From Robert Funicello, Holland, Michigan: I found your book Mayday 1971, some time after it was first published in 2020. I was delighted to learn that such a thorough history of the 1971 anti war and anti Kent State/ Jackson State murders protest had been published. Sadly, as we enter what may be another dark period in our national story, when once again the US military may turn its weapons on our own people, it is important to know about Mayday 1971.
In May 1971 I was a member of the D.C. National Guard, Specialist 4. I had enlisted, after graduating from the Washington College of Law of the American University, in Spring 1969, and taking the DC Bar exam in July 1969 (I was admitted to the practice of law in DC in February 1970). I was called for Basic training and MP School training at Ft. Gordon, Georgia, from mid October 1969 to February 1970. I returned to DC in spring in February 1970. In May of 1970 I became employed by the Environmental Law Institute, a 501(c)3 not for profit, located in DC at the Dupont Circle Building, as the Assistant Editor of the Environmental Law Reporter. ELI was a joint project of the Public Law Education Institute, which published the Selective Service Law Reporter and later the Military Law Reporter, and the Conservation Foundation. It was funded by the Ford Foundation. ELI was part of the then burgeoning development of public interest law. Â I took an apartment in the Dupont Circle neighborhood. I had enlisted in the DC National Guard to avoid being drafted and wasting 2 years in the military. I was also opposed to the war in Vietnam, but realistically or not, did not believe I would end up in combat if drafted.
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My DC Guard unit (two battalions of MPs) Â was activated for the Mayday Protest in 1971. As I recall we reported to the DC Armory sometime on Sunday (itâs possible it was Saturday) and very early Monday morning were for the first time in my experience in the National Guard issued M16 rifles (without magazine), vests, and riot helmets with face shields and transported by truck to one of the newer Federal Executive Office buildings located near the White House. We were staged in the basement /lower level of the office building. Each platoon was issued a wooden trunk in which were placed loaded M16 magazines (20 rounds each) for each weapon in the platoon. We remained in the basement of that Federal Executive Office Building all morning. The M16 ammunition was never issued to the troops. Around midday we left the Federal Executive Office Building and returned to the Armory for lunch. The M16s were collected from the troops at the Armory. Â
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Sometime after lunch we were alerted that we were to be deployed on foot to the nearby âRFK Stadium practice fieldâ. We were issued 3 foot long billy stick like weapons. We marched to the practice field and were stationed in small groups around the 8 foot cyclone metal fence that enclosed the field; 3 or 4 men to each location. Inside the fence on the practice field were thousands of people/civilians/protesters/ arrestees, who we understood had been detained by the DC Police Department at various locations around the city. (In my 2 plus years in the DC National Guard I never witnessed an arrest made by a Guard member and my memory is that the DC National Guard never had arrest authority during the time I was a member. The detainees were a very varied collection of people: many were young apparently college age men and women, but others were men in business suits, some with brief cases, some were women who appeared older, and I distinctly remember seeing a few women with children. I also saw one or two lawyers I knew from my involvement  with the Lawyers Committee Against the Vietnam War, including Geoffrey Cowan a cofounder of the Center for Law and Social Policy, one of the first public interest lawfirms in the country. It appeared the lawyers were interviewing detainees regarding the circumstances of their âarrest”, but I had no information about any of that at that time.Â
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The weather was very cool for DC in May and sometime after we were deployed around the practice field it began to rain. The detainees  at first had no shelter from the rain but at some point some of them pulled up the canvass cover on the field and used a metal pole/goal post of some kind to erect a makeshift tent, but it was not large to enough to protect most of the detainees. Private food/coffee trucks arrived in our area and some of the enlisted men began to buy coffee and other items and pass these over the fence to the detainees. But as time went on a number of the detainees began to protest their being held out in the rain and as this protest grew it moved towards the gate to the field and some of the protesters – dozens? hundreds?- began to press against the gates in an effort to open them or tear them down. At some point a platoon leader in the other DC National Guard battalion than mine that was positioned opposite the gate threw a tear gas grenade into the crowd. (No one in my platoon had been issued tear gas, but I donât know if my platoon leader had it.) My memory is that tear gas was used before any part of the fence was collapsed.
