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Bristling Camp. Some Democratic officials sensed disaster. First an electrical workers' strike ruined prospects for adequate television coverage of the streets, which Daley may not have wanted anyway. The strike, called 14 weeks before the convention, also prevented the installation of telephones and seriously impeded the candidates' operations. Then, nine days before the convention opened, drivers for the city's two major cab companies struck. Racial violence, which mercifully never erupted, was a real prospect. So were angry demonstrations by the young.
But the mayor had his way with the party. "Law and order will be maintained," he repeated ritualistically. He put his 11,900-man police force on twelve-hour shifts, called up more than 5,000 Illinois National Guard troops. In addition, some 6,500 federal troops were flown in. Daley turned Chicago into a bristling armed camp, with a posse of more than 23,000 at the ready. The convention hall was protected by barbed wire and packed with cops and security agents. WELCOME TO PRAGUE, said demonstrators' signs.
No Amenities. Daley refused the protesters permission to sleep on the grass of Chicago's Lincoln Park, a 1,185-acre expanse on the North Side. Critics of the cops pointed out that the site was ideal for the dissidents; it would also have been ideal for the police, who could have left the kids alone and stood guard on the fringes of the park until the soldiers of dissent got bored and left or until the convention was over. It might not have worked out that way, since many of the protesters were fiercely determined to find trouble, but at least the notion offered a better chance of avoiding violence. Had Daley been gifted with either humane imagination or a sense of humor, he would have arranged to welcome the demonstrators, cosset them with amenities like portable toilets, as the Government did during the Washington civil rights march of 1963. Instead, Daley virtually invited violence.
The police were not unhappy. Daley had prepared them last April, in the wake of the riots following Martin Luther King's assassination, when he ordered the cops to "shoot to kill" arsonists and to "shoot to maim or cripple" looters. Chicago police theoretically receive regular in-service riot training, but in fact the training consists largely of reading general departmental orders rather than intensive drilling.
Bloodletting. Fortunately, there was no shooting. The demonstrators constantly taunted the police and in some cases deliberately disobeyed reasonable orders. Most of the provocations were verbal—screams of "Pig!" and fouler epithets. Many cops seemed unruffled by the insults. Policeman John Gruber joked: "We kind of like the word pig. Some of us answer our officers 'Oink, oink, sir,' just to show it doesn't bother us." The police reacted more angrily when the demonstrators sang God Bless America or recited "I pledge allegiance to the flag."