In the Courtroom— Everything on the Line
What it looked like 56 years ago, what it looks like today
Last week I attended a murder trial. —a tragedy, as you may guess.
I’m not connected to any of the principals— I’m an observer. I felt like a quiet eye, the recorder.
I’m not writing today about the crime in question— another time, as things conclude.
Today, it’s something else.
Do you know what struck me in the trial? —Not the particulars of the case.
Rather, it was the way in which the courtroom, and everyone in it, behaved with immaculate decorum.
No one interrupted anyone else. When the attorneys gave their summations, all eyes were upon them, silent. There were scheduled breaks for all to take a breather, and then the serious work resumed. About 50 people were in that courtroom, all doing their jobs and their best.
Pinch me.
I feared our court system was broken beyond repair, perhaps even at the local level. I was braced for anything.
After all, the highest court in the land, SCOTUS, lands a preposterous egg every day they’re in session. Trump has turned the Justice Department into a vendetta machine. He’s demanded the military join his Pretorian Guard, and every cabinet seat be filled by his dignity wraiths.
I wasn’t altogether certain that “America” today could pull off an workaday courtroom trial. You know, where habeas corpus and reasonable doubt are a thing.
But this was not a Fox newsroom, nor a social media feed. It was the opposite. No cameras were allowed, no cell phone use. We took our hats off. Civilized people behaved as they have shown themselves capable to do.
This small town trial was not a kangaroo court. I had the urge to shout, “Thank you!” to somebody, or wipe my brow, “By Jove, the Republic is not lost!”
I attended the trial with my partner Jon Bailiff, who is talented in all manner of illustration and rendering. He drew everyone in court, live, and afterward, others came to look at his sketchbook.
“You’re as good as Franklin McMahon!” someone said.
That’s the ultimate compliment.
Franklin McMahon is the most famous courtroom “sketch artist” of all time— in part because of his skill, and in part because he covered the most notorious criminal trial of the 20th Century, the Trial of the Chicago 8.
It became known as “The Chicago 7,” after the case against co-defendant Bobby Seale was declared a mistrial.1
The mistrial came only after Bobby Seale, the one Black defendant, was gagged and shackled in chains. —One of the most shameful days in American judicial history.
McMahon’s and Howard Brodie’s illustrations of the despicable event were telegraphed around the world as the very picture of American racism gone amok. They were accurate.
The Court was presided over by a fire and brimstone conservative named Julius Hoffman, who was so prejudiced to the government and hostile to the defense, he makes Antonio Scalia look like a wuss. Not only did he demand convictions for all the defendants, he insisted on long jail sentences for their attorneys as well. He was, as they say, “out of control.”
Yet he was in charge. This was the face of American jurisprudence. This was a day in Chicago’s courts.
The defendants’ convictions were overturned on appeal, years down the line. But the memories of 1968, and how the US government seemed determined to bury their young—both in Vietnam, and blood-letting in the streets of Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco— it reminds me of today.
As young as I was in 1968, I remember the period well. It was a knife’s edge. My parents were terrified; everyone I knew at school was enraged. The elite goblins of the political class, on both sides of the aisle, seemed to have nothing to do with our lives except ruining them.
The mass anti-establishment protests during the Democratic presidential convention in Chicago dominated much of 1968’s headlines. People were disillusioned with the Democratic Party because they refused to stand against the war and the draft— no different from Nixon.
Yeah! The hits keep coming, eh?
The contentious Chicago convention followed on the assassination of candidate Robert Kennedy, and the political loss of the antiwar Democratic candidate, Senator Eugene McCarthy.
Ironic to consider now— McCarthy was neither a radical or a socialist like Bernie Sanders. He criticized the war and supported civil rights. Hence, he was treated as a dangerous lunatic by the mainstream news and his colleagues.
There was no such thing as a “liberal” bench on the Supreme Court at the time. Deja vu? No one thought the SCOTUS was going to save anything.
Abortion was illegal most everywhere.
Jim Crow prevailed. Violently.
