re: #448 Shiplord Kirel

Unfortunately not. I just watched from my hotel balcony as the cops beat the living shit out of the hippie hordes and anyone else they could catch. I could hear the truncheons on bare flesh from a couple of hundred feet away. I did see what appeared to be two cops fighting briefly before others broke them up. Never did find out what that was about. There was a lot of tear gas around. The slightest whiff of it today will bring back vivid memories. I was 18 and had longish hair so I didn’t dare go out on the street. I figured the cops wouldn’t stop to read my Young Republicans card before they bashed my skull in.

My father was a decade older and did go out in the mornings (he worked for Amoco and had to go near Grant Park to reach the Amoco Building (now the Aeon Center). His hostility to those hippies is still palpable today when he talks about it. He was definitely on the side of the police at the time and still is today.