WEBVTT 1 00:00:12.120 --> 00:00:14.440 Chicago is America. 2 00:00:16.080 --> 00:00:22.940 For throughout the city's history, its arms have been open to all of the world's people. 3 00:00:24.320 --> 00:00:41.880 Here every delegate will feel at home, and we are looking forward to extend the warm hand of Chicago hospitality to every delegate, to every official, every visitor, and above all, bring the wife and the family. 4 00:01:01.200 --> 00:01:05.020 And gentlemen, the laws of the city of Chicago are going to be upheld. 5 00:01:05.020 --> 00:01:14.240 The people all over America know that someday, unless somebody holds the line somewhere, that these mobs are going to roam through their streets. 6 00:01:14.340 --> 00:01:24.080 They're going to come into their towns, and they will want their police departments to stand firm and take the same action that the Chicago Police Department took yesterday. 7 00:01:44.900 --> 00:01:53.100 We've seen it all over the country, not just in Chicago. You know, when you get large groups of people with hair over an inch together, somebody goes over and beats them up. 8 00:02:14.400 --> 00:02:21.620 This is the first time I've been at the trial, but I follow it most of the time, you know, in the newspaper and on the radios, and I think the whole thing is pretty much a first. 9 00:02:21.940 --> 00:02:26.760 There was a few people from New York and Colorado here. They just come into Chicago to go to the trials. 10 00:02:26.760 --> 00:02:32.580 The first time I came here was at the pre-trial hearing last summer, and I didn't have any preconceived ideas about the old Julie. 11 00:02:32.800 --> 00:02:37.400 You know, that was when they were first appointed for continuance. You know, it was his defense so much. It was just like a good time. 12 00:02:37.800 --> 00:02:42.660 I was just so stunned. He hated the defense so much. He hated the defense so much. 13 00:02:43.700 --> 00:02:46.880 You know, there wasn't all this publicity about how biased he was. 14 00:02:47.120 --> 00:02:50.540 He was in a really jovial mood. 15 00:02:50.540 --> 00:02:54.920 This is a report on the trial, the Chicago 8 conspiracy trial. 16 00:02:55.240 --> 00:03:03.160 I'm Franklin McMahon, an artist reporter. These are my drawings made during that trial, with my comments and the voices of others recalling the trial. 17 00:03:03.160 --> 00:03:06.360 I'm overthinking. That's all this law is, conspiring. That's wrong. 18 00:03:12.020 --> 00:03:27.460 It all began on September 24, 1969, in the heroic grandeur of Judge Julius Hoffman's 23rd floor courtroom, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the United States District Court of the Northern District of Illinois. 19 00:03:27.460 --> 00:03:39.900 The room, it's just a neon oven to me. I don't care for it wall to wall, carpets, mahogany, prosecutors, velvet judges. Nah. I don't care for the room at all. 20 00:03:44.280 --> 00:03:55.560 1969, CR for criminal, number 180, the trial of David Dellinger and seven others for their part in the Troubles of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention. 21 00:03:58.220 --> 00:04:02.660 All eight charged with conspiracy. All eight charged with incitement. 22 00:04:03.340 --> 00:04:12.020 David Dellinger at age 52, a grandfatherly dissident whose protests against war had gone back to the 1940s. 23 00:04:12.300 --> 00:04:20.180 Thomas Hayden, a moving spirit behind the creation of the SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, and Ranny Davis, also from the SDS. 24 00:04:20.560 --> 00:04:30.040 These three, Davis, Hayden, and Dellinger, had come to the Chicago Convention as leaders of the National Mobilization Committee to end the war in Vietnam. 25 00:04:30.940 --> 00:04:43.160 Ebby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin are YIPI, the Youth International Party. Up to convention time, they'd been best known for dozing dollar bills from the balcony of the New York Stock Exchange, watching the guys down below scramble. 26 00:04:44.140 --> 00:04:49.180 They'd also gone to Washington to raise the Pentagon 300 feet in the air through meditation. 27 00:04:50.840 --> 00:05:02.620 John Froynes is a chemist from the University of Oregon, also charged by the government with concocting the stink bombs, which aromatized the Conrad Hilton and other Chicago hotels during the Democratic Convention. 28 00:05:03.260 --> 00:05:12.500 Lee Weiner is in sociology at Northwestern University. He is charged with attempting, trying, thinking about trying, to firebomb the Grant Park garage. 29 00:05:13.020 --> 00:05:19.600 And Bobby Seale, one of the founders and now national chairman of the Black Panther Party. 30 00:05:21.100 --> 00:05:31.140 Also there as representatives for the rest of us were the spectators, mostly young people who had come with their blankets, sleeping bags, and thermos jugs to wade through the cold Chicago dawn. 31 00:05:31.880 --> 00:05:36.660 The press and television. No photographs or recordings were allowed to be made in the courtroom. 32 00:05:37.800 --> 00:05:45.080 The defendants' wives, friends, and girlfriends, and with the most responsibility of all, the jury. 33 00:05:51.880 --> 00:05:57.460 The government saw it as a criminal trial to be tried under the classic rules of evidence which cover such trials. 34 00:05:58.600 --> 00:06:09.120 Thomas Foran, United States Attorney for the Northern District and Chief Prosecutor, says that this system worked out over 500 years, is the best way to get at the truth. 35 00:06:09.940 --> 00:06:18.520 To help him in this quest, he brought along Roger Cubbage, William Stanley of the FBI, and Richard Schultz, young assistant U.S. Attorney. 36 00:06:22.200 --> 00:06:25.080 The defense, meanwhile, saw it as a political trial. 37 00:06:25.500 --> 00:06:31.000 Felt they'd been chosen as scapegoats for all that had gone wrong in Chicago during the 68th Convention. 38 00:06:31.520 --> 00:06:36.500 And as symbols of what can happen to others who protest American involvement in the wars of Asia. 39 00:06:37.380 --> 00:06:40.540 Chief celebrant of this viewpoint was William Krenzler. 40 00:06:40.540 --> 00:06:49.560 With a successful commercial practice in New York City, he now has an added career as defender of unpopular causes, beginning with the Freedom Riders in Mississippi. 41 00:06:51.500 --> 00:06:54.940 And Leonard Wineglass, a young lawyer from Newark, New Jersey. 42 00:06:55.820 --> 00:07:05.160 And over it all, the honorable Julius J. Hoffman, known for his firm, no-nonsense handling of cases, famous for his strict interpretation of the rules of evidence. 43 00:07:06.240 --> 00:07:11.620 I think Hoffman sees this case as a criminal trial, when in fact that's really not the issue whatsoever. 44 00:07:12.040 --> 00:07:18.900 Abby, Jerry, Tom, myself, and others came to Chicago after having been in the Civil Rights Movement from a period of 1962 on. 45 00:07:19.540 --> 00:07:22.980 And so in a sense, what's on trial is the past decade in this country. 46 00:07:30.960 --> 00:07:42.120 And I can assure all of you here who have repose this confidence in me, we will carry the fight to the people in the fall. And we shall win. 47 00:07:43.800 --> 00:07:48.960 I would have given gladness not to be standing here today. 48 00:07:49.400 --> 00:07:59.080 And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. 49 00:07:59.380 --> 00:08:03.180 I have a dream. I have a dream to be. 50 00:08:22.740 --> 00:08:28.020 Our first effort must be, of course, to bring that war to an end by every means that is available. 51 00:08:28.380 --> 00:08:34.760 And if you're too hard to admit that you have to accept a new government in South Vietnam, that's what the war has been about. 52 00:08:34.760 --> 00:08:41.860 I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another time. 53 00:08:49.940 --> 00:08:57.920 To issue a police order, they have to kill any arsenal or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in their hand in Chicago. 54 00:08:57.920 --> 00:09:03.600 And I want to see a state down the barrier that's constantly divided and start killing with one another. 