Teddy Kennedy and the 1968 Democratic National Convention

Driving to work this morning, I saw a sort of pitiful crowd of 5 or 6 pro-life protestors gathered in Grant Park. Seeing them there reminded me, for whatever reason, of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which I have heard about many times from my dad, who attended it in the summer when he was 17 years old. My dad is a dyed-in-the-wool hippie, and spent most of his formative years mouthing off to Marist brothers and speaking against the Man and the war. If my memory serves me correctly, at least one of his days in Grant Park during the summer of 1968 landed him in jail. (This would not have been the first or only time my dad spent a night in prison--he has never been one to lie down patiently for authority.) But he wasn't just there for the protesting. He also wound up participating in the political process, when he became part of a group that tried to spontaneously push the nomination of Teddy Kennedy for president.

My great aunt Jerry was Mayor Richard J. Daley's longtime personal secretary (I'm sure there will be many more stories about this later), and she had scored my dad and his friend Larry passes that got them into various restricted areas where they probably did not belong. They were backstage in some part of a hotel being used for Democratic party operations, when they were recruited to be part of a "spontaneous" crowd of close to 100 people that was going to urge the convention to draft Kennedy as a candidate. They were given professionally lettered signs and buttons and were taken outside the meeting room where the Illinois Delegation was in caucus. Every so often, a man standing near the door would open it and another man would start the chant, "We want Kennedy!"

During this whole thing, my dad was standing next to Len O'Connor, a well-known reporter from NBC. Every time the door closed and the chanting stopped, Len O'Connor would start grilling my dad about how he came to be there, this 17 year old hippie in a flannel shirt and long hair, carrying a professionally lettered sign and wearing a button. My dad flippantly replied that he was there because he believed that Kennedy was the best chance to beat Nixon and end the war (his #1 concern in those days). But Len O'Connor would have none of it. He kept asking who had recruited him. Did his parents work for the city? Were they precinct captains? Meanwhile, O'Connor was also a great source of information because he had other reporters inside the room with the delegation who would come out and whisper news to him. It turned out that Mayor Daley was in the room, pushing hard for a Kennedy nomination, but Kennedy did not want to throw his hat into the ring. He kept calling Kennedy on the phone, and when he would dial, he would signal for them to open the door and start the chanting. So the chanting wasn't just to push the delegation to nominate Kennedy, it was actually to push Kennedy to run. Just as Peter denied the Lord three times, Kennedy denied Daley three times.

Teddy Kennedy speaking in Chicago in 1972

 It's one of those great "what if?" moments. If Kennedy had run, he might have beat Nixon. America might have had one less criminal in the White House. The Vietnam War might have ended sooner, saving countless lives. The students who were shot at Kent State might have been able to live out their lives. The divide between those who fought in the Vietnam War and those who protested it (which I would argue still lives out today in the indifferent patriotism of the Republican party and the so-called "anti-American" behavior of the left) might be less. It's hard to imagine, really, how things might have been different.

I'm sure, though, that Teddy Kennedy was imagining a very different "what if." You've got to keep in mind the tenor of the time. It was August of 1968. In April of that year, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed while preparing for a Poor People's March on Washington. The assasination resulted in riots that ended in another 46 deaths nationwide. In the end of April, students protesting at Columbia University took hold of seven university buildings and were violently removed by police. At the beginning of June, Robert F. Kennedy was shot and killed while campaigning for president. One can only imagine how terrifying this was. People were trying to stand up for peace, and their efforts were being met with brutal cruelty and violence. They were killing people for taking this position. Both of Teddy Kennedy's brothers had been murdered for their beliefs. If he felt that his life was in danger so long as he remained in the spotlight, you can imagine why.

We're always warned about history repeating itself, and I think that there's a strong lesson for our modern world in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Again today, we have politicians who are irresponsibly using violent rhetoric without realizing the effect that it has on their supporters. A MoveOn.org worker who attempted to approach Rand Paul was recently thrown to the ground and had her head violently bashed against the pavement by his supporters. California police recently arrested a man who had been inspired by Glenn Beck's television programming to go out and shoot people at a local chapter of the ACLU. Threatening phone calls have been made to local democratic leaders. A democratic representative in Arizona found windows in his campaign center shattered by bullets. Addresses of democratic leaders and their family members have been posted online, resulting in threatening mail. One democratic leader's brother's gas line was cut. Yes, people are angry, on both sides. Yes, there seem to be some irrevocable differences. But 1968 shows us how this ends. It ends with police opening fire on 19-year-old kids and killing them. It ends with a generation so split by the injustices of the past that they seem incapable of working together for the common good. It ends with children starving to death in the richest country in the world while the people who are charged with looking out for them argue about who is more American.

Violence in Grant Park, 1968

I have hope, though. My dad experienced one kind of politics in Grant Park, but in my own life, I have experienced something very different. On election night in 2008, I was watching the returns at my aunt and uncle's house in Lincoln Park, not too far from the hubbub downtown. I was rooting for Barack Obama. I had actually been waiting for this moment for several years. I had met Barack Obama years ago, when he was first campaigning for senator. My younger sister was in high school, and was involved in the Young Democrats club. I was in college, and was working downtown and taking the train to and from the suburbs every day. I came home one evening, totally exhausted, and my sister was all over me, wanting me to take her and the other Young Democrats (we grew up in DuPage County, so there were about five of them) to see some guy with a weird name speak in someone's backyard in Wheaton. I was not into it at all, but she wouldn't let up, so I took her to see him.

