The Price of Dissent: Testimonies to Political Repression in America

By Bud Schultz and Ruth Schultz

Bud and Ruth Schultz's vivid oral history presents the extraordinary testimony of people who experienced government repression and persecution firsthand. Drawn from three of the most significant social movements of our time--the labor, Black freedom, and antiwar movements--these engrossing interviews bring to life the experiences of Americans who acted upon their beliefs despite the price they paid for their dissent. In doing so, they--and the movements they were part of--helped shape the political and social landscape of the United States from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century.

The majority of the voices in this book belong to everyday people--workers, priests, teachers, students--but more well-known figures such as Congressman John Lewis, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), Abbie Hoffman, and Daniel Ellsberg are also included. There are firsthand accounts by leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World, active early in the century; Southern Tenant Farmers Union of the 1930s; Women's Strike for Peace, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; Berkeley's Free Speech Movement of the 1950s and 1960s; and the Hormel meatpackers' Local P-9 in the 1980s. Lively introductions by the authors contextualize these personal statements.

Those who tell their stories in The Price of Dissent, and others like them, faced surveillance and disruption from police agencies, such as the FBI; brutalization by local police; local ordinances and court injunctions limiting protest; inquisitions into beliefs and associations by congressional committees; prosecution under laws that curbed dissent; denaturalization and deportation; and purges under government loyalty programs. Agree with them or not, by dissenting when it was unpopular or dangerous to do so, they insisted on exercising the precious American right of free expression and preserved it for a new century's dissenters.

Excerpt

It did drag out from 1972 until 1975, for the final peace treaty to take place. There was vast relief that the bombing was over, that the carpet bombing of Vietnam was stopped. When the final treaty was signed, we organized the War Is Over rally. Cora Weiss from Women Strike for Peace got Joan Baez and Phil Ochs and a number of entertainers, and we had this big celebration in Central Park. But there was no overwhelming joy. I think that on an intellectual level I felt some satisfaction - you know, recognizing that our movement had some historical impact. But I wasn't happy. The carnage had been so vast. The death toll of Vietnamese was staggering. The loss of our men for nothing. Fodder. Fifty-eight thousand dead, thousands crippled. It was not the kind of situation that gave one joy.

Abbie Hoffman's Interview with the FBI in 1968 - Part 2

ABBOTT HOFFMAN, when interviewed by Special Agents (SAS) [...] and [...] on September 6, 1968, advised that he was raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, that he attended Worcester Classical High School, a public school, which "kicked" him out between his junior and senior year. HOFFMAN stated that he wrote a paper against God: that his teacher tore it up: that he "belted" the teacher and was expelled.

For a year thereafter HOFFMAN hung out in the pool halls of Worcester and was then enrolled in Worcester Academy, a private school where he completed his senior year. HOFFMAN then attended Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts. He took graduate work at University of California, Berkeley, California and he took courses in some school in France while at Brandeis.

HOFFMAN stated that he is registered with a Local Board in Massachusetts: that he is 4-F: that "all nuts" like himself are 4-F. HOFFMAN stated he had no military service.

HOFFMAN stated that he worked for about six years after college: that his last job was with State of Massachusetts as a psychologist: that he has held numerous jobs including that of a wholesalesman in Massachusetts. HOFFMAN stated that he has always been able to make money as a pool hustler. HOFFMAN claimed to be a superior pool player. HOFFMAN stated that when he first came to New York City he opened a store to sell the products of the Mississippi poor people: that he sold this store a year ago for one dollar. HOFFMAN said that his wife is also unemployed: that she makes beads at home and sells them wholesale to various bead stores in New York City.

HOFFMAN stated that he wrote a 180 page book, long hand, in three days after returning from Chicago: that he sold this manuscript to a publisher and that he got no money for the manuscript because he plans to donate all profits to "the people." He declined to identify the publisher and claimed that the book would be out in October, 1968, under the "Revolution for the Hell of It."

HOFFMAN stated that his parents are successful middle class Americans: that his father could be classed as a "Goldwaterite." HOFFMAN stated that his father, who has worked all his life and who does not approve of his own views or his acts, is in the wholesale drug business in Worcester, Massachusetts. Further, that when his father saw him on television during the Democratic Convention disorders from Chicago, Illinois, he suffered a heart attack and is still in the hospital.

HOFFMAN stated that he has no money, no bank account, and that he manages "somehow" to get by and to pay his $90.00 per month rent for his apartment. HOFFMAN stated that he does not own an automobile. HOFFMAN stated that his phone number, listed in the Manhattan book, is being changed soon to a private number: that too many "kooks" call him.

HOFFMAN, when interviewed, wore tight blue jeans and a dirty sports shirt held in by a large black leather belt. HOFFMAN's hair was fully grown, like a female, dark brown, curly unkempt. HOFFMAN, who appears to be alert, speaks in the jargon of the "beatnik," using expressions like "man," "my thing," "the establishment," and "I want to turn you on." He is evasive and appears to enjoy being the center of attention. HOFFMAN was cautious but not hostile during the interview. He made no complaint about being interviewed but made it clear that he felt that he was on the opposite side of "things" to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Abbie Hoffman's Interview with the FBI in 1968 - Part 1

SECRET
Federal Bureau of Investigation

Date: 9/12/68

ABBOTT HOFFMAN, also known as Abbie Hoffman, 30 St. Marks Place, New York, New York, was interviewed in the hallway of his apartment at 30 St. Marks Place between 11:05 AM and 11:40 AM, on September 6, 1968, by Special Agents (SAS) [...] and [...].

HOFFMAN, who advised that he was raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, and was graduated from Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, identified himself as a member of the YIP (Youth International Party) and stated that he was in Chicago, Illinois, during the Democratic Convention held in August, 1968.

