On the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, veteran journalists who were there when the last one, the epic one in August 1968, happened are expounding on their memories and similarities and differences between then and now. It was 56 years ago, long before many Americans were born, but it has been widely chronicled in books and TV documentaries. It was defined by an open police riot, a beat down by the Chicago of The Beats, as they were called, and others protesting outside the convention against the war in Vietnam but also against the horrible events of earlier that year, the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy that emotionally gutted the civil rights and anti-war ferment of that period.

      The ferment was absolutely authentic, as was the police response directed by the swinish then Chicago Mayor Daley, then considered a huge force in the Democratic Party. Out of it all came a mighty sea change in American politics that has led to the institutionalization of this era’s forces of progress, on the one hand, and reaction that are facing off in the clash between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump right now.