Chicago Seven/Abbie Hoffman

[bezdomni]

Do you think the Chicago 7 and the Yippies were true revolutionaries or drug-addled morons?

If you don't know anything about the subjects, you should check out Chicago 7 Trial, Abbie Hoffman, or Youth International Party on yahoo.

[jagjkdfblfjasl;gj]

They were definitely drug-addled morons.

[flyby]

The trial of the Chicago 7 was a very important event in the revolutionary movement of the 60s.

The government picked people to put on trial for the ground-pounding confrontations at the 1968 democratic conventions.... and they wanted to make an example out of them (to portray the movement as "criminal" etc.)

And (in a rather brilliant way) these folks turned the trial around -- putting the system (and judge hoffman) on trial before the world.

They refused to comply. they refused to beg. They refused to compromise. They confronted, they defied, they mocked, they exposed.

Before the trial was over, Judge Hoffman had literally bound and gagged Bobby Seale in the courtroom -- in one powerful moment, capturing the mistreatment of black people in a way no one could avoid.

So this trial was "bigger" in a sense than the individuals on trial. But, at the same time, these were also figures that were really worthy of respect. Bobby Seale was the chairman of the Black Panther Party. Dave Dellinger was a leader of the antiwar movement who played an important and consistent role (and who was by 1968 even starting to question his own pacifist assumptions). Abbie Hoffman was the political satirist of the movement -- engaging in brilliant practical jokes and utterly defiant stunts that both amused and educated people.

And even the lawyers of this trial rose to great hieghts -- standing with their clients, getting sentence to prison for "contempt of court" and playing an important role in turning this legal farce around.

[kirov78]

Because their cause was a failure, they should be judged as such. They brought a black mark to the cause and their obsession with distracting issues such as drugs brought us no closer to a realization of proletarian aims.

[Hampton]

They had not "brought a black mark to the cause" because Bobby Seale was already in it probally before they were.

But the trials themselves were jokes and nothing came out of them besides bringing more attention to the eight who were involved and their voices.

[guerillablack]

They trials were jokes only one i have respect for was Bobbe Seale. Like the Young Patriots said, if they was in the trial with Bobby Seale, all of them would be bound and gagged.

[Eastside Revolt]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19 2005, 05:19 PM
They trials were jokes only one i have respect for was Bobbe Seale. Like the Young Patriots said, if they was in the trial with Bobby Seale, all of them would be bound and gagged.
I always wondered what happened to them?

[Sabocat]

If my memory serves me correctly, they were on trial for the demonstration at the DNC in Chicago.

It had very little to do with drugs.

The police arrested them for insighting/instigating a riot. A fairly serious charge. I would doubt at the time any of them thought it was a joke. It was an act by the government (facilitated by the court) to squash protest and dissidence.

[flyby]

Originally posted by redcanada+May 19 2005, 08:19 PM--> (redcanada @ May 19 2005, 08:19 PM)
[email protected] 19 2005, 05:19 PM
They trials were jokes only one i have respect for was Bobbe Seale. Like the Young Patriots said, if they was in the trial with Bobby Seale, all of them would be bound and gagged.
I always wondered what happened to them? [/b]
i don't agree, guerilla black.

First of all, Bobby Seale asked the other defendants to allow him to take his stand alone. He wanted his case severed from theirs, and he was bound and gagged for demanding to defend himself and demanding that his case be severed.

And when he was bound and gagged, they all fought to defend him -- they brought the trial to a stand-still, and several of them were given serious charges for "contempt of court."

So your assumption that the chicago seven were a "joke" and only bobby seale deserved respect -- well, it kinda overlooks the actual facts.

In fact all of these folks risked their lives and freedom -- for the struggle against this system and for each other.

[Severian]

Far from revolutionaries, the Yippies were frustrated liberals. Their rhetoric was an attempt to scare the ruling class into paying attention to them. The same is true of the Chicago '68 convention demonstrations...which were intended to be pro-Eugene McCarthy, and which was a resounding failure in terms of mobilizing the masses.

Depite the massive attention paid to it by the big-business media, those demonstrations were some of the smallest national actions in the history of the movement against the Vietnam War.

[flyby]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2005, 12:58 AM
Far from revolutionaries, the Yippies were frustrated liberals. Their rhetoric was an attempt to scare the ruling class into paying attention to them. The same is true of the Chicago '68 convention demonstrations...which were intended to be pro-Eugene McCarthy, and which was a resounding failure in terms of mobilizing the masses.

Depite the massive attention paid to it by the big-business media, those demonstrations were some of the smallest national actions in the history of the movement against the Vietnam War.
This is confused at best.

The Yippies were a very mixed bag -- they were not really an organized party or organization but a loose movement of politicized forces from the youth counterculture.

Quite a few of them were rather seriously trying to figure out how to defeat imperialism and build a radically different culture. And I have always respected Abbie Hoffman because he was, especially in the height of the sixties, on that tip.

Obviously there were major differences between the Yippies (who I knew intimately in many places) and more organized communist forces. They had a vision of building rebel communities that would defie and undermine the reactionary U.S> system and government -- and serve as base areas for both resistance and revolution. But they really had a rather vague (and ultimately) utopian sense of how all that would come about. But at the same time, they also worked hard to spread radical ideas and activism among the youth communities and campuses -- and often worked closely in support of the Black revolution (and the panthers who were under attack).

Abbie and others were full of hilarious practical jokes -- he was brilliant at guerilla theater. But you would have to be humorless (and completely miss the point) if you took his antics literally and try to claim it is all "an attempt to scare the ruling class into paying attention to them." :P

As for your remarks about the Chicago 68 demos -- everything you say is mistaken. Anyone who knows anything about them knows that the demos weren't "pro-McCarthy" at all -- though they did succeed in winning over significant numbers of McCarthites who had come to participate in the convention and were disgusted by what they saw. And obviously there is nothing wrong with WINNING PEOPLE OVER in that way from bourgeois politics, right?

And they weren't a "resounding failure in mobilizing the masses" in other ways as well. YOu can try, but you can't hide the simple fact that this was one of the most significant and pivotal events of the 1960s -- as virtually anyone who was alive then will tell you. The "big business media" tried to prevent these demos -- by putting out that they were going to be a massacre -- and people poured out anyway, with great courage and self-sacrifice. (Making it seem like the bourgeoisie built these demos UP is one of the funnier distortions I've heard in a while.)

Hope that helps give a little clarity to all this.

[Ricardo]

I know this thread is old, but I would like to know why anyone thinks they were drug addicted morons. Abbie Hoffman wrote several books, and his anarchist ideals are visible in many of them.

Also, Abbie Hoffman and his fellow Yippies organized one of the biggest anti-vietnam war demonstrations, when they amassed a huge crowd of hippies and attempted to exorcize the Pentagon.

Lastly, Hoffman wrote a book titled, Steal This Book, in which he wrote, among other things, about surviving outside of the capitalist society, and using it against itself.

[which doctor]

I know one of them is a professor at the University of Illinois. It would be so cool if I could meet him, but I really don't want to go instate for uni.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

So just write and find out if you can attend a class and meet.