Here to Protect Us [Police Surveillance, Chicago 7]

[Chicago]: np, 1969. Handbill offset printed on recto only, 8 ½ x 11 in.

An exceptional flyer criticizing police surveillance and urging the public to join in support of Tom Hayden and Wolfe Lowenthal, illustrated with a photo of two undercover police officers.

At the time of this flyer, Lowenthal and Hayden were charged with letting the air out of the tires of a police vehicle during the 1968 Chicago DNC protests. Hayden, one of the founding members of the Students for a Democratic Society, would a few months later face charges of inciting a riot along with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin of the Yippies and several others, during the “Chicago 7” trial (originally “Chicago 8”, before Bobby Seale was removed for a separate trial).

This handbill is notable not just as an early artifact of the Chicago legal battles of Tom Hayden, but as a powerful rebuke to the surveillance, infiltration, and agitation of the Chicago Red Squad. Born from the labor battles of the early 20th century, so-called Red Squads were the political intelligence divisions of the police. Primarily focused on anti-communist efforts, Red Squads had come to focus on black liberation and anti-war activism in the 1960s. This flyer notes that the Chicago Red Squad “work[ed] tirelessly...to build an intelligence network any police state would be proud of.”

“PEOPLE ARE ASKED TO COM [sic] IN PLAINCLOTHES AND UNMARKED CARS...LET IT BE KNOWN THAT WE’LL DO JUST FINE WITHOUT ALL THIS PROTECTION”

Near fine.