Chicago 1968

I’ve been here since Sunday, and I wish I hadn’t come at all. I wish this damned thing would be over with and we could all go home. It’s just not that easy. I haven’t witnessed anything like it before. Blood, beatings, brutality. I knew it would be bad, but nothing like this. Maybe things had to be like this, to teach somebody a lesson. But who? Nothing could have prepared us for this. I just want to go home.

I dind’t want to be in Chicago very long, but with the way things were going, I had to stay. Someone needs to tell this story. Better me than some wanker who wasn’t there. At least I knew what was going on. Lots of people didn’t.

It all started in over in Vietnam, and came across the sea with the horrific images and stories told from within those gates of Hell. The Tet offensive didn’t help anything, especially with that lying son of a bitch Johnson at the helm. We know that if Jack was still in charge, things would be a lot different. We can only hope our message and struggle here in Chicago can be felt and heard throughout the nation. We can only hope people see this as a warning as to what’s happening around them.

We can only hope.

And we can only hope Hubert knows exactly what he’s doing too. Whatever’s going on inside those walls of the Convention Center must be pretty damn important. Maybe they’ve learned a lesson or two about security since King got blown away. You can taste the tension here, you can feel it with every battered bone and canister of tear gas. They rushed the park, too. If we get gassed, the whole city does. Fuck you too.

Now this brings me back to the streets. Michigan Avenue. I had my camera out to take some shots of the police barricade when a pig thwacked me upside the head. My camera got the brunt of the damage, saving me from certain blackout. It’s a wonder I even made it out alive, let alone made it. Those fuckers had us blocked in from all sides, like some quarantined animal. And they call it democracy.

Back at the Convention, they weren’t having much luck inside, either. Every time somebody spoke, they were hauled off, arrested, and given two black eyes. Just in time for the election, some real change coming. Yeah right. We’ve all heard that one before.

If Johnson would’ve decided to run again, he’d probably wind up dead like the rest of them. We never expected it to get this wild though. But the pressure was building. It had to pop sometime. The question was where? Chicago. Home of the Blues. The Blues happened here all right. Damn near got us killed too.

I guess I still have to vote Democratic this November. I was hoping that McGovern would have made it. Big surprise. The only one with a sure shot of beating Nixon was murdered in Los Angeles last June. That’s the mood in the air these days. Murder, war, riots. Bobby would have been a fine leader. He was just getting his speeches down. He was starting to sound a lot like his brother. Who knows what’s going to happen now. More riots, death and war.

I won’t leave it on such a sour note. We haven’t lost just yet. Maybe in Vietnam, but not here in America. The sixties are coming to a dead end with nothing to show for. Maybe there’ll be another revolution in San Francisco where we can all lick ours wounds.