DENVER, Colo. -- When protesters clashed violently with police in Chicago in 1968, the United States was neck deep in an unpopular war. Forty years later, the country is in a similar situation as the Democratic National Convention comes to Denver. Only this time some protesters from 1968 will be inside the convention hall as delegates in 2008.

Ironically, protesters today argue their rights are being trampled by the same generation that believed it had a right to the streets back then.

"I remember the police coming at us. You didn't know to turn around and run. You just kept going forward and I think we kept going forward until someone said they had guns," said Julie Hicks, a delegate to the 2008 convention.

She added, "When they said [Chicago Police] had guns, some of us turned and started to run and some of us went at them and charged them. They charged us and there was fights and people were getting knocked in the head with billy clubs."

Polly Baca is also a Democratic delegate to the 2008 convention. She, too, remembers being on the streets of Chicago in 1968.

"I looked down on the street and I saw the Chicago police in military form. They were in military formation and they approached the crowd that I just left. They picked up speed and then they started swinging their billy clubs as they ran into that crowd. No warning, no tear gas. No nothing."

Hicks told CALL7 Investigator John Ferrugia, "I was too stupid to be scared. The feeling was that we needed to change America and that was our focus."

The anti-Vietnam war movement, led by supporters of candidate Eugene McCarthy, wanted to be heard.

Chicago mayor Richard Daley wanted to make sure they weren't.

"We were on the ground trying to link our hands together, trying to do peaceful demonstration against the Chicago mob cops. And it just didn't work, so we just started fighting. They fought us, we fought them, they were throwing us in paddy wagons. They were dragging us, knocking us down and it didn't make a difference if you were a man or a woman. It was just crazy," said Hicks.

Baca added, "We couldn't believe that this was happening in our country. The demonstrators did not cause the riot. It was a police riot. Then the next day following that, the National Guard was called in and they lined the streets of Chicago and it was like you were in occupied territory. It was devastating."

Denver lawyer Mike Driver was also a McCarthy supporter caught in the midst of the rioting.

"I remember coming out of the Hilton Hotel into the streets and it was just complete chaos. The next thing I know I was pushed with a whole bunch of other mostly 20-year-olds, up against the windows because the police were coming up with batons, some on horse, some on foot, pushing us back, trying to put us in a containable area," said Driver.

Driver continued, "There is a fine line between courage and stupidity and I was on the stupidity side. But I stayed out there because there was a lot of people that I worked with on the campaign who had been hit and I think we were all pretty outraged by the Chicago police. So I stayed in the streets."

Since 1968, security around conventions has become progressively tighter.

In 2004, when Democrats met in Boston, protesters were kept in cages far from the hall and the delegates.

"They're being inconsistent just because it's 40 years later. The war in Iraq is every bit as egregious as the Vietnam War," said Re-Create '68 member Tom Mestnick.

Re-Create '68 is an umbrella group organizing protesters to this year's convention.

He says that 40 years ago, the delegates of today felt that they had a right to the streets.

"And now ... the free speech that they exercised in Chicago in 1968, they don't feel that they need to extend that to the demonstrators here in Denver in 2008," said Mestnick.

He added, "I wouldn't even call it irony, I'd call it hypocrisy. We're being confined to 'freedom cages' and we're being shut down."

Driver told Ferrugia, "The rights are the same. In 1960 I was 40 years younger, but I was not willing to listen. Now after 40 years I'm willing to listen a little more. I think it's a legitimate question as to whether or not trying to channel the protests."

Hicks sides, in part, with Mestnick.

She said, "I think it's gone too far the other way. I think we should give them some leeway here. I don't think they should be that far from the convention and I don't think that they should be in a cage because they have every right to do what we did and as long as everybody keeps a cool head, everything will stay under control."

While Baca understands the hypocrisy argument, she is more concerned about the safety of the candidates.

She should know. She was a supporter of Robert Kennedy in 1968, when he was assassinated.

"There's a balance that has to be struck. It's critical that we have enough security. Because of my history of being with the Senator, and not that far from him when the shots rang out, I am worried about security. I do have concern," said Baca.

All the 1968 protesters we spoke with agree that any protests must be nonviolent or the message of the demonstrators will be lost to memories of broken bones, tear gas, and a black eye for the city of Denver.