Nation’s politics have come full circle in just 40 years

By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Sunday, Nov. 9, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Just a walk in the park.

It was 40 years ago that a large group of Americans, mostly young people, gathered in Grant Park in Chicago to participate in a demonstration of some of our most precious freedoms — the freedom to speak, to assemble and to seek redress of our grievances.

The demonstration, of course, was to protest what was going on inside the Democratic National Convention of 1968 — basically the failure of those inside the convention hall to pay heed to the pleas of a new generation of Americans who disagreed with their parents and grandparents about the way this country went to war and how it conducted the war once we got there.

It was a time that followed the assassination of Robert Kennedy, whose candidacy promised a better way than following the Domino Theory into Southeast Asia. It was a time when the new peace candidate, Sen. Gene McCarthy, provided momentary hope and a glimmer of light to those seeking change, who saw it all disappear under the crush of realpolitik. There were other issues, to be sure, but none so important as the Vietnam War.

I remember that time very well because my sister Janie — who was first to oppose that war, first to seek the right to vote for 18-year-olds and first at just about everything else that added quality to peoples’ lives — had made up her mind that she would represent youthful Nevada in the convention hall and, if necessary, in that park.

Naturally, my father decided that he, too, would show up in Chicago. Not as much to fulfill his responsibilities as a newspaper publisher, which was usually foremost in his mind, as it was to support his daughter’s exercise of her newfound rights of citizenship. He also had an inkling.

That inkling turned into disaster. Mayor Richard Daley, the father of Chicago’s current progressive mayor, decided that law and order were paramount objectives. While the people seeking justice and peace were denied at every turn inside the convention hall, they were allowed to gather peacefully in Grant Park.

I am not certain anyone really knows what and why things went badly awry, but Grant Park turned into one of the uglier scenes of liberty lost in our short American history.

At one point a young black man named Julian Bond heard his name thrust forward into consideration for the vice president’s spot. I am not sure how he heard it because the roar from the youth crowd inside the hall was deafening in approval.

Of course, it was all symbolic because Bond was not yet old enough to be vice president. The message would be forever clear. A new generation of Americans did not see the color of that man’s skin but rather the quality of his ideas and his character — thank you, Dr. King.

That was about all the good news there was for the young people at that convention. Spurned via a generation gap too wide to bridge, they sought refuge in Grant Park to gather together, commiserate and protest what they believed was a dangerously wrong course for their country to pursue.

That’s when the billy clubs came out, the tear gas cans were set loose and the mace flowed freely in an effort by then-Mayor Daley to keep control of the Democratic convention and its message. And that’s when kids got hurt and the fabric of American liberty and freedom was forever stained.

Young people, and their older supporters too, ran in all directions, trying to escape the long arm and short attention span of a police force set amok. Television news showed people with their heads covered and eyes down in an effort to avoid the clubbing and gassing that ensued. It was also a time when my overly protective father was grateful he chose to be there, at his daughter’s side, over any other place on earth.

It would take 40 years for so many people to return to Grant Park in the public exercise of their rights of citizenship in support of a political cause. That was Tuesday night.

I saw once more the faces of our nation’s youth but this time they were joined by the faces of multiple generations of Americans. And there were more colors and shades in those faces than anyone could have conceived of just four decades earlier. There were no tear gas canisters, there was no mace and there were no police wielding billy clubs. No, this time it was very different.

Instead of the people in Grant Park keeping their heads down out of fear of their own countrymen, the hundred thousand people or more who jammed that park had their heads held high and their eyes cast toward the heavens as if to say, “It is finally our time, it is finally our moment.”

The reason for that dramatic change from one generational meeting in the park to another, of course, was the election of Barack Obama.

The brief hope that the name Julian Bond brought to a youthful group 40 years earlier had come back to that same place and was now a movement worthy of the belief that America could, once again, be that beacon to the world.

Yes, it took a generation, probably two, to effect that change. The old folks in Grant Park on Tuesday were the young people running from the police four decades earlier. It was their children and grandchildren who had accomplished what their forbearers could only begin.

But that’s the way it works in the greatest democracy in the world. Real change often takes time, comes too slowly and at far greater cost than is believed necessary. But, when it comes, it feels so good and gives so much hope. And that’s what the world saw in the faces of those people in Grant Park the other night.

We all saw hope.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.