Shawyer dissertation May 2008 final version - The University of ...

watching” (Box 66). Korean War veteran Bruce P. Lake describes the violence in greatdetail, as if unsure that the President, far away in the White House, really knew what wasgoing on:I have just seen videotapes of policemen wading into groups ofdemonstrators with clubs flailing. I have seen men dragged by their hair,clubbed in the groin and the back. I have seen boys with blood on theirfaces in the streets of Chicago, Illinois . . . More films now, a girl beingdragged by her hair—tear gas bombs and a crowd chanting ‘the wholeworld is watching.’ (Box 66)Visions of the violence on the television screen compelled these varied citizens toempathize with the Yippies and other demonstrators, and witness their pain.Another repeated image in the archive comes from Senator Ribicoff’s infamous“Gestapo” remark. Six people in Dekalb, Illinois, sent a telegram to the President arguingthat “the violence in Chicago streets is appalling. Mayor Daley and the Gestapo forcesare committing atrocities which should be publicly condemned by you” (Meffina et al.,Box 65). Typical is a telegram from Martin H. Clari and his family in Orange, CT:“shock and horror at Daley sponsored Gestapo like action of the Chicago police [sic],”they write (Box 65). Ribicoff’s remarks reminded the public of their fear of Fascist-styleauthoritarianism. These fears did not come from nowhere. On 21 August, 1968, the Westwoke up to learn of the Warsaw Pact’s Soviet-led invasion aimed at crushing the nascentdemocratic reform movement in socialist Czechoslovakia.193