HOFFMAN, to whom the interviewing SAS identified themselves as representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was advised that the interviewing agents desired to ask him certain questions regarding his participation in the Chicago disorders; that he was not obligated to speak to the agents and that he did not have to answer any questions which might possibly incriminate him.

HOFFMAN stated that his life is an open book; that he had no objection to the interview; that he understood his rights, and that he had received a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union; that is, the ACLU, only yesterday (September 5, 1968), indicating that the FBI would probably question him concerning his presence in Chicago during the Democratic Convention.

HOFFMAN stated that the Chicago disorders were the result of a set policy on the part of Chicago authorities: that as a representative of the YIP, he visited Chicago on March 25, 1968, and filed an application for a permit, with others, with the Chicago Parks Commission to allow demonstrators to utilize Lincoln Park, later changed to Grant Park, for their "thing" during the convention period: that he then met with Deputy Mayor STAHL, a Mr. BARRY of the Park Commission, certain Chicago police officials and others, and that the application was not then acted upon.

HOFFMAN stated that thereafter this application matter was left in the hands of the Chicago people who also wanted to use the park.

HOFFMAN stated that about five days before the Convention, he was advised that his Chicago group never received a permit to use Grant Park: that thereafter the application for a permit had been withdrawn. HOFFMAN stated that he then decided to go to Chicago to see what he could do to get a park permit; that he then flew to Chicago on a student rate fare and met immediately with Deputy Mayor Stahl and others in a last ditch stand to try to get Grant Park for the demonstrators.

HOFFMAN stated that his experience indicated that city officials usually hold off until the last day, then issue a permit, but that contrary to his advice to Chicago officials, this did not happen. HOFFMAN stated that he and others were told they could, within local law, use Grant Park, like any other city park, each day until 11:00 PM; that they could not sleep in the parks and would have to vacate them by 11:00 PM.

HOFFMAN stated that on Sunday, August 25, 1968, he and others then in Grant Park were confronted by Chicago Police between 6:00 PM and 9:00 PM; that he phoned the commander of the Chicago Police Department, 18th Precinct, between those hours to get a rule on the use of the park and that he was told that his group could legally stay there until 11:00 PM, and that the police unit forcing them about would be withdrawn. HOFFMAN stated that the police did not withdraw, but continued to pressure people out of the park.

HOFFMAN stated that he is identified with YIP, that YIP has no membership, no dues, no membership list, and no officers, but that he did act as a representative of YIP, while meeting with others in Chicago, Illinois. HOFFMAN stated that neither he nor any YIPs with whom he is acquainted in New York City or elsewhere, made any plans to cause any disorders in Chicago, Illinois, nor did they discuss any such ideas, nor did they bring any weapons or similar items to Chicago to protect themselves from attack or to use in attack.

HOFFMAN stated that while in Chicago, he made no plans to cause any disorders, that he gave no orders for anyone to become involved in any disorders, and that he has no knowledge of any such plans or activity on the part of any individual or any group in Chicago, New York City, or elsewhere.

HOFFMAN stated that the YIP issued a calendar of events for the Chicago Convention period: that he helped to prepare this program, and that it is a public record of all his own and all YIP plans, and that no disorders were scheduled or even suggested. HOFFMAN stated that he urged persons associated with the Convention confrontation to remain non-violent and that his position and policy in this regard has been quoted in the public press several times and was included in an article relating to him which appeared in the "New York Post", a New York City daily newspaper, on September 1 or 2, 1968.

HOFFMAN stated that he never advocated any disorder, fights with the police, or the use of weaponry of any sort, in connection with the Chicago disorders, and that he has no knowledge of such plans or activities on the part of anyone else.

HOFFMAN stated that he heard general gossip of absurd statements made by persons unknown to him, about putting LSD in the Chicago drinking water, and that since such things were so foolish and impractical he never took them seriously, but took them to be just talk and "letting off steam."

HOFFMAN stated that he could only speak for himself concerning motivation to visit Chicago during the period the Democratic Convention was being held. HOFFMAN stated that he believes in a free, unregimentated life: that he would hope to influence everyone to join him: that the philosophy of the Democratic Party advocates the continuance of the present system which is a monetary trap which causes people to work unnecessarily for an entire lifetime and only to perpetuate the system. HOFFMAN stated that in his opinion current technical advancements and scientific achievements, all of a revolutionary nature, can feed and clothe the entire world; that such technical and scientific achievements and their future refinements could, if allowed by the establishment to do so, release everyone from an organized life of work and entrapment, and that he wanted to utilize the Democratic Convention in Chicago to do his "thing," which was to confront the Democrats and to publicize his own philosophy of life.

HOFFMAN stated that he is not against the Democratic Party itself; that it is one group of many which advocated the established way of life. Further, that he has been called many things including a "Communist": that he is not a Communist and could never accept Communism since it is another absurd, regimented, disciplined group with its own aims and establishment type objectives.

HOFFMAN stated that he is against all political philosophies, that all presidential candidates hope to retain the establishment although they don't say so. Further, that he has expressed himself as favorable to George Wallace, only because Wallace is the least hypocritical candidate in that he is truthful and outright; that even though you can't agree with him on many points you know where he stands. HOFFMAN stated that he has made statements to this effect in public gatherings, in television interviews and interviews with the press, and that he has worn Wallace buttons at such gatherings and at public demonstrations.

HOFFMAN stated that "I presume that I will eventually be arrested for conspiracy because of my presence in Chicago." HOFFMAN stated that he did not know what the conspiracy charge, if any, would be. HOFFMAN stated that it is his understanding that his name was among those who are bringing a civil suit against the City of Chicago and Mayor Daley for 600 million dollars; that such suit started by a daughter of former Senator Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts and with a New York City law firm, if successful would allow the wronged demonstrators to give each Chicago police officer, who resigns from that police force in protest against the policies of the Chicago police, a sum of $10,000.00 each.

