STOP THE CITY

            According to Drew Miller, the War Chest tours were directly “...patterned after the 'Stop The City' demos in London.” The American anarchist movement was heavily influenced by what was happening in England, imitation being the highest form of flattery.

            In September 1983, and again in 1984, thousands of British anarchists had converged on The City, a mile-wide section of central London that serves as the city’s chief financial district. The brainchild of the Crass collective, a 10-person anarchist punk band and multimedia performance group, Stop The City! was actually a series of smaller demonstrations and blockades (“A Carnival Against War, Oppression and Destruction”), the largest of which drew 3,000 participants.

            Tired of engaging in purely symbolic forms of protest (happily “filling the jails”), the members of Crass had decided to take the battle directly to the Thatcherites; a direct action designed to put an end to “business as usual.” According to founding member Penny Rimbaud (né Jeremy Ratter), “‘Stop The City’ had been the only time that Crass had put out a direct call to its following to rally on the streets.”(11) The resulting days of action ended in total pandemonium:

Windows were smashed, while groups danced in the streets to the sounds of flutes and drums. Buildings were smoke-bombed while jugglers and clowns frolicked amongst the jostling crowd. City workers were handed leaflets and told to take the day off, phones were put out of action, locks were super-glued, walls were graffitied, and statues adorned with anarchist flags.(12)

            The Stop The City riots culminated in a daylong blockade of the London Stock Exchange, resulting in a “£100 million shortfall,” according to TheLondon Times. “The police were totally unprepared,” wrote photographer David Hoffmann, “as roads were blocked, cars trashed, office buildings blockaded & super-glued.”(13)

            The sense of possibility was captured on the Subhumans’ 1984 recording “Rats,” a tribute to the Stop The City demonstrations. “The unity and strength was obvious,” said Subhumans singer Dick Lucas. “It gave people a lot of fresh motivation, I think.”(14)

“HINCKLEY HAD A VISION”

A House Intelligence Committee member accused the CIA Thursday of breaking the law with a manual instructing Nicaraguan rebels on what critics say amounts to political assassination.(15)

- United Press International, Nov. 1, 1984

          In August 1984, a coalition of Yippies, punks, and anarchists staged a “Corporate War Chest Tour” during the Republican National Convention, in Dallas, TX, featuring “guerrilla performances” by the Dead Kennedys.(16) “The demonstrators marched through the Dallas streets, chanting political slogans and stopping at several corporate locations to stage ‘die-ins’ intended to dramatize the consequences of nuclear war.”(17)

The Texas War Chest Tour made national headlines after Gregory Lee Johnson, a member of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, was arrested for burning an American flag. Johnson was charged with the desecration of a venerated object, and sentenced to one year in prison and a $2,000 fine. Johnson appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and in 1989, the High Court ruled that flag burning was a protected form of political expression (Texas v. Johnson).

       The Dallas protests had their origins in the Rock Against Reagan tour, an attempt to unite political punk bands with dope-smoking hippies (the Yippies were an early sponsor). Taking their cue from the massive outdoor concerts staged by England’s Rock Against Racism, the Dead Kennedys teamed up with other, similar-minded groups, and hit the road for three months in the summer of 1983, arriving in Washington D.C. on the 3rd of July.

In the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, the Dead Kennedys played a concert right on the National Mall, together with MDC, the Dicks, DRI, Toxic Reasons, and the Crucifucks (whose song “Hinckley Had a Vision” was a tribute to Reagan’s would-be assassin). Illuminated by the floodlights cast by low-flying helicopters,(18) Jello Biafra called on the audience to help bring down “our Evil Empire.” Dave Grohl, future drummer for Nirvana and front man for the Foo Fighters, would later recount: “There were police helicopters all over the place, and buses full of riot police.”(19)

ROCK AGAINST REAGAN

            In July of 1984, the Democrats arrived in San Francisco.           

