Abbie Hoffman

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Abbie Hoffman, New York City, 1970. Photography by Fred W. McDarrah

Abbott Howard "Abbie" Hoffman (November 30, 1936 – April 12, 1989) was a social and political activist in the United States, co-founder of the Youth International Party ("Yippies"), and later, a fugitive from the law, who lived under an alias following a conviction for dealing cocaine.

Hoffman came to prominence in the 1960s, but practiced most of his activism in the 1970s, and has remained a symbol of the youth rebellion of that decade.

Biography

Hoffman was born into a Jewish family in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he attended Worcester Academy and graduated in 1955. He was a graduate of Brandeis University where he studied under Herbert Marcuse, a leading Marxist Critical Theorist associated with the Frankfurt School. In 1960, Hoffman married Sheila Karklin and had two children. They divorced in 1966. In 1967 Hoffman married Anita Kushner. They had one child, america Hoffman, deliberately named using a small "a" to indicate both patriotism and non-jingoistic intent. Although they were effectively separated after Abbie became a fugitive starting in 1973 and he subsequently fell in love with Johanna Lawrenson in 1974 while a fugitive, Abbie and Anita were not formally divorced until 1980.

Prior to his days as a leading figure of the Yippie movement, Hoffman was involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and organized "Liberty House", which sold items to support the Civil Rights Movement in the southern United States. During the Vietnam War, Hoffman was an anti-war activist who used deliberately comical and theatrical tactics, such as a mass demonstration in which over 50,000 people unsuccessfully attempted to levitate The Pentagon using psychic energy. Hoffman was also successful at turning many "flower children" into political activists. Another wartime trick was his announcement that the newest high was bananas inserted rectally. His hope was that Pentagon scientists would try this. ^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

One of Hoffman's protests was on August 24, 1967; when he led a group opposed to capitalism (and other things, including the Vietnam War) in the gallery of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The protestors threw fistfuls of (mostly fake) dollar bills down to the traders below, some of whom booed, while others began to scramble frantically to grab the money as fast as they could. Hoffman claimed to be pointing out that, metaphorically, that's what NYSE traders "were already doing".^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} The NYSE then installed barriers in the gallery, to prevent this kind of protest from interfering with trading again.

Hoffman was arrested for conspiracy and inciting to riot as a result of his role in protests that led to violent confrontations with police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. ^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} He was among the group that came to be known as the Chicago Seven (Formerly known as the Chicago Eight), which also included fellow Yippies Jerry Rubin and Juice Box, Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and several other radical activists, including future California state senator Tom Hayden. Abbie Hoffman's courtroom antics frequently grabbed the headlines; one day, defendants Hoffman and Rubin appeared in court dressed in judicial robes, while on another day, Hoffman was sworn in as a witness with his hand giving the finger. At sentencing (the convictions were ultimately overturned), Hoffman suggested the judge try LSD and offered to set him up with "a dealer he knew in Florida." ^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

At Woodstock in 1969, Hoffman interrupted The Who's performance to attempt a protest speech against the jailing of John Sinclair of the White Panther Party. He grabbed a microphone and yelled, "I think this is a pile of shit! While John Sinclair rots in prison ...". The Who's guitarist, Pete Townshend, unhappy with the interruption, cut Hoffman off mid-sentence, snarling, "Fuck off! Fuck off my fucking stage!" He then struck Hoffman with his guitar, sending him tumbling offstage. Townshend later said he actually agreed with Hoffman on Sinclair's imprisonment, though he made the point that he would have knocked him offstage regardless of his message.

According to Hoffman, in his autobiography, the incident played out like this, "If you ever heard about me in connection with the festival it was not for playing Florence Nightingale to the flower children. What you heard was the following: 'Oh, him, yeah, didn't he grab the microphone, try to make a speech when Peter Townshend cracked him over the head with his guitar?' I've seen countless references to the incident, even a mammoth mural of the scene. What I've failed to find was a single photo of the incident. Why? Because it didn't really happen.

"I grabbed the microphone all right and made a little speech about John Sinclair, who had just been sentenced to ten years in the Michigan State Penitentiary for giving two joints of grass to two undercover cops, and how we should take the strength we had at Woodstock home to free our brothers and sisters in jail. Something like that. Townshend, who had been tuning up, turned around and bumped into me. A nonincident really. Hundreds of photos and miles of film exist depicting the events on that stage, but none of this much-talked about scene."

Hoffman was arrested in 1973 on drug charges for intent to sell & distribute cocaine. He subsequently skipped bail and ran from authorities for several years. Despite being "in hiding", during part of this period under the name "Barry Freed" he successfully helped coordinate an environmental campaign to preserve the St. Lawrence Seaway. In 1980 he surrendered to authorities and received a one year sentence. On September 4, 1980 he appeared on 20/20 in an interview with Barbara Walters. Hoffman continued to be an influential radical journalist, contributing to the radical Ramparts Magazine. His Playboy Magazine article (October, 1988) outlining the connections that constitute the "October Surprise" brought that alleged conspiracy to the attention of a wide-ranging American readership for the first time.

Hoffman suffered from bipolar disorder (Jezer, 1993), and was found dead on April 12, 1989 at the age of 52. His death was caused by swallowing 150 Phenobarbital pills. He was known to have been distraught over his elderly mother (Florence)'s cancer diagnosis. ^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

His life was dramatized in the 2000 film Steal This Movie.

He was portrayed (by Richard D'Alessandro) in the anti-war protest rally scene at the Washington Monument in the 1994 movie ''Forrest Gump.

Quotes

(On the popularity of his book Steal This Book) "It's embarrassing when you try to overthrow the government and you wind up on the best seller's list."

"A modern revolutionary group heads for the television station."

“Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger.”

“The first duty of a revolutionist is to get away with it. The second duty is to eat breakfast. I ain't going.” -- in Chicago, while eating bacon and eggs in a coffee shop, to officers arresting him

“I was probably the only revolutionary referred to as 'cute'.”

“Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire.”

“The '60s are gone, dope will never be as cheap, sex never as free, and the rock and roll never as great.”

“I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.”

"You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists."

“Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.”

"I don't think my goals have changed since I was four and I fought schoolyard bullies."

"Political Pigs, your days are numbered. We are the second American Revolution. We are winning. Yippie."

Bibliography

Nonfiction

• Fuck the System (1967)
• Revolution For the Hell of It (1968)
• Woodstock Nation (1969)
• (with Noam Chomsky, John Froines, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Lee Weiner, Bobby Seale and Jerry Rubin) (1969)
• Steal This Book (1971)
• Vote! - A Record, A Dialogue, A Manifesto - Miami Beach, 1972 And Beyond (with Jerry Rubin and Ed Sanders) (1972)
• with Anita Hoffman (1976)
• Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture (1980)
• Square Dancing in the Ice Age (1982)
• Steal This Urine Test (1987)
• More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About Nuclear Waste Transports (pamphlet, unknown year)

Posthumous Nonfiction

• the Best of Abbie Hoffman (1990)
• Steal This Book: 25th Anniversary Edition (1996)
• (with Jonathan Silvers) (1999)
• (2000)
• with Anita Hoffman (second edition) (2000)
• Steal This Book (Four Walls Eight Windows edition) (2002)

Discography

Spoken Word

• Wake Up, America! Big Toe Records (1970) http://www.ubu.com/sound/hoffman.html

References