HOFFMAN stated that during his recent stay in Chicago he was under surveillance by the Chicago police: that he became friendly with those following him for his so-called protection, and that he enjoyed coffee and transportation from them.

HOFFMAN stated that he stayed at the Chicago home of a friend, whom he declined to identify; that he was out of the parks each night, and that, to his recollection, he was arrested and held for thirteen hours the day before that major trouble in Grant Park and near the Hilton Hotel and that he did not participate in these disorders.

HOFFMAN disclaimed any responsibility for any disorders at Chicago, Illinois.

1968: The Year That Rocked the World

by Mark Kurlansky

Another event that they did intend to carry out was the nomination of the Yippie candidate for president, Mr. Pigasus, who happened to be a pig on a leash. "The concept of pig as our leader was truer than reality," Hoffman wrote in an essay titled "Creating a Perfect Mess." Pig was the common pejorative for police at the time, but Hoffman insisted that in the case of Chicago, the "pigs" actually looked like pigs, "with their big beer bellies, triple chins, red faces, and little squinty eyes." It was a kind of silliness that was infectious. He pointed out the resemblance of both Hubert Humphrey and Daley to pigs, and the more he explained, the more it seemed that everyone was starting to look like a pig.

But there was a problem: There were two pigs. Abbie Hoffman had gotten one and Jerry Rubin had gotten one, and a conflict arose over which one to nominate. Typical of their differences in style, Rubin had picked a very ugly pig and Hoffman a cute one. The argument between them over the pig selection almost became physically violent. Rubin accused Hoffman of trying to make the Yippies his own personality cult. Hoffman said that Rubin always wanted to show a fist, whereas "I want to show the clenched fist and the smile."

The arguing continued for some time before it was decided that the official candidate of the Youth International Party would be Rubin's very ugly pig. Hoffman, still angry from the dispute, stood in the Chicago Civic Center as Jerry Rubin said, "We are proud to announce the declaration of candidacy for president of the United States by a pig." The police then arrested Rubin, Hoffman, the pig, and singer Phil Ochs for disorderly conduct but held them only briefly. The next day another pig was loose in Lincoln Park, apparently a female, supposedly Mrs. Pigasus, the candidate's wife. As the police pursued the animal, Yippies shouted, "Pig! Pig!" for the fun of it, because it was unclear whether they were shouting at the pursuers or the pursued. When the police finally grabbed the pig, someone shouted, "Be careful how you treat the next First Lady." Some of the police laughed; others glared. They threw the little pig into the back of a paddy wagon and threateningly asked if anyone wanted to go with the pig. A few Yippies said yes and jumped into the wagon. They closed the door and drove off. Some journalists took the bait and started interviewing Yippies. The Yippies said that they were unstoppable because they had a whole farm full of pigs just outside Chicago. A journalist wanted to know how they felt about losing their pig, and one of the Yippies demanded Secret Service protection for both their candidate and his First Lady. A radio reporter asked with great earnestness just what the pig symbolized. Answers were hurled back: Food! Ham! Parks belong to pigs.

Dissent in the Heartland: The Sixties at Indiana University

By Mary Ann Wynkoop

This grassroots view of student activism in the 1960s chronicles the years of protest at one Midwestern university. Located in a region of farmland, conservative politics, and traditional family values, Indiana University was home to the antiwar protestors, civil rights activists, members of the counterculture, and feminists who helped change the heart of Middle America. Its students made their voices heard on issues from such local matters as dorm curfews and self-governance to national issues of racism, sexism, and the Vietnam War. Their recognition that the personal was the political would change them forever. The protest movement they helped shape would reach into the heart-land in ways that would redefine higher education, politics, and cultural values. Based on research in primary sources, interviews, and FBI files, Dissent in the Heartland reveals the Midwestern pulse of the Sixties, beating firmly, far from the elite schools and urban centers of the East and West.

Excerpt

Members of SDS and other student groups across the country began criticizing the war in Vietnam, and on Easter 1965 twenty thousand protestors marched on the Washington monument. Folksingers Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, and the Freedom Singers led the crowd in singing "We Shall Overcome." The demonstrators presented Congress with a petition to end the war.

[...]

The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (nicknamed "the Mobe") had organized a Stop the Draft Week from October 14 to 21, 1967. The point of this campaign was to confront Washington policymakers with the fact that thousands of young Americans - straights and hippies, blacks and whites, working class and middle class - were opposed to the war in Vietnam. The week ended on October 21 with the March on the Pentagon. Protestors gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where they listened to music by Peter, Paul, and Mary and Phil Ochs and speeches by David Dellinger and Dr. Benjamin Spock.

Then the crowd marched across the Arlington Bridge toward the Pentagon, where they were met by military police. The protestors sang songs, talked to the troops, and joined together in a sense of community. Allen Ginsberg and Abbie Hoffman chanted "om" as they and others tried to levitate the Pentagon. However, by midnight the police were replaced by the 82nd Division and the scene turned ugly. Paratroopers cleared the area by beating peaceful protestors, who faced their attackers singing the national anthem. By the next morning, only a few hundred were left. The protest was over.

Rehearsals for Retirement

Rehearsals For Retirement was Phil Ochs' sixth album, released in 1969 on A&M Records. Recorded in the aftermath of Ochs' presence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago (where his exploits included selecting and purchasing a pig for Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies to nominate for President), it is the darkest of Ochs' albums, a fact exemplified by its cover, a tombstone proclaiming that Ochs had died in Chicago.

