The eviction of Occupy protestors is ongoing. Most recently, Philadelphia and Los Angeles together employed over 1,400 police to break up Occupy encampments in those cities, arresting more than 200 people in the process.
As municipal officials around the nation continue to suppress these public protests, it would do well to remember one of the most infamous government crackdowns against a group of peaceful American citizens. Though largely unknown to most people today, the Bonus Marchers of 1932 likewise protested the collapse of the American economy, gathered en masse, and were forcibly routed from their encampments by the government forces.
It all began in 1924, when Congress made a show of gratitude to America’s World War I veterans. It overrode President Calvin Coolidge’s veto to pass the World War Adjusted Compensation Act, which authorized a one-time bonus payment of roughly a thousand dollars to each WWI vet, to be paid in 1945.
By 1932, however, the United States was in the depths of the Great Depression. Half of all workers were either unemployed (25%) or relegated to part-time work (25%). And in a pre-New Deal world, there was very little in the way of social safety nets: no welfare, social security, minimum wage, medicare, medicade, unemployment insurance, or other forms of public assistance we now take for granted.
Homelessness was rampant. Some people actually starved to death.
In 1932, a popular social movement among WWI veterans emerged. They began asking Congress to payout their one time bonus now, when they desperately needed it, instead of waiting until 1945. But the initial response from many politicians was either tepid or ho
stile, so that spring, vets from all around the country began converging on the nation’s capital. Somewhere between 10,000-20,000 Bonus Marchers, many of them homeless, built a shanty town in Washington, D.C. along the Anacostia River. Family and friends camping with them brought the total near 50,0000.
Congressional support for an early payout grew, but President Herbert Hoover adamantly opposed it on the grounds of fiscal austerity. His press secretary referred to the marchers as “communists or bums.” While there was a small number of radicals attempting to ride the Bonus Marchers’ coattails, in reality it was a genuine American social protest movement, similar in some ways to today’s Occupy movement. Not directed by any external force, it was simply thousands of Americans spontaneously joining together to demand that the government do something about the ongoing economic crisis.
Congress held hearings on the matter, soliciting the testimony of these now destitute men who had fought and killed for their nation in the trenches of Europe less than fifteen years prior. The Democrat-controlled House voted to payout the bonuses forthwith, to the tune of $2.4 billion (almost $40 billion today). But on June 17, the Republican-controlled Senate voted against it 62-18. Hoover had already threatened to veto regardless, and the bill died.
Despite the smear campaign and false accusations that the Bonus Marchers were communists, dupes, and criminals, there was no riot when Congress voted against them. Instead, many of them simply picked up and left, returning to their lives of poverty.
However, with nowhere else to go, several thousand remained in the shanty town. Some of them mockingly threatened to stay there until 1945. In late July, Attorney General William Mitchell ordered them off of all government property. When Washington, D.C. police tried to 
remove them, they met resistance. Police shot and killed two veterans: William Hushka and Eric Carlson.
Hoover responded by ordering General Douglas MacArthur to evict the marchers, though not to invade their camp. MacArthur had bought into the propaganda, calling the marchers a mob “animated by the essence of revolution.” He disregarded Hoover’s orders, using cavalry, infantry, six tanks, and chemical weapons to clear families from the camps and then torch the shanties. George Patton led the charge against his former fellow servicemen. Dwight Eisenhower wrote the army incident report endorsing MacArthur’s actions. Hoover did not discipline him for exceeding his authority.
What we are now witnessing is hardly the first instance of American governments using force to break up peaceful protests. But it need not be this way.
Government violence against the peaceful Bonus Marchers turned out to be the final twist in Hoover’s agonizing political death spiral. Franklin Roosevelt unseated him in a thunderous victory that November. And several months later, when a few thousand vets again assembled in Washington to petition the new president for early bonus payments, he didn’t call them names or use violence.
Instead, Roosevelt had them temporarily housed in an abandoned barrack, had them fed for several days at government expense, invited a delegation to the White House, and explained to them in person that while he wouldn’t support the early payment of bonuses, he 
would be developing new programs to help the economy, and they would be included. In fact, he would soon reserve 25,000 positions in the Civilian Conservation Corps especially for veterans.
And before the marchers returned home, Eleanor Roosevelt trudged through the mud to their barrack one rainy evening. She met with them personally, expressed her sympathy, and sang songs with them.
Said one vet afterwards: “Hoover sent the army. Roosevelt sent his wife.”