The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 451 - Abbie Hoffman - Part One

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine activist Abbie HoffmanSourcesTour DatesRedbubble Merch

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bilingual American History podcast each week. Bye! New glasses wearer. Man with feet. Lover of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Dave Anthony reads a story from American history to his friend. And Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what the topic is going to be about. Two things so yeah and Josh Alson who wrote History of Islands and is my co-host on on the West Wing thing podcast. He must go insane every time we do that intro because not only do you end that repetitious grammatically incorrect thing but I also start and change the sentence in the middle where I say you know I and then I switch to me being talking about something

then I say Dave Anthony as if it's not me. So it's it's got to drive the guy. You third person yourself and I preposition finale but I honestly have funny thing is I didn't say third person because if you call it third person Josh's brain also explodes because it's not technically third person. Why? I don't want to get into it. The man is a nightmare to be around. That's what I'm saying. I'm sure I'll be told for three months on Twitter why. Look just walk around with a funk and waggles in your back pocket and you'll be okay. Good Lord what is happening? We're having a fight with somebody who's not here. Oh okay. It's

like Twitter. Yeah. Yep. You're like you're like Twitter. No I am not at all like Twitter. People say people say how do you describe Gareth Reynolds and I say what if Twitter was a person? That is the that is very rude and offensive and not what I am. Twitter is actually killing me. Because I love it. Oh that's nice. Well thanks for bringing it around at the end there still. But hard to love. All right well let's keep digging and what I don't know what's happening anymore. Give it up. Stop and called it quote is jam patch. I'm the fucking hippo guy. Dave okay. My name's Gary. Wait. Is it for fun? And this is not going to come to Tickly Podcast. Okay. Now hit him with the puppy. You both present sick arguments. That's like the hippo.

No actually. No, he's done my friend. No. No. No. No. Roda. Roda in the car. November 30th, 1936, Year of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It feels like you've had a religious epiphany because that one felt sincere. Trying to get in tune with the court. Wise. Abbott Howard Hoffman was born in Worchester, Worcester, Wauk Harster. There's different ways you can say it. Yeah, Worcester. We all know they want to say, they all know, we all know they want to say Worcester, but there's letters. It is actually, it truly is, it's a mouth crime. It's horrific. I mean, you raise your children to learn how to pronounce things and sound things out, and then the first time they see that, they go,

oh, Worcester Shire. You're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's W-O-O-S-T-R Worcester. So Abbott was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. His parents, John Hoffman, and Florence were middle class and Jewish. On the back of a baby photo, John wrote, quote, hell unleashed. Wait, what? On the back of Abbie's baby photo, he wrote, hell unleashed. That is insane. What? What? He just, he knew. I don't remember going to hell. When did we go to hell? He knew. He knew that, he knew that the kid was going to be here. He knew he had a demon, so this kid is bad. He knew, he knew the kid was going to be a hell raiser. Knew he was going to be a hell raiser. Okay. Okay. Abbie had asthma, but he was very outgoing and very lovable. A lot of extended family members

died when he was young. So it was kind of a sad house, sort of. Soon he had a younger brother, Jack, and then a sister, Phyllis. So three kids. And Abbie and Jack shared a bed. And every night, Abbie would physically kick Jack, so he fell out of the bed so he could claim a larger part of the bed. I guess define sharing. Because to me, when you physically kick someone out of something, the sharing is done. It's less sharing than the word would imply. Absolutely. Yeah. Yes. They had a war over the bed. That's right. One sided. Jack said Abbie's asthma attacks were frightening. He ended up hospitalized two or three times a year. Okay. Wow. Now, they lived in a Jewish neighborhood. It's, you know, obviously it's Worcester. So it's a lot of Irish, a lot of Italians.

So they're accepted, but there's still a lot of anti-Semitism. It's one of those, you know, fine balancing acts of a Jewish middle class area. But they're very proud to be Americans at this time. The post-World War II years, they're very happy years. Abbie's a preteen. He loves, he loved pranks. He loved, he got a lot of fights. I don't have asthma. Abbie, your whole life. Gotcha. Prank. Prank. All those trips to the hospital were part of Abbie's pranks. So at the time, Abbie thinks America is a great country. He's like, I love America. Feels like that's going to change. It's definitely a kid who gets in trouble a lot, but the more he's punished, the more he acts up. So it's one of those, what are you going to do?

