Contemplating the Pro Palestine Protests
This generation’s anti-war voices and problems
In 1968, when I was thirteen years old, I was tear gassed. I’d skipped school and taken a bus downtown to go to an anti-war protest against our involvement in the war in Vietnam. There were perhaps a thousand protesters, mostly college students, and we sat in the middle of our busy Main Street and blocked traffic, peacefully.
But in the windows of surrounding buildings were men with cameras with long lenses photographing individuals in the crowd and police were massing down the street. Without action by us, suddenly there was the popping of tear gas launchers and canisters landing among us. I ducked into the doorway of a department store, but not before getting a nose full of the intensely irritating gas.
Other things happened that afternoon, including an officer with a custom made white Billy club four feet long, beating the hell out of a kid and sending him to the hospital. That kid turned out to be the son of a prominent local judge and in a miracle of justice for that time, the rogue cop was fired.
It turned out he had a long internal record of violence that had been covered up for years. Some things never change.
Fast forward to now, 2024, like 1968 a charged political year, but so far no…