"Pretty Smart On My Part," the album opener, is a song in the persona of a right-wing reactionary, who plans to, among other things, "assassinate the President and take over the government" (the song was noted on Ochs' lengthy FBI file). "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed" is Ochs' telling of the events that unfolded in Chicago, followed by an upbeat jaunt berating those who weren't there. "The World Began in Eden and Ended in Los Angeles" seems to portray Ochs' then-home as a hellhole, as all metropolises eventually end up. "Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore" is the tale of a woman seeking out her ex-lover, and finding Ochs instead, telling a tale of loneliness that permeates American life.

Perhaps the most despairing track on the album is "My Life," in which Ochs states bluntly, "my life is like a death to me," which presages Ochs' suicide seven years later. He also asks the FBI to "take your tap from my phone and leave my life alone."

Track listing

All songs by Phil Ochs.

Side One

1. "Pretty Smart on My Part" – 3:18
2. "The Doll House" – 4:39
3. "I Kill Therefore I Am" – 2:55
4. "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed / Where Were You in Chicago?" – 3:29
5. "My Life" – 3:12

Side Two

1. "The Scorpion Departs But Never Returns" – 4:15
2. "The World Began in Eden and Ended in Los Angeles" – 3:06
3. "Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore?" – 6:11
4. "Another Age" – 3:42
5. "Rehearsals For Retirement" – 4:09

Participants

• Phil Ochs - guitar, vocals
• Larry Marks - producer
• Lincoln Mayorga - piano, accordion
• Bob Rafkin - guitar, bass
• Kevin Kelley - drums (rumored)
• Ian Freebairn-Smith - arrangements

Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and their Legacy

by Kathleen Cleaver and George N. Katsiaficas, editors

The Newton trial made the spear poster chic. Huey developed tremendous support on the full spectrum of the white left, from liberal to pro-Albanian Communist, and he rose to become a controversial folk hero in Black America. Eldridge was the prime mover of the White-Black alliance. He made friends with everybody but retained a Yippie soft spot for Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Phil Ochs, and me.

[...]

Unbelievably, Eldridge, Jerry, Huey, and Abbie and Anita Hoffman and Phil Ochs are now dead. But in the deepest part of my soul great memories live on about a time when we, Black and White, fulfilled each other's best dreams by joining in an outlaw's alliance dedicated to completely remaking and repairing the world.

Timothy Leary: A Biography

by Robert Greenfield

On Monday, May 11, a benefit for Tim took place at the Village Gate in Greenwich Village. Rosemary had organized it on what she described as "hallowed ground--the place where I first saw Miles Davis and Charlie Mingus." She had invited "all the big givers from the liberal left" in New York City and fully expected to raise enough money to help spring Tim from jail. Musicians scheduled to perform that night included folksinger Phil Ochs, the albino blues guitarist Johnny Winter, and Jimi Hendrix, whom Alan Douglas had persuaded to fly in from Chicago with his band just for this gig. Scheduled speakers included Abbie Hoffman, Allen Ginsberg, Alan Watts, Jerry Rubin, and Wavy Gravy. In a full-body cast after having been kicked in the back by a security guard at a Rolling Stones concert, Wavy Gravy showed up with a fellow member of the Hog Farm commune in New Mexico carrying a baby lamb in his arms. "Acid was flowing like water," Anita Hoffman recalled. "The punch was spiked and everyone was on acid. It was one of those very pivotal events because the mood was changing. The repression was increasing. Instead of all this love-and-flowers stuff, the attitude of politicos like Abbie and Jerry Rubin and myself was that you had to organize if you wanted to get people like Tim out of jail. But the Hog Farm people and all these religious people, all they wanted to do was chant."

Come Together: John Lennon In His Time

by Jon Wiener

John did not know that a similar "War Is Over" campaign had been launched by Phil Ochs and the Los Angeles Free Press more than two years earlier. Ochs wrote an article for the paper in June 1967 calling for a "War Is Over" rally in Los Angeles, across from the Century Plaza Hotel, where Lyndon Johnson was scheduled to speak at a five-hundred-dollar-a-plate dinner and the Supremes were to entertain. Ochs wrote a song for the occasion: "I Declare the War Is Over." Lots of people came, marched down the Avenue of the Stars to the hotel, and chanted, "The war is over!" Ochs started to sing his song; the police ordered the crowd to disperse and then attacked, beating the marchers while TV cameras, on hand for the President, whirred. Delighted by the extensive TV coverage, Ochs staged a second "War Is Over" demonstration in New York's Washington Square Park in November 1967. Paul Krassner and the Diggers commune helped organize it. This time the police did not attack, but again the press coverage was extensive. The Village Voice ran a front-page story on the event.

Ochs had demonstrated that clever and novel forms of protest could win much more media coverage than traditional antiwar demonstrations. Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman grasped the implications of Ochs's "War Is Over" events. Shortly after the Washington Square demonstration, they began to plan an even bigger festival at which their "Youth International Party" would nominate a pig for President outside the Democratic national convention in Chicago the following August.

Although the similarities between John and Yoko's "War Is Over" campaign and the proto-Yippie ones which preceded it are striking, the differences are equally significant. John and Yoko put up billboard; Ochs organized demonstrations which thousands of people attended. John and Yoko were a long way from real mass politics.

BBC-TV featured John as a "Man of the Decade" in a special broadcast on December 31, 1969. In a long interview, John reflected on the sixties. "Not many people are noticing all the good that came out of the last ten years," he said. "The moratorium and the vast gathering of people in Woodstock--the biggest mass of people ever gathered together for anything other than war. . . . The good thing that came out of the sixties was this vast, peaceful movement."

And with his sweet optimism, he said, "The sixties were just waking up in the morning. We haven't even got to dinnertime yet. And I can't wait! I can't wait, I'm so glad to be around."

