Levitating the Pentagon
PAGE FIFTY-FIVE
Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were partners in crime through the social and political movements of the late 60's and early 70's. And though they often differed philosophically on some of the issues they were fighting for, they remained close personal friends until Abbie's untimely death in 1989. Jerry Rubin would die tragically just a few years later in 1994.
The schism in their respective politics was always there, bubbling beneath the surface, but it played out
dramatically in the 1980's. Abbie continued the 60's tradition of opposing the newly radicalized Reagan Right on both social AND economic grounds; he still considered himself a "Groucho Marxist," as he so often comically put it. But Jerry, while not abandoning his stance on social issues, became enamored with wealth creation and entrepreneurship like so many did in the 80's.
Here's a
video of Abbie Hoffman in Dec. of 1980, shortly after Reagan's first successful run for president, talking about his old friend Jerry Rubin.
But Abbie and Jerry's differences didn't seem to matter as much in the 60's. Their paths first crossed professionally in 1967 when David Dellinger of the Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam (Mobe) tapped Jerry Rubin to be a project director for a march on the Pentagon on Oct. 21st.
Abbie was directing a high profile project of his own, set against the backdrop of the broader Pentagon protest. The Yippie idea would not be conceived until a few months later, on
New Year's Eve 1967, but in Oct. of that year Abbie was beginning to hone his shtick and make his first big waves as a guerrilla theater activist. He proclaimed to the media that he and his group of proto-Yippies would chant and sing and dance around the Pentagon, causing it to levitate into the sky and be exorcised of evil spirits.
Obviously, the Pentagon never levitated as advertised, but some of those who were present, Abbie Hoffman included, claim they did see it move a little.
The Pentagon march was the first time Dellinger and the Mobe had tried something on so grand a scale. This strategy of organizing a broad spectrum of organizations toward a single, narrowly defined goal, coupled with Abbie's sideshow antics for the press, in many ways made the march on the Pentagon a dress rehearsal for the tactics deployed on Chicago.
Of course, the most famous and enduring image of the Pentagon protest was this one, when a blonde-haired, doe-eyed hippie flower child placed carnations into the rifle barrels of the MP's guarding the Pentagon --
But the idea of levitating the Pentagon, while raising Abbie Hoffman's career into the limelight, has also lived on to inspire even recent examples of political theatrics.
A group calling themselves "Recreate '68," who protested the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, evoked the same spirit, if not the same radical fervor as the 1968 protesters, when they
organized an effort to levitate the Denver Mint, and shake it vigorously, so that all the money inside would fall out and wealth could be redistributed across the land.
Here's a
clip of the local Fox News affiliate covering the event.
Google Bonus: Sometimes I find some interesting stuff while searching around for blog material. This is the underground single
Levitating Pentagon from the album Technoshamanism by the psychedelic hip hop duo
Noah23 and
Crunk Chris.
I really dig it. If I were still on MySpace, I'd totally make it my profile song for a few weeks.
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