Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin Call Supporters to the Antiwar Showdown at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention

The Realist. New York, September 1968. 16 pages. 10.75" x 8.25". In article titled The Yippies Are Going To Chicago" Jerry Rubin and Abby Hoffman pen separate retrospectives on the Yippie movement, its confrontations with police, and issue a call to arms to supporters to join them at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which had just occurred in late August 1968. In the article, the political pranksters lampoon McCarthyism, American militarism, and middle class conformity, but Hoffman concludes his piece imploring the reader to "use Chicago as a means of pulling your local community together. It can serve to open up a dialogue between political (truncated) radicals and those who might be considered hippies...Each can help the other, and Chicago... might well offer the medium to put forth that message." The Yippies were as much a performance troupe as they were antiwar activists, and they suggest their viewers "prepare a street theater skit or bring something to distribute, such as food, poems or music." Their disruptive style of political activism made them well publicized, particularly when the protests they spearheaded at the Convention escalated and Chicago police cracked down ruthlessly, beating numerous protesters. The arrest of Hoffman, Rubin, and their six "co-conspirators" was on the grounds of inciting a riot, in a now infamous court case where they were deemed the "Chicago Eight". This pamphlet documents the leadup to one of the watershed moments in the Vietnam antiwar movement, straight from two of its most central figures. In very good condition overall. (Inventory #: 19072)