> Hmm, among the Yippie High Command I think Jerry Rubin's a better
> target for the bony finger of indignation.
>
> Carl
>
It was Dana Beal and Tom Forcade that I'd point that bony finger of (opportunism accusatory) indignation at, ah but... opinions ARE like a-holes. Everybody's got one.
Jerry Rubin was high profile, but really, as far as I could tell, peripheral to the Yippie! lifestyle itself. He took himself too seriously. Even as a yippie/clown/HUAC invading mock guerilla, it was all business. I don't know that he had a "theoretical" bone in his body, but he was the do-it guy. Whereas Abbie hid his theoretical skills behind his "funny" bone and had a tendency to procrastinate whenever possible, like a thoughtful philosopher.
Abbie was more than capable of doing it... but he was watching the results of his "doings" quite carefully. Rubin seemed more impulsive which is why Bob Pearson, the Chicago undercover cop, glommed onto Rubin (as "bodyguard"), not Hoffman who, I know for a fact never trusted Pearson, probably "made him" for not-a-real-biker, and told me and (two names redacted) that he believed George Demmerle(Prince Crazie) was an informer. He was.
Like I said. Abbie watched his "doings", and was an astute observer of other peoples "doings", tendencies, and abilities.
He was also a master delegator, which I believe is how he attracted a bunch of apolitical hedonistic hippie types to the antiwar movement.
He saw they were yearning for a better, more humane world, and he showed them trust, and the socio-political techniques to accomplish their cultural goals. Orgs like Earth Peoples Park, and The Rainbow Family of the Living Light owed a great deal of their organizational abilities and existence to him. He spoke the "lingo", and lived it, shared ideas with kindred spirits.
He was repaid with loyalty, trust, and direct antiwar activism by a subculture of people who the "left" had never even attempted to organize. It would have been as futile as the laughable attempt to "join the factory workers in solidarity on the job" by all those SDSers and other "revolutionary" factions & "vanguards" (grrrr!) that I ignored as politically useless, or downright destructively dangerous when I was young, and are still proving their uselessness, and are still damaging the reputation of that large "umbrella" that the "left" resides under, on a daily basis.
Abbie was the right person for the role of being a hippie/yippie.
The rest is history, and history should judge Abbie Hoffman kindly for being the right person in the right place at the right time.
Leigh www.leighm.net