I Was Arrested With 10,000 Others On My 21st Birthday — 50Years Ago

Fifty years ago today, on my 21st birthday, one year to the day after the Kent State massacre, I was arrested as part of the May Day anti-war protests where we shut down D.C. 10,000 were arrested over three days. In our particular action on May 4 we blocked the street in front of the Justice Department, headed at the time by Attorney General John Mitchell, to protest the trumped-up murder trials of Black Panthers Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins. “Free Bobby, Free Ericka, end the oppression of Black America.”

Many thousands of arrestees were bused to D.C. Stadium but I and those near me were taken to a precinct lockup. There, in a cell approximately 8' by 9' I was held with eleven other men, all of us in our twenties or thirties, from mid-afternoon to 3 a.m. It was intensely crowded. In order to urinate in the lone toilet we engaged in a contortionist exercise that involved coordinated movements of at least four of us, with one guy pissing over the legs of another.

We had twelve hours together to analyze U.S. imperialism, systemic racism, U.S. counter-intelligence programs against black Americans, against the anti-war movement, and in SE Asia. We were Marxists, Maoists, anarchists, progressives, liberal Democrats, veterans, college students, back-to-the landers, and drug-smokin’ and dealin’ hippies. It was one of the most educational and exciting days of my life.

At 3 a.m. we were brought into a district court. I recognized a tall, elaborately hatted woman standing at a table before the judge. She was representing all of us pro bono. I knew then we would be OK. It was Battling Bella Abzug, in her first term in the U.S. House of Representatives. We were released on personal recognizance and I walked back home. Our charges were dropped.

The trials of Seale and Huggins ended in mistrial with almost all jurors voting to acquit. The judge dismissed the cases. Less than four years later it was John Mitchell who would be convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury. He served 19 months in a federal prison.

Nixon was re-elected in ’72 but forced out of office two years later, while many of his closest aides went to prison for Watergate related crimes.

On April 30, 1975 the National Liberation Front and North Vietnamese Army drove U.S. forces out of Vietnam and ended over a century of western colonization, oppression, and exploitation.

So, yeah, I’d say the future is not always easy to predict. We know remarkable change can be achieved but always with struggle and the struggle always continues.