55 00:09:04.200 --> 00:09:09.140 First Bernard Shaw once said, if some people see things as they are, they say, why? 56 00:09:09.720 --> 00:09:14.120 I dream that anything ever where and someday come to pass for all the world. 57 00:09:15.020 --> 00:09:24.980 Let us show our countrymen a Republican Party that is a faithful reflection of the real America. 58 00:09:26.700 --> 00:09:34.980 I shall recommend to the convention that it nominate for Vice President of the Republican ticket, Governor Agnew Merrill. 59 00:09:36.340 --> 00:09:43.060 I was an underdog for my first time to the United States Senate in 1948, just before I won. 60 00:09:45.680 --> 00:10:00.420 I was an underdog many, many times in the United States Senate when I led the fight for such programs as the Peace Corps and Medicare and Seed for Dreams and the nuclear weapons treaty just before we won. 61 00:10:07.680 --> 00:10:16.640 If George McGovern is President of the United States, we wouldn't have to have Gestapo's tactics in the streets of Chicago. 62 00:10:36.920 --> 00:10:45.420 So now a year and a month after the fateful events of August 1968, here was a Chicago jury with front row seats for the reenactment. 63 00:10:46.040 --> 00:10:48.900 Most were housewives from Chicago and its suburbs. 64 00:10:48.900 --> 00:10:52.420 One was a cook, another a computer operator. 65 00:10:53.080 --> 00:11:00.660 There was an interior decorator, a nurse's aide, a house painter, a retired employee of the Chicago Transit Authority. 66 00:11:01.200 --> 00:11:03.740 The jury is hardly a jury of our peers. 67 00:11:03.820 --> 00:11:09.820 I mean, it's not a jury of young people with long hair and aware of the political issues that motivate us. 68 00:11:10.080 --> 00:11:15.600 The jury was basically asked the question whether or not they would be prejudiced to the government or the defendants. 69 00:11:15.600 --> 00:11:19.060 If they answered that they would not be, they were let on the stand. 70 00:11:19.140 --> 00:11:23.880 That jury was probably chosen quicker than a jury involved in a case of pickpocketing. 71 00:11:24.420 --> 00:11:26.600 The conspiracy law dates back to the 1800s. 72 00:11:27.380 --> 00:11:30.580 The new federal law deals with incitement and intent. 73 00:11:31.080 --> 00:11:45.140 Somehow part of the 1968 civil rights law, it makes it a crime to cross state lines with the intent to incite a riot or to organize, promote or carry out a riot or to commit any act of violence in furtherance of riot. 74 00:11:45.140 --> 00:11:50.580 A riot, according to this bill, can be carried out by an assemblage of three or more persons. 75 00:11:51.480 --> 00:11:54.920 There were more than three people in Chicago those days in August. 76 00:11:55.160 --> 00:11:57.860 I don't think that the whole mob was there for violence. 77 00:11:58.040 --> 00:12:01.440 When I was there, everybody has a right to peaceably assemble. 78 00:12:01.520 --> 00:12:14.500 When the ruling party administrating militarism and racism is invited into the city, it is inevitable that people who believe in decent human values will come with the convention in order to protest. 79 00:12:14.500 --> 00:12:19.300 The people who call them political are the defendants. They're self-styled political tribes. 80 00:12:19.480 --> 00:12:23.420 If they come to a city and they incite violence, there's nothing political at all involved. 81 00:12:23.720 --> 00:12:27.040 The rules of evidence are designed to handle a criminal case. 82 00:12:27.360 --> 00:12:33.920 The nature of the charges and the nature of the defendants just does not lend itself to a traditional criminal proceeding. 83 00:12:34.140 --> 00:12:38.160 We were really being untried for the way we live our lives and for the thoughts that we have. 84 00:12:38.160 --> 00:12:44.140 It was our language, dreams, our fantasies, our imagery. It was not for inciting riots. 85 00:12:46.140 --> 00:12:47.340 Now how did they do it? 86 00:12:47.420 --> 00:12:49.120 And now came the government's witnesses. 87 00:12:50.300 --> 00:12:59.680 First they tried to get tens of thousands of people to Chicago by saying, we're going to have a counter convention. 88 00:13:00.540 --> 00:13:07.760 Frank Rigio tailed Davis and Hayden, eventually arrested Hayden, said he'd let air out of a police car's tires. 89 00:13:16.400 --> 00:13:22.900 There was Bobby Seale's speech in Lincoln Park and how he'd recommended to his listeners that they barbecue some pork. 90 00:13:28.380 --> 00:13:32.260 There was a TV film of students practicing riot formation. 91 00:13:35.820 --> 00:13:38.460 There had been talk of putting LSD in the city water supply. 92 00:13:40.900 --> 00:13:46.500 Joseph Hale, a police photographer in Grant Park, took a picture of the American flag at half mass, 93 00:13:46.500 --> 00:13:55.420 saw plastic bags of a brownish solution from sailing out of the crowd, sticks tin cans in a jar of mustard, heard Jerry Rubin shouting, kill the pigs. 94 00:13:59.620 --> 00:14:01.840 They were told of Abbie Hoffman's obscenity. 95 00:14:10.500 --> 00:14:19.800 They do it through the use of an appeal to drugs, an appeal to free and illicit sex and public fornication. 96 00:14:20.240 --> 00:14:27.660 They do it through some people who style themselves as homosexuals. 97 00:14:27.660 --> 00:14:32.160 Froyans was linked to butyric acid bought from a local chemistry farm. 98 00:14:35.080 --> 00:14:37.260 And Weiner was seen in the Grant Park garage. 99 00:14:43.320 --> 00:14:51.000 Another subpoenaed news film showed Davis leading a march on the 11th and State Police Station to protest Hayden's arrest. 100 00:14:58.860 --> 00:15:05.280 Gregory Keiritz was the policeman most injured during convention week, sustained a double fracture of the bone around his eye. 101 00:15:05.280 --> 00:15:08.980 An object thrown from the crowd in front of the counter at Hill Park. 102 00:15:09.260 --> 00:15:11.080 These police have under a lot of pressure. 103 00:15:11.360 --> 00:15:15.320 They've been maligned out there, sworn at, spit at, cursed at, boxed, rattled. 104 00:15:15.360 --> 00:15:17.660 Things were thrown at them that I can't even tell you on TV. 105 00:15:18.400 --> 00:15:20.240 And they reacted, they reacted strongly. 106 00:15:20.740 --> 00:15:23.780 But they are protecting the citizens of the city of Chicago. 107 00:15:25.240 --> 00:15:30.540 Irwin Bach had posed as a veteran against the war in Vietnam, had attended mobilization meetings. 108 00:15:30.540 --> 00:15:38.940 He testified that Davis had wanted demonstrators to break windows in stone police cars and that Rubin had said they should start fires in the loop. 109 00:15:39.820 --> 00:15:43.260 It was Bach who first developed the two-edged theory against David Dellinger. 110 00:15:43.480 --> 00:15:45.600 At that meeting they planned two actions. 111 00:15:46.060 --> 00:15:50.160 One action was going to be Dellinger's march, which Dellinger said will never make it. 112 00:15:50.320 --> 00:15:51.200 Which they knew all the time. 113 00:15:51.280 --> 00:15:52.160 He said it's going to be a block. 114 00:15:52.880 --> 00:15:57.000 And the other action was going to be people were going to infiltrate out of there. 115 00:15:57.000 --> 00:16:00.180 They've been going to the loop and they've been pressed up and shut it down. 116 00:16:00.600 --> 00:16:01.520 They planned this. 117 00:16:01.960 --> 00:16:03.580 And then they executed. 118 00:16:04.680 --> 00:16:08.360 It was this more than anything else that was the government's case against Dellinger. 119 00:16:12.100 --> 00:16:19.120 When there was the confrontation, voices back and forth around the battle lines, screaming their heads off for the megaphones. 120 00:16:19.480 --> 00:16:24.360 Get the pigs, kill the pigs, give up your lives if necessary, come back and fight. 121 00:16:24.820 --> 00:16:26.540 Arm yourselves, get them, kill them. 122 00:16:26.540 --> 00:16:32.400 That is inciting people to imminent unlawful action, inciting to riot. 123 00:16:33.680 --> 00:16:34.760 Where's their case? 124 00:16:35.240 --> 00:16:37.440 I've seen more evidence than a case of scotch. 125 00:16:39.500 --> 00:16:46.060 The government presented some 56 witnesses in their first go around and maybe 10 more in rebuttal testimony. 