The Phil Ochs Video Vault: Yippie (1968)

The Youth International Party's biting critique of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Yippie members included Abbie Hoffman, Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Nancy Kurshan, Paul Krassner, Stew Albert, Dick Gregory, Ed Sanders, Phil Ochs, Jonah Raskin, Dana Beal and David Peel. Film includes alternate versions of "I Ain't Marching Anymore" and "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed" by Phil Ochs.

"[...] furnished tape recordings of the remarks of Abbott Howard Hoffman (100-449923) during his public talk given at the University on 4/30/69. Excerpts taken from the tape concerned a catalog of films made to send to schools and to be shown on the streets and in communities. The film that won the academy award for the most political relevance by Students for a Democratic Society was made by Hoffman, Ed Sanders, Phil Ochs and G.W. Griffith. Ochs and some other Yippies made up a song for the film." --Excerpt from Phil Ochs' FBI File

For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman

by Jonah Raskin

Long before their plans became finalized, Abbie and Jerry--now an inseparable movement duo--were publicizing Chicago as well as promoting themselves. Folksinger Phil Ochs interrupted a Carnegie Hall performance to invite them on stage to announce the demonstration. "Fuck Lyndon Johnson, fuck Robert Kennedy, and fuck you if you don't like it," Abbie shouted. The Carnegie Hall management cut the power, leaving the hall in darkness.

Abbie, Jerry, and their friends also took part in Phil Ochs's "War Is Over" demonstration in New York on November 25. Allen Ginsberg, America's poet-legislator, had urged that peace activists should "simply declare the war over." He inspired Phil Ochs, who'd been singing protest songs for most of the decade, to write the song "The War Is Over," with its refrain: "I declare the war is over / It's over." On November 25 Ochs met with demonstrators in Washington Square Park, sang his song, and then led a march up Fifth Avenue to Times Square. The war in Vietnam, he explained, was "only a figment of our propagandized imagination, a psychodrama out of 1984." George Orwell's fantasy had become a reality. If enough people saw the war as an illusion and refused to believe it, then the war would really end, Ochs suggested.

Bum Trip

By Stew Albert (published January 10-January 16, 1969)

At a New Year’s Eve party in New York the Yippies declared 1969 to be the Year of the Bum Trip. It was universal, the wild-men moved between parties and into the streets, and always came back with a “It was a lot more joyous last year” tale.

We sat around and it was all reminisces about last year’s pipe dreams of both freaking out and making love to America.

The felony indictments are going to come down heavy. If you plan a demonstration it will be conspiracy, and if you go to it it will be assault with a deadly weapon (existing in the pigs minds).

The despair was exaggerated, everybody at the parties knew that, but there were just no beautiful dreams as January 1 became a reality.

A lot of the best struggles have turned sour. There was an attempt to get Bill Graham to give the Lower East Side community a free night at the Fillmore East. Graham gave in for a while and then backed out claiming the insurance companies were threatening to cancel the Fillmore if the free nights continued.

There was a wild semi-riot after an MC 5 rock concert. Graham got his nose bruised by a chain and a couple of ushers were stabbed. The street people went after some of the MC 5 when they caught them leaving the gig in a bourgeois chauffeur-driven limousine.

A couple of days later Graham convinced people that the insurance rate really would ruin him and that there was no way he could give away the Fillmore.

Bill Graham may be a very big cat on the block for us, but for the insurance companies, he is a tiny mouse that can never roar.

I spent a couple of hours with Abbie Hoffman, a one-man global village, all electric and always optimistic. Even Abbie was seeing grey for the future. He hopes Eldridge is in Cuba, setting things up for an exile-dropout community. Hoffman figures we have a year or so and then the trip without a ticket will end.

Back in Berkeley everyone says the movement on the campus is at a ten year low. Telegraph Avenue is applying for status as a police station. The Diggers have gone a hundred ways into hopelessness.

I checked out the Panthers and they are in the needed business of purging crazies and reading Lenin. They are going to stop recruiting for a while, harden their core and be ready for a long cold winter with Richard Nixon.

The revolution has spread out a long way since the FSM. Campuses like Columbia and San Francisco have exploded higher into the sky than Berkeley ever did, and lots of high schools are blowing with them. The psychedelics are taking over TV and some of the best light shows are found in commercials that undermine the products they sell.

But the price is going to be paid. The man has no intention of letting us take over and illuminate his power trip without first trying to build concentration camps around our dreams.

To survive and grow in the next year we are going to have to re-examine every anti-organizational bias in our rebel souls. Everybody just can’t go off and do his own thing. We have to develop a program for winning the majority of American youth to a real thing, social and political revolution. Your own thing has to become our thing.

The FBI agents who have visited me four times since Chicago wake up early in the morning, and through the day exert a ferocious and determined energy in the cause of J. Edgar Hoover’s evil portrait.

Lying around stoned all day isn’t going to make the revolution for us. Those agents will install bars around our pads and leave us there to meditate on our navels and die.

There's a Riot Going On: Revolutionaries, Rock Stars, and the Rise and Fall of the '60s

Extensive coverage of Phil Ochs in this book - a rarity among the plethora of sixties rock books that have been written.

Synopsis:

Between 1965 and 1972, political activists around the globe prepared to mount a revolution. While the Vietnam War raged, calls for black power grew louder and liberation movements erupted everywhere from Berkeley, Detroit, and Newark, to Paris, Berlin, Ghana, and Peking.

Rock and soul music fueled the revolutionary movement with anthems and iconic imagery. Soon the musicians themselves, from John Lennon to Bob Dylan to James Brown and Fela Kuti, were being dragged into the fray. Some joined the protestors on the barricades, some were persecuted for their political activism, and some abandoned the cause and were dismissed as counterrevolutionaries.

Scrutinizing the ways in which musicians reacted to the movement, Doggett exposes the myths behind their involvement to show that, contrary to belief, many were actually reluctant figureheads, while others merely paraded as revolutionaries, acting with a bourgeois curiosity that negated the ideas of peace that musicians proselytized and that their lyrics idealized.

