The National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE), headed by long-time pacifist David Dellinger, set out to attract the largest possible number of antiwar demonstrators to Chicago for Democratic National Convention week by planning a sort of multiple-choice protest like their huge October 1967 antiwar demonstrations in Washington, where the level of protest — from lawful assembly to passive resistance to civil disobedience — was left up to the individual. MOBE's plans were undermined by the refusal of Chicago authorities to grant the necessary permits and by the violent behavior of the Chicago police department during an April 1968 antiwar protest and the riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Many moderates who might otherwise have attended the demonstrations stayed away. About two thousand protesters had shown up in Chicago by the weekend before the...