Randal Carlson Witnessed the Largest Mass Arrest in U.S. History

I look up to the left and I see these armored buses pulling across the intersection lining up nose totail completely blocking the intersections. And then what they would they started on both ends and they would drag people in, throw them on the buses and when one bus got packed full they would pull it off. The other buses would pull up and this went on pretty much from morning until afternoon. And I don't know why I didn't get busted. I mean, maybe they didn't see me up. I was I stayed up on top of this statue while they're clearing out the whole street and then pretty soon the last buses are gone and I climb down and go on my way wherever I went. Um, and I think that was one day and then the next day everybody gathered on this island in the Ptoac River and uh the Beach Boys. You ever heard of the Beach Boy? Yeah. So the Ryan Wilson just passed I think. Yeah, he just passed. Yeah. Yeah. So the Beach Boys were playing, right? And the island is packed and I met this lady, very attractive young lady, and she and I hit it off and she had a lean to or attempt or something. I'm in there with her and and she's telling me, "Yeah, after, you know, tomorrow you can come over to my place and stay with me." And I'm like, "Yeah, I'm I'm game. I'm good. I'm I'm down for that." And uh so we go to sleep and then oh, must been like 5:00 a.m. or something. And I hear this and I look out and there's coming helicopters coming in and there's this thick fog mist over the river and over the island, right? And the girl, I don't remember her name at all. She got up, said, "I got to go you use the bathroom." So she she goes off and I'm there with all the stuff waiting for her to get back. And then I hear this. I look out. It's the helicopters. And then they've got these big spotlights and they're swooping down. I mean, like 40 feet over our heads. Big announcements. Come on. You know, um, clear the island. Anybody, you know, we you will be arrested, blah, blah. You know, like and it sort of it was so weird with the with the the heavy mist hanging over. And then I get out and I go, "Oh shit." And I start packing up. I guess I don't want to get arrested again, so I'm going to hightail it out of here. The fog starts lifting and both sides of the river. As far as the I could see in both directions were cops in full riot, ready for the green light. when that when you could start seeing these guys through the through the fog, everybody re everybody just scattered like you know cockroaches turned the light on and everybody's going and um so I me too went with them. Uh got out of there. I didn't get arrested. Never I got separated. I you know I had my destiny was all worked out. I was going to go stay with this attractive lady that obviously liked me. And uh that didn't happen. Needless to say, I was very disappointed. So now I'm just wandering the streets, you know. Um find out later that uh both Rowan and Rocky, you haven't met Rocky. He's been missing in action for over 30 years. Haven't seen him. These are brothers. Yeah. He's halfway between me and Rowan and aid. Okay. So they both get arrested. Rowan. They took him. He Rowan was only 16 at the time. They take Rowan and he'll he can tell you this story, but the Washington downtown Washington DC jail cells that was like three or four stories underground. They take him down and they've got this little I don't know whatever 6 by8 or 6 by8 cell and they just pack like 15 guys in there, lock them in there and then after they get them in there, they start pumping tear gas through the through the ventilating system. And so now, you know, you got everybody crying. You've got people, you know, like choking. You've got one guy started going into like an epileptic fit and and then one of the guys realized Rowan was a juvenile. And so he's yelling, "Guard, guard, guard." So the guard comes, says, "This guy's just a juvenile." So they Rowan would have to tell you what happened next, but they let him out of of that cell. Um, meanwhile, our other brother Rocky got busted, got arrested, and they had filled up every jail cell in Washington DC and they still had like 20,000 more people arrested. It was the largest mass arrest in American history, right? So, what they did was they I don't know the baseball stadium, but they had a baseball stadium and they wrapped it in barbed wire and they put 20,000 people in this baseball in this sports field wrapped in barbed wire. And Rocky told us how, you know, they started oming, you know, like 20,000 people all oming. And then I believe it was the next chanting. Chanting. Yes. Chanting. Yes. Yes. Chanting. Right. And I think it was the next day and I don't remember how many people showed up. 20,000 more, 50,000. There was over a million people in Washington DC that showed up that week, first week in May 1970 with one intention. We are going to shut down the federal government until this war stops. And 20,000 maybe, I don't know, 25,000 of those people went out. has happened. Locked arms and completely surrounded the Pentagon. Every bridge, every road coming in and going out of Washington DC was shut down. What they did was they got these old cars and drove them out onto the bridges and the interstates, got out and took out the distributor caps or whatever they did. So, Washington DC was literally shut down for a whole. And it was right after that, if you look at the history of the Vietnam War, you begin to see that's when it really began to turn. and the troops started coming home and it took a long took three years to bring all the troops home after four years really pretty much they were all for the most part home by 7374 um and then there's the famous final withdrawal from Vietnam where the helicopters are taking off from Saigon and everybody's hanging on you know just like what we saw the evacuation of Afghanistan was like almost like a re