http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/08/02/greene.reunion.1968/
By Bob Greene
CNN Contributor
August 2, 2009
Beer summits at the White House notwithstanding, not all
controversies between the police and the citizens they serve are
destined to turn into gauzy, orchestrated "teachable moments."
Some wounds are so deep that they just may last forever. Which is a
lesson in itself.
As interesting an evening as I have spent this year took place
earlier this summer on a Chicago, Illinois, street well west of
downtown. "Just wanted to come spend time with some old friends,"
said Tom Dempsey, 67, as he arrived at the lodge of the Fraternal
Order of Police, next door to a plumbers' union training center.
He had plenty of company. This was the first reunion of Chicago
police officers assigned to the streets during the 1968 Democratic
National Convention. Not to diminish the heat of the emotions in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, this summer, but in terms of international
attention being focused on a police department, what happened in
Cambridge was rather mild.
The mayhem on the streets of Chicago during that long-ago August
week, captured on film and in still photographs, has emblemized a
moment in history. A federal commission used the term "police riot";
for more than 40 years the officers who were there have been offended
and angry about that.
So here they were in 2009, retirees in shorts and in golf shirts, in
natty blazers and in khaki trousers. "A celebration?" said Bill
Jaconetti, 66. "A celebration of what? This is just some former
police officers getting together to remember when we were asked to
protect a great American city."
He fully understood it wasn't as simple as that; it never has been.
The organizers of the reunion had elected to use uncompromising
language on the Web site announcing the event. The anti-war
demonstrators of 1968 were "Marxist street thugs"; criticism of the
actions of the police was "unwarranted, inaccurate and wrong." The
language was destined to get attention, and it did.
Thus, half a block to the west of the lodge this summer, protesters
were gathering behind police barricades. They felt that the
organizers of the police reunion had mischaracterized and purposely
insulted the anti-Vietnam war demonstrators of 1968; the police, for
their part, have long believed that they were the ones who were
provoked at that Democratic convention, that they were goaded in ways
that were guaranteed to culminate with violent confrontations.
Now, on this summer evening in 2009, the protesters, many of them not
born in 1968, looked toward the arriving retired officers and
chanted: "No justice! No peace! No riot police!"
The whole world wasn't watching. In Grant Park near Chicago's
lakefront -- site of some of the ugliest convention-week battles of
1968 -- hundreds of thousands of people had congregated on this day
in 2009. It had nothing to do with the police reunion. Taste of
Chicago, the annual food-and-music festival, had opened its 10-day run.
Miles distant from that, out on Washington Boulevard, there were
perhaps a few hundred retired officers in the lodge, and a lesser
number of demonstrators to the west. Anyone three blocks away would
have been unaware of either group. Many of the marquee players from
the famous Democratic convention -- Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin
from the dissenters, the first Mayor Richard Daley from the city,
Chet Huntley and David Brinkley from the national media that spread
the pictures -- are dead.
And the former police officers who were approaching the front door of
the lodge? "I know there were probably a lot of peaceful
demonstrators in '68 who didn't want all that to happen," said John
Wotring, 63, who had flown up from his home in Sanford, Florida. The
one remnant from his life as a street cop is that the nickname his
buddies had for him -- "Johnny Wo" -- is now, in retirement, a proud
part of his e-mail address.
They're on the back nine of life. "You ask about your buddy -- you
say, 'How's so-and-so doing?' " said John Murray, 62, who was 21
during convention week. "You get the answer: 'He died' " The calls of
this year's protesters summoned certain echoes. Murray said: "I was
the age of the demonstrators in '68. I was a kid, too. But all they
saw was the uniform."
The two sides didn't speak to each other then, and not much seemed to
have changed. "I think it's fine they're here," said retired officer
Harold Brown. "It's a nice night. They're not hurting anyone." But
the people chanting, kept at a distance, could not hear him. John
Eshoo, 68, formerly of the 18th District, said, "Was I angry
convention week? No. I was just so amazed that we were being faced
with what we were being faced with."
There's never going to be common ground, or an inch given on either
side, even after everyone who was at the famous convention is gone.
"I had served as a Marine corporal in Vietnam for 13 months," said
Ken Lavorata, 64. "And then I came home and joined the Chicago police
and there I was."
The truly radical thing, on a 21st-century summer evening, would have
been for someone to take down the wooden barricades at the end of the
block and let the cops and those who were chanting toward them get
together and talk. But if that was going to happen, it would have
happened long ago. "I wasn't a big fan of the war, either," said
retired patrol officer Murray, on a night so pretty it made you
half-believe that life can be like that.
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