Today's posting is about Uncle Bill's 's memories of the 1960's in Berkeley. This story comes from an email sent to me on February 26, 2017.
 
While so many generations from the 1970's and onward reflect upon it as an amazing time, they are only thinking of the fashions, the music, the TV shows and the flower power era.  But for those who lived through it, whether they were a parent or a teenager, it was not the best of times.
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The Vietnam War, the drug culture, hippies, protests, racial issues and assassinations of President John F Kennedy, his brother Bobby, Martin Luther King and Malcolm  X, made it a very scary  & unknown time for many. 
 
I recall having a book all about the 1960's that I thought was really cool and wanted to show it to my Aunt Fran (who was married to my Dad's older brother). Her retort was, "No I really don't want to see it". At that time as a kid, I could not understand why. Now as an adult (and most likely the same age she was then) I can understand and appreciate why. The documentaries I have seen on both Vietnam and the 1960's have given me a greater understanding of that the time period and what it was like. It was not always "right on, groovy and outta sight"
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Uncle Bill's memories of that time are so strong and precise it is as if his experience happened only yesterday
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                               The "history" of my 60's experiences:
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"Much like the present with our marches and protests during these past few years, the 60's were a very tumultuous time.  The Vietnam war was raging, students and young people were protesting the draft, and the country was very divided, much along the same lines as today - intelligent, educated, thinking people opposed the war; stupid, blindly-patriotic southern and Midwestern people and many WWII vets supported it.  Nora and I had been married in July, 1967, and were living in San Francisco, the "summer of love" going on all around us, but we oblivious to it all!
 
"In January 1968, after a 2 year break from school, I resumed college, this time at UC Berkeley, where we had a small apartment.  Nora supported us as a receptionist at a stock brokerage (Dean Witter) and I was a full-time student. There were near-daily protests, marches, speeches going on all around us.  At one point our fascist governor, the never-great Ronald Reagan, called in the National Guard with tanks and rifles to quell the near-riots that were bringing the city and college to a near halt.  I kid you not.  We frequently spent weekends with Nora's family in Marin, and coming back home to Berkeley were stopped at "check-points" to prove we were residents in order to enter Berkeley.
 
"Remember at this time I was still a goody-two-shoes-raised -Catholic-cause no trouble kink of guy, never joining in the protests and student strikes, just kind of going about my business and watching from the sidelines.  Then came the People's Park movement.  You have probably never heard of it - just another protest that has faded into distant history.  Anyway, what happened was that the University owned a block of vacant land not far from the campus which students and street people (read homeless) had taken over and transformed into a park with walkways, plants and trees, benches, and places for people to "hang out", sleep, smoke dope, etc.  They did all of this with their own labor.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 





























The University was afraid they would lose control over the land if they let this continue, so they began fencing off the property, tearing out the gardens, and brought in the police to keep the students and street people out. Riots ensued, with the Alameda County Sheriffs and National Guard brought in to augment the Berkeley City Police.  Tear gas was being used daily to disburse the crowds.  Law enforcement began firing on the students - rubber bullets they claimed - except they weren't, and one student was killed.  All hell then broke lose and for days there were "skirmishes" between police and the crowds.
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On one of those days I marched with the crowd to downtown Berkeley where the police blockaded the streets trapping about 400 of us, whom they then proceeded to arrest for failure to disburse when ordered. Now at that time I still was on medications for petit mal epilepsy and I carried medications with me at all times. Also at that time police generally thought all students were drug-using Commies. The majority of law enforcement officers were veterans and viewed students as elitist, cowardly draft-dodgers (sound familiar?).  When arrested I showed Berkeley police officers my medications and explained what they were for. They let me keep them.  Next we were boarded onto Alameda Sheriff's buses and transported to Santa Rita Prison, the County's jail, to be booked.  What happened next was surreal.  
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We were hustled and hassled off the bus by a cordon of screaming and black-jack wielding Alameda County Sheriffs Deputies, forced to lie down face-first on the pavement, arms behind our backs, required to turn our heads in one direction while deputies marched up and down the aisles we formed, hitting us with their batons and screaming obscenities at us.  We were not allowed to speak, and when one student tried to do so, he was yanked off the ground, pushed up against a flag pole, and the flag pole then beaten by deputies with their batons until the reverberations caused his nose to bleed. It was getting on toward evening by the time I was "processed".  They had me empty my pockets, saw my medications, and when I attempted to explain what they were for, was attacked by 2 deputies, taken to the ground, threatened and beaten, cracked one of my fingers, and threateningly asked if I was going to give them any more "trouble".
 
They then yanked me to my feet by my hair, and shoved me along, confiscating my epilepsy medications.  I used my one phone call to Nora who called John, and they drove out to Santa Rita the next morning with my bail money.
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Needless to say this experience transformed my view of law enforcement, especially after reading the preposterous lies of the Alameda County Sheriff in the next day's paper, explaining how we were all dangerous subversives, and denying that any police brutality had occurred.  Ultimately all charges against all 400 of us were dismissed.
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There was some justice, eventually.  After Nora and I were living in St. Louis the following year, two FBI agents came to my job to interview me as part of an investigation into brutality by the Alameda Sheriffs Department.
 
As I understand several deputies were fired as a result of this event.  I hasten to add that these charges brought by a group of upper middle class white kids were addressed.  I can only surmise that such would not have been the case for people of color, who were and are routinely dealt with in this fashion, all these many years later.
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So that is the story of my Berkeley years and how the 60's ended for me.  I must add that my life experiences there far eclipsed any book learning at the University and helped form my view of the world and those who hold the power.