Flamingo Park Jamboree

For weeks an aura of impending mayhem hovered over Miami Beach. Residents were openly jittery about claims that up to 10,000 militant protesters would storm the city during the Democratic National Convention. As it happened, the feared invasion was more carnival than confrontation. Fewer than 4,000 "non-delegates" showed up. With the approval of the city fathers, they unfurled their bedrolls in Flamingo Park, seven blocks from the convention center. The armies of the New Politics looked anything but menacing. Saffron-robed Hare Krishnas jingled and danced next to the Young Socialists. Satanists tossed Frisbees with the Jesus people. Half a dozen young stragglers took refuge under a spreading shade tree, stuck up a crayoned POT PEOPLE'S PARTY sign, and soon found that they had the largest group in the park. Exclaimed one young Democratic worker who had spent months planning for the expected crunch of street people: "It looks like a Boy Scout jamboree!"

Jeff Nightbyrd of the Youth International Party explained: "There aren't any real villains here at the Democratic Convention." In marked contrast to the club-wielding cops at the 1968 Chicago convention, Miami Beach Police Chief Rocky Pomerance worked closely with protest leaders. Most important, the Democrats had changed into a party with a broader base. Not only did the Democrats nominate an antiwar candidate, but members of the protest groups who stormed the barricades in Chicago were now inside the convention hall. Said Yippie Leader Abbie Hoffman: "I'm groovin' on democracy! This thing really freaks me out!"

What little serious political action there was came from a coalition led by the National Welfare Rights Organization. They marched on the empty convention center, took over the hall and demonstrated for nearly two hours.

Protest leaders promise bigger things at the Republican Convention in August. As if to underscore the point, late last week six leaders of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War were indicted in a Tallahassee, Fla., federal court for plotting to "maliciously damage and destroy, by means of explosive devices, buildings and persons" during the G.O.P. convention.

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