Occupy Phoenix – October 2011

   (Courtesy of Dennis Gilman – HumanLeague002) 

The Occupy Phoenix rally held at Cesar Chavez Plaza in downtown Phoenix was representative of the tone set at all Occupy-events throughout the nation.  As you can see in the above video, the participants came from every walk of life, every ethnicity and every age group.  The crowd was extremely peaceful and articulate in their concerns about bringing the    99%ers back into the national debate. 

However, it may be difficult for the Occupy movement to maintain the peaceful aspect of civil disobedience, not because the organizers aren’t dedicated to this principle, but rather because the 1%ers and their surrogates will soon find ways to undermine the “peaceful” perspective. 

The wingnuts are ruthless when it comes to dirty tricks used to derail “real” populist movements, and Richard Nixon was a master at these tactics.       I know this is true from first hand experience. 

I once attended an anti-war rally at San Jose State College in October of 1970.  The rally was held on campus in the afternoon, followed by a march to the San Jose Civic Auditorium where Richard Nixon was speaking at a GOP mid-term election rally later that day.  I had been to several anti-war rallies at Bay Area campuses, but this one was very strange.  I knew most of the players in the Bay Area anti-war movement and was familiar with the rally routine.  They had some great musical entertainment and some fiery speeches but very little violence.  San Francisco State and Cal Berkeley were known for having occasional confrontations with the police, but the San Jose State rallies were very laid back. 

The October, 1970 San Jose State rally was much different.  There was a small group of very vocal agitators, wearing pseudo-hippie garb, who were trying to take over the event.  They brought their own megaphone and were constantly trying to drown out the student speakers.  No one knew who these people were.  A friend and I finally decided to leave the rally and head to the auditorium to see if anything interesting was going on there.  There wasn’t.  The local police had cordoned off the march route on San Carlos Street and the Civic Center parking lot, and the area was quiet.  We decided to leave the rally area. 

That night I watched a local TV newscast of the “riot” that took place at the Civic Center when Nixon left the auditorium that evening:

Nixon after he departed the San Jose Civic Auditorium -10/29/70

 Image Source – Ron Burda 

Everything was peaceful inside the Civic Center during President Nixon’s and Governor Reagan’s speeches.  However, Nixon's political game plan was to take advantage of the planned “turmoil” that was taking place outside.  As H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s Chief of Staff, noted 24 years later in "The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House:"  

San Jose turned into the real blockbuster…We wanted some confrontation and there were no hecklers in the hall, so we stalled departure a little so they could zero in outside and they sure did. 

After Nixon stood on top of his limo and waved his two-handed peace signs to those who were still bitter about his bombing incursion into Cambodia earlier that year, Halderman got his wish.  The crowd began to pelt the motorcade with rocks and bottles.  However, I also noticed on the local news broadcast that the “violent” protestors were the people that I had seen earlier on the San Jose State campus – the unknown agitators. 

The violence was pre-planned, and the national media fell for it. 

As California State Senator Alfred Alquist mentioned after the incident, the actions appeared to be “deliberately staged… to provide a phony ‘law and order’ smokescreen,” for Nixon. 

Indeed they were.  Two days later in his GOP rally speech in Phoenix, Nixon began his “law and order” campaign against the peace movement:  

It is time for the President of the United States to speak out clearly to the American people, not because he personally has been affected by it but because all of America is affected by what happened a couple of days ago in my home State of California, in San Jose.  

You saw some of it on television. You saw the crowd inside, a crowd like this, 3,000 people, listening, cheering, indicating their interest in who might be the Governor, who might be the Senator, and, of course, showing respect for the office of the President of the United States. You saw also the crowd outside.  

The crowd inside were exercising their right to peaceable assembly, as you are today. They were listening to political speakers. They were weighing the issues in the campaign of 1970.  

And outside the hall there was a mob of about 1,000, maybe a few more. We could see the hate in their faces as we drove into the hall, and the obscene signs they waved. We could hear the hate in their voices as they chanted their obscenities.  

And inside the hall, we could hear them pounding on the doors as if they could not bear the thought of people listening respectfully to the Governor of the State of California, the senior Senator, and the President of the United States.  

Along the campaign trail we have seen and heard demonstrators, but never before in this campaign was there such an atmosphere of hatred. As we came out of the hall and entered the motorcade, the haters surged past the barricades.  

They began throwing rocks. These were not small stones; they were large rocks. They were heavy enough to smash windows, windows in the press bus, windows in the staff cars. They weren't directed at me, though some did hit the Presidential car. Most of the rocks hit the buses and the other cars behind.  

What is the reaction of the people who came--people like you? They are at a rally, peaceably at a rally. Many who brought their children were terrified. Others were incensed at the insult to their elected leaders. And all were repelled by the atmosphere of violence and hatred that marred the event. And they thought to themselves, "Is this America? Is this the land where reason and peaceful discussion is the hallmark of a free society?"  

Some say that .the violent dissent is caused by the war in Vietnam. Well, ladies and gentlemen, my fellow Americans, it is about time we branded this line of thinking, this alibi for violence, for what it is: pure nonsense.  

Those who carry a "peace" sign in one hand and throw a bomb or a brick with the other are the super hypocrites of our time. 

"Law and order" became the battle cry of the right during the remainder of the 1970 mid-term elections and into Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign .  And it proved to be quite effective.  The anti-war protests were no longer seen as being a nonviolent movement by a large segment of our society, mainly because of the wingnut-staged phony riot in San Jose. 

Will the mega-funded wingnuts try to do the same thing today in order to sabotage the Occupy movement? 

It's just a matter of time.