Women couldn’t open bank accounts or rent an apartment on their own in most states.
The idea that you could count on the courts to be fair to the young and dispossessed was a dispiriting uphill climb. No one thought that Judge Hoffman’s courtroom was going to be “fair,” even if what he did went beyond the pale.
Congress was much the same. All but a lower-level handful of elected reps were hardcore hawks and racist puritans, appalled by black power, long-haired hippies, draft resistors. Women’s lib was barely nascent.
Fighting in the streets, draft resistance, “throwing yourself against the gears of the machine”— all were realistic options anyone with conscience could consider.
When you review how Mayor Daley of Chicago decided to eviserate the protestors, it will remind you of recent times in Portland, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. It was far more bloody.
I remember crying and running out of the house onto the pavement the night I saw the drawings of Bobby Seale bound and gagged in the courtroom. I threw myself on the hot sidewalk and screamed my head off . . . which, you know, was about all I could do at ten.
In those days, I had few other strategies. I distributed to everyone’s mailbox on the street, my construction paper flyers with a red crayon that said, “Ronald Reagan Must Be Stopped.”
My campaign failed.
By 1970, then-Governor Ronald Reagan spoke of his protestors: “If it’s to be a bloodbath, let it be now.”
And people voted him to be President.
God, I hated him, and Judge Hoffman and Hubert Humphrey and Nixon and all the rest.
“You are a rotten, racist pig fascist liar,” Bobby Seale said to the Judge and prosecution in the Chicago 8 courtroom. “You are slave owners.”
It was just the facts.
Years later, as a teenager, I lived in Detroit, and then Louisville for a while. I met other young people, a little older than me, who’d had their heads bashed in, in Chicago.
One dude, a crimson-Afro’ed skinny guy named “Red,” would always hang out at the pizza joint where we gathered after work. “Fun City Pizza.”
He never said one word. —Zero facial expressions.
My friend Donna confided to me that Red had lingering mental problems from a billy club dent to his head, thanks to Daley’s thugs in 1968. —He couldn’t work.
The day Mayor Daley died (of natural causes) it was Xmas week, 1976. We were at Fun City, as usual. Red raised his glass, opened his mouth for the first time, and croaked, “That sick bastard Daley. May he rot in hell.”
Everyone stopped and stared.
Red said, “I’ll buy the next round.”
He talked and talked and talked and then cried and cried. He sobbed, hiding his face under his big red curls, and it was like he was on fire, crying.
We all thought we were going to cheer when Daley finally passed. Yet the damage had been done.
1968! I don’t mean to go on for so long. The Eternal Return, eh?
Maybe today is another ring of fire, instead of the last ash. I guess we’ll find out.
In 1971, Franklin McMahon made a short documentary of the 1968 Days of Rage, and the infamous trial, which I’d like to share.
It’s an animated montage of his drawings, and his tape recordings of the voices, captured at the time.
Aaron Sorkin Remakes The Chicago 7
In 2020, Aaron Sorkin, the man who became synonymous with TV political action on The West Wing, directed The Trial of the Chicago 7, for Netflix.
The cast had everyone drooling in anticipation: Eddie Redmayne as Tom Hayden, Jeremy Strong as Jerry Rubin, Mark Rylance as William Kuntsler, Joseph Gordon Levitt as the assistant DA, and the incomparable Sasha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman (his greatest performance, IMO).
Abbie often faced off with actor Frank Langella, who played Julius Hoffman with such ferocity, I was screaming in recognition.2
Sorkin said he wanted to portray the revolution in progress. After all, the antiwar movement, the draft, and the Black Panthers were all put on trial — and in public opinion, they won.
The cost, in their personal lives, was brutal.
Attorney Leonard Weinglass:
And when you saw the persons with the cross and the cross being gassed, what, if anything, did you do?
Allen Ginsberg:
I turned to Burroughs, and said, “They have gassed the cross of Christ.”
The Sorkin film was controversial, because many of the participants are still alive, and so are the witnesses.
