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W Leggett
WHY I posted the subject below is to remine us what happened in 1968
News Analysis: Racism, unrest, police brutality. Is America living 1968 all over again? Yes, and no
Demonstrators used park benches to construct a barricade against Chicago police and National Guardsmen during the 1968 Democratic convention. The confrontation left many injured and arrested. (Associated Press)
In the broad sweep of American history, certain years stand like grim mileposts. The year 1968, bathed in blood and drenched in sorrow, is one. The year 2020 may be another.
The nation is convulsed today in a way it has not been in more than half a century: stalked by a mysterious virus, burdened by soaring joblessness, wrestling — once again — with the twin plagues of racism and inequality that have poisoned the country from its outset.
As it happens, 1968 was a presidential election year. So, too, is 2020. It is the time when Americans take stock of what has been and look forward, with varying degrees of hope and resignation, to what may be
.So much has changed in 52 years. So much remains the same.
Every election amount to a choice, between candidates but also between possibilities. Given these unnerving times, the vote on Nov. 3 could very well matter more than any election in a generation.
That's what happened the last time the country cast its ballots for president amid such an air of foreboding.
In 1968, the country was torn apart by an ill-conceived war fought in the cities and jungles of far-off Vietnam. Americans came to realize the conflict was a lost cause and, worse, grew to understand their leaders had lied to cover up their own doubts about the war and ineptitude prosecuting it.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the nation's leading apostle of nonviolent protest, was shot and killed at age 39 for dedicating himself to the proposition that all men, no matter the color of their skin, were created equal. Scores died as more than 100 cities around the country went up in flames.
Robert F. Kennedy, age 42, was shot and killed two months later after inveighing against the Vietnam War and taking up King's torch.
In Chicago, rogue police smashed the heads of demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention after carefully removing their badges to avoid identification. Inside the hall, reporters were roughed up. When Connecticut Sen. Abraham Ribicoff objected to the police tactics, his speech was greeted with a stream of profanity and anti-Semitic invective from the city's mayor, Richard J. Daley.
HISTORY Rewriting IT SELF
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BUT it got you to post on the site
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