It has been 50 years since the end of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. I lived in Chicago that summer, between my junior and senior years in college. I had been selling Good Humor ice cream out of the back of a truck in the north end. I hated my job, and it showed. The kids called me the Bad Humor man. With all the action of the convention, I decided to quit my job and go down to Grant and Lincoln Park to check out what was happening.
I started as an interested witness to history. I had been to maybe one other demonstration before Chicago. I saw the lines of national guardsmen wearing gas masks and the police vans roaring menacingly through the streets. I listened to David Dellinger, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jean Genet, and many other anonymous, passionate people.
The night of Aug. 28, I found myself in the middle of Michigan Ave. right next to a camera from one of the major networks. The police attacked, and it was no longer possible for me — for any of us — to be just interested observers. I became an active participant in what turned out to be one of the major American events of the 20th century.
Even though Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated earlier that year, I still believed in the non-violent principles that they espoused. With my fellow demonstrators I sat on the street, still wearing my torn Good Humor jacket, and was teargassed and later hit by a police officer in the groin. I know I was personally changed by that experience. In my judgment, the entire country was changed.
At the time, I was filled with rage, which defined my life for several years. As I look back, the anger is long gone for me, replaced by sadness and a heavy pain. A wound opened on Michigan Ave. that night in August, separating families, communities and friendships into warring factions. Despite the half century that has passed, it remains.
Stephen Simmer
Northampton