I also was in Young Democrats when I was in high school. I was, like my sister, a very involved member. The group was actually started by a friend of mine, sometime during my sophomore or maybe junior year. Before that, I had never felt a united political presence. Growing up in a very conservative town, I was used to being the only one to support the things that I believed in. As I began to apply to colleges and think about my future, I decided that I would like to go into lobbyism, or public interest advocacy. Through Young Democrats, I got involved in the 2004 election. I remember driving around my suburban hometown delivering yard signs to various area democrats. Many people had requested three or four signs because they said that their signs would always get stolen or defaced. I felt so right and so just helping this small minority find their voice and speak out against a candidate who so many people felt was underqualified for his role. When election day came, I did not see that there could be any other outcome than a victory for Al Gore. The alternative was clearly lacking the skills necessary to do a good job. In my mind, no person could look at him and think that things should continue in this way. I watched the election returns on TV with my family, and when Al Gore was announced the winner, I went to bed thinking that all was well in the world. And the next morning I woke up to the realization that values and rightness didn't matter. Winning mattered, and it mattered enough for people to act like total slimeballs. I went on to college still planning on doing some kind major with politics and advocacy. I circled a bunch of policy classes in the coursebook and signed up for a bunch of advocacy groups' listservs. My first day of college was September 11, 2001. After that, I didn't really want to do anything with politics anymore, for whatever reason. I decided to major in English and Russian and never took a single course in the Political Science department.

When I took my sister and her friends to meet Barack Obama in the backyard in Wheaton, I had pretty much checked out of politics altogether, and especially Illinois politics since I was now living in Minnesota for most of the year. I didn't expect anything too thrilling. But I was very impressed by the candor and optimism of this young candidate. I was especially impressed when, after his speech, he came straight up to my sister and her friends, all of whom were clearly way too young to vote. He asked them about themselves and where they were from, and encouraged them to remain engaged in local politics and to be outspoken on behalf of the things that they believed in. The grown-ups were gathering around, waiting for their turn to speak with the candidate, but he didn't rush off. He had asked one of my sister's friends, who was of Indian descent, what part of India his family came from. You got the feeling that he was really listening to the answer.

Several years later, I voted for this man for president and was truly excited when he won. I was watching the election returns at my aunt and uncle's house in Lincoln Park, along with my boyfriend and various members of my extended family. Lots of my friends were in Grant Park all day long for election festivities, but I didn't really want to be there. I had gotten up early to vote (there had been warnings, which turned out to be true, of long lines at polling places), and had worked all day. I went to the gym before going over to my aunt's house. I also felt some need to contain my enthusiasm so as to avoid starting an argument with my boyfriend, who is such a party-line Republican that he actually voted for George W. Bush the second time. He had voted for Rand Paul in the 2008 election.

When Obama won, to my surprise, my boyfriend told me that he wanted to go to Grant Park. So we got into a cab and went. It was unseasonably warm for November, and there was no need for a coat. Once we got downtown, we saw that the streets were full of people. Everybody was in a great mood. Traffic was a disaster down State and Michigan through downtown, but nobody seemed to mind. People were just hanging out of their cars, shouting the good news about Obama. We got to the park just in time for Obama's speech. We were, of course, nowhere near the stage, but we could see and hear what was going on because of the large screens and speakers. Usually, any group event in Grant Park, even something as relatively small as jazz fest, is a recipe for total chaos. People are everywhere, getting in your way. They drop their stuff all over. They get drunk and fall on you. They aggressively try to sell you things. When it's time for the performance, they all talk too loudly and crinkle bags and you can't hear a thing. You spend the whole time jostling and pushing.

I can only imagine that many, many more people gathered in Grant Park to hear Obama than showed up to jazz fest, but somehow, it was totally different. People were polite and respectful. When we came running up toward the side of the crowd just as Obama was about to speak, people made room, and made sure that we could see and hear. Everyone was shouting and cheering when Obama took the stage, but when he began to speak, it was silent. Each of his words rang out clearly over Grant Park as tens of thousands of people stood still and silent, really listening to what he was saying. I was standing next to a black couple with their teenage son. He was openly weeping.

Hope in Grant Park, 2008

I was grateful to be there, but was worried about what would happen when the speech was over. I was concerned that it would be a long, rough trip back to Lakeview where I lived. It was already almost midnight, and I had to work the next day. I envisioned fighting my way through crowds to get to the train station, only to wait in a long, awful line. But when Obama finished speaking and the crowd finished cheering, the most miraculous thing happened. Everybody gathered up their things. Usually Grant Park is totally littered with garbage after any event, but when I looked out at the emptying lawn, there was virtually no sign that anybody had been there. People had picked up after themselves. And, without any trouble or noise, they processed quickly out of Grant Park and toward the red line station, where people behaved efficiently. The first to arrive were the first to get on a train. People made room in the cars, and held the doors for one another. On the train ride home, I heard people talking on their cell phones in at least four different languages, all with one common word: Barack Obama.

We may not be there anymore, but we've been there. I saw it with my own eyes. So that gives me hope.