Abbie Hoffman

Writer and activist Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989) was best known for his anti-war protests as a leader of the Youth International Party in the 1960s.

Abbie Hoffman was born November 30, 1936, in Worcester, Massachusetts, and educated at Brandeis University (B.A., 1959) and the University of California, Berkeley (M.A., 1960). Like so many other activists of the 1960s, Hoffman was radicalized by participating in the civil rights movement. Among other activities, he founded a store—Liberty House—to sell products manufactured by co-operatives of poor people in Mississippi. In mid-decade he turned his attention to the war in Vietnam, which heated up just when Black Power was driving whites out of black freedom organizations. Hoffman's unique contribution, with Jerry Rubin, was to unite political activism with the emergent counter-culture. As a rule the two movements were antithetical, politics drawing young men and women into public affairs, the counter-culture attracting others to the private pleasures of rock music, drugs, indigency, and liberated sex.

Hoffman made activism glamorous, so to speak, by staging such media events as throwing money onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and wearing an American flag shirt on television. Hoffman's theory was that by ridiculing the symbols of authority one weakened its power as well. Deprived of legitimacy, Wall Street and Washington might wither away, or perhaps they would become so frail as to be easily overthrown. These hopes appear more unlikely in retrospect than they did at the time, when authority seemed discredited and many young people believed that the revolution was at hand.

Hoffman's Youth International Party, formed in 1968, was not so much an organization as a way of life. It enabled counter-culturists, known as hippies in their passive state, to express themselves politically without having to elect officers, pay dues, attend meetings, or perform any of the tiresome work associated with real parties. The yippies, as Hoffman's followers were called, assembled at irregular intervals to hold Festivals of Life. These gatherings featured rock music, guerrilla theater, poetry reading, obscene language, and other activities meant to delight the young and aggravate the old.

Their most publicized effort took place at the Democratic National Convention of 1968. In cooperation with the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam some 2, 500 yippies danced, sang, smoked marijuana, and advertised the virtues of their own candidate for president, a live pig named Pigasus. Poet Allen Ginsberg chanted mantras for peace. Hoffman inscribed dirty words on his forehead. All this inflamed Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, whose police attacked the yippies with clubs and tear gas, then arrested many for having provoked uniformed officers to riot. The result was a famous trial when eight demonstration leaders—including Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden of Students for a Democratic Society, and Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers—were indicted for conspiring to incite these riots. Most of the defendants abused and ridiculed Judge Julius Hoffman (no relation), destroying his composure. He had Seale bound and gagged, then declared a mistrial in Seale's case. The other seven were found guilty of various offenses, but as the trial had been a farce their convictions were not sustained.

This was the height of Hoffman's celebrity. With the war in Vietnam winding down and the turbulent 1960s giving way to quieter times Hoffman found himself at loose ends. On August 28, 1973, he was arrested for possession of a large quantity of cocaine. Claiming to have been framed, Hoffman jumped bail and went underground. The next seven years were busy and productive ones for Hoffman, whom the police could not seem to find even though he granted interviews to national magazines, served as travel editor of Crawdaddy magazine, and published two books and some 35 articles. In 1980 he surfaced and disclosed that he had been living for the previous four years in Thousand Islands, New York, under the name of Barry Freed. As environmental activist "Freed, " minus the long hair and beard of his yippie days, he had appeared on local television and radio, been commended by the governor of New York, testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee, and been appointed to a federal water resources commission. After serving a year in jail Hoffman returned to Thousand Islands where, as Barry Freed, he continued to campaign for the environment between engagements as a speaker on college campuses.

Hoffman's place in history will depend upon how much weight is given to his activities in the 1960s. Besides providing the young with a good deal of entertainment, Hoffman wrote extensively on behalf of social change. His Revolution for the Hell of It (1968) more or less seriously advocated transforming society by means of psychedelic drugs, rock bands, sexual freedom, communes, and the like. Similar themes informed many of his other books, which collectively sold over three million copies. He also figured in some of the most important events of the period. These included not only the Chicago demonstrations in 1968, but the earlier March on the Pentagon, October 21, 1967. At that event some 75, 000 demonstrators gathered in Washington, many following Hoffman's lead in attempting to levitate the great military headquarters building. Whether Hoffman's efforts did anything to shorten the war is doubtful. The methods he employed, though they generated an immense volume of publicity, were short-lived, as were the theories he advocated in connection with them. Yet, whatever the lasting results, if any, of his stunts, Hoffman is likely to be remembered as one of the boldest and most imaginative spokesmen for the counter-culture in its days of glory.