From Mick Jagger's legendary appearance in Grosvenor Square standing on the sidelines and snapping pictures, to the infamous incident during the Woodstock Festival when Pete Townshend kicked Yippie Abbie Hoffman off the stage while he tried to make a speech about an imprisoned comrade, to Lennon's display of self-publicity when he auctioned off his hair on top of the Black House, Doggett unravels the truth about how these were not the "Street Fighting Men" they saw themselves as and how the increasing corporatization of the music industry played an integral role in derailing the cultural dream.

Subject: Youth International Party (YIP)

1. Allegedly conceived during a New Year's Eve party on 31 December 1967 in Greenwich Village, New York City, the YOUTH INTERNATIONAL PARTY (YIP) has been referred to as "the first attempt to give social direction to the drug movement." The "founders" of YIP included: Jerry Clyde RUBIN, organizer and leader of numerous demonstrations opposing U.S. activities in Vietnam; Abbot [sic] Howard (Abbie) HOFFMAN, hippie leader at the 1967 Pentagon demonstration; Paul J. KRASSNER, editor of The Realist; Edward SANDERS, leader of "The Fugs," a rock group; Keith R. LAMPE; and, possibly, Stewart Edward ALBERT, active opponent of the Vietnam war.

2. The first published announcement of the formation of YIP appeared in a "throwaway" on a Liberation News Service letterhead as a 16 January 1968 press release datelined New York City, with HOFFMAN, RUBIN, KRASSNER, and SANDERS listed as founders. What the founders had in common was the use of LSD, other mind-expanding drugs, and marijuana. They considered themselves "revolutionary artists" devoted to the "politics of ectasy [sic]." RUBIN has described their politics as "wild in the streets." Both RUBIN and HOFFMAN glory in violent encounter with authority.

3. The YIP has no leaders, no elected officers, no formal structure, no members. It is not a real organization, but has been functioning as a sort of New Left coordinating group, utilizing the extensive underground press network to broadcast "its gospel of protest and ridicule of the establishment." RUBIN, HOFFMAN, and KRASSNER have been described as "non-leaders" who have given "credence" to YIP myths by "their prestige in the news media."

4. In early March 1968, an undated YIP announcement of "an international youth festival" in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention in August was distributed. In this, the YIP was referred to as "a new coalition of forces." The announcement urged the public to participate. At a news conference in Chicago on 25 March, spokesman for the New Left and anti-war groups announced a coalition to cooperate with the YIP on the August "love-in" in Chicago. Allen GINSBURG [sic] and Dr. Timothy LEARY had attended the weekend planning conference preceding this announcement as "YIP observers." The YIP then wrote Mayor Daley of Chicago requesting facilities in the parks for "thousands" of young Americans who would be coming to Chicago in August. RUBIN announced on 19 March YIP plans for offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. At a May YIP meeting, HOFFMAN announced there was no YIP movement in Chicago and that the Blackstone Rangers had no interest in YIP plans.

5. On 14 April the YIP held a music festival in Central Park, New York City. On 29 April LAMPE stated at a press conference that the YIP could call up 700 people in a half hour to prevent police from removing striking students from Columbia University. On the evening of 24 May, some 100 hippies led by RUBIN and HOFFMAN harassed police in St. Marks Square.

6. Planning for the Chicago Confrontation continued during June and July. HOFFMAN was the main speaker at a 5 August meeting of Veterans and Reservists against the war in Vietnam. He said that about 1,000 would be "trained" and that the day when the Democratic candidate was nominated would be the "big day." He further stated that the YIP would be dissolved after the Convention as it had been conceived solely for the purpose of countering the Convention. On 10 July a YIP survival manual prepared by HOFFMAN was published in New York in 10,000 copies. The $1,000 for this project came from the Urban Task Force through the Judson Memorial Church.

7. A number of YIPPIES were arrested in connection with the disturbances in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. HOFFMAN and RUBIN were indicted by the Federal Grand Jury in Chicago. Trial is scheduled in October 1969. RUBIN described Chicago as "a high speed, high intensity course in street insurrection."

8. After the Convention, RUBIN and HOFFMAN announced that the YIP would hold another "Festival of Life" in Washington on inauguration day, 20 January 1969. A group of YIPPIES participated in counter-inaugural activities, including the smashing of windows in stores, churches, banks, and other buildings, but they failed in their efforts to break up the inaugural parade.

9. On 13 February 1969, the YIP handled the mailing of several thousand Valentine greetings containing marijuana cigarettes.

10. The relationship between the YIP and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) apparently has never been overly friendly. YIP leader HOFFMAN, in the 3 April 1969 issue of "The East Village Other" charged SDS national office with failure to support the YIP and asserted his own agreement with charges by Black Panther Julius LESTER that the SDS was racist. HOFFMAN asserted that the SDS claimed to be the "vanguard of the white revolution," but had no national officers in trouble with the U.S. Government. He further stated that the SDS goal was similar to that of Castro's Cuba, i.e., everything free. HOFFMAN concluded his article by commenting that his "attack" on SDS was undertaken with the hope of ironing out differences between the YIP and SDS.

11. As of July 1969, the YIP had virtually ceased to exist as a functioning organization.

--CIA report, 1969

CIA Profile: Jerry Clyde Rubin

Jerry Rubin, one of two "Conspiracy 8" defendants who came to the Chicago trial under arrest and in the custody of U.S. marshalls, is a co-founder and leader of the Youth International Party (Yippies), and is said to be the "brains" behind the movement. He was a key leader in the 1967 student sit-ins at Berkeley; acted as coordinator of the October 1967 march on the Pentagon; and is an experienced organizer of war protests.

