The week after I was arrested for lying down in front of the Selective Service office were the May Day demonstrations to end the war. The slogan was, “If the government won't stop the war, we will stop the government.” On Saturday, May 1 there was a concert and demonstration on the Mall. On Sunday, the police forcibly evicted the people camping on the Mall even though permits had been granted for the campsite. The group of Quakers I was with had not been camping and that evening we tried to decide what we would do on Monday. There was a lot of uncertainty about what was going to happen next. The eviction seemed to be an escalation of the police response. The intention of the May Day organizers was to try to shut down Washington. They were planning to do this by blocking traffic at DuPont Circle and other major intersections. We were concerned that the chance of violence was to high for us to participate in blocking traffic but given the overall situation we had to do something. We finally decided to walk from where we were staying to the Pentagon and make some form of non-violent protest. Cross the line with me to see how this all worked out.
Early Monday morning we started out walking to the Pentagon. I remember it being a bright and sunny morning. We saw other groups of people carrying signs and walking across the city to various places. As we were walking on the sidewalk along a street near the mall, some paddy wagons pulled up and policemen hustled us into them. They stopped and opened the doors and shoved more people in with us. The new people included a couple who had been walking up the steps of City Hall to get their marriage license. We ended up being taken to the practice field outside of RFK Stadium. There were already hundreds of people in the field and more were arriving all the time. The field was surrounded by a chain link fence and there were police and National Guard soldiers, some with rifles keeping an eye on us from outside the fence.
Inside the fence there was no shelter and no organization. We talked with the people there and it seemed that the police had just been scooping up anyone who was young or looked like a hippie. Eventually some people climbed up on the goal posts at one end of the field and knocked them down. Then they pulled the field tarp up over the goalposts to make a makeshift shelter. One thing about being with a large group of anti-war protesters was that there was no shortage of ordained ministers of various denominations. So under the makeshift tent in the middle of the practice field, we held a wedding ceremony for the couple whose crime was seeking a marriage license.
The catering for the wedding left a lot to be desired. It was clear that there had not been a lot of planning as to what do do with the thousands of the people who were picked up that day. People had just been picked up and brought to the practice field. That meant that they still had with them whatever they were carrying at the time, except for protest signs. So people did share whatever food or beverages they had. Other people showed up and started throwing sandwiches over the fence from a hill. As the day wore on we began to wonder what would happen that night.
Late in the day prison buses showed up and we were loaded into them. They took us to the Washington Coliseum, which was a hockey rink. Hockey season was over so the ice was gone. We detainees were herded onto the floor of the arena, we were not allowed into the seats. At least we did have access to bathrooms. Volunteers came in with boxes of sandwiches. They stood in the seats and proceeded to throw sandwiches to us. It felt like feeding time at the zoo.
We were provided blankets. I don't remember if there were any mattresses or cots or if we just slept on the bare concrete. There were no windows. High up in the walls at the ends of the building were exhaust fans. Looking through them there was just a glimpse of sky so you could tell if it was day or night. There was no other way to tell as the arena lights were on all the time.
In the morning the police set up tables and said that people should come up and be processed. Then people on the floor stood up and shouted that no one should do that. We had not been arrested or legally detained and we should not cooperate with the process. So for three days we stayed in the hockey arena. Periodically people would show up with boxes of sandwiches and throw the sandwiches to us. We would then sort out them out to make sure that the vegetarians got the cheese sandwiches and the carnivores got the ham and bologna sandwiches. They brought cans of soda to the boards surrounding the ring and passed them out there. Periodically they police would ask people to come to the tables and be processed. They were mostly ignored. Because the light never changed, there wasn't much of a sense of time passing. Sometimes I ate. Sometimes I slept. Sometimes the sky behind the fan was dark. Sometimes it was light. Sometimes people showed up and food fell down on us from above. We had no idea what was going on in the outside world. The mood was pretty upbeat the whole time.
After three days we were then told to get onto the buses. We were going to court. We pulled up the Court House and we were lined up and taken to a court room. When the court room was full, they took people to the next court room. There were lawyers sitting at the tables in the front. The judge came in and was seated. Our case was announced, the case of John and Jane Doe 1 through 87. (or whatever the seating capacity of the room was.) The judge grilled the district attorney about why we were being held. It was clear that he was not happy with any of the answers he was getting. He ordered us all released on writs of habeus corpus.
I walked out of the court room thinking that this shows that for all the high sounding words written in the Declaration of Independence about inalienable rights and in spite of the Bill of Rights you have exactly as many rights as the officials with the guns are willing to grant you. I was grateful that in this case the officials with the guns were willing to listen to and obey the people in the black robes. Our freedom and our liberty are not inevitable and should not be taken for granted.
A number of years later I received notice that there had been class action lawsuits brought against the Federal Government on behalf of the people who had been detained, and that if I wanted to, I could apply for a portion of the settlement. The classes seemed to be for people arrested at the Capitol, or certain other locations. There was not a class for people walking down the sidewalk. My share of the settlement would have been around $150. I did not apply for the settlement. It felt to me that accepting the settlement would have been tantamount to selling my right to free speech and assembly. I was not willing to do that. Even, if I were willing to sell my rights, I would certainly want more than $150 for them.
And that is the story of the day that I was not arrested.