- The Hardhat Riot by David Kuhn
In the Spring of 1970, after the Kent State killing of students by national guard troops, there were demonstrations all over the Country, a march on Washington and throughout the streets of New York. I came across this book this Spring in the New York Times book review just before my 50th law school graduation, by zoom.
One such demonstration by students was to be in the financial district and a number of my classmates went to be legal monitors. They were beaten up by construction workers.
This book is the story - - -and I would say it is an important historical corrective as well as a viewpoint of how the Vietnam War demonstrations were a loss to the Democratic Party. Its a very different view than what we normally find in the academic analysis of the "liberals" and the Nixon "racist" counter. Very different.
The book is in three parts. The first part is the background of the events with a detailed description of New York at that time during the Lindsey administration and the media centered focus on the City at that time. It fairly deals with the Vietnam War buildup, the 1968 election including the riots during the Democratic Convention in Chicago and the Nixon election over Humphrey.
The second section deals with the demonstration and counter-demonstrations and the violence during it. It is perhaps too much, giving at times a minute by minute account and block by block description of events.
The third section is the aftermath. Here is the surprise.
The author's research conclusion is that the counter by the construction workers from the World Trade Center and one other building then under construction was spontaneous eruption at the students. it was not, he writes, part of a plan by the Union or by the Republican Party. The later were taken wholly by surprise. Rather it was a cultural event largely led by men who had served in WWII and the Korean War who reacted in fierce anger at the anti-Americanism of the students, especially their disrespect for the American Flag and the flying of the Vietnamese flag.
More, it was Nixon, a policy "liberal", certainly on civil rights, who was envious of those who had gone to Ivy League Schools and who excluded him from social acceptability who saw a political opportunity to cleave the working class from the Democratic Party on cultural, patriotic and educational differences. It was that turn, by the Nixon Administration and its message, that lead, Kuhn writes, to the Nixon landslide in 1972 over McGovern. But for the Watergate scandal, the "moderate" Republicans might not have lost in 1976 etc, The GOPs turning ever more "rightward" is further exploitation of that division in education and media driven culture.
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Mike S
50 years on and almost back to square one
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