Andrew. wrote:Second, there were protesters throwing nasty stuff, undoubtedly. The American State, which cops in '68 represented at home, was throwing more than bricks in Vietnam, meanwhile. 373 000 tons of naplam were dropped on Vietnam. At the '68 convention, your dad was a local enforcer of acquiescence to that policy. And that's just a fact. No amount of personal decency, or biographical color, changes that.

Drop the internet revolutionary routine and show humanity yourself. The guy's Dad just died six months ago. Jesus.

vockins wrote:

Andrew. wrote:Second, there were protesters throwing nasty stuff, undoubtedly. The American State, which cops in '68 represented at home, was throwing more than bricks in Vietnam, meanwhile. 373 000 tons of naplam were dropped on Vietnam. At the '68 convention, your dad was a local enforcer of acquiescence to that policy. And that's just a fact. No amount of personal decency, or biographical color, changes that.

Drop the internet revolutionary routine and show humanity yourself. The guy's Dad just died six months ago. Jesus.

Yeah, fair enough.

zom-zom wrote:If you want to paint a picture of peaceful, mellow groovy innocent hippies getting beaten up by mean and nasty cops go ahead. There was more to it.

Time article - September 06, 1968 - Dementia in the Second City

With billy clubs, tear gas and Mace, the blue-shirted, blue-helmeted cops violated the civil rights of countless innocent citizens and contravened every accepted code of professional police discipline.

No one could accuse the Chicago cops of discrimination. They savagely attacked hippies, yippies, New Leftists, revolutionaries, dissident Democrats, newsmen, photographers, passers-by, clergymen and at least one cripple. Winston Churchill's journalist grandson got roughed up. Playboy's Hugh Hefner took a whack on the backside. The police even victimized a member of the British Parliament, Mrs. Anne Kerr, a vacationing Laborite who was Maced outside the Conrad Hilton and hustled off to the lockup.

Time article - Friday, December 06, 1968 - CHICAGO EXAMINED: ANATOMY OF A "POLICE RIOT'

Dan Rather even got roughed up inside of the convention.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrlYRWD_tnA

Andrew. wrote:

vockins wrote:Drop the internet revolutionary routine and show humanity yourself. The guy's Dad just died six months ago. Jesus.

Yeah, fair enough.

Too late for the sentiment to count much, I'd think.

zom-zom wrote:If you want to paint a picture of peaceful, mellow groovy innocent hippies getting beaten up by mean and nasty cops go ahead. There was more to it.

Now I don't think anyone at this board is finger-painting that trippy scene, man. The press may have put it that way, and I'm sure this whole post-conflict is divided between what side of the groove people wanna stand on, but nobody here is putting that on file. Even if it was a bunch of pilled-out mongoloids rubbing cat shit in their hair, the shit should not have gone down like that and WE ALL know this, every one on every side of the thing.

scott wrote:steve jobs was discussed in that doc I saw. they said he was total hippie guy. that the reason Apple computer was started in the first place was to take the power away from the corporations and put it back in the hands of the common man. they showed old film of Jobs saying just that, back in the 80's, at some event where he was selling people of the Apple II.

I got a good laugh out of that.

Jobs did a lot of acid back in his college days and even went Hara Krishna fo a while.

touching, before my time, but i've certainly heard enough about this.
Nice photographs, the kind they won't show you at school

Marsupialized wrote:Do you think Bush would have been so quick to attack Iraq if he knew his daughters would have to be on the front lines of the invasion? and the daughters and sons of all his advisors and policy makers?

Again, it's a fair point - I kinda think those kids would be getting 'promoted' to positions less likely to be in danger though.

Marsupialized wrote:

Andrew. wrote:There are lots and lots of good men and women who are cops. And cops do lots and lots of good things.

Why do people keep saying this?
Everyone just assumes there must be good people who are cops and they must be out there doing good things.
There are not and they do not, none and never.

This is a gross generalization and a bullshit one. My dad works with cops and I've actually been helped out by the police a couple of times. When a man high on something cheaper than meth is veering dangerously towards violence while shouting at a nun while you're working at a church-run thrift store downtown and a cop escorts the man away from the premises, trust me, it's helpful. It's a good thing. Maybe not as good a thing as walking him into rehab or something but I'm fairly glad it happened anyways.

Another gross generalization is that those evil hippies were hurling stuff en masse at the cops who were just there because they got called there. At a time when the attitude towards hippies was to conflate them with communism and evil, I seriously doubt that every cop who joined the force was a decent guy. Like today, a fair number of them probably had severe superiority complexes and other attitude problems that led them to despise any threat to their authority. Hippies certainly fall under that category. Never mind that those in charge basically gave them free rein to mace, club and arrest whoever they saw fit. Arguing otherwise would basically be trying to argue that the Nixon government wasn't tremendously corrupt.

A number of the cops were probably just there because it was their job and hated it. A number of hippies weren't throwing stuff but instead were putting flowers in guns and singing "Kumbaya" and doing other noted hippie activities.

There are shitty people everywhere, guys, and there are good people everywhere. This shouldn't even be a discussion! There are more important things being said in this thread, like this:

John George Peppers wrote:

bassness wrote:We will never again see people rise up for what they believe is right like the people from these times.

I hope you're wrong, but I happen to think you're right.

Why do people insist on having the cop conversation with Marsupialized? It's the exact same thing as having the Ron Paul conversation with clocker bob - hidebound and pointless.

Ty Webb wrote:Why do people insist on having the cop conversation with Marsupialized? It's the exact same thing as having the Ron Paul conversation with clocker bob - hidebound and pointless.

Wave a petard around long enough, expect to be hoisted by it eventually.

With help, of course.

-r