            Walter Mondale, the Democratic presidential candidate, was set to receive his party’s official nomination on July 19th. While the delegates and the news media gathered at the new Moscone Center (named in honor of the late San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, who was assassinated by a former police officer in 1978), local law enforcement braced for a wave of demonstrations.

With Jesse Jackson threatening “a black boycott” of the presidential election,(20) gay leathermen posing for the cameras, and memories of Mondale’s historic betrayal of the Civil Rights movement still fresh in people’s minds,(21) the Democratic National Committee feared a repeat of the disastrous Chicago Convention of 1968.(22)

While Reagan’s cowboy persona had struck a chord with millions of affluent suburbanites, Mondale was forced to compete with a cacophony of potentially embarrassing special interest groups. “Frisco Freaks Have Field Day in Kook City,” read the headlines in the left-leaning Guardian newspaper, “But it is still the homosexuals who mesmerize the out-of-town visitors and scare the party establishment.”(23)

            To quell any potential disturbances during the convention, police were put on 12-hour shifts, with 2,200 officers and sheriff’s deputies stationed outside the Moscone Center, and another 1,600 officers “on call.” Fearing their own citizens, local government had also made “contingency plans to call in National Guard or regular Army units,”(24) should the need arise. According tothe Washington Post:

The most innovative police tactic was reserving the enormous parking lot across from the convention hall as a venue for demonstrations. In effect, the parking lot was a pen, easily secured by police barricades.(25)

            Meanwhile, on the floor of the Moscone Center, the Old Guard was reasserting itself. The pendulum had swung too far to the left, resulting in “an excess of democracy.” To solidify their power, party officials had changed the rules of the convention, setting aside 14 percent of the convention seats for high-ranking “superdelegates”(26) –party loyalists whose votes weren’t bound by the results of state caucuses or primary elections. In a close race, the superdelegates had the power to effectively block one of the candidates. As was reported in the New York Times, the new rules were “an open turn away from the trend toward grass-roots activism… with the deliberate re-establishment of party regulars as a legitimate power center.”(27)

            While the Democrats were busy maintaining the illusion of democracy, others were taking to the streets. On July 16th, a peace rally drew 14,000 people, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Afterwards, a group of local and national bands staged a “Rock Against Reagan” concert in front of the Moscone Center. Headliners the Dead Kennedys (a multi-racial punk band) came out dressed as members of the Ku Klux Klan, tearing off their hoods to reveal matching Ronald Reagan masks.(28)

            After the concert, two thousand members of the audience marched to the Hall of Justice to demand the release of 89 anti-nuclear protesters who’d been arrested earlier that day. Outside the jail, these leaderless youth (“a group the police know as ‘the punk rockers’”)(29) were herded into the backs of police trucks, resulting in over 300 additional arrests.(30) “A few were clubbed,” according to the Washington Post, while eyewitnesses spoke of mounted policemen charging in on horseback and “beating the shit out of people."(31) 

SAN FRANCISCO – Police arrested more than 80 demonstrators today with a show of force that graphically illustrated the city's determination to keep the hoopla surrounding the Democratic National Convention peaceful and under control.

The demonstrators, a self-described ‘leaderless collective’ of youths who had threatened a series of acts of civil disobedience over the next few days, sought to disrupt traffic in the heart of the city's congested financial district.

- The Washington Post, July 17, 1984

Bay Area writer Gordon Edgar (better known by his pen name “Gordonzola”) was among the hundreds of people who were arrested that day:

Gordon Edgar:

The Democrats were in town for the Democratic National Convention. And there was a whole week of street protests and festivities planned –a lot of what were then called ‘War Chest Tours.’ Basically, it was a form of direct action; going to where the corporations had their offices in downtown San Francisco and running amok; pointing out the corporations’ ties to both the war machine and the Republicans and the Democrats... the Democrats being basically no different than the Republicans in terms of who was going to run the country and kill us all in World War III.

