More on Vietnam veterans' protest

Continuing from my previous post on the account of Vietnam veterans' protest against that war in John Prados' The Hidden History of the Vietnam War (1995), I was especially struck by a couple of stories he relates.

At the 1972 Republican Party convention in Miami Beach, veterans organized by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) caravaned to the city in what they called the Last Patrol.  There was a campsite set up for them, where the veterans had also been based during the previous Democratic Party convention in the same city.

Prados tells what happened upon their arrival:

As during the Democratic convention, the campsite set aside for demonstrators at the Republican convention was a walled enclosure in Flamingo Park. The Last Patrol veterans pulled up to discover a strange scene - members of the American Nazi party, mounting a demonstration of their own, had taken over the stage and podium at the park and were haranguing the crowd. While there were only a couple of dozen or so of the Nazis (by veterans' estimates), and perhaps 3,500 or so assorted antiwar activists already in Flamingo Park, no one seemed to be able to do anything about the Nazis. Camp organizers approached VVAW members begging them to get the American Nazi party people off the stage. When Del Rosario of the VVAW national office mounted the stage to ask the Nazis to vacate, someone, evidently a bodyguard for the speaker, picked up a chair and hit Rosario with it from behind. Outraged, the VVAW vets then surrounded the stage and pulled the offenders off one by one, passing them from hand to hand to the edge of the park where a really big veteran named Fred Rosenthal literally threw them out into the street, some by the scruff of their necks. The Nazi speaker reportedly went straight up over the wall, suffering injuries when he landed on the other side.

This incident with the Nazis made the Last Patrol veterans the darlings of Miami Beach, if not of the Republicans. Suddenly a Jewish alderman, who had most vociferously opposed VVAW at every turn during the weeks leading up to the convention, was asking veterans if they had enough portable toilets, if they needed electricity, anything at all. When the veterans refused to camp inside the walled enclosure, which they considered not secure and which was becoming packed with less-disciplined antiwar demonstrators, it suddenly became all right for the veterans to move to a new site two hundred meters south. Jewish residents materialized with baskets of food and bottles of wine, feeding the VVAW that first night as they set up camp. Finally, relations were cemented with the Miami Beach police, who cooperated amicably with the VVAW for the duration of the Last Patrol. When the Nazis later tried to return, with more cars and bodies, they were turned back by Miami Beach residents - little old ladies with garden hoses and men with shovels. When they heard the story, veterans felt proud to have given an example.

That's just such a great story!

Of course, today's war-loving keyboard commandoes would surely be shocked! shocked! that these antiwar protesters were impolite to the Nazis who were trying to break up their antiwar protest.  This just shows what shameful hypocrites those dirty, smelly, antiwar hippies were!

Prados also relates the story of how some creative VVAW protesters managed to dump motor oil on a ramp that the Republicans were using to bring people into the hall to sing hosannahs for Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.  (The 1972 Republican convention may have been the most royalist event in American history.)  Prados relates what happened then:

The next bus to come along promptly stalled [because of slipping on the oil]. As other buses lined up behind it the entire entry system [of bus shuttles] collapsed.

The delegates on their buses perforce had to confront the demonstrators. Many rolled down their windows and shouted at the state troopers to "get" the veterans. Several VVAW members heard shouts of "Gas 'em!" The troopers deployed and began to use teargas. Then a remarkable thing happened - the wind changed direction and blew the gas back toward the convention hall. The buses with open windows were soon filled with gas. Worse, the hall had opened its garage door in expectation of buses entering, and the gas wafted inside. Spiro Agnew stopped briefly in the middle of his introductory speech, tears in his eyes. Richard Nixon himself writes, "My eyes burned from the lingering sting of tear gas as I entered the hall."

This story also provides a good self-test.  If an involuntary smile didn't come to your lips upon reading about Tricky Dick and Spiro Agnew getting gassed with their own tear gas, you ain't no true Jacksonian Democrat.  You may be a loyal Dem and a lot of other good things.  But a hardcore Jacksonian, you're not!

Reading that latter story made my whole day, actually.

And those poor Republican white folks in the buses yelling "gas 'em" and then having their own buses filled with tear gas.  Gosh, I feel so sorry for them!