Читать книгу History of the Trial of the Chicago 7 - Bruce A. Ragsdale - Страница 50

Table of Contents

Jerry Rubin Courtesy of Bettman/Corbis.

Like his fellow Yippie, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin approached the Chicago conspiracy trial as an opportunity to present a critique of American society and to challenge the legitimacy of the U.S. government.

Rubin was born in Cincinnati and attended Oberlin College before graduating from the University of Cincinnati. He worked for a short time as a sports reporter and then enrolled in graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley. He quickly gave up school for political activism and traveled to Cuba. Back in Berkeley, Rubin participated in the Free Speech Movement in 1964. He organized one of the first teach-ins against the Vietnam War. He also developed a reputation for theatrical behavior when, in 1966, he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee dressed as an American Revolutionary soldier.

After an unsuccessful run for mayor of Berkeley, Rubin moved to New York where he merged his political activism with an interest in cultural radicalism. He joined with David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee to organize a massive protest against the Vietnam War in October 1967, and it was Rubin who proposed to stage the march in front of the Pentagon. With Abbie Hoffman, Rubin was one of the founders of the Yippie movement, and the two of them moved to Chicago in the spring of 1968 to organize Yippie events and to seek city permits for their gatherings in public parks.

In the week before the Democratic convention, Rubin appeared at a rally at the Chicago Civic Center, where he nominated as president a pig, named “Pigasus." (The organizers were arrested and the pig placed in the custody of the local humane society.) Rubin and other Yippies drew on their media skills to spread wild rumors of non-existent Yippie plans, including a supposed effort to put LSD in the Chicago water supply and a plot to place Yippies disguised as bellhops in the hotels serving convention delegates.

The Daley report on the convention demonstrations cited Rubin as one of the “outside agitators" blamed for the violence. While the grand jury investigated possible indictments related to the convention violence, Rubin continued his political theater. When the House Un-American Activities Committee in October 1968 held hearings on the convention violence, Rubin showed up “bearded, beaded, barefooted, and bare-chested," as the New York Times described him. At additional HUAC hearings in December, Rubin arrived at the committee room dressed as Santa Claus.

Rubin was convicted of intent to incite a riot, but the U.S. court of appeals reversed the conviction, and the government declined to retry Rubin on the charge.

At the close of the trial, Judge Hoffman convicted Rubin on fifteen charges of contempt and sentenced him to more than two years in jail. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed the convictions and remanded the contempt charges for retrial before another judge in the district court. The government prosecuted only three of the contempt charges, and Judge Edward Gignoux convicted Rubin on two of the charges and found Rubin not guilty on the third. The convictions were on charges related to a vocal attack on Judge Hoffman following the revocation of bail for David Dellinger and to Rubin’s appearance, along with Abbie Hoffman, in the courtroom in judicial robes, which they flung to the floor.

Rubin drew media attention again in the 1970s when he withdrew from political activity and started work as an entrepreneur. In the 1980s, he joined Abbie Hoffman on a campus tour dubbed the Yippie versus Yuppie debates. Rubin was killed in a pedestrian accident in Los Angeles in 1994.