Yet I would not have missed it; I think it’s one of the better Hollywood courtroom dramas. The good guys are indeed the heroes, just as they were in real life.
I would say, when the movie is good, it’s very very good, and when it’s bad, it’s . . . a crutch. The intelligence these defendants possessed, their deep bench of activism— it’s more than anything that could be shoehorned into the standard two-hour melodrama. Reality was much heavier.
In that vein, one of the living defendants, Rennie Davis, wrote a review of the movie for his Facebook friends, which I found as riveting as the film itself. I’d like to reprint it here.
Rennie died a year later, in February of 2021.
Rennie Davis on The Trial of the Chicago Seven
Part I
I want to start by thanking Steven Spielberg and Aaron Sorkin for creating this work. Any support we can give to today’s generation standing up to self-serving government authority is my reason for promoting this film.
This movie— as it stands— delivers a whole new meaning to how protest can put the U.S. government on trial.
That’s what the Chicago 8 trial did and that’s what we need to do again today.
There was an earlier Hollywood film deal, unrealized, that took shape during our trial itself. Actor Dustin Hoffman was chosen to play my role and he came to our courtroom numerous times to understand the defendants and their message. That film proposal never got produced but it did suggest one good way to make this historic movie. Tell the story of what actually happened without any fiction or made-up fluff.
That approach was not the one taken by Aaron Sorkin. The Sorkin movie delivers an impactful drama but missed a golden opportunity.
I once told the Chicago defendants, when the movie is made about our trial, no producer will capture the courage and elegance of the actual defendants. It was my honor to know them. They were born for the Sixties and they were an inspiration in courage.
Aaron Sorkin was eight years old when the Chicago 8 trial began. He relied on trial transcripts and his own imagination to make a movie. He choose not to spend time with any defendant. He could have taken a week to get to know who Bobby Seale really was, after Bobby galvanized the world as he was chained and gagged in our courtroom.
My friends keep telling me Sorkin is their favorite Hollywood writer, so let us start this movie review with some good news. In the Chicago 7 movie, Abbie Hoffman’s character is pretty good. Sorkin made me smile by how Abbie was portrayed. It was very close to how he actually was.
After that, it went mostly downhill. Jerry Rubin would not have loved his largely fictional character and Dave Dellinger would have been disappointed too. The real David Dellinger was a stateman who went to prison in WWII because he was a pacifist. All the defendants respected him and look to him for his clarity and wisdom. In the movie, his character is a poor imitation of the inspiring real hero.
Bill Kunstler was the most charismatic and elegant lawyer of our time. The movie’s character was unable to convey Bill’s extraordinary courtroom presence and humor.
Here is one example of Bill’s humor: All the defendants got fan mail delivered to our table in the federal courtroom. Abbie opened a package one morning and a pound of marijuana spilled onto our table that was surrounded by 20 federal marshals.
Bill jumped into quick action explaining to the Judge that something was on the table that should be removed with court approval. The judged agreed and Bill announced to the court that he would make sure it went up in smoke tonight.
At the time, pot was illegal in Illinois but Judge Hoffman made one generous package legal to the delight of the defendants and world press.
Part II
Tom Hayden’s movie character seemed to have endless conflict with his lawyers and defendants, especially Abbie, whose film character tried to educate Tom on the nature of a political trial.
While that was silly, the “movie Tom” argued that voting was the only way to change a social order.
That was absurd. Tom was my best friend at that time, and it saddened me to see the founder of Students for a Democratic Society have his brilliance sullied by a writer who had no idea who Tom was.
Co-defendants John Froines and Lee Wiener were college professors who came to the demonstrations in Chicago and got singled out with a federal indictment to make college professors across the country think twice before supporting the anti-war movement.
In the real world, the government’s tactic never worked.
In the movie world, John and Lee’s names were read by the court clerk but otherwise they didn’t exist in the movie. That was certainly not how the real defendants felt at all.
