Two weeks before May Day, 1971 more than 200,000 people attended rallies in Washington, D.C. organized by the National Peace Action Coalition. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) camped out on the Mall and by April 24th, the number of demonstrators more than doubled. An estimated 500,000 demonstrators marched. One hard core group of protesters organized by the Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice, and its more militant Mayday Tribe, planned to combine massive traffic disruptions with marches on the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the Capitol over three days. Washington, D.C. police managed to prevent any disruption of traffic or government functions, mainly through mass arrests. Between May 3rd and May 5th, 12,000 protesters are arrested and held outdoors at the Washington Redskins football practice field near Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium.

Metropolitan Police Lt. Robert Klotz, who was a captain on duty during the demonstrations, says,

"They looked at all of the major access routes coming into the District from Maryland and Virginia, and they made assignments to demonstrators where they could go to block the streets. They were going to come out in waves, so that when the first wave got arrested, the second wave would fill the streets and then a third wave and so on. They had done a pretty good job. A lot of them came down because they felt very strongly about what they were doing, and a lot of them came for adventure. And adventure meant confrontation."

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