Anyone know how many times the Weather Underground blew up the Haymarket Cop Statue? Was it two times or three times? I've looked at various histories of the WU and it seems like they only did it twice, but I've read in other places that it got damaged a third time as well, after which they moved it to the Chicago Police Headquarters where it was/is fenced in. However, I'm not sure who did it the third time or if it was ever actually damaged again. (It also says much that the real, working-class Haymarket Statue is out in the open and doesn't need this sort of protection, or at least doesn't keep getting destroyed.)
Wikipedia's entry on the WU says they did it three times as well, but they don't provide a source for that claim. Avrich states, in his Haymarket Tragedy book, that the Weatherpeople destroyed it only two times and that Mayor Daley eventually just moved it because the 24-hour police surveillance was too expensive:
Avrich wrote: Over the years the statue itself was plagued with troubles. In 1903 the crest of the city and state was stolen from its base. In 1925 it was knocked over by a streetcar that had jumped the tracks. Restored, it was moved to Union Park and years later to a special platform built for it during the construction of the John F. Kennedy Expressway. At the time of the Vietnam War, the statue drew nationwide attention as the focus of numerous protests, especially during the conspiracy trial of the so-called Chicago Seven stemming from disorders at the Democratic National Convention. On May 4, 1968, the eighty-second anniversary of Haymarket, the statue was defaced with black paint after a clash between anti-war demonstrators and the police. On October 6, 1969, during the "Days of Rage" protests against the war, the monument was shattered by an explosive charge placed between the legs of the figure. Nearly a hundred windows in the area were broken, and pieces of the statue were showered onto the Kennedy Expressway, the Weatherman faction of the Students for a Democratic Society claiming credit for the deed. The statue was quickly restored, only to be blown up a year later, once again by the Weathermen. After the second bombing, Mayor Richard J. Daley denounced the perpetrators as "evil creatures who work in the dark," and he ordered the statue to be rebuilt. At the rededication ceremony, Daley vowed that the monument "will always remain as a testimonial of the people's gratitude to the police," and he placed it under twenty-four-hour protection. This, however, proved too costly, and in February 1972 the statue found a permanent haven in the lobby of Chicago police headquarters. (431)
Here are also some contemporary newspaper clippings I dug up, if anyone's interested. I was only able to find the two times: 1969 and 1970.
