It’s come up in many recent discussions that there are stark similarities and differences between the 1968 Democratic convention and the NATO Summit of 2012. The most glaring likenesses are the location and mass numbers of protesters and police. The differences, in short, are the political agendas of the protesters, the police, and the reasons for their presence in the downtown streets of Chicago – the government.
My soon to be 66 year old father, Kent Harder, was 22 when he took a train from Michigan State University to Chicago, where he and his left-wing friend planned to protest the war in Vietnam. The protesters, he says, did not start the violence at the ’68 Convention.
Last weekend, he watched the major networks’ coverage of NATO endlessly, hoping I was not getting beat up or arrested (I covered both the conference and the protests first-hand). His reaction to the protesters purpose in ’68 goes the same way for NATO. The difference is, at NATO, “there was a diversity of influence.”
“They came from the south and started beating people for no reason…I just wanted to get out of