126 00:16:46.660 --> 00:16:49.760 The defense charged that there were only two real people. 127 00:16:50.160 --> 00:16:53.820 They were all undercover policemen, FBI agents and paid informers. 128 00:16:53.820 --> 00:17:02.480 The one rebuttal witness who most resembled the defendant was a young police cadet who'd attended a speech by Abbie Hoffman at a university near Baltimore. 129 00:17:02.980 --> 00:17:06.520 As he came down from the witness stand, Davis said, get a haircut. 130 00:17:08.240 --> 00:17:10.840 Much has been written of the antics actions of these defendants. 131 00:17:10.900 --> 00:17:12.460 They were to say at least something else. 132 00:17:13.240 --> 00:17:15.960 We also aren't just talking to the members of the jury. 133 00:17:16.060 --> 00:17:20.140 We're talking to the whole world and in particular to young people in America. 134 00:17:20.140 --> 00:17:28.480 So we're quite willing to pick up the challenge that the government laid down before us and put on the most militant and offensive defense ever launched in history. 135 00:17:48.480 --> 00:17:57.620 Part of what this trial is about is in terms of our language and the visual imagery that we create and how we relate to the media and how we understand things like that, 136 00:17:57.620 --> 00:18:00.240 that you can't understand just reading the transcript. 137 00:18:27.940 --> 00:18:34.020 Yeah, well, he told me, see, I was, I meditate in a lotus position and he said, you'll have to take your shoes off the chair. 138 00:18:34.500 --> 00:18:37.760 So I took them off, took them off the chair, took them off my feet, you know. 139 00:18:37.760 --> 00:18:40.820 I just was agreeing with the marshal. He had a good suggestion there. 140 00:18:41.120 --> 00:18:44.100 Reaction to that to the, to the jury. 141 00:18:44.180 --> 00:18:44.960 That's funny. 142 00:18:46.840 --> 00:18:49.620 Often a ripple of recognition would run through the defense table. 143 00:18:49.760 --> 00:18:55.840 And I began to imagine how these now very straightly dressed witnesses might have indeed looked during convention week. 144 00:18:55.840 --> 00:19:01.160 Robert Pearson, for instance, an investigator for the state's attorney's office, interested me. 145 00:19:01.600 --> 00:19:03.460 I allowed my hair to grow long, he said. 146 00:19:03.740 --> 00:19:07.680 I allowed myself to go without a shave for approximately four to six weeks. 147 00:19:08.160 --> 00:19:17.740 I purchased the attire of a motorcycle gang member, which is motorcycle boots, a black t-shirt, black Levi's and a black leather vest and a motorcycle helmet. 148 00:19:18.100 --> 00:19:21.500 He even testified that he'd thrown a bottle of paint at a police car. 149 00:19:22.500 --> 00:19:27.260 Louis Salzberg, a photographer, was in and around the movement for two or three years. 150 00:19:28.280 --> 00:19:31.240 Turned up at the trial as an undercover agent for the FBI. 151 00:19:31.560 --> 00:19:35.260 Testified that he'd made $10,000 in pay and expenses as an operative. 152 00:19:35.780 --> 00:19:41.000 I'll always maintain that the courtroom techniques right from the beginning geared against the defendants. 153 00:19:41.120 --> 00:19:46.360 I mean, take the very act of getting down from the witness stand and pointing at a defendant. 154 00:19:46.540 --> 00:19:49.940 That's incriminating because, well, first of all, he's saying, well, he's right here. 155 00:19:49.940 --> 00:19:50.520 He got him right. 156 00:19:50.640 --> 00:19:53.420 Then when he goes back to the witness stand, obviously he's going to get the next thing right. 157 00:19:53.760 --> 00:19:56.980 And secondly, it's pointing an accusing finger of guilt at a person. 158 00:19:57.460 --> 00:19:59.340 And visually it has a tremendous impact. 159 00:19:59.340 --> 00:20:01.060 And see, they never get it wrong. 160 00:20:01.440 --> 00:20:02.780 They ain't missed once, right? 161 00:20:03.200 --> 00:20:04.400 Nobody's missed a witness. 162 00:20:04.900 --> 00:20:06.580 I mean, all jury knows who Hayden is. 163 00:20:06.580 --> 00:20:08.080 He knows, everybody knows. 164 00:20:09.020 --> 00:20:12.880 As he fingered Hayden, Dellinger said, I'm disappointed in you, Louis. 165 00:20:16.080 --> 00:20:24.140 What's happened in the past 10 years is that hundreds of thousands of white people have joined with black people in a struggle to effectively change this country. 166 00:20:24.420 --> 00:20:25.900 And they understand that as a threat. 167 00:20:26.520 --> 00:20:28.340 And I think that's why the Yippies are on trial. 168 00:20:28.560 --> 00:20:32.880 Tom and Renny are on trial because they represent a kind of SDS political background. 169 00:20:33.660 --> 00:20:36.080 Dave represents the pacifist anti-war movement. 170 00:20:36.320 --> 00:20:38.920 Lee Wine and I represent the academic community. 171 00:20:39.240 --> 00:20:40.380 I'm not forgetting Bobby Seale. 172 00:20:40.580 --> 00:20:42.760 I think Bobby Seale is the most important thing in this case. 173 00:20:43.440 --> 00:20:53.820 The very fact that this trial is going on, the very fact that I was pulled into it, the very fact that the other seven defendants are put in the situation that they're in, it's all not inseparable. 174 00:21:00.520 --> 00:21:05.960 Seale had come to Chicago in 1968 as a substitute for his friend Eldridge Cleaver. 175 00:21:06.500 --> 00:21:10.800 He did give a speech in Lincoln Park, but was in town only 18 hours. 176 00:21:10.800 --> 00:21:16.540 He had no real interest in the convention. 177 00:21:17.700 --> 00:21:25.480 Charles Gary of San Francisco, the Black Panther lawyer, had asked Judge Hoffman to postpone the trial until he could recover from surgery. 178 00:21:25.960 --> 00:21:27.640 This the judge refused to do. 179 00:21:28.480 --> 00:21:32.480 Now that his lawyer couldn't appear, Bobby Seale sought to plead his own case. 180 00:21:33.180 --> 00:21:37.740 But if this was denied, he wanted it to be known that he was firing his lawyer of record, Kuntzler. 181 00:21:38.460 --> 00:21:40.460 This was ignored by Judge Hoffman. 182 00:21:43.840 --> 00:21:49.420 Kuntzler tried to withdraw his appearance for Seale, but by now the trial was in its second day with a full jury. 183 00:21:50.600 --> 00:21:55.800 Each time there was a witness with testimony relating to Seale, Seale moved forward to cross-examine. 184 00:21:57.900 --> 00:21:59.420 The judge would not allow this. 185 00:21:59.880 --> 00:22:01.460 You have a lawyer, he told Seale. 186 00:22:01.900 --> 00:22:04.100 You have a very able lawyer from New York. 187 00:22:06.560 --> 00:22:09.820 Seale was alert for every opportunity to make his point. 188 00:22:10.120 --> 00:22:12.580 To wine glass he said, hey, you don't speak for me. 189 00:22:12.780 --> 00:22:17.080 I would like to speak on behalf of my own self and handle my case on behalf of myself. 190 00:22:17.580 --> 00:22:19.620 How come I can't speak on behalf of myself? 191 00:22:20.140 --> 00:22:21.600 I am my own legal counsel. 192 00:22:21.960 --> 00:22:24.040 I don't want these lawyers to represent me. 193 00:22:27.420 --> 00:22:33.100 He made another formal motion to defend himself and asked for bail so that he might better conduct his case. 194 00:22:34.040 --> 00:22:38.320 Schulz meanwhile maintained that there were seven lawyers of record by trial time. 195 00:22:38.760 --> 00:22:43.900 That it wasn't right for these guys to quit and go off, and Seale demanded that one of them should come back as his lawyer. 196 00:22:44.800 --> 00:22:48.100 Judge Hoffman said that the case was too complex for self-representation. 197 00:22:49.240 --> 00:22:51.760 That it might jeopardize the rights of the other defendants. 198 00:22:52.320 --> 00:22:53.720 And Seale became more vehement. 199 00:22:53.760 --> 00:22:57.360 You are denying them. Every other word you say is deny, deny, deny. 200 00:22:57.680 --> 00:23:00.900 And you begin to oink in the faces of the masses of the people of this country. 201 00:23:00.900 --> 00:23:05.940 That is what you begin to represent, the corruptness of this rotten government of 400 years. 