by Jordan McGill
Staff Writer

Imagine standing up for what you believe in. How far would you go to defend it? Would you be willing to bleed? The idea behind Chicago 10, as stated by director Brett Morgan, “was to try to remind people what it means to take a stand… to get out there and raise your voice.”

In 1968 the Vietnam War had reached a boiling point. Around 19,000 Americans were dead. Fed up with the war was proceeding, counterculture icons Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin joined together with renowned pacifist David Dellinger in an attempt to bring about social justice and change.

They decided to protest the 1968 Democratic Convention being held in Chicago by organizing the Festival of Life, an anything-goes party with free music in one of the city’s public parks. The Yippies (Youth International Party) and MOBE (National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam) arrived in Chicago with the intent to challenge militarization without confrontation.

By the end of the Democratic Convention week, the tension between protestors and the law culminated in a massacre outside of the Hilton Hotel. The young and free had no chance. They were tear-gassed and beaten to a pulp. The police went on a rampage that would polarize a nation and forever remind us of the evil that lurks within the powers of man.

Chicago 10 is a politically inspired conversation discussing the actions of a generation; halfdocumentary peppered with archival footage of Yippie-led peace marches confronting Police- State Chicago and half animated account of the infamous “Chicago Seven” trial based on the actual courtroom transcripts.

The “Chicago Seven” (Hoffman, Rubin, Dellinger and others) were later charged with intent to incite in a state of mind trial; prosecuted for carrying ideas across state lines. The trial was a joke, a direct suspension of the Constitution, especially when Judge Julius Hoffman (no relation to Abbie Hoffman) bound and gagged Bobby Seale, co-chair of the Black Panther Party, when he insisted on defending his rights himself.

It has been said that free speech died in Chicago that week under those clubs. Our generation missed out on what could be the most volatile time of our country’s existence. Chicago 10 is a Polaroid photo of an ideal’s generation snuffed like the flame of a Zippo snapped shut with a click.

Chicago 10 is a reminder that most social change is brought about by youth movements and younger people in their twenties and early thirties. Feel for yourself the emotions that will rise within you while watching a dark-haired woman wearing a pink nightgown be pushed, prodded and pulled into a police dog-catcher truck while singing, “we shall overcome.”

The images of Chicago 10 prove that nothing’s changed except the clothes of the beast. We can still fight to uphold the values and freedom the greatest generation fought for. It is still the same forces of old and evil; it is still the same now.

Chicago 10 (in theaters now) will stir your eternal energy to stand up for what is right and true in this world. That energy, inherent to us all, is a mere hop, skip and a step away from being reactivated in our lifetime, if only we so choose. In the words of Bobby Seale, “All power to the people.”