Rubin has been prominent during the trial, if for no other reason than his unconventional dress in court, a yellow and red-striped polo shirt, and the clowning he has indulged in with fellow Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman. He also, however, has featured as the target of much testimony by witnesses for the prosecution, who have related various incidents of his inciting demonstrators during the Convention riots in Chicago, some of which incidents have been detailed in previous Situation Reports.

Rubin was born on 14 July 1938 in Cincinnati, Ohio; graduated in 1956 from Cincinnati's Walnut Hills High School, which is described as having then been "the goal of Jewish mothers with sixth graders"; and in 1961 received an AB degree in American history from the University of Cincinnati. He attended Hebrew University in Jerusalem during 1962-1963; and upon his return to the United States entered the University of California at Berkeley as a graduate student in sociology, but remained for only two months. Thereafter, in the summer of 1964, in a group of eighty-four, he visited Cuba, in violation of State Department regulations, on a trip sponsored by the pro-Castro Student Committee for Travel to Cuba.

It was following this visit to Cuba that Rubin entered upon his New Left career. As one newspaper account expressed it, he became: "Jerry Rubin, public troublemaker, blocking troop trains in California, running for mayor of Berkeley, organizing the march on the Pentagon, getting busted in Chicago." The same April 1969 Washington Post account stated that, "At thirty-one, he lives in a strange man-boy world, completely cynical about manipulating the media, rushing to a TV set so he can see his 'rap' on the evening news, calculating what will drive adults up the wall...(but that) At the same time he is intensely earnest in his role as Marxist preacher to the young."

Rubin, in 1967, was an unsuccessful candidate for mayor of Berkeley, California, on a platform which opposed the Vietnam war and "American imperialism", and espoused Black Power and the legalization of marijuana.

In the fall of 1967, Rubin and Dick Gregory founded the Youth International Party; and in 1968 Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panther Party suggested that Rubin run for Vice President on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket, on which he was to be the Presidential candidate. (However, at the New York Peace and Freedom Party Convention in July 1968, another was named as "interim candidate for Vice President.") As of August 1968, when the National Democratic Convention began, Rubin was the Chicago organizer for the Youth International Party.

Since launching his new militant career, Rubin has been arrested on a number of occasions: On 24 August 1965, in San Francisco with a group demonstrating against General Maxwell Taylor; on 19 August 1966, in Washington, D.C., for causing a disturbance during a session of the House Committee on Un-American Activities; on 30 November 1966, for demonstrating on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley; on 13 June 1968, in New York City, on a charge of possessing marijuana; and twice in August 1968, during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, on charges of disorderly conduct, mob action, and resisting arrest.

Rubin can possibly best be pictured by quoting his own words, notably statements made by him in an article he wrote for Evergreen magazine (May 1969) titled: "A Yippie Manifesto". In this he describes the Yippies as a "revolutionary religious movement" and states that: "The religion of the Yippies is 'Rise Up and Abandon the Creeping Meatball!!' That means anything you want it to mean. Which is why it is so powerful a revolutionary slogan." Rubin promotes the much-quoted Yippie warning, "Don't trust anyone over thirty!", but says: "We are born twice. My first birth was in 1938 but I was reborn in 1964 in the Free Speech movement...I am four years old." According to Rubin, Bertrand Russell, age ninety, "is our leader."

Regarding the war in Vietnam, Rubin has stated: "The purpose of the Vietnam war is to get rid of the blacks. They are a nuisance. America got the work she needed out of blacks but now has no use for them." "It's a psychological war. The old send the young to die for the old." He sees the U.S.A. as "a military bully in Vietnam."

Some of Rubin's Yippie pronouncements:
"We fight to...do what we want to do whenever we want to do it."
"Prohibitions should be prohibited. Never say No."
"Rules are made to be broken."
"Property is theft. What America got, she stole."
"How was this country built? By the forced labor of slaves. American owes black people billions in compensation."
"'Capitalism' is just a polite schoolboy way of saying: 'Stealing.'"
(Money, according to Rubin should be burned and during rallies he often has demonstrated its burning. Wall Street businessmen are "money freaks".)
"America is a loony bin."
"America does not suffer a cold; she has cancer."

Rubin claims that young whites are dropping out of "white society" with its middle class institutions, schools and homes, and forming their own communities. "We are becoming the new niggers. ... Within our communities we have the seeds of a new society. We have our own communications network, the underground press. We have the beginnings of a new family structure in communes. We have our own stimulants." Their long hair, he says, "is vital to us because it enables us to recognize each other. We have whtie skins like our oppressors. Long hair ties us together into a visible counter-community." The "smell", (and by implication of the dirt) of which he says "white society" accuses the Yippies, he dismisses with the statement: "That's what they used to say about the black people, remember? They don't say that about black people anymore. They would get punched in their _____ mouths." Rubin's speech and his writings are larded with the use of four letter obscenities.

Despite his jester-like appearance and "kookie" ideas, Rubin is sometimes a keen analyst of human nature. He has noted that: "We (Yippies) are a new generation, species, race. We are bred on affluence, turned on by drugs, at home in our bodies, and excited by the future and its possibilities. Everything for us is an experience...we live off the fat of society. Our fathers worked all year around for a two-week vacation. Our entire life is a vacation." Another of his observations is: "The economy is closed. It does not need us. Everything is built."

Rubin frequently makes outlandish statements--some of which even he couldn't intent to be taken seriously. Others, he obviously does believe in and it is sometimes hard to tell what he actually means to say. For example: "Everyone in the world should vote in American elections, because America controls the world. The Vietnamese have more right to vote in the American elections than some 80-year-old grandmother in Omaha. ...I am in favor of lowering the voting age to 12 or 14 years. And I am not sure whether people over 50 should vote. It's the young kids who are going to live in this world in the next 50 years. They should choose what they want for themselves."

