Date: May 22, 2006 8:26:53 PM PDT
Subject: Looking Ahead While Looking Back
(Seymour Hersh, "1971 Tape Links Nixon to Plan to Use 'Thugs'," New York Times, September 24, 1981, pp. 1 and (excerpts) 26).
When [protesting students at Kent State] were shot by the National Guard on May 4, 1970 (4 killed, 9 wounded), campuses shut down across the country. 350 institutions went out on strike, and 536 schools were shut down completely for some period of time, 51 of them for the entire year. More than half the colleges and universities in the country (1350) were ultimately touched by protest demonstrations. (Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS, pp. 636-637) On the close of business on May 4, the stock market had its biggest plunge since Nov. 22, 1963. The Wall Street Journal sounded the bell: "It isn't 1970 anymore. It's 1928 and seven eighths."
Ohio
<lyrics by Neil Young>
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.
Histories of the era fail to address how Nixon quailed under the pressure of the growing national student strike and related protest ...
On May 5 [1970], construction workers, or "hardhats", at a City College of New York building site attacked a rally-bound student with the war cry, "'I was in Vietnam and I love to kill gooks.' (New York Times, 5/6/70, p. 20).
On May 6, hundreds of protesting students in Battery Park were attacked by "a number of workers from a nearby unfinished building.", and a larger attack followed on a Wall Street rally later that day. (NYT, 5/7/70, p. 19; 5/8/70, p. 16)
After many phone threats, the "hardhats" returned in force in the biggest attack yet on the morning of May 8, attacking another Wall Street rally in a precise assault behind standard-bearers hoisting American flags from all four directions.
The protesters were attacked with fists, kicks, and heavy metal tools. The police on the scene shouted encouragement and doffed their helmets to the American flag. (Washington Post, 5/10/70; Washington Star, 5/17/70).
Carrying walkie-talkies, the hardhats proceeded to storm City Hall, Trinity College, and Pace College (the national student strike clearinghouse).
The "walkie-talkies" indicated tactical control.
That summer, Scanlan's magazine reproduced a memo from Vice President Spiro Agnew identifying these hardhat-riot organizers as operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency -- one of the bombshells that led the Nixon Administration to drive Scanlan's out of the magazine business. (Philip S. Foner, "'Bloody Friday'-- May 8, 1970," Left Review, Vol. 4, No. 2, Spring 1980, p. 20; on the Scanlan's story see Mission Betrayed.)
A lawsuit filed by antiwar protesters later unearthed White House tapes containing the following conversation between Nixon and Haldeman:
HALDEMAN: They're going to stir up some of this Vietcong flag business as Colson's gonna do it through hard hats and Legionnaires. What Colson's gonna do on it, and what I suggested he do, and I think that they can get away with this, do it with the Teamsters. Just ask them to dig up their thugs.
PRESIDENT: Yeah.
HALDEMAN: Just call what's his name.
PRESIDENT: Fitzsimmons. (Frank Fitzsimmons was the head of the Teamsters, succeeding the jailed Jimmy Hoffa)
HALDEMAN: Is trying to get-- play our game anyway, is just, just tell Fitzsimmons--
PRESIDENT: -- they've got the guys who'll go in and knock their heads off.
HALDEMAN: Sure. MURDERERS. Guys that really, you know, that's what they really do. Like the steelworkers have and-- except we can't deal with the steelworkers at the moment.
PRESIDENT: No.
HALDEMAN: They're the regular strikebuster types and all that and then they're going to beat the [obscenity] out of some of these people. And I hope they really hurt 'em. You know, I mean, go in with some real-- and smash some noses [tape noise] some pretty good fights.
(Seymour Hersh, "1971 Tape Links Nixon to Plan to Use 'Thugs'," New York Times, September 24, 1981, pp. 1 and (excerpts) 26).
A key organizer of the attacks was Peter J. Brennan, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council, stating "any child" should know that "violence by them can bring violence by our people or others disagreeing with them." As for the "unknowns" who had done the punishing, "Perhaps a few ruffians opened the door to some sanity." (Brennan was later to become Nixon's Secretary of Labor, only to be indicted and convicted based on still other corrupt activities.)
Even conservatives saw "disconcerting similarities between the fury of the workers and the Nazis during the last days of the Weimar Republic." ("Wall Street: Three Days That Shook the Establishment," Business Week, May 16, 1970, p. 24).
Ironworker Charles Rivers came to the same conclusion: "I didn't see Americans in action. I saw the black shirts and brown shirts of Hitler's Germany." (Emanuel Perlmutter, "Heads of Buildings Trade Unions Here Says Response Favors Friday's Action," New York Times, May 12, 1970, p. 18).
