Oh boy, 1970 was a crucial year for this writer. Nineteen years old and just baptized into activism on May 5th, with no celebration for Cinco de Mayo that year. My campus at Brooklyn College was closed down by the mass of students like myself who were pissed off at the National Guard killing of three Kent State students the day before. That event was caused by our entire nation finding out that President Nixon ordered the (illegal and immoral) carpet bombing of Cambodia. This, 1970, was the height of the Anti Vietnam War movement, which gathered steam each and every year since LBJ amped up the thing. Nixon had campaigned in ’69 to bring the war to an end, which was, like our current president’s promises, bullshit!
We took over the campus and really didn’t know what the hell to do with it. We did get the military recruiters to leave our campus, but other than handing out myriads of anti war flyers, the focal point of our small group of so called ‘ Leaders’ had no other agenda. The thing ended as quickly as it began, but it did feel good to show solidarity with the millions of other college students who did the same thing: Protest, Protest and Protest that phony war. Although I was a politically naive person at nineteen I did understand that I was living in a Military Industrial Empire. My father, who voted for Nixon in ’60 and ’68, was not a political man at all. My Mom was strictly one who voted for any Democrat that ran for office. Being brought up in a racist society, both my parents were more focused on staying far away from anyone Black. The Watts, Detroit and Newark riots scared the shit out of them, if, God forbid, the rioters came to our 98% white neighborhood. (A side note: In late ’69, having just gotten my old man to buy me this used (very used) old police car, I was driving down the Avenue U shopping area to buy the newest Led Zeppelin album. Turning off the avenue on this December 5th sunny late afternoon to look for a parking spot the ‘soon to be setting’ sun hit my eyes . As I braked I hit this old woman who was crossing the street from in-between parked cars with her head down. The poor lady rolled a few yards as I jumped out of the car and screamed for help. I took off my bomber jacket and laid it over her as she yelled out ‘You tried to kill me!’ A crowd quickly appeared and a cop showed up. He loudly said ‘Did anyone see what happened here?’ Silence. I searched the crowd hoping for some help. Suddenly a voice from the crowd, “I seen the whole thing officer. That lady just walked right in front of that young man’s car as he turned. He done nothing wrong sir.” She stepped forward to give her name and address to him. It was a black woman surrounded by a sea of white faces.)
That was early May. By early August I was back at home having spent late June and all of July in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I spent five nights a week driving a yellow cab and getting ready for football practice at the end of the month. On my nights off from driving I would hang out by the corner of E. 24th St with a few friends and our neighbor Don. Don was a fire marshal who lived above one of the corner stores with his wife Julie and three young kids. He was in his early 30s and a Nixon supporter all the way. Matter of fact, though Don really liked me since he moved practically next door to me when I was 12, he loved to debate me on politics all the time. A year earlier he and his wife Julie would invite me up to their apartment when they had two other couples over on a Saturday night. Their friends were blue collar like them; one guy owned a pizza parlor and the other guy was a fireman. Their wives all had lots of kids to raise, though Don’s wife Julie was a nurse. Don always had a small keg of draft beer and we would sit, drink and drink some more and then the debate would begin. I was the young radical that they loved to argue with, but it was all in fun. I knew they all liked my being there. Julie thought I was sooo good looking.
Getting back to that Saturday night on the corner in early August, Don liked to ‘Stir the shit’. If he wasn’t bragging about how many women he cheated on his wife with, then it was about the ”******* anti war protestors.’ Our neighbor Gus, who was a dental student at NYU Dental, decided he had enough of Don’s bullshit. “Let me tell you pal, I was at school this past May when those ******* hard hats beat the shit out of the anti war protestors. They used their tools and whatever and really did a number on the crowd. Many of my fellow students and myself ran down to give first aid to the victims of the massacre.” Don finished the can of beer in his hand and threw it in Gus’s direction. “You ******* fascist!” Gus yelled as Don started for him. Eddie and I stepped between them and kept Don at bay, as he was looking for trouble. Gus turned away and headed for his house mumbling obscenities. Don leaned on a parked car and tried to lecture us, but we had had enough shit. From that point on I didn’t hang out on that corner anymore.
With the most recent Trump Cabal’s moves of hiring ex military ‘The Iceman Cometh’ thugs (who seem to weight lift more than read) as his new Storm Troopers, and the lifting of gun carry laws, it is becoming much worse than 1970. The targeting of a sovereign nation, Venezuela, for illegal regime change, and the mass 1930s Germany style unconstitutional and immoral street, business and residential building grabs of who may be or not be an undocumented scares the shit out of me. At least in 1970 we had a Supreme Court that could sometimes hold Nixon and his cabal in check. Not anymore gang.
October, 2025