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

Just days before the Convention started, the world watched in horror as Soviettanks barreled through the streets of Prague. It had seemed inconceivable that Czechstudent protesters could be brutally suppressed in the city streets. But it also seemedimpossible that demonstrators could be gassed and beaten in a modern American city,and that the public could watch it all unfold from the safety and comfort of their homes.William Huffman’s telegram to the President, complaining that the violence “is beyondbelief,” compares law enforcement in Chicago with the Soviets in Czechoslovakia (Box65). This comparison had already been floating around in the media from the start of theweek. Reviewing security measures even before the Convention began, reporter vonHoffman names Chicago “the Prague of the Midwest,” and notes that “the brutal lack offinesse, the weaponry, the barbed wire and the candid obviousness of the authorities’intention to keep the population, the delegates and the press in line has been shocking anddisturbing to outsiders” (“Chicago!” A1). The comparisons between law enforcement inChicago and the Soviet crackdown in Prague continued all week. During his Chicago trialtestimony, Abbie Hoffman admits that he lay down in front of an armored personnelcarrier on Michigan Avenue on 29 August because he “had seen Czechoslovakianstudents do it to Russian tanks” (374). The repeated use of Prague and the Gestapo asmetaphoric touchstones indicates that the American public was outraged by the extent ofthe violence, and perhaps fearful that Soviet-style authoritarianism was being repeated athome.Despite the overwhelming response in support of the demonstrators andcondemning police and National Guard actions in Chicago, there were other audience194