Take Up Arms To Remove 'Dictator' Trump

War Foes Here Attacked By Construction Workers

By Homer Bigart

May 9, 1970



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Helmeted construction workers broke up a student anti war demonstration in Wall Street yesterday, chasing youths through the canyons of the financial district in a wild noontime melee that left about 70 persons injured.

The workers then stormed City Hall, cowing policemen and forcing officials to raise the American flag to full staff from half staff, where it had been placed in mourning for the four students killed at Kent State University on Monday.

At nearby Pace College a group of construction workers who said they had been pelted with missiles by students from the roof, twice invaded a building, smashing windows with clubs and crowbars and beating up students.

Earlier the workers ripped a Red Cross banner from the gates of Trinity Church and tried to tear down the flag of the Episcopal Church.

“This is senseless,” said the Rev. Dr. John Vernon Butler, rector of Trinity Parish. “I sup pose they thought it was a Vietcong flag.”

Twice Father Butler ordered the gates closed against menac ing construction workers.

Inside the church, doctors and nurses from the New York University Medical Center had set up a first-aid station, treating 40 to 60 youths who had been beaten by the workers.

The Mayor issued a statement saying that “a mob came perilously close to overwhelm ing the police guard at City Hall.”

He added his “deep regrets” that the day of memory for the four students killed by Ohio National Guardsmen at Kent had been defiled by violence.

The police said that six per sons had been arrested and that 19 persons, including four patrolmen, had been injured. However, Beekman-Downtown Hospital alone reported that 23 persons had been brought by ambulance from the Wall Street area suffering from cuts and bruises, none of them serious.

Fighting Erupts

It was about five minutes to noon when Wall Street sudden ly erupted in a melee of fist fighting that entrapped thou sands of employes headed for lunch.

Starting at 7:30 A.M., hun dreds of youths, mostly from New York University and others from Hunter College and city high schools, gathered at Broad and Wall Streets in a demonstration demanding the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam and Cambodia, the immediate release of all “political prisoners in America” and the cessation of military-oriented work by the universities.

All accounts agree that the demonstration was without violence until the construction workers reached the scene.

The construction workers, most of them wearing brown overalls and orange and yellow hard hats, descended on Wall Street from four directions. A thin line of policemen had blocked off the steps of the Federal Hall National Memorial at Nassau and Wail Streets, from about a thousand students who were sitting on the side walk and pavement listening to speakers denounce the war abroad and repression at home.

The morning was chilly, with a light rain. But toward noon the sky lightened and the day became warm and humid. The students were in good humor: they cheered a Broad Street lawyer, Charles F. Appel, 56 years old, who told the youths: “You brought down one Presdent and you'll bring down an other.”

Then came the moment of confrontation. The construction workers, marching behind a cluster of American flags, swept the policemen aside and moved on the students. The youths scattered, seeking refuge in the lunch-hour crowds.

The workers sought them out some selecting those youths with the most hair and swatting them with their helmets.There did not seem to be more than 200 construction workers, but they were rein forced by hundreds of persons who had been drawn into the march by chants of “All the way, U.S.A.” and “Love it or leave it.”

On reaching the Federal Hall National Memorial, the workers at first pushed halfheartedly against the police line. “All we want to do is put our flag up on those steps,” one worker said quietly to Inspector Harold Schryner. “If you try, there'll be blood to pay,” the inspector replied.

But within two minutes the workers had surged over the memorial's steps, planting American flags on the statue of George Washington. Then they outflanked the police, driving demonstrators before them and hitting the youths with their helmets.

A Staged Assault?

From his 32nd-floor office at 63 Wall Street, Edward Shufro of the brokerage firm of Shufro, Rose & Ehrman watched through binoculars two men in gray suits and gray hats who, he said, seemed to be directing the workers.

“These guys were directing the construction workers with hand motions,” Mr. Shufro said.

At Exchange Place, Robert A. Bernhard, a partner at Lehman Brothers, tried to protect a youth from assault by a worker. The worker grabbed Mr. Bern hard and pushed him against a telephone pole.

A man who came to the ald of Mr. Bernhard was himself attacked by a worker and struck with a pair of pliers. Bleeding from a head wound the man was taken to Beekman Downtown Hospital.

Near City Hall, a Wall Street lawyer, Michael Berknap, 29, a Democratic candidate for the State Senate, was beaten and kicked by a group of construe tin workers yelling, “Kill the Commie bastards.” He was treated at Beekman-Downtown Hospital with his right eye completely closed, a large well on his head and five boot

Source: New York Times Archives