I was at the concert; I had gone in with my brother and a couple friends… And as the Dead Kennedys finished their show, some people stood up and were talking about how all these people had gotten arrested downtown. And they asked the crowd to all go down to City Hall to protest the arrests. And almost the entire crowd marched from Moscone Center to 850 Bryant, which is the Hall of Justice, the police station. It was thousands of people. And because they were coming from the punk show, it was almost all punk rockers.

           Many of the arrestees were veterans of the Livermore Action Group (LAG), a loose-knit federation of smaller affinity groups opposed to the development of nuclear weapons at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. (Lawrence Hayes, the founder of Lookout! Records, actually adopted “Lawrence Livermore” as his nom de plume.) Others were residents of the squatted beer vats in the Mission District (“The Vats”), a community based in the former headquarters of the General Brewing Company.

Gordon Edgar:

A lot of the energy for [the protests] came from the anti-nuke movement and punk rock. And there was definitely overlap between those groups.

            One of the chief targets of the July 16th demonstrations was the Bank of America, which provided loans to the white supremacist government of South Africa. Chanting “Hey, hey, B of A, how many have you killed today?" the protesters encircled the Bank of America, attempting to block the street, but they were quickly nabbed by undercover cops.(32)

            Under the Apartheid system of racial separation, 87 percent of the land in South Africa was reserved exclusively for whites. Blacks were denied the right to vote, stripped of their citizenship, and forced to live on the remaining 13 percent in so-called “African homelands” (Bantustans). In order to travel, South African blacks were required to carry “passbooks” at all times –a kind of internal passport with fingerprints. Those caught without a passbook were subject to six month’s imprisonment. Yet American companies continued to do business with the racist government, with U.S. banks lending $4.7 billion to South Africa in 1984 alone.(33)

IN GOD WE TRUST, INC.

I don’t vote for Democrats, and I sure as hell don’t vote for women.(34)

- William Williams, retired electrician

        Just one week earlier, on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, staged a Family Forum in downtown San Francisco. Falwell was joined by conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, and U.S. Rep. Newt Gingrich. With the cameras rolling, the Family Forum called for an immediate end to “radical feminism,” abortion, and sodomy, and a return to prayer in public schools.

            Speaking before a crowd of 350 Christian conservatives, Congressman Newt Gingrich denounced Walter Mondale for having the temerity to name a woman as his running mate. According to Gingrich, the choice of Geraldine Ferraro as Vice Presidential candidate sent a dangerous message to the Russians. If Mondale “could not stand up to”pressure from the National Organization for Women, Gingrich said, then “how will he do with Chernenko?”(35)  (Konstanin Chernenko, the ailing leader of the Soviet Union, would be dead within a year.)

            Outside Falwell’s hotel, a thousand gay rights supporters had gathered to protest Moral Majority and its political agenda, marching from the Holiday Inn to nearby Union Square. “Then the mood turned ugly, when several young people lay down in the middle of the intersection.”(36) Police ran down the protesters in an attempt to clear the streets.(37) One woman was struck by a motorcycle, at which point a skirmish broke out between the demonstrators and armored police. The next day, a group of gay men returned to Union Square dressed as nuns, where they performed a ritual exorcism of the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

            Though Falwell’s “Moral Majority” drew a mere 350 people, as many as 150,000 union members turned out on Sunday Jusly 15 for the annual Trade Unionist’s Unity Parade, while a separate Gay Rights march (also held on Sunday) drew 100,000 people. The Moral Majority was clearly outnumbered.

Gordon Edgar:

This had all been going on for several days before the Rock Against Reagan protest. That was also the big Day of Action. So just outside the Moscone Center, there was a whole area sectioned-off where all of these amazing punk bands were playing: Dead Kennedys, Dicks, MDC, Reagan Youth… It was just an amazing line up of political punk bands! And during the concert, people were going off, doing various political actions, and then coming back; the police were trying to arrest them; and a whole bunch of people got arrested downtown.

The next day, all the newspapers were talking about it as the ‘biggest mass arrest since the Sixties.’ It was a crazy week!

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