Although there is some controversy concerning Hoffman's death in 1989, it seems certain that he killed himself with a lethal combination of 150 pheno-barbital pills and alcohol.

Further Reading

Among Hoffman's own books are: Revolution for the Hell of It, New York: Dial Press, Inc., (1968); (with Jerry Rubin and Ed Sanders), Vote! (1972); (with Anita Hoffman), To America with Love: Letters from the Underground, Stonehill Publishing, Inc., (1976); and Square Dancing in the Ice Age (1982). Woodstock Nation: A Talk-Rock Album New York: Random House (1969.) There are several biographies of Abbie Hoffman, in varying degrees of quality. Hoffman wrote his autobiography, Soon to be a Major Motion Picture, New York: Berkley Books, (1980), the year he surrendered to federal authorities.

Since Hoffman's death a great many books have appeared which explore the details of his life and his socio-political views and actions. There is even an Abbie Hoffman website on the Internet which contains reviews of his books and discussions of his life and political actions. There is also a copy of Steal This Book, New York: Private Editions, Inc., (1971), which may be down-loaded. The original volume was self-published, rocketed to the best seller list and sold more than one-quarter million copies at $1.95, the original volumes must all be in private hands as no copies seem to exist in libraries, and book dealers are asking $100.00 per copy if they have one.

Abbie Hoffman's place in history may be that of a political prankster; however, many current volumes are discussing him seriously as a political activist, for example, David DeLeon's Leaders from the 1960s: A Biographical Sourcebook of American Activists, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, (1994); Marty Jezer's Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press (1992); Jack Hoffman and Daniel Simon's Run Run Run: The Lives of Abbie Hoffman, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons (1994); Theodore L. Becker and Anthony L. Dodson's Live This Book: Abbie Hoffman's Philosophy for a Free and Green America, Chicago: The Noble Press, Inc. (1991); and Jonah Ruskin's For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman, University of California Press (1996). □

THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO SEVEN

The Convention

In August 1968 the Democratic party held its national convention in Chicago. The Vietnam War and the civil rights movement were near their respective climaxes, charging American politics with tremendous ideological intensity. Two groups, the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE) and the Youth International party (Yippies) had been planning since early 1968 to conduct protest demonstrations in Chicago during the convention. Rock concerts were scheduled, parade permits were sought, and other preparations were made by the members of the two organizations. During the event there were repeated clashes among the crowds of protesters and the police and National Guard. Many were injured on both sides, and several protesters were arrested.

The Anti-Riot Act

Earlier in 1968 a group of conservative senators had added to the Civil Rights Bill of that year a provision which came to be called the Anti-Riot Act. The new statute made it a violation of federal law to travel in or use the facilities of interstate commerce with the intent to incite riot. After the convention Lyndon Johnson's Justice Department had drawn up indictments for violation of the act against five MOBE and Yippie leaders, plus three other men who were also involved in the protests. David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, and Tom Hayden were involved in MOBE, and Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman headed the Yippies. John Froines was a college professor and Lee Weiner was a graduate student. Bobby Seale was national chairman of the Black Panthers. President Johnson's attorney general, Ramsey Clark, refused to prosecute the case, but the newly elected Nixon administration decided to pursue the indictments.

Trial as Theater

From the inception the strategy of the defendants was to so disrupt the proceedings that no conviction could be obtained that would stand on appeal. In addition, the defendants correctly perceived that the trial would give them a priceless opportunity to publicize their views. To further heighten the confrontational atmosphere, the federal judge assigned to try the case, Julius Hoffman, was seventy-four years old and not known for his patience. Matters got off to a dramatic start when Judge Hoffman sought to jail four lawyers for contempt because they withdrew from the case before the trial started. In screening the jury the judge generally restricted the defendants' questions, particularly those relating to the attitudes of prospective jurors toward the Vietnam War, youth culture, and protests. Once the trial got under way the defense and the prosecution traded insults and generally offended the standards of legal decorum outrageously. At one point Dellinger charged that the defendants were being treated like Jews sent to the gas chamber. Seale was enraged that he was not able to be represented by his usual attorney, Charles Garry, who underwent surgery shortly before the trial started. After repeated attempts to prevent Seale from examining witnesses on his own, Judge Hoffman added his own touch to the proceedings by having Seale bound and gagged. Finally, the judge separated Seale's trial from that of the remaining defendants and sentenced him to a total of forty-eight months in prison for sixteen specific acts of contempt.

