The most contentious issues of the convention were the continuing American military involvement in the Vietnam War and voting reform, particularly expanding the right to vote for draft-age soldiers (age 18) who were unable to vote as the voting age was 21

[...]

The entire event took place live under television lights for seventeen minutes with the crowd chanting, "The whole world is watching".[56] Samuel Brown, one of the organizers for Senator McCarthy, lamented the violence, saying: "Instead of nice young people ringing doorbells, the public saw the image of mobs shouting obscenities and disrupting the city".[18] Brown stated the demonstrations at Chicago had been a disaster for the anti-war movement, as the American people saw the protesters as the trouble-makers and the heavy-handed police response as justified.[18] The general feeling at the time was the hippies were intent upon destroying everything good in America and the Chicago police had acted correctly in beating such dangerous anti-social types bloody.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Democratic_National_Convention

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