Tom Foran was the lead prosecutor for the U.S. government, and he wanted to run for governor of Illinois. Our trial was the perfect venue for him to ride the wave of patriotism and flag-waving into a successful election, until he got knocked off his wave when he cross examined me before the jury and world press.
That cross examination ended Foran’s career in politics. In the movie, his fictional character barely existed. I have no idea why since he was the lead prosecutor and most colorful by far. The movie makes you believe Richard Shultz was the government’s star. I really don’t know why.
My character was hard to recognize. The “movie Rennie” was a complete nerd who was afraid of his own shadow and worried his girlfriend’s parents might not understand the protest. My role in the movie trail was mostly non-existent like Lee and John.
The two most dramatic events in the actual trial were one, the chaining and gagging of Bobby Seale, and two, the later day, when I spoke as to why we came to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in the first place.
Bobby was chained and gagged for four days during the actual trial. Each day, the pressure bandages around his head got tighter and more and more intense. When I sat next to him I could see blood out of the side of his mouth from the gauze stuffed with force into his mouth before he was carried chained and gagged into the courtroom.
No matter how hard the marshals tried to quiet Bobby with their gauze and pressure bandage, Bobby could still be heard as he said over and over, “I demand my constitutional right to represent myself.”
Despite being chained and gagged, he could still be heard in the courtroom. He was also heard in Africa, Europe, Asia, South America, Canada and the United States as well.
That was what actually happened.
The movie gives you no idea of the intense four day buildup as Bobby was chained and gagged in front of the jury. The movie didn’t even explain the global impact of this extraordinary event— a black man chained and gagged in an American courtroom for wanting to represent himself.
Only Abbie and I took the witness stand during the trial. I was the coalition coordinator of the Chicago demonstrations and responsible for negotiations with the Mayor’s office that resulted in daily press conferences. It got the American public focused on the “permit issue,” going into Chicago. I was in position to explain to the jury why we came to the Democratic Convention as the representative of our non-violent coalition.
When I was on the stand facing the jury, I held up a “bomblet” from a cluster bomb unit that was given to me by a North Vietnamese woman who had lost her entire family from this weapon.
I explained to the jury that if this bomb went off in this courtroom right now, we would all die but the court room would still be here and another trial of America’s Vietnam war could go on.
This was a U.S. bomb that could not destroy the courtroom. It sends iron pellets that might hit your leg and ricochet up the leg causing a slow bleeding to death. It was the main weapon used by the U.S. Air Force against the Vietnamese population for living in their homes.
In the actual trial, we had this one chance to explain why we came to Chicago. The movie made no mention of this three-day drama on the witness stand or the Judge’s hysteria.
I got two and half years in prison for my conduct on the witness stand.
The movie never explained my support from the U.S. Justice Department in negotiations with Mayor Daley for permits. It even subtly left the impression that the defendants may have really wanted to incite a police riot. It never explained that a coalition of 150 national organizations set out to bring 500,000 people to protest nonviolently at the Democratic Convention and that the Chicago Mayor refused to grant permits or recognized our right to assemble and petition the government that denied our right to assemble in Chicago.
We went anyway. It was courageous. When we were camped out at Lincoln Park hosting a festival of life, at 11 pm, waves of police entered the park clubbing and tear gassing peaceful demonstrators and reporters while the whole world was watching. The movie never mentioned that this Chicago police riot was watched on television by more people than watched the first man landing on the moon.
Later, when a national commission studied who caused the riots, the investigation officially concluded it was a police riot. That report went to the top of the NY Times best sellers list and was certainly the most favorable thing ever written about me. There was no mention of the Walker Report conclusions in the movie, however.
In the movie, you could not be sure if the government undercover agents who testified against us were telling the truth so-help-me-God or making it up. They all agreed that we came to Chicago to start a riot.
I would have gladly given Sorkin our massive evidence that the government made up all their evidence against the defendants. That reality never made it into the movie.
The real trial wasn’t all dark. There was humor and joy and hope. We had differences in style but we became a family and got along, tightly bound in our opposition to the Vietnam war. Every defendant knew this was a rare opportunity in American history to put the government on trial before a world audience.