The Verdict

The trial dragged on for five stormy months. Finally, after hearing almost two hundred witnesses and after having been sent from the courtroom innumerable times while the judge and attorneys wrangled, the jury retired to consider its verdict. Matters did not go much better in the jury room than they did in the courtroom. The twelve members, ten women and two men, were themselves deeply divided. In the end feelings were so aroused that the groups for and against conviction could not even occupy the same room. Determined not to let the case be mistried on account of a hung jury, they arrived at a compromise. The two academics, Froines and Weiner, were acquitted of all charges. The remaining five defendants were acquitted of conspiracy but convicted under the new Anti-Riot Act.

The Appeals

While the jury deliberated Judge Hoffman sentenced the seven remaining defendants and two of their attorneys to jail terms ranging from two months to four years for contempt of court. The appeal of the contempt sentences and the appeal from the guilty verdicts were both heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in February 1972. In May the court of appeals reversed the contempt citations. It relied on a recent Supreme Court ruling that where the trial judge is the object of personal vilification and he waits, as did Judge Hoffman, until the end of the trial to cite for contempt, then a person charged with contempt is entitled to a hearing before another judge. In the main case the appeals court handed down its decision in November 1972. The Anti-Riot Act was upheld against the defendants' assertions that it was overly vague and violated the guarantee of free speech in the Constitution. However, the convictions were reversed. The court held that Judge Hoffman had not permitted the defendants' attorneys to question prospective jurors adequately about their beliefs and prejudices and about the impact of pre-trial publicity. In addition, the court said the judge had demonstrated an antagonistic attitude to the defendants and had not allowed certain key witnesses to testify for the defense.

The Aftermath

The government elected not to try the defendants again on the original charges, even though the appeals court held that sufficient evidence had been presented at the trial to support the convictions of Del-linger, Davis, Hayden, Hoffman, and Rubin under the Anti-Riot Act. On the contempt citations, retrial took place in late 1973. Dellinger, Hoffman, Rubin, and one of the attorneys, William Kunstler, were convicted, but the presiding judge decided not to sentence them to any time in jail. At last, the Chicago Seven trial was over.

Sources:

David Dellinger, From Yale to Jail, The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter (New York: Pantheon, 1993);

USA v. Dellinger, et al., Federal Reporter, second series 472, p. 340;

John Schultz, Motion Will Be Denied: A New Report on the Chicago Conspiracy Trial (New York: Morrow, 1972).

HOFFMAN, ABBIE 1936-1989

Social activist

Revolutionary Hedonism

Abbie Hoffman was a countercultural leader whose commitment to radical politics spanned the civil rights, antiwar, and environmentalist movements. When the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee expelled all whites in 1964, Hoffman moved into the hippie movement, seeing the counterculture as an arena for political change. He pioneered the idea that experimental use of sex, drugs, clothing, and communal living were revolutionary activities.

Street Theater

Hoffman, who was born in a middle-class Jewish family in Worcester, Massachusetts, and graduated from Brandeis University, was influenced by both Marshall McLuhan and Herbert Marcuse. His political career demonstrated his dramatic flair in using the media to promote himself as well as his unconventional Marxism. The generation gap, not class conflict, sparked his social and political revolution. With fellow hippie-radical spokesman Jerry Rubin he created the Yippies—the Youth International Party, which pioneered the use of street theater as a means of political protest. They made the 1968 Democratic National Convention a show-case for antiwar politics, parading a pig, "Pigasus," through the streets as a potential presidential nominee and calling for the legalization of drugs, free sex, and the abolition of work.

Outlaw

After a sensational trial for conspiracy to in-cite a riot during the Democratic convention in Chicago, Hoffman was acquitted in 1973. He was disillusioned by the dissipation of the intellectual fervor and political intensity of the 1960s but refused to market his celebrity. In New York City he was arrested for selling cocaine, went underground for eight years, and taunted the FBI like an outlaw hero. The movement's underground permitted him to create a new identity as a community organizer, Barry Freed, in upstate New York. In 1980 he negotiated a settlement of his legal problems with the police and joined the talk-show circuit after a brief prison term.

Suicide

But the 1980s were not fertile ground for a 1960s hippie media star, and after a lackluster campaign against the conservative policies of President Ronald Reagan, Hoffman suffered manic-depressive episodes and committed suicide in 1989 in a New Jersey motel.

Sources:

Abbie Hoffman and Daniel Simon, eds., The Best of Abbie Hoffman (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1989);

Jack Hoffman and Simon, Run, Run, Run: The Lives of Abbie Hoffman (New York: Putnam, 1994).