October 16, 1965: Mickey Mouse Fight Club

Different city, same scene: Antiwar protesters and counter-protesters, Berkeley, California, November 20, 1965.

Never underestimate the impotency of a heckler–even when he, she, or it represents the majority. Such was unfortunately the case on the date in focus here, when almost 400 protesters turned out for Seattle’s first major local demonstration against the Vietnam War, and were greeted with decidedly feral heckling from both counter-protesters and pro-war bystanders.

The event was organized by the Seattle Committee to End the War in Vietnam (SCEWV) and the University of Washington chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in solidarity with other, larger protest events in several major U.S. cities that same weekend, including a 13,000-strong march in New York City. The Seattle protest began with a march under police escort down Fourth Avenue in downtown Seattle, from the Federal Courthouse at Fifth Avenue and Spring Street to a noon rally at Westlake Park. The heckling began at the courthouse, where the counter-slogans included such reactionary gems as “Keep Washington Green–not Red!,” “For Sale Cheap–Ho Chi Minh Sandals!” and, amusingly representing the UW’s right-wing Greek community, “Sigma Chi says ‘USA–All The Way!’”

When the march arrived at Westlake Park, the counter-protesters, keeping their distance one block away from the rally, attempted to drown out the antiwar voices by singing the Mickey Mouse Club anthem, and the first speaker, UW Political Science professor Paul Brass, was doused with red paint by a certain self-identified “Joe Freedom,” who amusingly turned out to be a disgruntled student of Brass’s.

To protest the Vietnam War at such an early stage, when American public opinion was still squarely (yes, that was a double-entendre) in its favor, was truly daring, especially in light of the news that the march in NYC hours earlier had been violently attacked by spectators, while in Oakland, California, 10,000 marchers were also attacked–some bludgeoned, even–by Hell’s Angels. According to eyewitness and radical Seattle icon Walt Crowley (1947-2007), then an 18-year-old UW freshman braving his first major protest event, all involved were understandably “nervous.” Nevertheless, the crewcutted heckling majority eventually ate their according crow: by mid-1970, in the wake of the Kent State massacre and the war’s increasing lack of direction and loss of American lives, nationwide antiwar protests had grown into massive events, with increasing empathy from the so-called “silent majority.”

One can only wonder what Walt Disney (1901-1966), noted anti-radical, would, by that point in time, have done.

–Jeff Stevens. Sources: Richard Simmons, “Viet Protest Orderly Here; Violence Across Nation,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 17, 1965, p. 1; “Hell’s Angels Attack Berkeley Demonstrators,” The Seattle Times, October 17, 1965, p. 1; “Viet-Nam Protesters Heckled In March to Westlake Mall,” Ibid., p. A; Walt Crowley, “Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle” (University of Washington Press, 1995), pp. 45-46.

April 24, 1969: Protesters and Beekeepers

The bees, being both apian and apolitical, stung leftists, rightists, neutrals, and police with equal enthusiasm. --Walt Crowley. Photo credit: Chris Richards, UW Daily archives

The very concept of “counter-protesters” at a protest demonstration is already absurd enough. Imagine the emphatic absurdity, then, of a full-fledged mêlée between left-wing and right-wing student protesters on a college campus–and then throw an onslaught of angry bees into the mix. Sounds like the plot of–pardon the pun–a “B” movie, doesn’t it?

Nevertheless, that’s exactly what happened on the University of Washington campus on the date in focus here. It all began at approximately 12:30 p.m., when roughly 300 members and sympathizers of the UW chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) attempted to shut down the UW’s Loew Hall–then the home of the UW Career Planning and Placement Center–in order to protest ongoing on-campus recruiting by representatives of the military-industrial complex (specifically, on that day, TransWorld Airlines; Aetna Life and Casualty Insurance Co.; and the U.S. Navy).

The scene quickly became confrontational as an organized group of right-wing anti-SDS students, along with a growing crowd of curious onlookers, prevented the SDS contingent from entering the building. The majority of the SDS group serendipitously managed to enter Loew through the back doors. Meanwhile, several spontaneous fisticuffs between angry right-wing students and angry left-wing students–ignited in part by an egg-throwing incident instigated by some among the anti-SDS crowd–quickly escalated into a full-blown radical campus free-for-all.

