1968 Redux: Islanders at the Chicago convention reflect on then and now, Part 2

Across the Island from Katama’s South Beach to the cliffs of Aquinnah, the flickering blue glow of television can be seen through the windows of homes late into the night recently as the whole Island seems transfixed by the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. 

On Thursday night, the four-day convention culminated with an acceptance speech by Vice President Kamala Harris. And it comes on the heels of historic speeches made by President Biden, who dramatically stepped aside last month. In his speech, he framed a life of service, as he observed, from a newly elected senator too young to serve to a president who his own party leadership felt had become too old to serve. And there were powerful speeches by former President Barack Obama and the First Lady, Michelle Obama. And by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost the presidential race in 2016 to Donald Trump. The speeches were an evisceration of the Trump era as a time of division and deceit, and put forward a new vision of hope and joy. 

Last week on this editorial page, we made the comparison of this year’s convention to the political tumult and the raucous street protests that defined the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which was also in Chicago. 

Geoff Cowan, 82, a summer resident of Menemsha, who was a leader of a political reform movement in Chicago in 1968, and who is back in Chicago, staying at the same Hilton Hotel next to the convention center where so much of the street violence back then unfolded.

“So far, Chicago 2024 is filled with joy, hope, and unity, whereas Chicago 1968, while filled with a great deal of creativity and even courage, was marked by anger and dissent,” said Cowan, who is organizing a seminar for students from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School, where he heads up the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. 

Cowan spoke with The MV Times by phone from Chicago, where he is once again at the center of the action, watching it all unfold around him. He is in many ways still actively shaping a debate around policy, and continuing his work toward reforming the process to be more inclusive and dynamic, just as he did back in 1968. 

“It is overwhelming excitement. It is really and truly just an unbelievable phenomenon. The only thing close to it is how people felt when Obama was the nominee in 2008. You can feel the party is lining up behind Kamala Harris, and it is exciting to watch,” he said.

Cowan, who was the former head of the Voice of America, and his wife, Aileen Adams, the former deputy mayor of Los Angeles, have both been political activists and change agents through the past 60 years, and were together in Chicago, and happy to be there at an historic moment and staying at the infamous Hilton Hotel.

“This year I am in the same hotel, and that was by design. I wanted to see what it was like to be back here in this hotel, back in the meeting rooms. This was the place where the reform movement took place, and where I could maybe reflect a continuation of that work. This was the place where we helped to reform the party, and I feel like what we are doing now is exciting,” he said.

He added, “The demonstrations outside were a different world back then. And there was an anger and maybe even a hatred in the voices back then. Back then, American kids were being killed. There was so much on the line with the war in Vietnam,” he explained. 

“It feels different now; it feels more positive. I have not been in the middle of the protests against the war in Gaza, and there are important voices of dissent on the streets here. And I do not want to minimize them, but they are not of the same magnitude, and they do not have the same level of anger. We were living in a world in which MLK and RFK had been assassinated, and the war was raging with U.S. troops and U.S. bombs being dropped. There was unrest in cities about civil rights, and the racial discrimination was rampant. Voter intimidation was a part of life in the South,” he said. 

“Now the voter participation in the Black community is much larger. Still not good enough, but just in a completely different place. The candidate herself is Black, not something you could really even imagine in 1968. 

“You were seeing anger, demonstrators in violent confrontation with the police, and what became known as police riots. Today, there is just a real sense of joy,” said Cowan, who also attended the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee where Trump, just after being grazed in an attempted assassination in Ohio, offered his vision for America.  

This amazing Island is blessed to have a number of longtime residents who remember the searing year of 1968 like it was yesterday, and have some deep thoughts to share on how this year compares with back then. Last week we shared the thoughts of Phyllis Segal, who was there in 1968 in Chicago and staying at the same Hilton Hotel, watching the scene of violent clashes between Mayor Daley’s aggressive Chicago Police Department and an unruly group of student protesters who were not willing to back down to threats and thuggery. Her full interview is available online.

Another legendary Islander, Rose Styron, was also there in 1968. And we will feature her reflections on this DNC on these pages next week. We have received some great letters to the editor from Islanders who were there in Chicago in 1968, which we will share in print next week as well, and please keep them coming if you were there, and have thoughts that would provide context for today. We want to hear from you.