Mayday 1971: Most arrests in US history

[Zorra]

Mayday 1971: Most arrests in US history

More than 200,000 protesters and veterans converged on the US capital to demand an end to the war in Vietnam forty years ago on May 3, 1971.

“The idea was to shut the city down because the war wouldn't stop,” said Eddie Becker, a documentarian who filmed the protests. “The only way to stop the war was to stop the government, and that was by putting your bodies on the road and blocking traffic.”

Protesters blocked roads with cars, trash cans and their own bodies in order to prevent government employees from getting to work across Washington and at the major bridges and roadways leading into the city. Becker was filming protesters blocking Washington’s Dupont Circle.

Police used tear gas and clubs to disperse protesters. Then President Richard Nixon called in the military and paratroopers landed at the National Monument. Retired Lt. Robert Klotz was a police captain working the protests that day.

http://rt.com/usa/news/mayday-usa-protesting-history/

For anyone that cares:

Occupy May 1 General Strike

http://www.occupymay1st.org/2012/04/11/what-is-m1gs/

[LiberalEsto]

1. I was there

We were organized into cadres of three -- two who were willing to get arrested, and one who would take responsibility for bailing the other two out.

I chose to be the bail poster because I was planning to be a teacher, and in those days you couldn't become certified if you had ever been arrested. Don't know if that's still the case.

I had never seen such savagery on the part of the police. A young woman, maybe 17, stepped off a curb to get a better look at something down the street. A huge cop, maybe twice her size, grinned insanely and ran up behind her, knocked her down and beat the shit out of her before arresting her. She had done nothing illegal. It was possible she wasn't even involved in the protest.

At one point the cops drove some of us toward the GWU campus, where students were pulling up paving stones to hurl at the cops, and cops were firing tear gas at the students. In the middle of all this, a GWU student came racing over to me, happily shrieking my name. It was someone I'd known in high school who graduated the year after me. She asked me to come up to her dorm room to see her yearbook, because it had photos of me in a theater class play from late my senior year. WTF, this was total insanity anyway, so I took a quick break, then ran back out to the fray.

Our group was staying in a church up 16th Street, and the young Jesse Jackson came by a couple of times to keep our spirits up. I remember thinking that he was going to be well known one of these days.

I located and bailed out my two co-conspirators, drove them back to our college in NJ, went around collecting more bail money, drove back to DC, bailed out more people, drove them back to our college, collected more bail contributions, etc etc etc until I collapsed from exhaustion and a case of strep.

[Luminous Animal]

2. Me, too. I was 13.

My aunt, who was 17 brought me. I had a great time and a scary time. I came home with an armload of lefty propaganda that I thoroughly enjoyed.

You've got a great story. Thanks for telling it.

[BlueIris]

3. Jesus.

What a story!

That makes my political protesting days look...paltry.

[Zorra]

4. Wow. Great story.

Thanks for sharing that, and thanks for caring enough to risk your health and freedom by taking action to try to stop a heinous injustice,

Solidarity.
☮

[LiberalEsto]

12. Addendum to original post

When my buddies and I made plans to participate in May Day, we decided to only do non-violent civil disobedience. Which is all they did. I didn't even sit down in the street because my role was to make sure they got out of jail afterward.

The general plan for May Day was for people to sit down and block the streets and roads of DC to stop the US government from doing business. The idea was to stop the war machine for just one day.

According to the radio and newspapers, DC commuters were outraged at having to sit in stopped traffic for a couple of hours. The cops, both DC and US Capital Police, joined by cops from nearby jurisdictions, absolutely went berserk, rounding up everyone they saw, including many who were not participants in the protests. Arrestees were herded into RFK Stadium by the hundreds.

My buddies wound up in what was then called Occoquan Prison, south of DC in Virginia. That's where I picked them up. It took a lot of doing just to find out where they were.

The May Day protest was huge, and it made a huge statement about how sick people were of the Vietnam War. I am proud to have played a small part in it.

[Fozzledick]

14. I was "illegally detained" by the D.C. police during the 1971 Mayday demonstration against the War

(reposted from a DU2 discussion of civil disobedience : http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5853801&mesg_id=5856376)

At least that's how the Federal courts ruled when the ACLU filed suit afterward - the result of a "criminal conspiracy" between Nixon's top aides and the D.C. police chief to "violate the civil rights of demonstrators". On the one hand I wasn't doing anything illegal when they caught me and they didn't follow legal arrest procedure, but on the other hand I had just spent most of the morning deliberately obstructing traffic as part of a civil disobedience action. I found out later that the police had orders to arrest any male under 30 who wasn't wearing a necktie.

At the time I was just trying to stop the slaughter that was going on every day in Viet-Nam, but years later Daniel Ellsberg revealed that Nixon was plotting a nuclear attack and that this demonstration deterred him into postponing it until after the election for fear of the political backlash. By that time he was preoccupied with the unraveling Watergate cover-up. (Details are spelled out in his introduction to the New York Times edition of the Pentagon Papers.)

Leaks from White House staff later revealed that Nixon disregarded the 500,000 person legal protest march the week before as "commuters" who weren't seriously committed, but that 10,000 people committing civil disobedience in the streets of Washington seriously shook him up with the prospect of a real political rebellion.

[saras]

5. Protests were different then. The Weather Underground bombed lots of buildings and avoided people..

http://yippiegirl.com/capbom_revisited.html

The mother of someone falsely accused of a bombing:

Leslie said to me recently that her mother, an upscale, conservative, California homemaker, told the national and international press staking out their Atherton home:

I don’t see why everyone is so upset about someone blowing up a building when the government is blowing up people.

Interesting times indeed.

[annabanana]

7. "bombed lots of buildings"?

"lots"?

funny, I don't remember lots of buildings being bombed. I remember one bomb going off accidentally about a block away from me at NYU.. but not "lots"

[apocalypsehow]

11. One was too many. n/t.

[Fozzledick]

15. That one was actually an FBI entrapment set-up.

[apocalypsehow]

17. Baloney. n/t.

[Luminous Animal]

10. That was cool! Thank you!

[Egalitarian Thug]

6. If you do nothing else this year, support the May Day GS! K&R

[Elwood P Dowd]

8. I was there Saturday and most of Sunday.

Went back across the Potomac to Ft Myer (Arlington) Sunday night because I was an Army draftee and had to be at my Army job early Monday morning. I probably shouldn't have spent the weekend participating in that considering the trouble I've could have gotten into for just being there. Those of us that took the chance were a little worried after what happened Monday, but none of our superiors found out.

[LiberalEsto]

13. You took a big risk

Thank you for your courage in taking part.

[2ndAmForComputers]

9. I will NOT go to work May 1.

And I'm going to get away with it too. Can't tell you how, though.

[DianaForRussFeingold]

16. Peace March with John Kerry- the week before! WOW!

April,24th 1971 "200,000 at Washington Peace march (John Kerry speaks and John Denver sings)

Thanks, One year after Kent State-I never knew!
I just found this: May Day 1971: