Hard Hat Riots, New York City, May 8, 1970
Stop being juveniles," a Lindsay aide, Donald Evans, admonished a construction worker.
"What do you mean, being a juvenile?" he replied, punching Mr. Evans on the chin.
On May 8, 1970, New York mayor John Lindsay order all flags on city buildings lowered to half staff, in memory of the students who'd died in the Kent State shootings four days earlier.
Construction workers at the World Trade Center building site got wind of the plan. When anti-war protester assembled at the George Washington statue on Wall Street that day -- complete with Viet Cong flags -- suits and hard hats joined forces against the hippies, in one of the weirdest 70s events you've never heard of: the Hard Hat Riot.
Here's a great, brief account of what happened that day:
By noon, more than 1,000 people had gathered and the vigil had escalated to a rally, and about 200 construction workers had had enough. They made signs reading things like “America, Love it or Leave it” and got right up against the police line that separated them from the students. They obeyed it for a few minutes, but the tension got to be too much and the construction workers started chasing the students through the street, beating some of them severely with fists, clubs and crowbars. The construction worker mob fought their way into City Hall and demanded that the flag be raised to full mast again - it had been lowered to half mast to honor the dead at Kent State. Fearful of further damage from the mob, the Deputy Mayor ordered the flag to be raised. The riot eventually fizzled out on its own. Six arrests were made and more than 70 people were injured.
If Martin Scorsese had any sense, he'd have made a movie about the Hard Hat Riots by now. Just think of the conflict, the spectacle, and the irony that the workers were building the World Trade Center.
The Kent State students were no angels, by the way. Read about what they'd been up to in the days leading up to the shooting. It's the side of the story you won't learn from leftwing books and movies.
I've been trying to raise awareness about the Hard Hat Riots for years now. This year, a lefty cartoonist turned the story into a graphic novel.
As the Tea Party rallies sweep America and confound the liberal media and their brainwashed audiences, it's a good time to look back at the Hard Hat Riots, one of the biggest -- yet little known -- populist demonstrations in U.S. history.
Comments
I was there at that time. In Cleveland Ohio. I was a musician playing the college bar circuit. My bass player was one of the national guardsmen that were at Kent State that day about 40 minutes outside of Cleveland.
He said that they fired warning shots over the heads of the mob that was attacking them. They were fearing for their lives at that point. Unfortunately, the bullets killed four students a mile away from the action.
I think the National guard showed amazing restraint and should have shot those who were actually trying to kill them with bricks and concrete projectiles.
My band played at Severance Center a few weeks later along with Blood Sweat and Tears and Neil Young to raise money so the four families could sue the National Guard. I would take that back if I could.
I was young and stupid and at that time I actually thought the students were right. Students rarely are right about anything and their professors are even worse.
I realize im two years late here, but i jsut want to point out only recently have rifles been able to shoot a mile in length with the power to kill someone, and this gun is a 50.cal sniper rifle, and i doubt the guardsmen were carrying those.
Kathy Shaidle, this is my first time to take issue with some of your words.
You were doing OK until you tossed in Kent State. Those shootings at Kent State were a deliberate slaughter of mostly innocent kids; a majority were students simply walking to class.
As you know, four students were killed. Two of those students were innocently walking across a parking lot headed to classes. Nine students were wounded, one is paralyzed for life. Most of those wounded students were also walking to their classes.
Most of those killed or wounded were not protesters. Their families and lives have been ripped apart for life.
Couple nights before the Kent State slaughter, a small crowd of people, after drinking at bars, started up a lot of trouble. Much vandalism was suffered. Few of those vandals were students nor even locals.
Next day and evening, students from Kent State arrived in town to help clean up the mess left behind. Those students were displaying goodwill towards the town of Kent.
During evening, national guardsmen tear gassed those students helping to clean up and repair. Many of those students were chased down, cornered and bayoneted. To be sure readers are clear on this, unarmed innocent students were stabbed with bayonets by the national guardsmen.
This set the stage for the Kent State slaughter.
Those guardsmen, although disputed, were ordered to about face and fire. Students almost a thousand yards away, off in the commons area and parking lot, were made targets. This killing was intentional.
Bayoneting unarmed kids, shooting down unarmed kids, this is not our American way. We, as a society, do not bayonet nor shoot down our kids.
Kent State was more than a tragedy, Kent State was a deliberate slaughter of our kids, a slaughter ultimately leading back to Richard Nixon and his tin soldiers.
As to the Vietnam War, I sincerely appreciate your article on the Hard Hat protest. However, tens of millions of Americans took to the streets in protest of the war. Those hard hat boys were a certain minority. Mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, folks of all ages and walks of life were against the war.
Look at your photograph. You will see a number of children, see mothers, fathers, old people. I understand those hard hats, even support their point of view. Nonetheless, perpetrating violence within those circumstances was wrong. This is especially true when children are present.
Those historical massive nationwide protests against the Vietnam War serve as shining examples of democracy in action.
When we, as a peoples, gather in protest then are beaten, bayoneted, shot down, we no longer live in a free and democratic nation.
While I believe Bill Ayers and his Weather Underground people should be imprisoned for life, while I do not support blowing up ROTC buildings, do not support violent civil disobedience, I do fiercely support our right to assemble and protest without being slaughtered.
Had Martin Luther King and his people been bayoneted and shot down?
We are Americans, we do not wantonly injure nor kill our kids.
Okpulot Taha
Choctaw Nation
Give a BIG HELL YEAH to the 'HARDHATS'!!