The absurdity, at this point, was only just beginning.

After SDS had gained effective control of Loew Hall, and at least 2,000 agitated students continued their aimlessly attempted catharses outside, a truck containing eight hives of bees, driven by two beekeepers from Eastern Washington’s Yakima Valley, abruptly stopped in front of the already absurd scene then unfolding in the plaza outside Loew’s main entrance. The abruptness of the stop caused one of the hives to overturn, and its wildly buzzing contents immediately swarmed out of the back of the truck and into the crowd. One of the drivers, clad in protective gear, then–and quite intriguingly–stepped out of the truck’s cab and began haphazardly handling the remaining hives, causing more understandably angry bees to be released, who then began stinging wildly, with noteworthy ideological neutrality.

Walt Crowley (1947-2007), the late radical Seattle historian and, at the time, a 21-year-old UW dropout, would recall the scene for the record many years later with delightfully mirthful pith: “The bees, being both apian and apolitical, stung leftists, rightists, neutrals, and police with equal enthusiasm.”

After several minutes, several of the students outside Loew Hall began pelting the truck with fruit and various other objects, including a brick that went through the truck’s windshield just before the driver took off.

The offending truck

In the sublimely entomological aftermath, no one at the scene was truly hurt–physically, anyway–yet much intrigue remained concerning the allegedly accidental nature of the event in question. The beekeepers involved volunteered their witness to the UW Daily the following week, claiming to have been merely seeking an academically trustworthy entomologist to examine their allegedly ailing freight. At the time, the UW had no entomology department–nor even a degree program in that field–and a mere two entomologists on its faculty.

The buzzing horde ultimately failed to break up the SDS demonstration, although 22 persons were later treated for bee stings at the UW’s Hall Health Center. Longstanding rumors of covert UW administration complicity in the attempted dispollination of radical UW student power by way of strategic serendipity that fateful day remain today unconfirmed.

–Jeff Stevens. Sources: Bruce Olson, “Groups Finalize Loew Plans,” University of Washington Daily, April 24, 1969, p. 1; Lee Rosen, “Placement Center Stays Open: Opposing Groups Clash in 4-Hour Student Confrontation at Loew Hall,” University of Washington Daily, April 25, 1969, p. 1; “Sleepy Bees: Common Denominator,” University of Washington Daily, April 25, 1969, p. 13; “Melees Erupt In Effort to Close Hall,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 25, 1969, p. 1; Melvin Goo, “Confusion Marks Shutdown Attempt,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 25, 1969, p. B; John Hinterberger, “The Many Signs of a Campus Demonstration at U.W.,” Seattle Times, April 25, 1969, p. 1; Julie Emery, “‘Bee-In Driver Is Sought,” Seattle Times, April 25, 1969, p. 16; Julie Emery and Svein Gilje, “Campus Tone Is Moderation,” Seattle Times, April 25, 1969, p. 16; “Student Fights Regretted by S.D.S.,” Seattle Times, April 25, 1969, p. 16; Richard Gollings, “Beekeepers Claim Accident,” University of Washington Daily, April 29, 1969, p. 1; Walt Crowley, “Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle” (University of Washington Press, 1995, pp. 135-136).

April 12, 1967: “I’m Marching Down The Ave…”

University District Movement report on police harassment, circa 1967. Photo credit: University of Washington Libraries, Vietnam War Era Ephemera Collection

Seattle’s University District has long been known as a locus for student-led protests, both for various causes and against various grievances. Some of these protest events have been large enough to at least temporarily shut down University Way Northeast–famously also known as “The Ave”–one of the city’s major stretches of retail storefront property. The first such major protest event in the U District, uncannily enough, was a protest against the U District business community–specifically, against its collective discriminatory stance toward Seattle’s counterculture, and the police harassment which, at the time, was aggressively enforcing such discrimination.

