely been hidden from public view all week was there for the nation to see in all of its savagery.

It was like we were invisible on our side of the street, still in the shadows not illuminated by those lights.  Folks right across from us in front of the Haymarket were not so lucky.  Several of them looked to be delegates, staffers, and others associated with the convention, not protestors.  But a handful of cops waded into them with gusto.  They pushed some through the plate glass windows of the restaurant.

Batons were still flaying as demonstrators began waving and pointing at the TV lights chanting over and over “The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!”

Some of the wounded began to straggle up our side of the street hugging the building for safety.  We guided a couple of them back up the street toward Wabash where I set up a kind of rough aid station using the firstaid kit on my utility belt and more of my dad’s handkerchiefs.  Amy ferried more to me as I dabbed blood and washed tear gas from eyes until my canteen was dry.  I was soon out of what meager supplies I had.

The National Guard taking up position on Michigan Ave.  At first many demonstrators welcomed them as a relief from the Chicago Police rampage.

Amy and I and our patients were still in danger.  Squads of cops were now breaking off chasing demonstrators.  We told our charges to scatter as they were able.  We helped some get to State Street.  We clamored down the stairs to the subway and headed north.

We evidently were just ahead of adrenalin pumped squads of cops who swept up Wabash and State beating any one they could find, including folks emerging from theaters.

We got off at Diversey and stumbled into the church Movement Center exhausted. Amazingly it was not yet 11 o’clock.  We huddled around the radio trying to find out what was happening.

After we left the National Guard relieved the Chicago Police on Michigan Ave. and began pushing the crowd north.  Greeted at first as practically saviors from the cop rampage.  Bayonets were sheathed and apparently not used.  Swinging rifle butts, however were.

The Battle of Michigan Avenue waned, but cops kept sweeping for stragglers all night.  In the morning they even charged into the hotel where they raided McCarthy headquarters, which had taken in several wounded demonstrators.  They beat everyone in the room.

Next—Winding down, winding up, and getting on with my life.

In My Chicago Summer of '68 A Commotion in Grant Park--Part IIX of a Murfin Memoir

An aerial view of the crowd assembled at the Petrillo Band Shell in Grant Park for the Mobilization rally Wednesday Afternoon.  Amy Kesselman and I were standing near the front out of this shot just to the right.  We were lucky not to get trapped in the seats.

Note—In today’s episode Amy and I make it Grant Park, where a certain literary lion makes an appearance and the Cops go ape, again.

Everyone knew that Wednesday of Convention Week was going to be the Big Day.  That’s when the Democrats down at the International Amphitheater were supposed to select their Presidential candidate.  The press and cameras of the nation were on hand for the event. 

For the first time I had a running buddy when I left the church Movement Center that morning.  My friend Amy Kesselman came with me.  Amy stood a good 5 foot nothing.  She had short black hair, deep brown eyes, and a little mole on her upper lip.  Cute as a bug’s ear.  Hey, I was 19 and noticed such things.  But I would never dream of putting a move on her. She was so intensely serious, in her 20’s and a dedicated SDSer of the community organizing stripe.  Out of my league, for sure.

I met Amy when she was working with 49th Ward Citizens for Independent Political Action (CIPA), in Rogers Park in the spring of ’67.  She gave what would now be called technical advice and support to our high school organization—the fighting Liberal Youth of Niles Township (LYNT) when we put on a program called Up Tight About the Draft? That summer she helped get me credentialed as the youngest voting delegate to the New Politics Convention held at the Palmer House where I met—or at least shook hands with—Rev. Martin Luther King and assorted other movement leaders and/or heroes.  And it was Amy who got me my glamorous slot as babysitter, cook, and dishwasher to the high school kids back at the Movement Center.

We took the train downtown.  It was a very pleasant day, the warmest of the week, but still cool enough for me to wear my denim jacket.  Tuesday the city was under a high haze or light clouds, but that day there was a glorious clear blue sky.  Most of the seating in front of the Band Shell in Grant Park was taken when we got there.  Speechifying had already begun.  The park swarmed with cops in their baby blue helmets, but they seemed to be keeping their distance.

We found a spot just to the right of the seats but within ten feet or so of the stage.  We had a very good vantage point for the program.  Phil Ochs was there to sing again, but this program was more about the speeches.  Boy was there a parade of them.  All of the by now usual suspects—Dellinger, Gregory, Ginsberg, Rubin, and Hayden made appearances.  

Norman Mailer harangued the crowd.   A furious Tom Hayden is on the right with his back turned.

Then Norman Mailer was introduced.  He was the only man in the park in a three-piece suit.  He looked just like the crumpled photo that had been shown to me at that party back at Eileen Claire’s earlier in the summer.  Maybe his mop of curly hair was a little longer, a little hipper.  Mailer had a lot to say.  At least it was stuff we hadn’t heard a couple of times already.  But he was full of himself and droned on.  Tom Haden prowled the edge of the stage not far from me, growing angrier and angrier.  He wanted to move the program along, but Mailer was too into his moment.