Thanks for a little bit of history I would have missed . (O:}
So this is an attempt to glorify mob violence and vigilanteism. I see no reference to any illegal or violent behavior on the part of the NY war protestors.. only illegal violence against citizens exercising their free expression rights.
And let us not forget how Nixon and the criminal Spiro Agnew deliberately sought to create just this sort of mindset that set American against American, and middle-aged people against the young.
Whom should the Tea Party participants beat up? But now of course, it's not just beatings, it's church shootings of liberals.
The Hard Hat Riot is nothing to celebrate.
When the Riot Act is read, it's time to leave if you have any brains.
Interesting piece. I never knew about this yet like John West (comments) I too was close by. I was in second grade in Cleveland. My teacher had graduated from Kent the year before. We heard a lot about the events, much of which I learned later was less than accurate.
Robert S. Siegel
www.MindYourOwnDamnBusinessPolitics.Com
Great informative article. As for the 'Hardhats', those marxists hippies pushed the wrong buttons that day, and opened up an oldfashioned can of Hardhat Whoop-Ass.
Thanks for the great article. Need to fix the lefty cartoonist link.
pnutbutr writes, "As for the 'Hardhats', those marxists hippies pushed the wrong buttons that day...."
Those hardhats were not fighting and dying in Vietnam, yes? Nor were senators' sons.
John Kerry had an easy go of it. He threw away his medals. George Bush served his country by boozing, snorting cocaine and flying military jets around the South.
My husband came home from Vietnam all shot up and near death. Virtually all of his friends over there came home in boxes.
There there is John McCain, a true American hero.
Easy enough to be a hawk when you are not the one doing the fighting.
DB_Kansas writes, "And let us not forget how Nixon and the criminal Spiro Agnew deliberately sought to create just this sort of mindset that set American against American, and middle-aged people against the young."
Just as Obama and Pelosi are doing today.
Currently, Obama, Pelosi, other left liberals are the greatest threat to our nation.
Our Vietnam War era, our Civil Rights era, those were very dark days for America. During the height of those ideological wars, there were no winners. However, much good has come of our second Civil War, those dark days of history.
Part of this good which came of those days is Americans are no longer fearful to stand up and protest; our government can no longer get away with totalitarian suppression of our peoples.
Those "Marxist hippies" gave back to our nation what we had lost, the American spirit of revolution. Those "hard hats" remind us we are not fearful to fight for our nation.
We need to recognize diversity in opinion, our right to free speech, both are critical components of our American way of life. If not, we end up "American against American" as DB_Kansas writes.
To close, I will pose a question for readers.
"Should our government bring back the military draft, how would America react?"
Okpulot Taha
Choctaw Nation
Kathy Shaidle writes, "As the Tea Party rallies sweep America and confound the liberal media and their brainwashed audiences...."
On this, you have my sincere support, Kathy Shaidle. Our family has attended two tax protests and will attend one more just before the "special elections" here in California on May 19. We are doing our part to protest against our government, both at a state level and at a federal level, and we are voting "NO!" on California's props 1A through 1F.
We consider George Bush to be a blithering idiot and we consider Barack Obama to be a blithering idiot. We do not play partisan politics.
We are proud to be on Napolitano's list of dangerous right wing extremists.
I have a hunch few, if any readers here have attended tax protests. Lot of talk, no action.
We Okies have a saying about this,
"Big Hat, No Cattle."
Okpulot Taha
Choctaw Nation
Of course, high taxes are bad. But after Bush committed our nation to trillions of dollars in military and related expenses and ruined our economy, all without paying for it through new taxes, we now have to pay the bill. Obama is doing the unpopular but necessary thing.
Yes, Democrats are tax-and-spend, but Republicans are don't-tax-and-spend, and that's even worse because that really ruins our nation.
I'm still waiting for a candidate that actually reduces our goverment.
"He said that they fired warning shots over the heads of the mob that was attacking them. [...] Unfortunately, the bullets killed four students a mile away from the action."
Maps of the positions of the shooters and the dead are widely available. Furthermore, only specialized sniper rifles have a range of a mile. It would also be highly irresponsible to shoot any rifle in a direction where you can't see whether the entire range of the rifle is clear.
In different words, either your buddy was lying, or you are lying.
Remember "Moratorium day", also around the same time. There were lots of confrontations around that flag poles on that day as well.
I was just a 13 year old kid living in nearby suburban NJ when
this happened, but I remember it well.
Comedian Lenny Bruce once said: “Liberals can understand
everyone except those who don’t understand them”. How
true! Liberals always overestimate themselves and public
support for their positions - ALWAYS. When this hard hat
incident occurred, the liberal media was sympathetic to the
radicals. But the public overwhelmingly supported the hardhats.
The union received phone calls and letters 20 to 1 in favor of
the workers. The antiwar crowd and liberal media just couldn’t
understand it.
The same thing is happening today, where we see the Democrats
totally stunned by the angry reaction of people to their plan
for government health care. Obama and minions like Chris
Matthews are bewildered as to why the people who would
benefit from government health care are not coming out to make
their voices heard. Once again, liberals overestimate their appeal.
Robert Moon is spamming The Activity Pit again: twi.cc/lAlq
Thanks for the information. I was currently reviewing an music-album that had lyrics about this event and your info helped a lot understanding the event.
Greetings from Sweden
//Bernando from the webbpage http usofoiofsweden.blogspot. com
Brings to mind the "liberty pole" conflicts of the revolutionary era in NYC. Many a head beaten then...
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