The Trial of the Chicago 7

NOTE: As I languish in Facebook Jail, I decided to go back through some of my unpublished and semi-published rants and raves from various online delivery systems. Most of these are responses to somebody's posts, blogs or comments. 
You may not agree with my point of view and that's okay. I may not agree with my points of view, either.
If'n you don't...feel free to comment.

October 18, 2020 (Unpublished response to the Lefsetz Letter blog post: https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2020/10/17/the-trial-of-the-chicago-7/)

Those guys were my heroes, politically speaking.

I was a Yippie kid in Norfolk in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. I was drawn to revolution and the Youth International Party’s penchant for embracing it with a sense of humor. Revolution for the hell of it...with the extra added attraction of chicks, acid and lots of smoke. That was after I discovered who they were during the 1968 Chicago DNC.

I made a point of going to D.C. for every action/demonstration I could. And I could go to many because I’d been expelled for writing on an underground newspaper at Norview High School. They took exception at being called racists, even then. There were lots of straight kids who weren’t like me, down below the Mason Dixon line.

Upstairs, I have a poster of the Yippie Manifesto. (Yes, we had a manifesto.) It’s like the one I had tacked to the wall of my bedroom. It espouses many of the same tenets we continue to yearn for to this day. (Attached is a picture and the text).

Look where it got us.  

I made it to the First Smoke-in on the National Mall…right next to Bob Hope, Pat Boone, Billy Graham and Kate Smith’s Honor America Day celebration. The cops tear-gassed us and the wind changed and they inadvertently gassed the straights. I remember helping freaked out families get out of the haze while admonishing them not to rub their eyes. That was revolutionary…in that situation.

I attended and engaged in the May Day demonstrations in 1971. The night before, again on the Mall, Jerry Rubin was, for all intents and purposes, reviewing the troops with his entourage. Bonfires had left a thick cloud of smoke hovering over the masses of kids prepping for battle the next morning...by getting high. I had recently finished reading his book, “Do It”, which had an entire page of the phrase “Fuck the first nun you see.” Over and over. I thought that that was not a revolutionary thought and simply a page full of filler. He could’ve done much better. 

The whispers in hushed tones began as he got closer to the bonfire my brothers and my friends had gathered around. “Jerry Rubin’s coming. He’s here and he’s coming.” Everybody was so reverent..like he was Abe Lincoln or something. 

I saw him and thought, “He’s just a little dude.” But that phrase of filler in a book I had paid for and read, filled my head. So I walked up to him and put my hand out and he took it. I said to him in the most serious of tones, “Mr. Rubin….I read your book.” He said, “How’d you like it?”. I responded “It fucking sucked…” He was repulsed and tried to withdraw his hand but I held on and continued, “But that’s okay. I’m here anyway.” And I let go. 

He and his entourage hightailed it out of there. My best friend said, “Damn, dude. You have balls.” Yet…to my mind I was just being a Yippie. Rubin, at that moment, happened to be the establishment.

Incidentally, the next morning our mission was to stop government employed commuters coming into Washington D.C. by any means necessary. Blocking bridges and roads leading into town. Rolling garbage cans into the middle of the street and shit like that. Over ten thousand people were arrested that day and detained at RFK stadium. My three brothers were all arrested. I got away.I was doing hit and run actions. They were not quite as nimble. After we got back to Norfolk I asked how it was being arrested and detained, expecting horror stories. To a man, (or boy, really), they said it was one big party. Cops didn’t search them as the normally would upon arrest and anybody that had pot or acid shared it with their jailed compatriots.

That I would’ve like to have seen.

Even though I ended up in California working for the War Machine in the ‘80s after my girlfriend got pregnant, I never lost that spirit. I continued to be active. Worked for Jerry Brown’s ’92 campaign in the Issues and Correspondence department, went to the Democratic Convention and was one of the few that stood in front of the three keynote speakers yelling, in Yippie-like fashion, “Let Jerry speak!”.  The rank and file conservative Clinton supporters were not happy. I took a lot of shit from them. I was loud And it was fun.