The effect of the tear gas on the detainees was like gasoline on a smoldering fire. The number of protesters rushing the gates multiplied exponentially and as the effects of the tear gas spread the situation became explosive. Soon after these events, we were ordered to âfall inâ and in squad formations we were marched away from the practice field. As we left some of us raised the “single fist salute”. We were cheered by some of the detainees and we were quickly reprimanded by our platoon leader, a young lieutenant who worked as an intern at the Nixon White House. As we moved off we were replaced by units of the 82nd Airborne Division, a regular Army elite combat unit. The 82nd Airborne were carrying weapons.Â
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We returned to the Armory. After dinner we were  trucked to the Washington Coliseum and were brought inside essentially to serve as a buffer between 1,200+/- detainees spread out on the floor and perhaps a dozen  people at tables on the floor that appeared to be âprocessingâ detainees one or two at a time. In pictures in your book this scene is shown. But, the less visible scene in fact was generally quite disturbing. Many DC police officers were milling about or sitting in groups in the stadium like seats that overlooked the floor. Arguments broke out repeatedly between various police officers and medical professionals who arrived to tend to the injured detainees. In one case a DC police officer pushed one of these medical professionals so that he fell from one row into a lower row of seats and injured his head. When a detainee needed to use a restroom, located under the main floor, he or she would be escorted by two police officers. On several occasions police officers began beating male detainees once they were in the hall under the main floor and generally out of sight. Members of the DC National Guard witnessed these beatings, and then were instructed by their officers to escort detainees to the restrooms to prevent the beatings. Then there was the particularly troubling scene of 6 or more police officers seating in the stadium-like seats cheering and clapping as a couple under a blanket on the floor appeared to be making love. All in all a surrealistic chamber of horrors. At some point late that night we were brought back to the Armory. We were dismissed either that night or the following morning. I was relieved to have gone through the call up without once being involved in any physical conflict with demonstrators, detainees or police officers.
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But, my involvement with May Day 1971 did not end on May 3. Some time later, perhaps 2 to 3 Â months, I was recruited by colleagues in The Lawyers Committee Against the Vietnam War to serve as a pro bono attorney for one individual who had been detained at the protest at the Justice Department offices on Tuesday, May 4, 1971. My client was a student at the Columbia University Union Theological Seminary. He had been arrested at the Justice Department on May 4, 1971 and charged with âincommoding a public thoroughfareâ; essentially obstructing a sidewalk, street, alley or public building. I was given the file, the trial date and time, and a very quick briefing on the likely weaknesses the Districtâs case. Curiously, I was not told much about the prior proceedings involving Mayday 1971 defendants and that Chief Judge Harold H. Greene had already dismissed thousands of cases essentially on the same grounds; a fundamental flaw in the arrest procedure that had been used by the DC Police Department in order to be able to conduct the sweep of the streets with the available police force personnel. You cover this issue very well in your book. All I knew was that my client should not testify and that I should focus my cross examination of the “arresting officerâ who testified at trial, and most likely the only witness for the prosecution, on the issue of whether he personally witnessed my client committing the acts with which he was charged. I had prepared 2 or 3 pages of questions for this witness. This would be my first trial as a lawyer.Â
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Chief Judge Harold H. Greeneâs court room was crowded with lawyers, defendants and police officers the morning of the trial. Our case was eventually called and the trial began with the DC prosecutor calling a police officer as his first witness. He asked the officer a few preliminary questions and then was interrupted by Judge Greene. The Judge asked the officer if he was in fact the officer who saw the defendant sitting on the steps of the Justice Department, the public thoroughfare at issue. The officer answered ânoâ, he was the arresting officer in the file because after another police officer in the line of officers trying to clear the steps had picked up my client from the steps he passed him back to the witness, who then stood next to him for a photograph and filled out the arrest record card. This procedure was contrary to normal  Police Department procedure but I learned later had been used throughout the Mayday arrests. Of course that meant that the witness in our case, though listed as the arresting officer, was not able to truthfully identify my client as having committed any offense at all. The officer who actually grabbed my client off the sidewalk was not recorded. The prosecutor had no further questions for the witness and sat down.
I stood and began to ask the witness my first question. After I had said âofficer can youâŚâ Judge Greene began speaking. He said something like âYou know, when I was nominated for this position by President Johnson, I appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee.â My mind was racing trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Judge Greene continued: âSeveral prominent people testified first on my behalf, and then I took the microphone and began to speak. I was interrupted by Senator Eastland, the Chairman of the Committee, and he said (here Judge Greene adopted a passable Southern drawl) âMr Greene a good lawyer knows when to shut up!ââ Judge Greene smiled and steadied his gaze on me. After one or two beats I got his message: he was telling me to shut up. I sat down. After two more beats I had realized what he was actually telling me and I stood up and said âMove to dismiss.â Judge Greene granted my (really his) motion and my client was free to go.
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Naturally it did not too long for me to understand how gracious and helpful Judge Greene had been to this young lawyer and how he had made certain my inexperience would not cause my client harm. None of my experiences during the Mayday 1971 protests were as important as the experience I had that morning in court. About 5 years later I was in the office of the Court Clerk in the basement of the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan and standing in line in front of me was another young male lawyer. When he turned to leave I recognized him as my client, then a divinity student, from the Mayday 1971. He had become a New York lawyer and so had I.
An extraordinary story Mr. Funicello, and extremely well-told, with lots of detail new to me. Thanks for sending it in.