The protest began on principle. It came in the aftermath of a great controversy concerning America’s freedom of speech: a proposed Nazi march in Skokie. The Nazis’ right to march, which united free speech advocates from Ayn Rand to the American Civil Liberties Union, prompted serious examination of the freedom of speech. A debate ensued for months. Chicago’s print and broadcast media indulged the question: is the right to speech absolute? A precocious 14-year-old suburban Chicago child decided that the answer is yes.
Within a few years, the nation was in crisis, chaos and turmoil. The economy was a wreck. America was attacked by religious zealots dictating life in Iran—the press and the U.S. government referred to the siege as a criminal act in which victims were “hostages,” not prisoners of war held in captivity on American soil (such as an embassy in a foreign state)—and a failed rescue left U.S Marines dead. A president had resigned in disgrace. Our military had withdrawn from Saigon as people clung to helicopters to escape Communism. Americans struggled to eat, keep warm and live amid inflation, gasoline rationing, an “energy crisis,” financial hardship and despair.
The nation’s president was Jimmy Carter, who was running for reelection. It was announced a few days in advance that the nation’s vice-president, Walter Mondale, would visit Chicago to campaign for Carter’s reelection. By then, the precocious boy had decided to support the only serious opposition, Ronald Wilson Reagan, California’s former governor. That summer, he had been invited to attend a national convention as a teenage Republican in Detroit, Michigan, where Reagan was nominated as the party’s presidential candidate. The kid was not enthused about Reagan. He was moved by a speech supporting Reagan’s nomination by a former presidential candidate who failed to win the presidency in the landslide 1964 election of Lyndon Johnson.
The speaker was Barry Goldwater. That fall, the teenager, who volunteered to carry Governor Reagan’s luggage during visits to Chicagoland, met Reagan at Midway airport. Though against Reagan’s philosophy, he decided that Reagan would make a better president than Carter. He also decided that the vice-president’s visit presented an opportunity to exercise the freedom of speech.
Organizing a protest turned out to be simple. The teenager pitched the idea to a gathering of young people volunteering at a suburban Republican Party headquarters. Kids were stuffing envelopes for various candidates. He proposed protesting the vice-president at an upcoming union gathering in Chicago. Participants would paint posters with expressions of dissent in opposition to the current executive government of the United States of America and their campaign to reelect Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. Food, drink and safe travel to the protest site where the vice-president would enter and exit the union hall would be provided. Participants would gather outside the union hall, band together in peaceful protest and speak out against taxes, inflation and appeasement of Islamic terrorism and acts of war. The protest would comply, the teenager explained, with the law.
This proved to be important for reasons the reader will soon discover. Impressed by the leader and his forethought and coordination of the proposed protest, the youths sought and obtained parental permission to attend. With adult supervision, motor vehicle transportation was provided and the teen leader and comrades went, parking near the union assembly, marching with posters to protest the Vice-President.
Walter Mondale’s appearance at a Chicago labor union hall fell on a cold, fall afternoon. The band of teenage protesters numbered less than 20, most under the age of 16. A few protesters were over 18 or in their early 20s. Benign, general slogans either advocating for the opposing candidate or expressing discontent with the current presidency and their policies emblazoned the posters. All the union members and those recruited to attend the rally were adults—mostly big, meaty men—and they greatly outnumbered the protesters. Chicago police dispatched cops to the event, presumably to protect the vice-president. Police outnumbered protestors, too. A phalanx of broadcast media attended as well, including Rosemarie Gulley from WLS, Chicago’s ABC affiliate and reporters from NBC affiliate WMAQ and CBS affiliate WBBM as well as radio and print reporters. At first, the youths were greeted with curiosity, amusement and mild irritation. This eventually turned to hostility and initiation of the use of physical force.
The union rally was bland. In the hour leading up to the vice-president’s arrival by limousine, most union members passively stood waiting for Mondale. They read the protesters’ posters, observing that the youths were happy, cheerful and assertive. Protesters called out slogans—“hey, hey, ho, ho / Carter-Mondale’s got to go”—which made rally attendees smile, chuckle or laugh. Some nodded. A few gave thumbs up.
This aggravated organizers—Democratic Party officials—who abruptly and hurriedly swarmed the hall to confer with Carter-Mondale campaign staff on site and communicate via radio to Mondale’s advance team. This mobilization was not lost on the teenaged leader; union hall doors remained open and the leader watched them confer in the hall.