202 00:23:07.680 --> 00:23:11.780 I admonish you, sir, that you have a lot of contemptuous conduct against you. 203 00:23:12.220 --> 00:23:13.280 I admonish you. 204 00:23:13.780 --> 00:23:18.200 You are in contempt of the constitutional rights of the mass of the people of the United States. 205 00:23:18.620 --> 00:23:19.920 I'm not in contempt of nothing. 206 00:23:20.380 --> 00:23:21.820 You are the one who is in contempt. 207 00:23:22.280 --> 00:23:25.540 The people of America need to admonish you and the whole Nixon administration. 208 00:23:26.340 --> 00:23:27.760 Let me cross-examine the witness. 209 00:23:27.760 --> 00:23:30.620 I admonish the defendant and his counsel. 210 00:23:30.860 --> 00:23:33.400 Counsel ain't got nothing to do with it. I'm my own counsel. 211 00:23:35.700 --> 00:23:37.560 You're not doing very well for yourself. 212 00:23:39.820 --> 00:23:43.340 Yes, that's because you violated my constitutional rights, Judge Hoffman. 213 00:23:43.640 --> 00:23:48.220 That's because you violated them overtly, deliberately, and in every racist manner. 214 00:23:48.860 --> 00:23:50.620 Somebody ought to point out the law to you. 215 00:23:51.400 --> 00:23:55.120 You don't want to investigate to see whether the people get their constitutional rights. 216 00:23:55.740 --> 00:23:58.660 68,000 black men died in the Civil War for that right. 217 00:23:59.200 --> 00:24:01.340 The right was made during the Reconstruction period. 218 00:24:01.880 --> 00:24:04.600 They fought in that war and 68,000 of them died. 219 00:24:05.160 --> 00:24:07.840 That law was made for me to have my constitutional right. 220 00:24:08.600 --> 00:24:10.060 You want to listen to me for a moment? 221 00:24:10.360 --> 00:24:14.260 Why should I continue to listen to you unless you are going to give me my constitutional right? 222 00:24:16.860 --> 00:24:19.660 I am warning you, sir, that the law, instead of warning me, 223 00:24:19.680 --> 00:24:22.240 why don't you warn me that I have the right to defend myself, huh? 224 00:24:22.240 --> 00:24:25.620 I'm warning you that the court has the right to gag you. 225 00:24:25.960 --> 00:24:27.080 I don't want to do that. 226 00:24:27.480 --> 00:24:30.280 Under the law, you may be gagged and chained to your chair. 227 00:24:30.960 --> 00:24:33.800 Gag? I'm being railroaded already. I'm being railroaded already. 228 00:24:34.480 --> 00:24:37.480 The court has a right, and I... The court has no right whatsoever. 229 00:24:37.980 --> 00:24:42.000 The court has no right to stop me from speaking out on behalf of my constitutional rights. 230 00:24:43.100 --> 00:24:46.000 The court will be in recess until tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. 231 00:24:47.460 --> 00:24:49.080 It had now gone on 30 days. 232 00:24:50.760 --> 00:24:54.060 On October 29th, before Judge Hoffman came in, 233 00:24:54.240 --> 00:24:57.260 Seals spoke to the Black Panthers in the audience and said in effect, 234 00:24:58.320 --> 00:25:02.140 cool it, you guys, whatever happens here today, just cool it. 235 00:25:09.540 --> 00:25:12.180 Federal marshals were beginning to line up in the room. 236 00:25:12.620 --> 00:25:15.100 Kunkler charged that there were 25 marshals present. 237 00:25:16.300 --> 00:25:18.780 As the judge appeared, Richard Shultz said, 238 00:25:19.380 --> 00:25:21.820 hit the court, please, before you came in this morning, 239 00:25:22.160 --> 00:25:24.000 Bobby Seals stood up and addressed this group. 240 00:25:24.180 --> 00:25:27.660 That's right, brother. I spoke on behalf of my constitutional rights. 241 00:25:28.780 --> 00:25:32.420 And he told these people in the audience, and I want this on the record, 242 00:25:33.040 --> 00:25:35.080 that if he was attacked, they should know what to do. 243 00:25:35.360 --> 00:25:37.880 He was talking to the people about an attack by them. 244 00:25:38.140 --> 00:25:41.980 You're lying, dirty liar. I told them to defend themselves. 245 00:25:41.980 --> 00:25:45.260 You are a rotten, racist, pig, fascist liar. That's what you are. 246 00:25:45.500 --> 00:25:47.560 You're a rotten liar. You are a rotten liar. 247 00:25:47.840 --> 00:25:49.220 You are a fascist pig liar. 248 00:25:49.820 --> 00:25:52.380 I said they have the right to defend themselves if they are attacked. 249 00:25:52.560 --> 00:25:54.440 And I hope that the record carries that. 250 00:25:54.780 --> 00:25:57.300 And I hope that the record shows that Tricky Dick Shultz, 251 00:25:57.340 --> 00:25:59.220 working for Richard Nixon and the administration, 252 00:25:59.360 --> 00:26:01.620 all understand that Tricky Dick Shultz is a liar. 253 00:26:01.880 --> 00:26:03.680 And we have the right to defend ourselves. 254 00:26:03.940 --> 00:26:06.200 And if you attack me, I will defend myself. 255 00:26:07.020 --> 00:26:09.340 Mr. Seals, I have admonished you previously. 256 00:26:09.780 --> 00:26:13.940 You have George Washington and Benjamin Franklin sitting in a picture behind you. 257 00:26:14.060 --> 00:26:17.280 And they are slave owners. That's what they were. They owned slaves. 258 00:26:17.860 --> 00:26:21.140 You are acting in the same manner, denying me my constitutional rights, 259 00:26:21.200 --> 00:26:22.780 being able to cross-examine the witness. 260 00:26:23.420 --> 00:26:26.100 Well, I've been called a racist, a fascist. 261 00:26:26.400 --> 00:26:29.060 He has pointed to the picture of George Washington behind me 262 00:26:29.060 --> 00:26:30.500 and called him a slave owner. 263 00:26:31.140 --> 00:26:32.800 They were slave owners. Look at history. 264 00:26:33.240 --> 00:26:35.020 As though I had anything to do with that. 265 00:26:35.340 --> 00:26:37.340 They were slave owners. You've got them up there. 266 00:26:37.840 --> 00:26:40.220 He's been known as the father of this country. 267 00:26:40.720 --> 00:26:44.420 And I would think that it's a pretty good picture to have in the United States District Court. 268 00:26:45.660 --> 00:26:47.380 We all share a common guilt, Your Honor. 269 00:26:48.180 --> 00:26:50.620 I didn't think I would ever live to sit in a bench 270 00:26:50.620 --> 00:26:55.620 or be in a courtroom where George Washington was assailed by a defendant in a criminal case 271 00:26:55.620 --> 00:26:59.060 and the judge was criticized for having his portrait on the wall. 272 00:26:59.760 --> 00:27:02.720 I will not hear you now. I'm asking you to be silent. 273 00:27:03.160 --> 00:27:08.300 I want to know, oh, look, it's a form of racism, racism that has stopped my argument. 274 00:27:19.860 --> 00:27:23.300 Mr. Seale, do you want to stop or do you want me to direct the marshal? 275 00:27:24.080 --> 00:27:27.920 I want to argue the point about this so that you can get an understanding of the fact 276 00:27:27.920 --> 00:27:29.700 that I have the right to defend myself. 277 00:27:31.320 --> 00:27:32.820 We will take a recess. 278 00:27:33.920 --> 00:27:36.040 Take that defendant into the room in there 279 00:27:36.040 --> 00:27:39.600 and deal with him as he should be dealt with under these circumstances. 280 00:28:34.420 --> 00:28:39.520 Seale continued to protest, continued to demand the right to defend himself. 281 00:28:40.420 --> 00:28:42.520 The consular called it medieval torture. 282 00:28:48.620 --> 00:28:52.240 Judge Hoffman, bowing to the effect on the jury and world opinion, 283 00:28:53.120 --> 00:28:54.720 the gags and straps were removed. 284 00:29:01.120 --> 00:29:03.480 Seale announced that he was waiving no rights 285 00:29:03.480 --> 00:29:06.500 and that he had spoken out only at appropriate times. 286 00:29:06.940 --> 00:29:10.800 When he again insisted on the right to cross-examine, the judge was furious. 287 00:29:14.340 --> 00:29:17.420 He found Seale guilty of 16 citations for contempt, 288 00:29:18.180 --> 00:29:21.900 sentenced three months on each count, a total of four years. 289 00:29:22.700 --> 00:29:24.600 He declared Seale's case a mistrial. 290 00:29:25.340 --> 00:29:27.620 Seale still spoke for his right to defend himself. 291 00:29:28.380 --> 00:29:30.580 Too late. The judge had spoken. 292 00:29:31.720 --> 00:29:32.700 Now there were seven. 293 00:29:37.600 --> 00:29:42.180 Today when we waited in line, they let us stand inside because it was like ten below. 