FIFTY YEARS AGO, I WAS ARRESTED ON THE STEPS OF THE U.S. CAPITOL
The similarities, contrasts and links between that protest and recent actions are striking.
I was rounded up on the final day of the “most influential large scale political action of the 1960’s,” according to activist/journalist L.A. Kauffman. But, she notes, it occurred in 1971 (still part of the 60’s in my opinion) and you’ve likely never heard of them…the MayDay Protests, in Washington, D.C., from May 3–5, 1971.
In 1969, I enrolled at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., a polite Catholic boy from rural upstate New York. I held a very few core beliefs and had little ambition to expand them. Two months later, I joined my first D.C. protest march. So by May, 1971, I had adopted a set of beliefs built around the anti-war movement. But exactly what effort had I made to get there?
Even if you don’t know, or care, about the Vietnam War protests of your parent’s (or grandparent’s) generation, the MayDay action is a compelling story, as told by Washington Post investigative editor, Lawrence Roberts. His 2020 book Mayday 1971: a White House at War, a Revolt in the Streets, and the Untold Story of America’s Biggest Mass Arrest includes personal recollections from many sides of the action: D.C. police, White House officials and lawyers, public defenders, protest leaders, followers, even tourists, all caught up in the chaos. Next, consider the behind-the-scenes maneuvers by Richard Nixon and his Justice Department acting tough, with few restraints, while still appearing legal. The links, similarities and contrasts to the recent January 6 insurrection and the BLM protests in summer, 2020 are stunning.
Now, some background. By 1971 it was evident those relatively peaceful 1960’s marches and rallies were ineffective. So activist Rennie Davis (you might know him as one of the defendants in the trial of the Chicago Seven) plus two other war resisters devised a strategy for a spring anti-war offensive.
Their call to action, “if the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government,” wasn’t original. According to Kauffman, author of Direct Action: Protest and Reinvention of American Radicalism, “Davis took the idea of nonviolently blockading the federal government from a bold but ultimately unsuccessful attempt by the Brooklyn chapter of the Congress of Racial Equity (CORE) to paralyze New York City traffic on the opening day of the 1964 World’s Fair.”
Day One. Monday, May 3: To halt or delay Federal workers into the city, as many as 25,000 protesters (estimates vary) converged, in waves, on key bridges and traffic circles; 20 of them in the city. With no central direction, they nonetheless McGyvered barriers — burning garbage cans, cars, large rocks, broken glass, even themselves — then moved. Hit and run. “Nobody felt that because we would be non-violent that we could not also be militant and creative,” said one organizer.
The strategy seemed to work, at first. However, a combined force of Metro police, National Guard and, not without internal debate, Federal troops, had been pressed into service. Making large sweeps of arrests, chasing down protesters, or anyone who may have looked like one, using tear gas, and discarding the protocol of field arrest forms, law enforcement managed to arrest about 7,000 individuals. Many were taken to a makeshift outdoor detention camp across from Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. An 8-foot tall cyclone fence enclosed them. Buckets and trash cans were all that were available for toilets.
Meanwhile, I was nearly arrested, but broke through a police line as our small group of 20 approached Key Bridge. I saw police chasing fleeing protesters back to the Georgetown campus, and lobbing tear gas bombs onto the lawn just in front of the administration building. By late morning, I went to the sidelines, confused about what had just happened. It was years before I understood the complete story of those thousands of arrests.
Day Two. Tuesday, May 4: A peaceful sit-in was held at the U.S.Justice Department. 2,000 people were arrested.
Day Three. Wednesday, May 5: An afternoon sit-in took place on the east front steps of the United States Capitol. Though invited by newly elected representatives Ron Dellums and Bella Abzug, 1,146 people were arrested.
Including me. I didn’t recall, but according to author Roberts, Rep. Bella Abzug was speaking out against the war when the police began their arrests. Later, there were questions if law enforcement issued the required legal warning first. The only reported instance of police mistreatment was of a cop swinging a billy club into Rep. Dellums’ ribs. Dellums was one of the very few African-Americans present that afternoon. Reportedly, he tried to push through police lines as they began to grab protesters. I stayed seated while the police lifted me off the steps. I offered no resistance.
There was no consistency in the charges against us. Protests near the Capitol had been illegal for a century, but the Vietnam Vets Against the War held a rally on-site a just few days earlier. So James Powell, head of the Capitol police force, checked with several superiors. Initially the charges were unlawful entry, though no protester tried to enter the Capitol. Later arrest charges changed to unlawful assembly, in violation of a law banning speech with “intent to impede, disrupt, or disturb the orderly conduct of Congress.”