Later, I volunteered and worked on Tom Hayden’s campaign for governor of California. 1994. In Orange County. That was a trip, too.

I have many “war” stories and limited opportunities to share them.

Now I’m old. 

But Thursday, while in line for early voting here in North Carolina, I got to speak truth to power when the Republican chair of the Dare County Board of Commissioners didn’t know who he was approaching, to ask for my vote...

Like old times.

p.s.: I think Rubin died when he was hit by a car crossing the street somewhere in Los Angeles. Weird.

The text:

"YOUTH INTERNATIONAL PARTY

MANIFESTO!

WE ARE A PEOPLE
We are a new nation.
We believe in life.
And we want to live now.
We want to be alive 24 hours a day.
Nine-to-five Amerika doesn't even live on weekends.
Amerika is a death machine. It is run
on and for money whose power
determines a society based on war,
racism, sexism, and the destruction
of the planet. Our life-energy is the

greatest threat to the machine.
So they're out to stop us.
They have to make us like them.
They cut our hair, ban our music
festivals, put cops and narcs in the
schools, put 200,000 of us in jail
for smoking flowers, induct us,
housewive us, Easy-Rider murder us.
Amerika has declared war on our New Nation!

WE WILL BUILD AND DEFEND OUR NEW NATION
But we will continue to live and grow. We are young, we have beautiful
ideas about the way we should live. We want everyone to control their
own life and to care for one another. And we will defend our freedom
because we can’t live any other way.

We will continue to seize control of our minds and our bodies. We can't
do it in their schools, so we'll take them over or create our own. We
can't do it in their Army, so we'll keep them from taking our brothers.
We can't make it in their jobs, so we'll work only to survive. We can't
relate to each other like they do - our nation is based on cooperation
not competition.

We will provide for all that we need to build and defend our nation. We
will teach each other the true history of Amerika so that we may learn
from the past to survive in the present. We will teach each other the
tactics of self-defense. We will provide free health services: birth
control and abortions, drug information, medical care, that this society
is not providing us with.

We will begin to take control of drug manufacture and distribution, and
stop the flow of bad shit. We will make sure that everyone has a decent
place to live: we will fight landlords, renovate buildings, live
communally, have places for sisters and brothers from out-of-town, and
for runaways and freed prisoners. We will set up national and
international transport and communication so we can be together with our
sisters and brothers from different parts of the country and the world.
We will fight the unnatural division between cities and country by
facilitating travel and communication

We will end the domination of women by men, and children by adults.

The well-being of our nation is the well-being of all peace-loving
people.

WE WILL HAVE PEACE

We cannot tolerate attitudes, institutions, and machines whose purpose
is the destruction of life and the accumulation of "profit.”

Schools and universities are training us for roles in Amerika's empire
of endless war. We cannot allow them to use us for the
military-industrial profiteers.

Companies that produce waste, poisons, germs, and bombs have no place in
this world.

We are living in the capital of the world war being waged against life.
We are not good Germans. We who are living in this strategic center of
Babylon must make it our strategic center. We can and must stop the
death machine from butchering the planet.

We will shut the motherfucker down!

WE WILL MAKE OUR NEW NATION FIT FOR LIVING THINGS

We will seize Amerika’s technology and use it to build a nation based on
love and respect for all life.

Our new society is not about the power of a few men but the right of all
humans. animals and plants to play out their natural roles in harmony.
We will build our communities to reflect the beauty inside us.

People all over the world are fighting to keep Amerika from turning
their countries into parking lots!

WE WILL BE TOGETHER WITH ALL THE TOGETHER PEOPLES OF THE EARTH

Pig Empire is ravaging the globe, but the beautiful people everywhere
are fighting back. New Nation is one with the black, brown, red & yellow
nations.

Che said:
'You North Americans are very lucky.  You live in the middle of the
beast. You are fighting the most important fight of all, If I had my
wish, I would go back with you to North Amerika to fight there.  I envy
you.' "