In the early part of April 1967, the conflict between Seattle’s “hippie” community–which by then had firmly established the U District as its physical and spiritual home–and the U District business community was already approaching a boiling point. At issue at the time was the latter’s recent alleged attempts to drive hippies, the homeless, racial minorities, and other “undesirables” from the neighborhood, by means both “civil”–such as lobbying Seattle City Hall and the University of Washington administration–and more direct. The latter means included the aforementioned police harassment, which consisted of discretionary ticketing of jaywalkers, arresting and detainment of hippies for frivolous “charges,” and other, more brutal forms of harassment–all considered by its target group to be sanctioned, de facto if not de jure, by the University District Chamber of Commerce (UDCC).

Organized opposition to such harassment arrived in the form of the University District Movement (UDM), an ad-hoc coalition of activists crucially co-led by Robby Stern, then a 23-year-old UW law student and a key member of the UW chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. The UDM’s immediate goal was to document alleged instances of police harassment of “undesirables” in the U District, along with cases of direct discrimination by restaurants, rental agencies, and other businesses. Working with the Washington state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, the UDM gathered affidavits aimed at convincing the UDCC to formally put an end to the harassment and discrimination in question.

On April 11, the UDM, with recent editorial support from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, met with the UDCC board of directors to discuss the UDM’s demands. Along with a prepared opening statement, they brought with them a pile of petitions bearing roughly 8,000 signatures in support of their goals. The UDCC’s formal response was politely hostile: they read a five-page prepared statement effectively rejecting the UDM’s demands, and refused to let UDM leaders speak further in counter-response. They did, however, pledge that a UDCC committee would meet with UDM leaders at a later, undetermined date.

Later that afternoon, the UDM met with some 500 UW students in front of the UW’s Husky Union Building to discuss the UDM’s next step. Stern told the crowd, “We need the 8,000 who signed the petitions to rally tomorrow to tell them we’re tired and we’re mad. Who’ll say, ‘We care, we want our district for us’?”

The crowd was not completely united; some vocally supported the UDM, while others supported the UDCC, with one student proclaiming, “What’s wrong with the police putting on a little pressure to clean [the U District] up?”

The next day–the date in focus here–the UDM met with a group of six U District merchants, who tentatively agreed to the UDM’s demands, with minor changes in language and no guarantee of approval by the UDCC. Later that afternoon, another rally, called the day before, of some 2,000 persons was held in front of the HUB to discuss a solution to the UDM-UDCC standoff. Just as on the day before, a rift arose between supporters of a potential compromise with the UDCC and more assertive supporters of the UDM. A vote was taken to decide whether the group should march down The Ave as a “show of strength” to the UDCC–a move the UDM had been warned might alienate the UDCC and thus jeopardize their chances of a meaningful solution to the UDM’s grievances.

The vote was narrowly in favor of marching, and a debate began between the pros and the cons in the crowd. At a particularly tense moment, Stern spontaneously proclaimed, “I’m marching down The Ave, and anyone who wants to join me is welcome to follow.”

And so they did–roughly 1,500 of them, thus introducing the U District to an activist tactic which would see even more spectacular use there during the next half-decade. The UDCC’s immediate reaction to the march was predictably negative, with at least one U District merchant proclaiming the UDM’s action a “breach of faith.” While negotiations still continued between the UDCC and the UDM, the UDM’s grievances would also continue; one of the UDM’s last acts before disbanding that summer was to document many further instances of police harassment and present them to City Hall at a rally that May.

–Jeff Stevens. Sources: Susan Slettvet, “UDM Dominates UW Scene,” University of Washington Daily, April 12, 1967, p. 1; Bruce Edmonson, “CC Cool To UDM,” University of Washington Daily, April 12, 1967, p. 1; Sue Lockett, “Kirk Cautions UDM,” University of Washington Daily, April 12, 1967, p. 1; Sue Catlin, “Marchers Irk Ave Merchants,” University of Washington Daily, April 13, 1967, p. 1; Jack Jarvis, “1,500 Students Stage March In U District,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 13, 1967; “U. District Firms Charge ‘Bad Faith’,” The Seattle Times, April 13, 1967, p. 13; “UDM May Go Out To Dinner,” University of Washington Daily, April 14, 1967, p. 1; Susan Slettvet, “UDM March Was Against Nobody, Stern Claims,” University of Washington Daily, April 14, 1967, p. 6; Walt Crowley, “Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle” (University of Washington Press, 1995), pp. 65-67.