We were bussed to the Washington Coliseum, an indoor sports arena built in 1941, sometime during the late afternoon. I’ve only maintained random snippets of memories from the next 24 hours. Never having been arrested before, I was intimidated, but not afraid. We were almost exclusively white, and mostly male, though I had no awareness of those privileges back then. National Guard troops were seated in the stadium seats surrounding us on the coliseum floor. A protester lit a joint in front of them. It was cold, but not like the makeshift outdoor pens. Crowded, but not as jamed as the precinct jails where many other Capitol protesters ended up. I don’t recall being fed. But the African-American community donated food. One neighborhood activist was quoted saying,“we gave them food so they could put their bodies on the line and disrupt the government.” Anything that “can upset the oppressive machinery of the government will help black people.”
Day Four. Thursday, May 6: That evening we were bussed to a courthouse. In groups of a dozen we were brought before a Judge, with Congressman Ron Dellums again present. I was told we were released in his recognizance, meaning he would guarantee we would return to the courtroom if charges were to be filed. I later read that two public defenders handling dozens of Coliseum cases for 48 straight hours went before one of two judges who continually dismissed all charges. Personally, I was too tired to pay much attention to anything going on around me. Exams awaited when I returned to campus. Soon after, I transferred from Georgetown a small private college, Union College, in upstate New York.
On November 11, 1971, the American Civil Liberties Union filed several lawsuits. An individual action on behalf of Rep. Dellums and a class action, on behalf of the 1,146 people arrested on the Capitol steps.
The charges in the case, Dellums v. Powell, were exhaustive. The Capitol police were charged with unconstitutional arrests, imprisonment and prosecution. They bungled the entire process and little of it was by accident. The suit asked for monetary damages and ordered a recall and destruction of all traces of the criminal charges.
I knew of this lawsuit. I’d signed papers, not expecting any result or consequence. Then, listening to NPR one morning in January, 1975, I learned that the United States Court of Appeals for D.C. decided for the plaintiffs, awarding a total of $12 million, to be dispensed on a sliding scale according to the length of incarceration. At the time, I was an unemployed college graduate, with a degree in American Studies, in the middle of a recession. In 1977 the total was reduced on appeal. Eventually, I was awarded $1200. I gave back half to the ACLU; the remainder, I used to pay bills.
Case closed, I thought. It might have been a small victory for free speech, but, in my bigger picture of the anti-war movement, the MayDay Protests changed next to nothing. I read little over the years to contradict that sentiment. Until reading Lawrence Roberts’s MayDay 1971. I also dove into L.A. Kauffman’s analysis of left wing protest history.
Kauffman argues that “scruffy and forgotten protest helped speed US withdrawal from Vietnam,” and “changed the course of activist history.” Direct-action protests, she says “help to highlight when the government is clearly more concerned with maintaining control than with maintaining public sympathy, and cites examples like the Seattle WTO blockades, Occupy encampments and the Michael Brown/Ferguson, MO. protests.
The court decisions, writes Lawrence, “would sweep away limits on how citizens can demonstrate their dissent in Washington, D.C. and chill the chance that future mass arrests could be made anywhere in America. They would create the standard by which judges can delete criminal records that were improperly created. For the first time, a federal court had acknowledged that individuals had an implied cause of action against federal officials for violations of their First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly. One judge erased the 1882 law that effectively prevented demonstrations on the Capitol grounds, making possible large protests like the Million Man March in 1995.”
And this one was unexpected… Dellums v. Powell would be one of the precedents cited for the legislation that awarded $20,000 payments to Japanese-American survivors of the WWII internment camps.
In spring, 1971, for likely the first time in my life, I stood up for something. Just by sitting on the steps of the United States Capitol.
On May 5, 1971, nearly 2,000 people were arrested for an anti-war demonstration at the U.S. Capital. No one had broken through police lines, stormed the building, attacked Capitol police with bats poles, shields, or bear spray. None of us trashed congressional offices, rummaged through documents, defaced government property or murdered a Capitol police officer. An action with that kind of violence isn’t a civil protest. The MayDay Protests were something different. All 12,000 citizens arrested over three days have made it easier for their fellow citizens who followed us to occupy that same space for similar ends. That right should be respected, and never walked over.