294 00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:45.420 But it doesn't look like they're going to let them do that today. 295 00:29:45.420 --> 00:29:47.700 There's too many kids. I don't know why. 296 00:29:48.720 --> 00:29:54.520 I'm 105 on the sign-up sheet, and I don't think I'll get in, but I'm hopeful. 297 00:29:55.300 --> 00:29:58.820 This thing could have been settled so easily just by letting him defend himself. 298 00:29:59.580 --> 00:30:04.620 It's almost unbelievable, really, to think that you would bound and gag somebody in a courtroom. 299 00:30:06.520 --> 00:30:10.400 And the only thing that could possibly top that is giving somebody four years for contempt. 300 00:30:11.420 --> 00:30:12.600 And Hoffman came up with that. 301 00:30:13.020 --> 00:30:15.720 This is a good way to goof off the court system, it really is, 302 00:30:15.780 --> 00:30:20.020 to keep the jurors and the judge and everybody in the whole courtroom tied up for so long. 303 00:30:20.640 --> 00:30:23.560 Well, God, I've been here since about one o'clock, and it's about nine now. 304 00:30:23.560 --> 00:30:25.620 And, you know, I just called outside. 305 00:30:46.460 --> 00:30:50.600 Because I've been saying every week that it'll come to an end next week. 306 00:30:52.700 --> 00:30:56.620 But today we passed our hundredth witness, 307 00:30:57.220 --> 00:31:04.920 and we still have 30 or 40 more that we could call for next week's cast. 308 00:31:05.260 --> 00:31:09.100 As you know, we are the longest-running production in Chicago. 309 00:31:15.020 --> 00:31:19.420 The defense witnesses by anybody's standards were real people. 310 00:31:19.420 --> 00:31:22.440 Jane Myerding took the Quaker affirmation. 311 00:31:22.780 --> 00:31:24.440 To take an oath was against her belief. 312 00:31:24.680 --> 00:31:26.760 Quaker, she said, always tell the truth. 313 00:31:27.400 --> 00:31:32.160 The mobilization had wanted their own marshals to maintain order during convention demonstrations. 314 00:31:32.760 --> 00:31:36.520 Miss Myerding was one of those marshals, was in Grant Park, was arrested. 315 00:31:40.660 --> 00:31:42.900 Another mobilization marshal was James Wright. 316 00:31:43.600 --> 00:31:46.580 He showed the jury the correct way the Wardolph Billy Club blows, 317 00:31:47.060 --> 00:31:49.980 something he had learned in civil rights demonstrations. 318 00:31:50.220 --> 00:31:53.780 He said that Grant Park, when he got there, was wall-to-wall police. 319 00:31:56.820 --> 00:32:00.860 In Grant Park, Angus McKenzie had lowered the American flag to half mast. 320 00:32:01.260 --> 00:32:04.960 Under the rules of evidence, he could tell how he'd been socked and dragged to the police car. 321 00:32:05.340 --> 00:32:08.400 But he wasn't allowed to tell the jury why he'd lowered the flag. 322 00:32:12.500 --> 00:32:14.280 Linda Moore seemed a fragile flower, 323 00:32:14.280 --> 00:32:18.440 until Schultz developed that she now practiced with an M1 rifle. 324 00:32:19.300 --> 00:32:25.260 The specific things that made me change my attitude were the actions on Mayor Daley's part in refusing permits, 325 00:32:25.660 --> 00:32:28.140 in violating completely, as far as I was concerned, 326 00:32:28.400 --> 00:32:31.860 the Constitution, which allows you the right to march and to demonstrate, 327 00:32:32.160 --> 00:32:34.320 and what was going on inside the convention, 328 00:32:34.500 --> 00:32:38.420 which convinced me that the democratic political process had fallen apart, 329 00:32:38.740 --> 00:32:42.100 that we had to defend ourselves, or we would be wiped out. 330 00:32:43.780 --> 00:32:49.060 The Yippies had planned a festival of life to counteract what they called the Festival of Death, 331 00:32:49.420 --> 00:32:50.680 the democratic convention. 332 00:32:51.300 --> 00:32:57.060 So one after another, celebrities came forward to relate their conversations concerning the festival of life. 333 00:32:58.500 --> 00:33:01.520 Timothy Leary was seen as a Yippie spiritual leader. 334 00:33:03.040 --> 00:33:06.020 Paul Krasner was president at the founding of the Yippie Party. 335 00:33:07.640 --> 00:33:09.380 Pete Seeger came on. 336 00:33:10.360 --> 00:33:12.380 Country Joe, Country Joe and the Fish. 337 00:33:13.700 --> 00:33:18.060 Arlo Guthrie, who told the long-winded story of Alice's restaurant. 338 00:33:19.100 --> 00:33:25.480 It was clear from his interest that Judge Hoffman had not, until then, heard the story of Alice's restaurant. 339 00:33:27.000 --> 00:33:29.040 We are symbols of a whole protest movement. 340 00:33:29.520 --> 00:33:32.180 The witnesses are as varied as the defendants. 341 00:33:32.460 --> 00:33:36.160 So all these defendants just there, and you see how different we are, 342 00:33:36.160 --> 00:33:41.540 and you come to the conclusion that we couldn't have a conspiracy to agree on lunch at dinner time, 343 00:33:41.540 --> 00:33:43.880 which we can't, and here we are charged with conspiracy, 344 00:33:44.140 --> 00:33:46.960 and then you see the witnesses that everybody knows bring into this, 345 00:33:47.020 --> 00:33:49.380 and the circle just gets bigger and bigger, and you say, 346 00:33:50.320 --> 00:33:53.860 well, Reverend Fernandez, he could have conspired with Timothy Leary, 347 00:33:54.300 --> 00:33:58.940 who conspired with this Green Beret, who conspired with Ramsey Clark, the Attorney General. 348 00:33:59.880 --> 00:34:01.140 It's getting a bit confusing. 349 00:34:01.140 --> 00:34:07.580 Then maybe some people will conclude that it is a conspiracy of the people that's on trial. 350 00:34:13.820 --> 00:34:18.480 Those of you that missed Judy Collins would have seen a very memorable sight. 351 00:34:18.820 --> 00:34:21.480 She tried to sing Where Have All the Flowers Gone, 352 00:34:22.160 --> 00:34:28.080 and Marsha went up to her, put one hand on the top of her head, and one hand under her chin, 353 00:34:28.080 --> 00:34:36.080 and with a certain gentleness closed her mouth, just as she was about to sing Long Time Passing. 354 00:34:37.300 --> 00:34:41.380 She then proceeded to do a very, I thought, emotional and good thing. 355 00:34:41.540 --> 00:34:44.380 She recited the entire poem. 356 00:34:47.000 --> 00:34:50.740 Will you please state your full name? Alan Ginsberg. 357 00:34:51.620 --> 00:34:54.860 What is your occupation? Poet. 358 00:34:55.700 --> 00:35:00.940 Ginsberg told the plants what a human being, a gathering together of younger people, 359 00:35:01.340 --> 00:35:04.820 aware of the planetary fate that we are all sitting in the middle of, 360 00:35:05.240 --> 00:35:11.600 imbued with a new consciousness and desiring a new kind of society involving prayer, music, 361 00:35:11.840 --> 00:35:16.540 and the spiritual life together, rather than competition, acquisition, and war. 362 00:35:17.060 --> 00:35:20.600 The judge ruled all this irrelevant, and we moved on toward the convention. 363 00:35:21.560 --> 00:35:24.800 Ginsberg had come to Mayor Daley's office to help get permits, 364 00:35:25.080 --> 00:35:30.040 and he had chanted the Hare Krishna mantra as an example of what was intended at the festival. 365 00:35:30.780 --> 00:35:40.620 Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare Hare Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama, Rama, Hare Hare. 366 00:35:41.640 --> 00:35:43.920 Foreign objected and was sustained by the judge. 367 00:35:45.520 --> 00:35:50.060 Then on Saturday night before the convention, he had met with Hoffman and Rubin and others, 368 00:35:50.060 --> 00:35:55.260 and he testified that they both had recommended leaving the park at the 11 p.m. curfew time. 369 00:35:56.060 --> 00:35:58.540 They had said that the park wasn't worth fighting for. 370 00:35:59.180 --> 00:36:05.260 Then at 10.30, the police moved into the park, and there was surprise consternation in what Ginsberg called 371 00:36:05.260 --> 00:36:12.340 swift and agitated motion, without any center, without any calm, and Ginsberg began to chant, 372 00:36:13.360 --> 00:36:13.920 Om. 373 00:36:20.620 --> 00:36:23.840 The judge would allow only two om's. 374 00:36:24.500 --> 00:36:29.360 Again on Sunday, Ginsberg had been in Lincoln Park and chanted the om for seven hours. 