POLICE WIELD CLUBS IN CHICAGO RIOTS

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31771, 30 August 1968, Page 11

POLICE WIELD CLUBS IN CHICAGO RIOTS

Thousands Demonstrate Against Vietnam War

(N Z.P A.-Rtuter—Copyright)

CHICAGO, August 29.

About 3000 demonstrators against the Vietnam war fought a bloody battle with an equal number of policemen and National Guardsmen last night in an attempted assault on the central Chicago headquarters of the Democratic Party’s national convention. 7

There were many arrests and about 300 persons were injured as the police clubbed their way through the demonstrators, who had massed in Chicago to protest against the Administration’s war policies.

Bottles and stones were thrown, car windows broken and garbage cans overturned and set alight in a five-block stretch along the fashionable South Michigan Avenue.

Vice-President Hubert Humphrey was in his twenty-fifth - floor suite in the Conrad Hilton Hotel, which faces Michigan Avenue, waiting to appear at the convention, and one of his aides said tear-gas could be smelled in his room as the police battled with demonstrators on the ground floor.

Senator Eugene McCarthy, visibly shaken, visited the several hotel rooms set aside for injured victims. Senator McCarthy had been on the twenty-third floor, watching on television the Presidential nomination he had sought for nine months slip from his reach. Somebody told him the injured were being brought to a suite of rooms eight floors

I below, under the supervision of his close friend, Dr William Davidson. Senator McCarthy, followed by his secret service agent and reports, immediately took the elevator down. He stepped into one room, where a young man with a bandage on his knee asked the Minnesotar Senator what it all meant.

His voice hardly under control, Senator McCarthy replied: “It’s the way this movement will go on from here.”

As Senator McCarthy emerged from another temporary first-aid room where a young man whose shirt was covered with blood was sitting on a bed, a nurse approached him. She tried to speak but burst into tears. Senator McCarthy put his hand on her shoulder, and said: “It'll be all right. I’m upstairs if you need me.”

When photographers clustered round. Senator McCarthy told them: “Get out of the way, fellows, get out. You

don’t have to see everything.” Then his voice rose to an angry shout: “Get the hell out of the way.” Someone asked him to comment on what he had seen. “You don’t have to comment when you see something like that,” he said. “It goes back to the whole business of having the convention here in Chicago.” 10,000 In Protest The rioting youths, have been in Chicago since last week-end to demonstrate their opposition to the Johnson Administration's policies on the Vietnam war. They chose today the day the Democratic Presidential candidate was to be selected, for their major demonstration. More than 100,000 demonstrators had been promised by the Administration's opponents, but only about 10,000 showed up. The rush on the Conrad Hilton Hotel came after National Guardsmen, using tear-gas, had foiled a protest march on the convention, where a “dovish" Vietnam plank had been rejected by delegates. The demonstrators broke through police and military lines in Grant Park, across from the Hilton, and stormed the hotel, where they were beaten back. Then they went on a rampage through the streets.

The police met groups head-on, clubbed the demonstrators and threw them in

vans to be taken to the central detention lock-up. Central Police Headquarters said it could give no estimate of those arrested because the staff was too busy. Many of the injured suffered hand, arm and head fractures. One policeman was bitten on the neck. Bayonets Ready About 12.000 National Guardsmen reinforced the police, some of them aboard wire-covered jeeps. Almost all had their bayonets unsheathed. As the police wielded clubs, clearing the area in front of the Hilton, the guardsmen moved in fast to establish skirmish lines. Then the demonstrators scattered the police chasing them. Hotels flanking the Hilton closed their doors and all traffic in the battle area was stopped. On Michigan and Jackson Streets, north of the Hilton, 150 police armed with shotguns stopped all traffic and forcibly cleared the area. Reporters Hurt United Press International reports that at least five reporters were injured during the melee.

Their injuries brought to 29 the number of journalists hurt while attempting to report the confrontations between the police and demonstrators during the convention.

At least four reporters were arrested by the police during last night’s fracas, but all were subsequently released without being charged.