Rubin, like the other "Conspiracy 8" defendants, has spent much of his time during the last year lecturing to obtain funds; and he has continued his agitating even while on trial. On 14 October, the eve of Moratorium day, eh spoke on the Berkeley campus of the University of California to some two thousand students, following a talk by former Chancellor Dr. Clark Kerr during which James R. Retherford, former editor of a New Left newspaper at the University, threw a pie in Dr. Kerr's face and was arrested. Rubin spoke of the injustices of the Chicago trial--following which five hundred marched to the jail to support Retherford, and a rock was thrown through the Police Department window.

--Central Intelligence Agency report, 1969

CIA Special Report: Democratic National Convention

The following hard information has been received from sources considered reliable and represent the more noteworthy developments in the current demonstration and resistance atmosphere surrounding the Democratic National Convention.

At approximately 4 P.M., 28 August, about one hundred members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference including the Reverends Abernathy and Young, began a peaceful march to the Hilton Hotel. Augmented by thousands of Hippies, the original one hundred marchers soon grew to a crowd of from 3000 to 5000. Upon reaching the vicinity of the Hotel, Hippies in the group attempted to rush the Hilton and the conflict with police and troops was on. Prior to the outbreak of violence, Abernathy and Young left the march and departed for the Convention Amphitheater.

Early in the evening of 28 August 1968, thousands of dissidents gathered in Grant Park, heard speeches and pep talks by Dave Dellinger, leader of the New Left, Tom Newman of the Hippie movement and Dick Gregory. Many of the participants in this rally later moved on the Hilton Hotel and joined in the battle with the authorities.

Jerry Rubin, leader of the Yippies, was arrested during the height of the conflict and charged with inciting to riot. It had been reported earlier that Rubin had been frightened by the rough action and was going to remove himself from the scene.

Other dissident leaders arrested during the course of the day included anti-war spokesman Staughton Lind, Abbie Hoffman, a leader of the Yippies and David Wyatt, an official in both the Yippie and Hippie groups.

Picketing demonstrations, planned by the National Mobilization Committee, are to take place all day Thursday, 29 August 1968 at the following locations: U.S. Army Induction Center, Chicago Police Headquarters, Federal Building, Welfare Offices and major Loop banks that conduct business in South Africa.

Number dissident groups such as the Radical Organizing Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, Womens Liberation, West Side Organization and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference plan meetings and/or demonstrations for Thursday, 29 August 1968.

--Central Intelligence Agency, August 29, 1968

The Lost Chicago 8 Tapes

During the course of making Chicago 10, director Brett Morgen made an incredible archival discovery: courtroom recordings of the Chicago 8 trial, made by the court stenographer in an attempt to make sense of the proceedings. The reels had sat unlabeled in a Chicago archive for nearly four decades. While some of the audio had degraded, other parts of the tapes provided the basis for the voice actors' work in Chicago 10, allowing them to hear what lesser known voices like Thomas Foran and Judge Julius Hoffman sounded like. I've uploaded an excerpt from these recordings, which provides fascinating insight into the tone of the trial, here.

In a related historical note, the prosecution in Chicago 8 trial was able to listen in on private conversations of the defense with the aid of the Chicago Police and/or FBI. This information was made public in a judgment in 1981 where David Dellinger, Abbie Hoffman, William Kunstler, and Jerry Rubin had attempted to expunge their original Chicago trial convictions. Presented below is an excerpt from the trial judgment dated August 19, 1981:

One of the FBI memoranda indicates that United States Attorney Thomas Foran requested the FBI before the 1969 conspiracy trial to monitor closely the activities of the defendants and obtain any statements they might have made "to show possible admissions, to thwart a possible attempt to seek a change of venue due to publicity, and to show possible contempt of court before, during, and after the trials by the defendants and their lawyers." A subsequent FBI memorandum states that, during trial, Foran requested the FBI to record any statements made by the defendants, as such recordings "would be invaluable to prove contempt actions" and to demonstrate (in response to a request for change of venue because of adverse publicity) that "the defendants generated their own publicity."

Another FBI memorandum suggests that Judge Hoffman had ex parte conversations with Foran concerning both the defendants' possible claim of adverse publicity and the possible contempt citations against the defendants.

According to another FBI memorandum, "Chief Judge William J. Campbell (of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois) advised ... in strictist (sic) confidence that Judge Hoffman based on actions of the defendants and attorneys in the courtroom may call a mistrial and send all defendants and their attorneys to jail for contempt for six months." Another FBI memorandum indicates that Chief Judge Campbell advised the FBI that a subpoena served by the defendants on the FBI would be quashed.

Three of the documents indicate that the Chicago Police and possibly the FBI had surreptitiously attended and/or surveilled several meetings of the defendants and their counsel. It appears that information obtained in this manner (including trial strategies and potential arguments on appeal) was forwarded to Assistant United States Attorney Richard Schultz, one of the prosecutors at the 1969 conspiracy trial.

Another FBI memorandum relates to a threatening letter that was allegedly signed by "The Black Panthers" and addressed to two of the jurors. After Judge Hoffman showed this letter to one of these two jurors (who defendants believed was favorable to their position), she stated that she feared to remain on the jury. This juror was therefore replaced by one of the alternate jurors (who, defendants allege, was engaged to be married to a "patronage dispenser" of former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley). Defendants challenged the authenticity of the letter and requested that the district court order a full investigation. Judge Hoffman indicated he would do so. The memorandum from the FBI file, however, reads in part:

Assistant United States Attorney) Jack S. Schmetterer ... requested letter sent to Petersen family and King family be examined for latent fingerprints. He desired absolutely no other investigation or 'outside contacts' at this time. No investigation should be undertaken without contacting him or the USA Thomas Foran. Judge Hoffman concurs.