375 00:36:37.960 --> 00:36:40.920 And again Monday, calming the crowd at the barricade. 376 00:36:42.980 --> 00:36:48.040 When all of a sudden a police car came rolling down into the group with a lot of crashing and tinkling of glass 377 00:36:48.040 --> 00:36:50.700 and broke up the sound of the chant that had been built. 378 00:36:51.700 --> 00:36:55.860 And again on Tuesday, chanting Om through the glary lights and the tear gas. 379 00:36:55.860 --> 00:36:56.800 Om. 380 00:37:10.600 --> 00:37:16.700 And he was in Grant Park on Flag Wednesday, and had joined the march with David Dellinger, 381 00:37:17.080 --> 00:37:19.220 and was again tear gassed, leaving Grant Park. 382 00:37:29.260 --> 00:37:33.860 Robert Hall brought along the police billy club, which he said had been broken over his head in Grant Park. 383 00:37:35.720 --> 00:37:41.140 Ann Patricia Carr, who was a British member of parliament, was shocked that there wasn't a bible in this federal court, 384 00:37:41.520 --> 00:37:45.540 had been to the Conrad Hilton, and had been attacked by the police and thrown into a paddy wagon. 385 00:37:46.320 --> 00:37:50.160 She put her face to the window of the paddy wagon and was maced through the board hall. 386 00:37:51.060 --> 00:37:57.160 Ruth Migdahl testified that the police had chanted kill, kill, kill as they charged the demonstrators. 387 00:37:58.560 --> 00:38:00.420 Norman Mailer had been in the Conrad Hilton. 388 00:38:01.020 --> 00:38:08.340 He looked down into the street where the police cupped through the crowd like sheets of rain, like a sword cutting down grass. 389 00:38:09.300 --> 00:38:14.440 Because finally what was it? There were 12,000 kids not given a permit to march, and just being beaten day after day after day, 390 00:38:14.440 --> 00:38:17.980 and these kids kept coming back. This police department finally cracked up over here. 391 00:38:17.980 --> 00:38:28.860 When we come here to assert our democratic rights and are threatened and intimidated by troops, mace, tanks, guns, all the rest of it, 392 00:38:29.040 --> 00:38:33.300 I think it will be extremely clear who has created the incident. 393 00:38:48.840 --> 00:39:14.540 Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill 394 00:39:19.340 --> 00:39:28.720 This administration will never permit a lawless violent group of terrorists to menace the lives of millions of people and take over the streets of Chicago. 395 00:39:32.980 --> 00:39:43.580 Chicago's Mayor Daley was a cool witness, though technically a defense witness, it was Kuntzler's strategy to show he was indeed a hostile witness, subject to cross-examination. 396 00:39:44.040 --> 00:39:58.260 He asked more than 50 questions about police behavior, the mayor's order to shoot and kill looters, and the mayor's convention time activities, each time foreign objected, each time he was sustained by the judge. 397 00:39:58.260 --> 00:40:06.820 As Kuntzler became more and more desperate, he was supported by hissing from the spectators, who were immediately tossed out by federal marshals. 398 00:40:09.120 --> 00:40:12.780 At one point the judge said that this was indeed a most friendly witness. 399 00:40:14.300 --> 00:40:19.740 Daley once said that he didn't mind a yippie snake dancing, flippies zippies dancing, he'd prefer an Irish jig. 400 00:40:20.100 --> 00:40:22.460 I put on a button, Bernardine Devil and so on. 401 00:40:29.400 --> 00:40:31.480 The yippie theater continued. 402 00:40:32.740 --> 00:40:40.540 Hoffman and Rubin had wangled invitations to Judge Hoffman's luncheon club, and came to court that afternoon in the neckties they were required to wear there. 403 00:40:43.000 --> 00:40:45.460 One witness tried to describe hippie dress. 404 00:40:46.540 --> 00:40:53.620 Let the record show that the defendant Hoffman stood up, lifted his shirt up, and bared his body in the presence of the jury. 405 00:40:55.260 --> 00:41:00.520 This reminded Kuntzler of the time President Johnson had shown his appendectomy over national television. 406 00:41:02.100 --> 00:41:05.380 Maybe that's why he isn't president anymore, said Judge Hoffman. 407 00:41:07.000 --> 00:41:13.900 He had trouble remembering the defendant's names, and particularly that of the lawyer Wineglass, whom he called Fineglass and Winerust. 408 00:41:17.800 --> 00:41:19.860 Rubin made a sign to remind him. 409 00:41:21.620 --> 00:41:25.520 The judge didn't like to see Kuntzler leaning on Miss Vanderohe's lectern. 410 00:41:26.200 --> 00:41:31.340 A lawyer stands at the lectern. He stands erect and does not lean as though having a beer someplace. 411 00:41:35.680 --> 00:41:44.060 They began to address their Christmas cards at the defense table, and the defense asked that the jury be allowed off for Christmas, and the trial postponed for that period of time. 412 00:41:44.060 --> 00:41:49.060 The judge demurred and in fact increased the trial days from five days a week to six. 413 00:41:53.900 --> 00:41:57.720 The defense camp retaliated by bringing their kids on Saturday morning. 414 00:42:00.140 --> 00:42:03.340 Now a quick sudden huddle of all the defendants. 415 00:42:05.560 --> 00:42:11.740 An out popped Hoffman and onto the stand, and the confrontation between the two Hoffmans was complete. 416 00:42:14.060 --> 00:42:16.720 I said my name was Abby, I'm an orphan of America. 417 00:42:17.220 --> 00:42:25.540 Although we are Americans on trial, that we've been so estranged from the founding principles of the country that we are indeed orphans. 418 00:42:25.960 --> 00:42:38.360 The whole problem with testifying was how do you try and recreate in your head that state of mind that you had before you came to Chicago, and what you want to say to young people in America, and it's very difficult. 419 00:42:38.360 --> 00:42:53.760 He'll ask you a question and you'll see doors open up, you'll see the movement in your brothers and sisters, and then you'll see conviction, and you'll see perjury, you know, and you'll see the jury, and you'll see your other defendants, about five or six doors, and you only get one answer, yes or no. 420 00:42:54.020 --> 00:42:59.440 It's sort of like justifying your childhood and your innocence, you know, and the questions are very complicated. 421 00:43:00.080 --> 00:43:11.120 I was asked at one point, what were your thoughts on that night as you stared at the building, you know, and I said gee, I never been on trial with my thoughts before, I'll have to take a little time, you know, and my books were used against me. 422 00:43:11.380 --> 00:43:24.520 At one point I was asked what I was dreaming, because I wrote in the book that I was dreaming of, you know, a whole fantasy project, you know, I said oh, didn't know you were a psychiatrist, so I thought you were a lawyer, you know, ah, leave me alone, leave me alone. 423 00:43:25.280 --> 00:43:30.940 Oh, a guy tried to kill me coming through a window, he had a load, that's not relevant, oh, that's not relevant, oh yeah, wow. 424 00:43:31.460 --> 00:43:47.320 See, it's insanity and it's a complexity, and the nature of the charge and the complexity of that week in Chicago, and the vitality that young people showed in the face of all this massive show of force by the establishment is what makes this trial so fascinating and so vital. 425 00:43:48.040 --> 00:43:51.820 I've actually never been on a job this long in my whole entire life. 426 00:43:52.400 --> 00:43:55.160 It's like watching 800 movies back to back. 427 00:43:55.360 --> 00:44:00.440 Next day he came down with a cold, and so everyone was let off for Christmas after all. 428 00:44:01.600 --> 00:44:09.260 I tried to direct myself, but in a very personal way, to the 14 people in that jury box as human beings. 429 00:44:09.700 --> 00:44:25.940 To give the jury a sense that we knew the area backwards and forwards, we were not just out of towners as the charge goes, and that we were exceedingly flexible about what routes to the International Amphitheater and what assembly areas at the International Amphitheater. 430 00:44:25.940 --> 00:44:29.340 It was really the city that had a non-negotiable position. 