The children of the protest gained momentum, foisting and waving posters higher, trying to garner media attention while observing and respecting everyone’s physical space. They had been coached by the leader—trained to practice proper protest tactics and protocols, including not intruding upon someone else’s space and being cordial toward Mondale supporters. A hush fell over the rally as Mondale’s arrival time drew closer.
The protesters’ excitement disproportionately rose compared to Mondale’s supporters, who visibly displayed a sense of drudgery at the prospect of greeting Vice-President Mondale. Police lined the rally periphery—behind the crowd—as protesters fronted the barricade which cordoned off a path from the curbside where Mondale’s limousine would deposit the Vice-President near the union hall’s entrance. The press, including Rosemarie Gulley, who had been amused, became demonstrably scornful of the youths.
The lull ended when the Vice-President arrived. Union members and their cohorts rallied on cue, outmaneuvering and pushing the teenagers, wedging themselves between protesters—separating the band of united boys and girls—blocking them from sight. Brawny, oversized men in union gear pushed the children back from the front in a coordinated effort to disrupt the protest. Protesters were shoved to the ground during the labor union’s assault. Posters, some of them on wooden sticks, were seized and ripped, torn or destroyed. Adult protesters witnessing the siege sought to intervene; they were quickly blocked by the union. Protest chaperones waved to the leader, shrugging to signal powerlessness as they were boxed in. The attack continued. Some teenagers started to cry.
The teen leader pushed his way toward the bank of broadcast media. “Do you see what’s happening?” He asked reporters and cameramen. No one responded. No one looked at him. No one chose to film the melee started by the Democrats. The leader stepped over wires and stood before Rosemarie Gulley, tapping her shoulder. The veteran TV reporter turned and looked him in the eye. He met and held her gaze. Then, he asked: “Do you intend to ignore this assault on a legal protest?” The veteran reporter blinked, ignoring his inquiry, blithely turning and putting a microphone to her mouth, resuming coverage of Vice-President Mondale’s arrival. The youth spoke up and said: “Whatever else you think you’re doing—you are not reporting the news.” This is the last and only thing he said to a reporter whom he had once held in high esteem.
Protesters converged despite the systematic oppression. The leader cupped his hands around his mouth and called out: “Don’t let them divide us!” He yelled loud enough for everyone—including the unionists—to hear. He spoke as much to the labor union, as if to let them know that the youths would not shrink from exercising the right to free speech. “Hold the line!” He exclaimed. “Don’t let go! Hold your poster high—keep your head up—stand your ground!” This had the effect of stilling some of the union members, though not the thicker unionists, who more aggressively shoved the youths down. Finally, a policeman stepped in. The peace officer grabbed the young leader’s arm.
“Come, now,” the policeman commanded the teen, pulling his arm. The 14-year-old protester, who was neither an admirer of Ronald Reagan’s nor an anti-government activist, yanked his arm away and replied: “I am not leaving. I have a right to assemble and protest the Vice-President.” The cop scowled and said: “You’re coming with me.” Physically forcing the boy from the rally as Mondale stepped out of the limousine as the boy’s poster fell, the cop forced the teen activist into a police detention vehicle, telling the leader to sit on a bench in the back. Having pointedly started mass detention with the teen leader, police proceeded to physically immobilize, force and corral the protesting youths.
The teen leaned forward as his comrades filed into the police truck, making eye contact with one of the adults outside on the other side of the spectacle. He yelled: “Follow us!” After the vehicle door closed with the protesters detained by police, the suburban children were transported to a police station, where they were released. Chicago’s police, press and union had apparently conspired to censor freedom of assembly and speech.
This government, labor and media convergence did something else. The siege radicalized a 14-year-old exercising his rights and terrorized everyone attending the protest. Tears streamed down the girls’ and boys’ faces, which were red with shock, rage and shame. Terrified kids were traumatized by thoughts of being punished and ostracized by the state, police, parents, teachers and peers. The kids were confused—bewildered that their peaceful protest had been violently breached by a labor union endorsing the nation’s vice-president—visibly evaded by the press—aware that they were wrongfully, unjustly and illegally corralled, detained and taken by force to where the accused are jailed.
The leader made sure everyone safely arrived at home, making calls to each protester, offering to explain the trauma to parents and take responsibility.
The principled protest offers a historic lesson in the confluence of government, corrupt press and a labor collective conspiring to disrupt assembly and censor speech. The state sanctioned and turned the other cheek as union and Democratic Party thugs assaulted, marginalized and excluded innocents, acting against the world’s smallest minority, the individual, whom they forced to succumb and submit to tyranny. The child who became a radical activist that day cried out in defiance against injustice.
Today, this free speech activist wants to know: will you?
