04 May 2009
 
May Day

  
(May Day Poster, 19781)
 
The classic May Day was last week, but it was on this date thirty-eight years ago that I first came to Washington on my own.
 
I had been there before, born by the family Rambler station-wagon. We visited the Smithsonian, I remember that, and the orange sleek shape of Chuck Yeager’s Bell X-1 aircraft, “Glamorous Glennis.”
 
I wish I could say that I remember anything else, but I can’t. The aviation collection was then housed in a wing of the American History Museum, and that would have meant that the vast bulk of the Munitions Building and Main Navy still sprawled to the west, past the Washington Monument, across Constitution Avenue.
 
They obscured the view of the Reflecting Pool from the road, just as they had since World War One.
 
It was interesting, since on this day, thirty-eight years ago, I stood on the same Mall, in front of the same building, and watched the troops arrive by helicopter to chase me out of the city.
 
The Headlines from that day’s Washington Post told the story:
“7,000 Arrested in Capital War Protest; 150 Are Hurt as Clashes Disrupt Traffic”
 
A fellow named Richard Halloran reported the story. He is still active in the business, writing a weekly column called the “The Rising East,” about Asia and U.S. relations with it. He was with The New York Times for two decades after the time our lives briefly overlapped, mostly as a foreign correspondent in Asia and military correspondent in Washington, D.C.
He is a Dartmouth man, but earned his Masters at the school in Ann Arbor where I learned about what was going to happen in Washington.
 
I need to explain myself. I was shaggy enough to be one of the protestors, hair down to my shoulders and a wispy moustache garnishing my lip. But I was in town to be a witness to something profound, the first national event that had a direct affect on me.
 
The Kennedy murder, and that of his brother and Doctor King were things that happened when I still rode a bicycle for transportation. This May Day protest was something I could attend on my own, and I was determined to be there to see it in person.
 
Dad loaned me his Minox camera to record the events. The Minox was the little sliver tube-like device much admired by the intelligence community. There were many things coming together that week that would sweep me along the great current of history. I did not know it, of course, but life is a funny thing, isn’t it?
I don’t know if Halloran was in the knot of print media people I stood with on the Mall, but it is quite possible. I was old enough to be one of the troops in the helicopters, but I was not. I had a student deferral from my local Draft Board to earn my college degree.  But that is all it was. A postponed obligation.
 
Halloran had been a solider, too, and recently. He enlisted in the Army during the Korean War and was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division. He served in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam, though he did not mention his service in the article he wrote about the events of that day.
 
Journalism was more objective back then, perhaps because the reporters knew more about who and what they were dealing with.
 
He wrote about the 7,000 antiwar protesters who had fought running skirmishes with metropolitan police and Federal troops throughout large areas of the nation's capital.
 
About 150 of us were also injured in the six hours of disturbances. The cops had revoked the permit to camp in the parkland along the Potomac on Sunday night. I had crashed in a church up near DuPont Circle, though I am not sure about that. It could have been the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. At this distance in time, I do not recall.
 
I do recall the acrid whiff of tear gas that came before breakfast as the police smoked out the little bands of protestors as they attempted to get organized. The whole downtown reeked of CS that day, and the standard gear for the protestors included bandannas over the mouth.
 
Throughout the morning, some 30,000 kids streamed out of the littered campsite, some heading for home, others seeking refuge in universities, churches, and private homes. The protesters called themselves the Mayday Tribe. Their intent was to shut the capital down.
 
They intended to harass Government employees on their way to work, using trash, tree limbs, stones, bottles, bricks, lumber, nails, tires, rubbish bins and parked cars as weapons of inert destruction.
 
The police fought these tactics with tear gas and nightsticks.
 
With the coming of the gas before dawn, I shadowed the groups of five or ten young protestors, boys and girls, really, toward their designated targets.
 
I took pictures as young people darted out into traffic, attempting to disable commuters on 14th Street. I recall being surprised at the response to one motorist, who leapt from his car and beat the crap out of a young man who tried to open the hood of his car to steal the distributor cap.
 
He wore a crew cut and a white, short-sleeved shirt. The young man had a batting helmet and a vest.
 
The police were quite effective at chasing down the knots of young people, which had never coalesced into anything like an organized group. I allowed myself to float along to the south, to the Mall, and that is where I may have encountered Mr. Halloran, since I had a camera, and there seemed to be safety with the working press.
 
I was quickly disabused of the notion, as the troops dismounted form the helicopters, formed up, and began to sweep up the Mall towards us.
The Reporters may have been credentialed, but they were no fools. This group began to melt away, and to my back was the entrance to the American History Museum. Breathing hard, the flight or fight reflex flooding my blood with adrenaline, I turned and ran up the steps….
 
…to pass through the glass doors and the watchful eye of the security officer and walk sedately into the gift shop. Tourists were there, looking at the curios for sale. Plastic busts of Lincoln and Washington, blue plates with patriotic themes. Models of the Glamorous Glennis. Outside, I could see through the window the regular Army troops sweeping the Mall of all those who stood before them.
 
I do not think I have ever been rendered so dumb, before or since, with normalcy around me and madness just short steps away.
 
This was not a peaceful protest, and it had not been billed that way. There had been three weeks of protests before this, peaceful ones. It included an encampment of young veterans not much different than the Bonus Army my Grandfather had been part of.
 
Flush with youth and enthusiasm, the protesters demanded an immediate halt to the war in Vietnam. The demand was non-negotiable, and so was the response.
 
Twelve hours later, on this day, most of those who had not fled the city were confined in JFK Stadium where the Senators were playing their last season. I assume they were on the road that week. The arrested were permitted to forfeit a $10 collateral and obtain their freedom.
 
According to Mr. Halloran, a Justice Department official said:
"We couldn't just keep those people indefinitely. We had to do something with them."
 
I was hitchhiking on the highway back to Michigan by then.
 
First time I saw history in person. I have to say, I sort of enjoyed it. I thought I might be back to town someday.
 
Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com