Our daily global press conferences were larger than Presidential press conferences in the White House. In the movie, you would never know it. What you see in the movie are fictional fights and events that never happened.
Part III
So many funny things happened in the real trial that never made it into the screen play. Here are a few examples.
There was a morning in the federal courtroom when the marshals “arrested” a birthday cake we brought into the courtroom for Bobby Seale.
There was also a close call one morning when my plane was delayed coming from a speech on the East Coast. I was fifteen minutes late to the trial. Bill Kunstler created some pure legal shuck and jive to stall the court long enough for me to arrive and not have my bail revoked. Bill gave an Oscar-winning performance that only he could pull off. I walked into the courtroom to a collective sigh of relief as Bill proudly smiled at me for arriving not a second too late.
Then there was the day when we wanted to show the press how prejudiced Judge Hoffman was towards the defendants. We sat at the defense table moving our feet with an anxious look to make it perfectly clear that we needed a pee break. We wanted the world to see that no matter the situation, the Judge always ruled against every defendant motion, period. Bathroom break? Motion denied!
We invited celebrity singers who had agreed to come to the Yippie festival of life but were stopped by the police riot. We wanted our artists to explain to the jury why they couldn’t accept our invitation to come to Chicago. Many singers, like Judy Collins, tried to sing the song she was going to sing at our festival before the jury.
Of course, that caused glee from the defense table and hysteria from the Judge’s bench.
I will finish with one precious moment when Mayor Daley took the stand, and the court had to take a break while the Mayor was still on the stand. During the break while the jury was out of the room, Abbie stood up and challenged the Mayor to an arm wrestle.
Abbie said, ‘Let’s you and I settle this whole thing right here and now.”
Even the Mayor laughed.
Our trial put the U.S. government on trial. It ignited the college and university community into a massive protest movement.
Our power didn’t come from the eight people in a Chicago courtroom— it was the millions of college students and veterans whose passionate support for the defendants changed the entire country. We had profound support from high school students, too. None of this vast youth passion is mentioned in the Chicago 7 film.
On the opening day of the trial, the NY Times wrote, “The trial of the Chicago 8 is the most significant political trial in American history.” Any movie that tells this story today is going to inspire the next generation’s voices resisting the rise of America’s racist and authoritarian regime.
Did you know there was a public survey two weeks before the Chicago convention that showed a majority of voters supported the war in Vietnam?
Two weeks after Chicago, the same public survey showed a majority of the American public opposed the war in Vietnam.
That tells you why it is important to remember that a single demonstration fraught with difficulties and unexpected challenges can sometimes change the world.
I write this so my friends can remember what actually happened in Chicago and that putting government on trial is needed again today.
Hard times and challenges are coming. As temperatures climb and aquifers deplete, mass migrations will cross international borders with hundreds of millions of displaced people while food distribution chains go snapping. We can all sense this is a time like no other.
As our Republic erodes, and a new generation experiences an age of extinction, the Chicago 7 trial is a movie that can help us remember millions of people united, marching, voting, and growing their own food who can live and thrive while creating a future of humanity. We know who we are. We are a global family and we are a new nation on Earth. I see us as a nation of hope that needs to remember we have done it before, and we can do it again today.
— Rennie Davis
In Case You Missed It
DId you know that if you study to be a courtroom stenographer, the Chicago 8 trial transcript is often the student textbook? It’s what you learn from. If you can transcribe this trial, you can transcribe anything! You can still find a paperback of the transcripts today; they are as compelling as the day they were witnessed.
In researching this story, I discovered that Julius tried to destroy another man’s life in a trial: Lenny Bruce.
Thank you so much for this Susie. The insight and perspective are a welcome balm on our fevered brows. I must say, it’s an honor to appear in any proximity to McMahon’s and Howard Brodie’s illustrations. It is also good to be reminded that we are children of violence, because we are Americans, and violence has come to us, come from us, one and all. Rennie Davis is the hero we must strive to deserve.
Good stuff. Thank you.