I’ve written about my killer score of finding Portland’s underground newspaper, The Scribe. Here are some photos scanned from the October 12-23, 1972 issue about an anti-war, anti-Nixon, pro-McGovern protest. The turnout wasn’t as high as organizers had wanted or planned. There was a reference to a violent demonstration in May that might have kept some of the protesters away.
“We passed by a beauty school where all the young coiffed beauties’ heads and faces stared curiously down at us. We could smell the hair spray and other gunk down in the streets.”
Give ’em hell, George.
Kent Ford from the Panthers, among others spoke. Buckman Groats, John Groats, John Willems and the Lighthouse Theater group, among others, performed. All went well.
Marching down Broadway.
The crowd was about a block long, with comfortable spaces between people, who walked along easily long, flashing, I’m sure, in and out from the squads of silly police standing or cycling around.
Boilmakers for McGovern. No clue, here. Anyone?
Lots of kids, of course, and white collar office workers on their lunch breaks, well-dressed West Hill matrons and blue collar workers.
Where do starving Portland protesters go after protesting? Food carts, of course!
Lost Oregon 
7 replies on “Anti-Vietnam War/McGovern Rally, 1972”
Offhand, I’m guessing the it was these boilermakers for McGovern rather than these boilermakers for McGovern.
But knowing Portland, and given the last photo (which proves Portland is nothing if not hungry and thirsty) maybe the beer cocktail is the smarter guess.
And it’s one, two, three what are fighting for, don’t give a dam next stop is Viet Nam, and it’s five, six, seven, eight open the perally gates Yippie were all going to die. “Country Joe Fish” Woodstock 1969.
That last part is hilarious. I was in London when there was a huge pre-Iraq II protest march and after it was over, many of the protesters went…shopping! I’m serious. They left their signs in the shops in the same places people left umbrellas.
I was at the May, 1972 demonstration. The only “violence” was the breaking of a bank’s windows in the Georgia-Pacific building.
Here are some links to photos I took of the event as part of a photo-journalism course at PSU that year, the first year I was old enough to vote.
Boilermakers, ship builders union. Out on Swan Island.
I lived through this protest era in Portland. My father would not let me go downtown. We lived out on 39th & Belmont area and Downtown was big and scary. We can laugh about it now.
Broadway was a HUGE center for protests and hookers and Cruising on a Friday/Saturday night.
I think if you took all the pics of Broadway through the years you would see the tranformation of Portland. It would be an interesting Photo Essay.
I was there waiting to leave for basic in the Navy. When we got to AFEES the windows were broken out and there was glass and rock in the hallways.