Chiefs

D. A. Pennebaker associate Richard Leacock films the United States police chiefs convention in Honolulu in 1968. Not surprisingly, both in speeches and conversation the focus in on rioting and unrest. Also not surprisingly, police chiefs are not at sympathetic to protestors and unrest, but to be fair, most of it amounts to the very common ailment of thinking that your world view is objective fact.

I'm not meaning to downplay the extent to which this has a tendency to play like grim farce. One speaker tries to sell the claim that extreme physical violence was justified in Chicago because protestors called the police names, and the police obsession with the Black Panthers is striking, especially since not a one of them describes them accurately. Their repeated decrying of violence is juxtaposed with salesman hocking toys to violently supress protestors.

It's quite striking that both these police chiefs and many radicals of the period are laboring under the same delusion that protest = revolution.