On Wednesday afternoon nearly ten thousand people had gathered at an antiwar rally in Grant Park. By now, the ranks of the radicals were swelled by the increasingly bitter supporters of Eugene McCarthy. When a young demonstrator wearing an Army helmet started shinnying up a flagpole to remove the American flag, the police charged. While this teenager was being dragged off, a group of young men—including at least one undercover police officer—surrounded the flagpole and removed the flag. They replaced it with a red T-shirt, and a general melee followed. Demonstrators threw asbestos, floor tiles, balloons filled with paint and urine, bricks, eggs, and "all types of stones," according to the Walker report, compiled for the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. The police responded with clubs, Mace, and tear gas. A police official testified later that "profanity and spitting did not have the same effect on the police that incidents involving the flag did." He felt that “abuse or misuse of the flag deeply affected the police." One demonstrator heard an officer yell, "Hey, there's a nigger over there we can get." According to the official report, the police "are said to have veered off and grabbed a middle-aged Negro man, whom they beat." The crowd chanted, “the whole world is watching." *

[[* Earlier estimates that one hundred thousand demonstrators or more might descend upon the city were large exaggerations. The Walker report on the disturbances estimated the largest crowd of the week at ten thousand people, with no more than five thousand from out of town. [New York Times, 12/2/68.]]
Grant Park was across the street from the Conrad Hilton, where Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy both had their headquarters. As the nominating speeches began at the convention hall, some seven thousand demonstrators gathered in front of the Hilton. Hundreds of people—ranging from innocent bystanders to hardened militants—were clubbed and beaten
A reporter noticed a policeman smiling happily: "They're really getting scared now," the officer said. Massive amounts of tear gas were released, and some of it even reached the nose of the vice-president in suite 2525A of the Hilton.

Looking down from his room two floors below Humphrey, McCarthy thought the police formations were "reminiscent of the formations of Hannibal's last battle"; then he compared the scene to "a surrealistic dance—the ballet of purgatory." George McGovern told a New York Times reporter he had seen "nothing like it since the films of Nazi Germany." Inside the amphitheater, Connecticut senator Abraham Ribicoff was on the podium to nominate the South Dakotan for president. "With George McGovern as President," said Ribicoff, "we would not have to have such Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago." The television cameras zoomed in on the Chicago mayor. Though he could not be heard, millions of lip-reading Americans were certain Richard Daley had just said, "Fuck you," to the United States senator standing only twenty feet in front of him. Ribicoff scowled back. "How hard it is to accept the truth," he said, "how hard." Twenty years later, people were still coming up to Ribicoff at airports to praise him for his courage. However, there had also been a practical consideration behind the senator's attack. Ribicoff was up for reelection in 1968, and the McCarthy forces had never been enthusiastic about him. On Wednesday evening, Anne Wexler, a leader of the McCarthy movement in Connecticut, declared, "I'm going to get everyone to work their guts out for Abe for what he said tonight." Ribicoff was re-elected by a large margin in the fall.