The Capitol, the Mob, and Me

©2021 by John LaTorre

As I watched last week’s assault on the United States Capitol, with an angry mob running up the steps of the building, I was reminded of another protest there, over fifty years ago. 

On those very steps, I was arrested by the District of Columbia Park Police. The date was June 11, 1969. The charge was trespassing, but it was really an attempt by the Nixon administration to silence a peaceful, orderly protest against the Vietnam War.

The demonstration was organized by A Quaker Action Group (AQAG), an association of some activists who wanted to put the anti-war tenets of the Society of Friends into a more concrete form. Their tactic was to have a group of demonstrators arrive on the steps of the Capitol and simply read the names of those who had died in the war. It was planned to be a number of demonstrations, where one group of demonstrators was to get arrested, and then another group would do the same thing the next week, and the week after that.

I was there because of a phone call by my friend Steve Burns. He and I had been doing a few things together in the previous year. We ran a coffeehouse in the attic of Levering Hall, the student center for the Johns Hopkins University, where we were both students. And we did some counseling for those who wished to avoid the draft for the war on the grounds of conscientious objection. 

On June 11, Steve gave me a call. “Do you want to go to D.C. and get arrested?” he asked. When he explained why, I told him I was in. He said that he’d be by to pick me up directly, and told me to wear the most conservative dress I had. I put on the only suit and tie I had, and off we went.

We were dropped off at a building with a meeting room, where we were briefed by the members of AQAG. The demonstration’s tactics were explained to us: we would assemble quietly in front of the Capitol, making sure not to block traffic. Then a book of the names of the soldiers who died in the war would be passed around, and we would each read a page and then hand the book to the next one. When the Park Police told us to move, we would refuse. We would submit to being arrested, and be taken to a holding cell, after which we would be arraigned in a court. All legal representation would be provided. If we were offered bail, we would collectively refuse on the grounds that the bail system was intended to benefit the rich over the poor, and that was something we could not ethically support.

George Willoughby chaired the meeting, and I remember that Bayard Rustin dropped in for a moment to commend us. I did not really know who he was at the time, only that he was an important figure in the civil rights movement. When the meeting was over, we went over to the Capitol and put our plan into action. I remember being a bit anxious, because my father worked for the government and I was afraid that there might be some repercussions for him. But I realized that for all my work against the war thus far, I had not yet taken the step that would put me forever among those who put something at personal risk to stop it. In each person’s life, there may come such a time. For me, it was that morning.

The demonstration went exactly as planned. The tourists saw a group of conservatively dressed men and women standing in an orderly group, passing a book around and reading from it. When they realized what we were doing, there were a few catcalls and some abusive language from them. But they finally grasped our sincerity to the cause of peace, and they fell silent. 

Two contingents arrived at that point. The first was the Park Police, who talked with Mr. Willoughby and instructed him to tell us to disband. He politely refused. Then the police talked to each of us, explaining that if we didn’t disburse, we would be arrested. “Do you want us to do this?” they asked me. Like my compatriots, I replied as I had been instructed: “We are here exercising our right of free speech. Do what you must do, as we are doing as we must do. We will not interfere.”

The second contingent was the news media. There were reporters and television cameras trained on us, recording events as they happened. In retrospect, I think they were anticipating, and perhaps hoping for, the sort of scene that would not transpire for another fifty-some years, with at least some scuffling and physical resistance. Instead, they got a couple of dozen well-mannered, docile resisters. Not a bat, a megaphone, or a thrown punch was to be seen. But they kept the cameras rolling anyway. As for the tourists, they were now quietly watching. They were seeing, perhaps for the first time, a public act of conscience, by people just like themselves. I have no idea whether it changed anybody’s opinion about the war, but it might have changed their opinion about the people who were opposing it. 

The time came for the policeman to put the handcuffs on me. I was startled to see tears in his eyes. He clearly didn’t want to do what he was doing. “I’m going to put the handcuffs on you,” he said. “Do you understand?” I said yes, and turned around and put my hands behind me. He read me my rights, and guided me away to a paddy wagon. 

We went to the jail, where we were photographed and fingerprinted. There we waited in a hot, stuffy holding cell for a few hours, until our arraignment came on the court’s schedule. At that session, we were all told that the charge would be trespassing and demonstrating without a permit. We were offered bail, and our lawyer explained that we would refuse it. Then we were released “on our own recognizance” which, translated from the legalese, meant that we were on our honor to show up in court at the appointed time. We were clearly not flight risks; in fact, we were looking forward to our day in court.

I was given a court date of August 6th,  and then sent home. That night, a friend of my brother, whom I had met three years earlier, was catching the evening news on television and happened to see the demonstration. He recognized me, and called out, “Hey, Joe! I think I just saw your brother getting arrested!” Well, our group planned to air our concerns to the public, and it seems we succeeded in doing that to the extent of being on national television, but I never considered that somebody I actually knew would be one of the viewers!

As it turned out, I didn’t have to appear in court; on June 30, all the charges were dropped. I got a notice in the mail in early July that read:

“This is to notify you that the above-mentioned case was dismissed by Judge [Harold A.] Greene on June 30, 1969 in accordance with his previous opinion in United States v. Nicholson (No.20210-59A) decided June 19, 1969. “

In that decision, the Court decided that the Park Service had not made a cogent case that the demonstrators were causing any interference with the normal affairs of either the Legislature or the tourists, and that the Park Police therefore had no reason to impede the demonstrators’ right of free speech 

An interesting, and perhaps significant footnote: Judge Greene would later be associated with another incident at the Capitol, far more violent than our demonstration. On November 7, 1983, a bomb exploded outside the Senate Chamber. It did $250,000 worth of damage, although the damage proved to be non-structural, and no one was injured. (The bombers made sure that the detonation would be after working hours, when nobody would be around.) Four years later, two women, already in prison for their part in similar politically inspired acts of destruction, were charged for their part in the bombing, The case would eventually be brought before Judge Greene. On December 7, 1990, he sentenced the two women to lengthy prison terms for conspiracy and malicious destruction of government property.  Bill Clinton would eventually commute one conviction just before he left office; the other had been paroled shortly before that, on August 6, 1999, after serving fourteen years in prison. 

What did that bombing have to do with what happened last week? It resulted in a strengthening of security measures in the Capitol, including a permanent closure of the area outside the Senate Chamber. That might have been one of the reasons why last week’s rioters might not have been able to penetrate the Chamber so easily. 

As I watched the coverage of last week’s riot, I was reminded once again of the Capitol’s role as a witness to history, and my small part in it. The rioters might have hoped to energize their base, and convince people far and wide of their theory that the election had been stolen from them. Did they change anybody’s mind about that? I don’t know. Did they change anybody’s mind about the character of Trump’s supporters? I don’t know that, either.

I hoped to change a few minds the day I made my own protest. I definitely changed my own mind about the role I could play in getting that dirty war shut down. But the differences are plain. We are seeing some of that mob now complaining that they’ve been “outed” by the media to their friends and family and employers, and were outraged at some of their fellows have been charged with crimes and subjected to police action. On the other hand, we were not afraid of having our reputations soiled, and of facing consequences; we calmly faced all of that, embraced it, and accepted the consequences with dignity. I feel good about that.

And in in our protest, nobody got hurt, and no damage was done to our national shrine. I feel good about that, too.