Note: The following questions were answered by e-mail after the discussion ended:

TOC: What was the most memorable incident for you during the convention?
Peck: I noted the example of the cops firing through our office windows. Another one was a gas station attendant, freaked by all the people running out of the park and across his fueling area— or maybe expressing his politics—breaking a running demonstrator’s arm with a baseball bat. Again, my view of the time was more about liberation than politics. The Convention changed that.
Rose: It was the Tuesday night in front of the Hilton where the police lined up along the park to “protect” the hotel from an onrush of demonstrators—and the police were replaced by armed, bayonetted national guardsmen who emerged from these strange jeeps covered with barbed wire. Frightening in a way even the violence on Wednesday was not. Were we all going to be shot?
Katz: For me, the most memorable night was the first in Lincoln Park, when the phalanx of tear gas-loaded fire trucks and police came west across the park, aiming their full force at the unprepared revelers.

TOC: Do you think that people were more passionate then, and why or why not?
Rose: This is almost impossible to measure, but if the times seemed more intense during Vietnam, I would attribute it to a more deadly (50,000 dead) war, plus the existence of the draft, which threatened more people.
Katz: Well, men were, as there was a draft—and it very directly affected them. In general, I don’t think the issue was passion, but a sense of possibility. We felt very empowered in the ’60s, that what we did would/could make a difference. The world was a revolutionary place from Paris to Prague, with socialist and progressive countries thriving, and liberation movements throughout Africa. I think today there is a greater sense of desperation, a sense—a reality—that nothing we do will affect Bush, et al. (proven to be true). More people demonstrated against Iraq and Bush just told them, us, and the world to go screw—that no amount of opposition would stop their folly. Thus, the pull of electoral politics this time around…a feeling that only taking over the government can stop the madness.
Peck: Many today are passionate; we were in the crucible.