When the police rioted in Chicago in 1968 during the Dem convention, the protesters chanted,

[tblue37]

"The whole world is watching!"

That chant needs to be revived.

[greenjar_01]

1. Police all have earbuds in, listening to Neo-Nazi thrash metal and getting updates from Sarge

Sorry.

[tblue37]

2. But GOP politicians can hear it. nt

[Miguelito Loveless]

3. Doesn't matter

"The whole world" will do nothing. I don't see Australia recalling its ambassador. It should now be obvious that Trump will do all in his power to either rig the election, or thwart it. Either way, he will retain power. The GOP, the police and the military have now demonstrated their willingness to support him as dictator.

[former9thward]

4. Really?

Have you forgotten how that election turned out? After the "whole world" watched?

[DavidDvorkin]

6. Part of that was due to purists on the left rejecting Humphrey because he had soiled himself

in their eyes.

[customerserviceguy]

9. And I'm sure

that way, way more voters discarded Nixon for George Wallace, who not only was on the ballot in all fifty states, but actually captured the Electoral College votes from five of them, depriving Nixon of a near-landslide. Not only were they the most racist voters in the US, they were the former Dixiecrat supporters who would have never supported Hubert Humphrey, who was considered a champion of civil rights, going back to his days as the mayor, of, you guessed it, Minneapolis.

Nixon was able to exploit the fear that followed the signing of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965. The narrative was, "look what we did for these people, and look how they treated America for it." The GOP was able to manipulate Ferguson in the same way to get Claire McCaskill out of the US Senate. It was her first defeat of her political career.

Expect Trump to follow the same playbook.

[PJMcK]

5. I was ten at the time and we lived just outside Chicago

Even for a kid it was a scary time. There was a lot of unrest throughout the country. Even my father, a passive liberal Democrat, bought a hand gun for home defense even though we lived in a suburban development. (Upon reflection, it's amusing that he bought a Baretta automatic-- James Bond's first weapon!-- since that's not really the most effective firearm for the purpose.)

And even though I was a kid, I knew that the presidential election was crucial. And we got Nixon. And that was the real beginning of the decades-long destruction of the United States by the Republican Party. And now we have Trump.

Thanks to the band Chicago, the chant is memorialized on their first album:

[11 Bravo]

8. Still one of my favorite albums.

I've got my original vinyl safe and sound.

Every cut was outstanding (except maybe Free Form Guitar. Not quite sure what Terry Kath was thinking, or maybe he was just WAY ahead of his time).

[PJMcK]

12. Terry Kath was Jimi Hendrix's favorite guitar player!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Kath

[11 Bravo]

14. I loved the guy.

I just never quite got Free Form Guitar.

[customerserviceguy]

10. Sounds a bit like my history, too

I was twelve, and the family lived in Merrillville, Indiana. So, we had local coverage of the events surrounding the Democratic National Convention, and it was indeed scary. My father would never have a weapon in the house with three kids, but we stopped making trips to Chicago to see Mom's Polish relatives there.

[PJMcK]

13. Three kids in our house, too

My dad must have been really scared for him to buy a gun. It's totally outside his personality and values. He did take lessons at a local range and kept it locked where us kids couldn't get to it. Shortly after we moved to Connecticut, he sold it for $50 more than he paid for it.

[customerserviceguy]

18. My family

moved away from the Chicago area, too, but it was for economic reasons. The steel industry had seen hard times in the late 1960's, and my father was able to find a good job in the Portland, Oregon area, so we moved out there. I was a bit bummed to have to move away from my friends, but looking back, it was one of the best things that happened to me.

[frazzled]

15. The MC5, in Lincoln Park

They were the only band that actually showed up. I was lucky enough to see the documentary made about them in the early 2000s, but it was suppressed (band member Wayne Kramer objected). In the movie, you hear them play over surveillance footage of the event that was taken by the Department of Defense. Kick Out the Jams, MFs!

