Demonstration in DC, 1970

I’ve just been poring over the news accounts of the demonstrations in Washington, D.C.

The demonstrations held on July 4, 1970 I mean. Because I was there.

I was of course inspired by accounts of the current demonstrations. I was trying to find details after hearing there had been fatalities when it struck me that I’d been there before.

I do expect to find out more eventually, as friends-of-friends are there. (Chinese/Vietnamese from Oklahoma. They’re going because they loathe Biden for trying to keep them out of America when they were refugees.)

But at present details are sketchy and contradictory. Just like back then.

News media consistently refer to it as a “riot” or even “insurrection.” Which must be really bad since all summer they referred to disturbances causing an estimated eight billion dollars of damage “mostly peaceful demonstrations.”

However no video of any extensive property damage has yet emerged. Information on the fatalities is slim. One woman was reportedly shot trying to enter the Capitol building through a window. Others are attributed to unspecified reactions to gas or blunt force trauma.

Back then the action was on the Washington Monument grounds, in front of a stage set up for an “Honor America Day” with Bob Hope as organizer and MC.

Now there’s the first thing that doesn’t jibe. I remember it being commonly called a “Support America Day” rally.

Hope organized it with the blessing of President Richard Nixon, then facing pushback over incursions into Cambodia and the tragedy at Kent
State where four students were killed by National Guardsmen during a demonstration.

Rumor quickly spread that Abbie Hoffman had called for a “smoke in” counter-protest. Everybody was supposed to show up and conspicuously break the law to show how much we didn’t like the war.

I hitchhiked to D.C. to stay with a friend who went to George Washington University and was involved with the Students for a Democratic Society, then in the process of splintering.

I arrived after dark to see cops with riot sticks chasing people and began to feel a sense that perhaps this might not have been the best idea.

But next day full of enthusiasm a small band of us set out to join an estimated 100,000 people in the biggest demonstration of the era.

What I saw from the edge of the crowd was a phalanx of riot police screening the stage, bottles and fireworks flying, and Bob Hope sounding very nonplussed.

I remember Kate Smith singing her signature tune “God Bless America” and Red Skelton reciting the Pledge of Allegiance three times, trying in vain to get someone to recite it with him.

And I remember the crowd in front breaking on a chant of “BLEEP Bob Hope! BLEEP Bob Hope!”

Hope, ever the trouper, came back with a quip but it must have been pretty feeble because I can’t remember it.

Eventually we dispersed. I hitchhiked home the next day, and got arrested on the highway resulting in a taste of incarceration.

Not long afterwards my childhood friend went underground, but unlike other 60s radicals like Bill Ayres, Bernadine Dohrn, et al he wasn’t the son of a high powered corporate executive. He never resurfaced and I have heard nothing of him to this day.

The news accounts bore little resemblance to what I saw there, one even referring to the Support America demonstration as if it had actually happened that way.

I suggest keeping that in mind.