431 00:44:29.600 --> 00:44:36.380 We had to come to Chicago to protest not only the war, not only racism, but what was going on in Chicago. 432 00:44:36.740 --> 00:44:45.520 In the largest assemblage of peace the country had ever seen in its history, we feel that the country is really the ultimate jury in a political trial. 433 00:44:49.300 --> 00:44:53.860 Julian Bond of Georgia came to testify about events within the Democratic Convention itself. 434 00:44:53.860 --> 00:44:57.860 None of this was allowed under Judge Hoffman's Rules of Evidence. 435 00:44:59.200 --> 00:45:09.480 Bobby Seale returned to play the tape of his Lincoln Park speech to find a pig as a person or a policeman who is generally found violating the constitutional rights of the people. 436 00:45:11.200 --> 00:45:16.800 All we have to say here is that power to the people and red on. 437 00:45:19.800 --> 00:45:24.820 Ramsey Clark had been Attorney General of the United States during the time of the Democratic Convention, 438 00:45:25.260 --> 00:45:34.760 and Kuntzler wanted testimony about his phone calls to Mayor Daley and about his meetings with President Johnson and about ordering of the National Guard into Chicago. 439 00:45:35.620 --> 00:45:38.640 Judge Hoffman refused to allow Ramsey Clark to testify. 440 00:45:39.740 --> 00:45:43.620 He was heard in voir dire examination outside the jury's presence. 441 00:45:44.320 --> 00:45:49.700 The jury never knew that the former Attorney General of the United States had come to testify. 442 00:45:51.280 --> 00:45:53.560 David Dellinger was now increasingly agitated. 443 00:45:56.040 --> 00:46:02.420 Next, Ralph David Abernathy. He was co-chairman of the mobilization at the time of the Convention. 444 00:46:03.060 --> 00:46:05.980 Reverend Abernathy was on his way into the city from the airport. 445 00:46:06.680 --> 00:46:12.400 Kuntzler asked for a recess. Judge Hoffman ruled against this and closed the defense's case. 446 00:46:15.920 --> 00:46:21.960 It was for mentioning this incident to the jury that Kuntzler later received a major sentence for contempt. 447 00:46:23.480 --> 00:46:28.480 James Reardon, Deputy Chief of Police, called by the government in rebuttal testimony, 448 00:46:28.940 --> 00:46:33.120 he had headed the forces that stopped David Dellinger on the march from Grant Park. 449 00:46:33.640 --> 00:46:41.900 Now Reardon told the jury and all these folks in open court assembled that when Dellinger had left the park, he had gone with a group carrying Viet Cong flags. 450 00:46:41.900 --> 00:46:48.900 It was at this point that Dellinger uttered the unforgettable watchword of the New Left Movement, which the New York Times called a barnyard vulgarity. 451 00:46:50.880 --> 00:46:53.720 Now Dellinger's bail was revoked. 452 00:46:53.780 --> 00:46:56.900 The judge! The judge hasn't let anybody go in four years! 453 00:46:57.920 --> 00:47:00.300 No longer were Hoffman and Rubin playful yippies. 454 00:47:02.760 --> 00:47:03.780 He's a madman! 455 00:47:04.620 --> 00:47:10.760 A schande für die Gäuchen, which means that if he had lived under Nazi Germany, he would have sent Dan Frank off to prison, 456 00:47:10.820 --> 00:47:14.120 and the gas chambers in the same way that he wants to send us to jail. 457 00:47:14.780 --> 00:47:17.460 It's a insane asylum up there. It's a insane asylum. 458 00:47:18.980 --> 00:47:22.240 And I think that he has pretensions to lost aspirations. 459 00:47:22.520 --> 00:47:26.980 And I meant it that way and wanted to remind him of his origins in Delancey Street. 460 00:47:26.980 --> 00:47:31.360 Judge Julius Hoffman is a character of every judge in America. 461 00:47:31.680 --> 00:47:34.200 You've seen one judge, you've seen them all. 462 00:47:45.140 --> 00:47:47.340 Now the summations began. 463 00:47:49.380 --> 00:47:53.540 Wineglass once more took the jury through his photographs of those fateful days in August. 464 00:47:54.560 --> 00:47:57.300 Schulz pleaded the government's case. 465 00:48:00.520 --> 00:48:01.320 Kuntzler said, 466 00:48:01.940 --> 00:48:05.820 We have young people who are depressed and dismayed at what they see about them, 467 00:48:06.260 --> 00:48:11.020 who cannot accept the ideals and the dreams and the drives of their parents and their grandparents, 468 00:48:11.440 --> 00:48:17.200 and who are worried and disturbed and are suffering from a malaise of not understanding where they are going, 469 00:48:17.260 --> 00:48:19.420 where the country is going, the world is going. 470 00:48:20.380 --> 00:48:24.960 These are rough problems, but they don't go away by destroying their critics. 471 00:48:25.580 --> 00:48:27.400 These are not solutions to the problems. 472 00:48:27.720 --> 00:48:32.460 The solutions are essentially made by continuing and perpetuating with every breath you have, 473 00:48:32.720 --> 00:48:36.540 the right of men to think, the right of men to speak boldly and unafraid. 474 00:48:37.900 --> 00:48:39.900 Thomas Foran got in his last licks. 475 00:48:40.280 --> 00:48:41.920 I mean, what has happened to us? 476 00:48:42.240 --> 00:48:44.180 Are you going to get conned like that? 477 00:48:44.500 --> 00:48:45.960 The bad people are policemen. 478 00:48:46.260 --> 00:48:48.180 The bad people are FBI agents. 479 00:48:48.180 --> 00:48:51.220 The bad people are people who give their lives to government. 480 00:48:51.760 --> 00:48:53.840 The bad people are a kid who goes in the Navy. 481 00:48:54.560 --> 00:48:58.560 That you're only a good guy if you like the homosexual poetry of Allen Ginsberg, 482 00:48:58.800 --> 00:49:01.860 or you're only a good guy if you think Paul Krasner is funny, 483 00:49:02.240 --> 00:49:07.240 or you're only a good guy if you think that somebody like that Sanders with a goofy outfit is a decent man. 484 00:49:07.700 --> 00:49:10.200 We can't let people use our kids like that. 485 00:49:10.760 --> 00:49:16.180 The vision and ideals that our forefathers had just can't be corrupted by the haters and violent anarchists. 486 00:49:16.900 --> 00:49:20.940 The future will be with people who will be truthful, pure, and loving. 487 00:49:21.320 --> 00:49:22.300 You know who said that? 488 00:49:22.900 --> 00:49:26.500 Gandhi, Dr. King, truthful, pure, loving. 489 00:49:26.860 --> 00:49:29.900 Not liars and obscene haters like these men are. 490 00:49:30.280 --> 00:49:35.040 At this point he accused them of name dropping, of not knowing Dr. King, of not marching with him. 491 00:49:35.120 --> 00:49:39.340 Now Dellinger's daughters rose and shouted out, and Dellinger too was on his feet, 492 00:49:39.560 --> 00:49:41.560 and the courtroom was once again in turmoil. 493 00:49:42.620 --> 00:49:45.460 You see, said Foran, you see how it works? 494 00:49:49.100 --> 00:49:52.000 Right now we're absolutely convinced that there's a split in the jury. 495 00:49:52.800 --> 00:49:57.400 On the other hand we also see us going up for contempt, I mean especially when we beat the rap. 496 00:49:57.520 --> 00:50:00.560 When they come back, no matter what their verdict is, the judge is going to say, 497 00:50:00.800 --> 00:50:04.560 oh wait a minute, boys, because one matter I want to take up with you fellas. 498 00:50:06.980 --> 00:50:10.280 The next day started quietly, the judge charging the jury. 499 00:50:10.280 --> 00:50:14.780 Then the jury up, Judge Hoffman began his contempt citations. 500 00:50:15.560 --> 00:50:21.060 The law says that there may be no citations for contempt longer than six months without provision of jury trial. 501 00:50:21.680 --> 00:50:28.080 So Judge Hoffman tacked one citation on another in a strange litany of 175 separate offenses 502 00:50:28.080 --> 00:50:30.800 to his honor and to the decorum of the court. 503 00:50:31.880 --> 00:50:36.260 Dellinger was sentenced to 29 months and 16 days on 32 counts of contempt. 504 00:50:37.800 --> 00:50:39.380 Once more Dellinger was on his feet. 505 00:50:39.380 --> 00:50:43.240 You want us to be like good Germans supporting the evils of our decade. 