By the time of the infamous 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago---well-known for the brutal attacks of police against thousands of aggrieved protesters---the MC5 had become heavily influenced by Fred Hampton and Huey Newton. Under their manager John Sinclair, they became prominent representatives of the “White Panthers,” an anti-racist analogue of the Black Panthers formed on a suggestion of Newton’s.

n September of 1968, Sinclair would be indicted for taking part in the bombing a CIA office in Ann Arbor. But exactly one month prior, he presided over the MC5’s appearance at the riotous Chicago Democratic National Convention. The band was booked as part of Abbie Hoffman’s attempt to stage a “Festival of Life,” bringing 100,000 young people to the city “for five days of peace, love, and music,” writes the site Chicago ’68, to “redirect youth culture and music toward political ends.” Fittingly, perhaps, the MC5 was the only band that showed up after Hoffman and his Yippies failed to secure the permits. They played for less than an hour to a crowd of a few thousand.

"There was no stage, there was no flatbed truck, there was no sound system, there were no porta-toilets, there was no electricity. We had to run an electrical cord from the hot dog stand to power our gear. We played on the ground in the middle of Lincoln Park in Chicago with the crowd all around us sitting on the ground, in the back standing. I’m going to guess there were maybe 3,000 young people there. And it was very tense. The Chicago police had been very aggressive and very intimidating all day, and even though it was a rock concert and we were the only band to play, it didn’t feel like a rock concert. There was a dark cloud over the day because we knew the likelihood of people being hurt was great."

Here's the band doing Kick Out the Jams, but in Detroit. After, the (silent) surveillance footage. Put the two together.

[PJMcK]

16. Classics!

Why do you think Wayne Kramer objected to releasing it? Just curious.

[frazzled]

17. Here's the explanation I found

We saw it in Cambridge, MA, just before it was yanked. It may have been the only public screening of it ever.

Chicagoans David Thomas and Laurel Legler, who work together as Future/Now Films, spent almost seven years making MC5: A True Testimonial, which is action packed and fascinating in part because the MC5 was so explosive in every sense of the word. But two weeks ago a weeklong run at the Gene Siskel Film Center was canceled, as were a couple dozen other engagements around the country, and a May 4 DVD release of the movie by the BMG subsidiary Private Music was postponed indefinitely. "With the attempted murder of the film," says Legler, "between the filmmakers, our investors, and our various business partners, we're looking at a loss just under a million dollars."

The source of the holdup is a bitter dispute between the filmmakers and their once-cooperative subjects--in particular Kramer, who claims the filmmakers reneged on a verbal agreement to let him control how the band's music was used in the movie and release an official companion CD on his indie label, MuscleTone. Frustrated by failed attempts to get that in writing, he's refused to sign a release permitting the filmmakers to use his likeness, and in November he asked Warner/Chappell Music, the company that administers the publishing rights to the MC5's recordings, to deny Future/Now one of the licenses they need to use the music in the movie. The filmmakers have responded by filing a motion to reopen Kramer's 1999 Chapter Seven bankruptcy in order to investigate his control of those rights.

https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-mc5-movie-you-may-never-see/Content?oid=915255

[PJMcK]

19. Fascinating

Thanks for posting the background, frazzled.

For about a dozen years, I was affiliated with Warner/Chappell Music in their NYC offices and got to know the company and their senior executives fairly well. However, those are stories for another time!

[beachbumbob]

7. Whatever happened at the DNC convention riot ended up Nixon

winning 1968 election. Mayor Daily hated Hubert Humphrey that much.

[BamaRefugee]

11. Chants do NOTHING. I was living in Birmingham during riots and bombing. I watched Chicago 68.

I watched Watts riots. I was live and in person in the middle of Rodney King riots. I took part in anti-Vietnam protests, and the huge protest in LA and around the world before the Gulf War. And on and on and on.

I've heard all the chants. I've chanted all the chants.

They don't mean anything, as I view it now from 68 years as an American.

The ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS MONEY!
The chant of the cash register drowns out EVERY OTHER SOUND IN AMERICA.
The money men make the rules, and to them the sound of chants is like the slave owner sitting on the porch in the early evening, listening to the darkies in their quarters singing sweet and low, and telling Uncle Tom to make him another mint julep.