While we were listening to speeches in the Park, delegates in the Convention Hall were debating a “Peace Plank” to the Platform proposed by Eugene McCarthy’s forces.  Word got to the rally that it had been soundly defeated.  As the crowd booed and jeered someone started to haul down the flag from a pole on the left of the stage, just across the crowd from us.  I couldn’t get a good view, but evidently a gaggle of cops surged forward to arrest him starting a small melee around the flag.  After he was dragged off others succeed in bringing the flag down and hoisting a shirt smeared with real or fake blood.  It later turned out one of the hoisters was an undercover cop.

The police charge the Bandshell crowd pinning many against the seats.

Realizing that this would bring a full-scale assault the word went out for Mobe marshals to deploy around the crowd.  I never heard the call, which undoubtedly saved my ass.  Most of those in the seats still watching the stage were unaware as the cops closed in from three sides, swinging their clubs.  The line of marshals was pinned against the seats, many beaten senseless, including Rennie Davis.

The crowd stampeded many falling and stumbling amid the seats.  The cops beat them unmercifully where they fell.  Amy and I had room to maneuver and stayed out of harm’s way.  We could see a few objects being thrown back into the police lines, but the battle was one sided.

If you ever saw the movie Medium Cool, you may remember a blurred shot of the red-headed leading lady streaking across the screen in terror.  Haskell Wexler was filming with his cast on the scene, and they were caught up in the attack.

After a few heart pounding minutes, the police retreated dragging their prisoners with them.  People began to attend the wounded.  I dabbed blood from a few broken heads from the collection of my father’s old handkerchiefs that I carried in the old ammo pouch on my utility belt. 

From the stage Dellinger and Hayden tried to regain control of the crowd.  Except that they couldn’t agree on what we should do.  Dellinger wanted to go ahead with the announced big march from the rally to the Amphitheater.  Hayden, recalling the tactics of Lincoln Park, wanted people to break up into small groups to try and infiltrate the city then join up on Michigan Avenue for a march.

Like most of the crowd, I decided to stay with the March.  I figured there was safety in numbers.  The far more adventuresome Amy, I believe, opted to go with the small groups.  Anyway, we got separated.

 

Cops block the attempt to march from the Band Shell to the Amphitheater.  As we waited in the sun for more than an hour top brass and Red Squad dicks prowled the line identifying individuals.   I was surprised when I was pointed out and a Red Squad guy said, "We know who this is."

We lined up on a sidewalk alongside the Band Shell, but headed north, probably to get to the nearest bridge over the Illinois Central tracks.  But we were unable to move.  The police blocked the march for lack of a permit.  Dellinger and others tried to negotiate a deal to let us pass.  We stood in that long line for at least an hour.

After while a small knot of cops, a couple of brass in uniform and hulking Red Squad cops in mufti came down the line.  They had a young guy with them—either a stool pigeon or an undercover agent.  He was picking out people in the line and identifying them as one of the Red Squad goons scribbled furiously.  When they got to me one of says, “Oh we know who this guy is.” I didn’t recognize the guy from either of my two earlier personal encounters with Chicago’s finest. Now I admit with my cowboy hat I stood out, but I was astonished that any one as insignificant as me would even be noticed.  Later I figured that because of the SDS folks, our Movement Center was probably under much more intense surveillance than other places.

After it became apparent that the March was going nowhere, the crowd began to break up to try and find a way out of the park.  This was not easy as most paths were quickly blocked.  A large group of us headed into the park in search of a route.  We were hemmed in at a distance on either side by cops. 

We came on a set of tennis courts each surrounded by 10-foot-high chain link fences.  But there were narrow open doorways and on the far side an opening to what looked like an open road to the north.  Those in the lead plunged into the courts. I dutifully followed but was sure that once a two or three hundred of us were inside the cops would shut the gates and we would be trapped.  I will never know why we weren’t, but it was an immense relief to get out of those cages.

Our first glimpse of the National Guard defending bridges over the railroad tracks from the park to Michigan Ave.  We finally found an open bridge at Jackson.

We finally headed north on Columbus Drive.  We tried to get across the tracks at Congress.  But the first Illinois National Guard troops we had yet seen were blocking the way.  The same was true at Jackson.  A suburban mom type in a respectable sedan drove past us up to the roadblock.  Where she came from or how she got there I don’t know, but she didn’t seem to be a demonstrator.  She had picked up an injured kid who was in the back seat.  She argued with a Guardsman that she just wanted to get the kid to a hospital.  The trooper had none of it.  She tried to inch forward, which is when another Guardsman punctured her front tire with a bayonet.

We kept moving north through the park until we found a bridge unattended.  Somehow, I was near the head of the column, which probably happened when we reversed directions.  We could see something moving south on Michigan Ave.  We surged out of the park, across the bridge, and into what we could not expect.

Next—That evening the whole world was watching.