506 00:50:43.700 --> 00:50:47.400 And then when we refused to be good Germans and came to Chicago and demonstrated, 507 00:50:47.920 --> 00:50:50.760 despite the threats and the intimidations of the establishment, 508 00:50:51.420 --> 00:50:56.040 now you want us to be like good Jews, going quietly and politely to concentration camps. 509 00:50:57.000 --> 00:51:00.100 Mr. Marshall, I will ask you to have Mr. Dellinger sit down. 510 00:51:00.100 --> 00:51:01.380 And now the turmoil again. 511 00:51:04.520 --> 00:51:06.920 This time three rings of chaos. 512 00:51:10.580 --> 00:51:12.160 Dellinger thrust into his seat. 513 00:51:14.740 --> 00:51:16.880 His daughter is being forcibly removed. 514 00:51:22.960 --> 00:51:24.240 And Kuntzler at the lectern. 515 00:51:27.440 --> 00:51:29.700 Yesterday for the first time in my career, 516 00:51:29.700 --> 00:51:35.780 I completely lost my composure in court as I watched the older daughter of David Dellinger 517 00:51:35.780 --> 00:51:39.700 being rushed out of the room because she clapped her hands to acknowledge 518 00:51:40.400 --> 00:51:43.320 what amounted to her father's farewell to her. 519 00:51:44.200 --> 00:51:49.100 I felt such a deep sense of utter futility that I could not keep from crying, 520 00:51:49.660 --> 00:51:52.040 something I had not done publicly since childhood. 521 00:51:52.640 --> 00:51:55.400 I am sorry if I disturbed the decorum of the courtroom, 522 00:51:55.400 --> 00:51:58.140 but I am not ashamed of my tears. 523 00:52:01.520 --> 00:52:03.920 Each was allowed to speak at the time of sentence. 524 00:52:05.780 --> 00:52:10.980 Lee Weiner told the judge that at Northwestern University the plaque had been ripped from Hoffman Hall. 525 00:52:12.100 --> 00:52:17.200 John Freunds evoked the Oregon Constitution that all power is inherent in the people 526 00:52:17.200 --> 00:52:23.060 and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their peace, safety and happiness. 527 00:52:23.060 --> 00:52:29.880 That they have at all times a right to alter, reform or abolish the government in a manner they may think proper. 528 00:52:30.780 --> 00:52:34.120 And that is what I think we did, said Freunds. 529 00:52:34.920 --> 00:52:37.420 Thomas Hayden discussed each of his citations. 530 00:52:38.360 --> 00:52:42.720 Even as the elder Dellinger is taken off, a younger Dellinger fights back. 531 00:52:43.400 --> 00:52:48.380 So, Your Honor, before your eyes, you see the most vital ingredient of your system does not hold together. 532 00:52:48.920 --> 00:52:51.700 Oh, don't be pessimistic, said Judge Hoffman. 533 00:52:52.140 --> 00:52:53.620 Our system isn't collapsing. 534 00:52:54.260 --> 00:52:57.060 Fellows as smart as you could do awfully well under this system. 535 00:52:57.520 --> 00:52:59.360 I'm not trying to convert you, mind you. 536 00:52:59.740 --> 00:53:01.520 We don't want to join the regiment, Julie. 537 00:53:03.900 --> 00:53:08.280 The Ippies were subdued during the long reading of their citations. 538 00:53:10.180 --> 00:53:13.000 But each recovered sufficiently to make his sentiments known. 539 00:53:14.540 --> 00:53:18.040 William Kuntzler had maneuvered himself into the position of a defendant. 540 00:53:18.680 --> 00:53:22.680 He had identified with their causes and even with their actions in the courtroom. 541 00:53:23.240 --> 00:53:25.120 And now he was to follow them to jail. 542 00:53:26.400 --> 00:53:29.060 Never once, said Judge Hoffman, at one point in the trial. 543 00:53:29.920 --> 00:53:32.680 Never once have you asked these defendants to cool it. 544 00:53:34.400 --> 00:53:37.940 I have tried with all of my heart faithfully to represent my clients. 545 00:53:37.940 --> 00:53:43.980 In the face of what I considered and still consider repressive and unjust conduct toward them. 546 00:53:44.620 --> 00:53:50.900 If I have to pay with my liberty for such representation, then that is the price of my beliefs and sensibilities. 547 00:53:51.760 --> 00:53:56.320 I may not be the greatest lawyer in the world, but I think that I am at this moment, 548 00:53:57.100 --> 00:54:02.980 along with my colleague Leonard Wineglass, the most privileged, being punished for what we believe in. 549 00:54:02.980 --> 00:54:10.280 His deepest revenge was reserved for the middle-aged lawyer, who had violated the traditional lawyer-client relationship. 550 00:54:11.320 --> 00:54:15.900 24 counts of contempt, a total of 4 years and 13 days. 551 00:54:19.820 --> 00:54:25.540 We don't see any possible way that there can be anything but a hung jury or an acquittal. 552 00:54:25.840 --> 00:54:31.660 Where when each one does their hair up, when each one lets it down, you know, down hair is a sign in our favor. 553 00:54:31.660 --> 00:54:36.440 We don't know which ones are carrying on friendly conversations, what kind of groupings have occurred. 554 00:54:38.000 --> 00:54:40.920 We have nicknames for every one of them. We call this woman Mrs. Baldwin. 555 00:54:41.660 --> 00:54:46.220 Her real name is Mrs. Fritz. We see her as a leader of sympathetic jurors to us. 556 00:54:47.400 --> 00:54:52.300 We call this woman Mrs. Wallace. We named her after our friend George from Alabama. 557 00:54:52.860 --> 00:54:58.960 And we see her as a ringleader of the opposition. And the women next to her and next to her go with her. 558 00:54:58.960 --> 00:55:03.620 I mean, obviously, probably these two women share a room together in the Palmer House. 559 00:55:03.900 --> 00:55:07.360 This is the youngest girl we see for us, sympathetic. 560 00:55:08.240 --> 00:55:15.760 And she has made up her mind way in probably the first week of the trial and hasn't paid too much attention to all the nonsense that we're carrying on that we do. 561 00:55:16.380 --> 00:55:22.320 These two are Tweedledee and Tweedledum, probably against these two in the back. 562 00:55:22.320 --> 00:55:29.300 This is Peterson and our friend Krochke, poor old soul. He hasn't had a drink in four months, five months. 563 00:55:30.520 --> 00:55:34.620 We feel sympathetic for him, but he don't dig us. That's my guess. 564 00:55:34.720 --> 00:55:39.700 This woman pays more attention than anybody in the world, but she's an alternate. She ain't gonna get a vote. 565 00:55:39.760 --> 00:55:42.100 And this woman's very sympathetic, but she's an alternate. 566 00:55:42.540 --> 00:55:46.300 And this guy's against, he wears white socks. I mean, he's never gonna dig us. 567 00:55:48.640 --> 00:55:54.420 Now suddenly the jury had reached a verdict. 568 00:55:55.760 --> 00:56:01.460 Freunds and Weiner were turned loose, cleared on all counts, and the jury could see no conspiracy. 569 00:56:02.360 --> 00:56:07.500 But they did think that Hayden and Davis, Hoffman and Rubin, and Dave Dellinger, 570 00:56:08.240 --> 00:56:13.980 that these five defendants, head-crossed state lines, had come to Chicago with the idea of causing a riot. 571 00:56:13.980 --> 00:56:21.060 These ten women and two men, these twelve Chicagoans, did think so beyond a reasonable doubt. 572 00:56:25.220 --> 00:56:28.940 Most Chicagoans, and indeed most Americans, are glad that it's over. 573 00:56:30.120 --> 00:56:34.740 But most also know that the political and legal issues it dealt with are not yet settled. 574 00:56:36.540 --> 00:56:39.560 Straddling as it did the end of one decade and the beginning of another, 575 00:56:39.560 --> 00:56:43.080 no one is sure if it symbolized a beginning or an end. 576 00:56:44.260 --> 00:56:48.500 You can't tell the truth. You can't tell the truth. 577 00:56:48.860 --> 00:56:53.120 You can't tell the truth. You can't tell the truth. 578 00:56:53.720 --> 00:57:02.140 You can't tell the truth. You can't tell the truth. 579 00:57:02.720 --> 00:57:06.420 You can't tell the truth. You can't tell the truth. 580 00:57:06.980 --> 00:57:08.800 You can't tell the truth. You can't tell the truth. 581 00:57:09.160 --> 00:57:12.980 You can't tell the truth. You can't tell the truth. 582 00:57:12.980 --> 00:57:17.880 You can't tell the truth. You can't tell the truth. 583 00:57:18.340 --> 00:57:19.600 You can't tell the truth. 584 00:57:43.040 --> 00:57:47.980 You can't tell the truth. You can't tell the truth. 585 00:57:48.220 --> 00:57:49.980 You can't tell the truth. 586 00:58:12.980 --> 00:58:12.980