Yeah, you love it. But in high school, he hung out with tough kids. Okay. He started shooting craps, played pool, smoked cigarettes, and he started hustling up at pool and bowling, making a little extra cash. Sure. He shoplifted, then he started carrying a knife. This is literally all things that I did as a child. His brother, quote, the craft he studied to perfection was the street hustle. Okay. Abbie started hanging out with a couple of other kids when he was 16. So a little crew, they called Abbie the abs. Wow. He better have had me in six pack. Otherwise, that's like, show me. I'm fat. Yeah. It's, there's just jello stuff there. They called themselves the trio. They called themselves the Ruth Street stomping society.

Uh-huh. So, okay. Sure. So they're, this feels very of the time. That's right. Yeah, with the Ruth Street stomping society. Oh, you don't like that, do you? Boom, boom. Yeah. Yeah. Go along. Abbie fought a lot, but the fights usually came to him. So at this point, he has a reputation. So kids are always testing him and wanting to see what he's made of. So he's fighting a lot. Okay. He stole cars for joy rides. Sure. And he was very good with the ladies. Okay. Well, he always had that hot car. That's right. Jack, quote, nobody was getting laid more than Abbie. Nice. That's cool. That's, it's cool. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. That's hot. That's sweet. In 1953, Abbie was expelled from his high school. Now there's different versions.

Abbie's written, Abbie wrote a biography. So there's different versions, even his own telling of the story. One is that he got into a fight with the teacher, another is that a teacher ripped up his paper and yelled at him, and then he got into a fight with him. Another was that he just, in the paper, attacked God. And then that led to an argument and he got kicked out. So there's a bunch of different. Okay. Something definitely happened with the teacher though. Sure. So he goes to a private prep school. And in 1955, he's pretty much a greaser, but still headed for college and wants to be a doctor. Okay. So it's like that. I'm a bad boy, but I'm still a privileged, you know, kid. Right. Bad boy. Right. Yeah. That's

what, yeah. Right. Those are the best bad boys. I'm from the streets and I will cut you and then I'm going to be a doctor. Yeah. Yeah. Or you're just like, Hey, I know, why don't we go inside and steal it? Or let's put it on my dad's credit card. Badass. He got into Brandeis, the college. There he was heavily influenced by a Marxist teacher named Herbert Marcusa. So soon every leftist in the country is, every college kid leftist in the country is going to be reading a Marcusa. Right. He wrote like the, the sound book for the time for leftist. That's why you've got to abolish Brandeis. That's right. That's right. Yes. Yes. Yes. So, but at the time, this guy's teaching him, right? So, which is crazy. It's crazy to think of like, yeah. So many

of Abby's professors at the school are anti-establishment. He also learned a lot from Abraham Maslow, which a humanist psychologist. Maslow fed Abby's like desires to help oppressed people and like he sort of fed into that to get that. Oh God. Here we go. He's getting radicalized, learning about the oppressed. So then when he's in college, he learns all about the actual history of America that kids don't learn, that he wasn't taught in Worcester. Why didn't he have a podcast? A dollop history. Yeah. And so he started to get upset that he'd never learned the truth. And in the summer of 1958, Abby took a trip to Europe and he was in Paris and he stumbled across his first protest that he'd ever seen. What the hell is this? Hey. Oh, the fucking what?

That's right. What you've never seen one of these before? No. Yeah, we're fed up with, well, what, what is it? We're fed up with the government's shit, huh? Oh, they give us all the time as a plate of shit and they tell us it's spaghetti, but it's not spaghetti. It's shit. No, it's okay. No, it's not okay. No, you don't take a sitting down. No, you stand up. You make poster beard. No, I just eat the shit. No, the shit is not, but you know, do you know it's shit or do you think it's spaghetti? No, okay. So I'm American. So I eat the shit and then I get mad at people who point out that I'm eating shit. I'm American. Well, then, yeah, well, exactly. You're being forced fed shit. They tell you it's spaghetti. It's not spaghetti at all.

Look, why don't you join us? Maybe after this, you could get a real plate of spaghetti instead of continuing to eat shit and calling it spaghetti. Think about it. I'm eating the greatest food in the world, even though it's shit, but that's what I'm eating because I'm from the greatest country in the world. So I'm eating this shit because I like the greatest country. It's the greatest country. You say? Yeah. And I like freedom and that's why I eat shit. And let me ask you this. Who told you that your country was the greatest? Ooh, let me guess your own country. Huh? What are they supposed to tell you that you live in a shit hall that is just getting high on its own supplies the whole time? Or is it supposed to tell you, hey, you live in shit, huh? Maybe

you should fight back retaliate, huh? Your choice is yours, my friend. Do you want to be full of shit? Or do you want to be turning spaghetti into your sheets like a natural digestive track? We save you from Germany, motherfucker. That is propaganda. You continue to eat shit and ask for more shit. So I hope someday you get so full of shit you explode. And when you explode, you want something to eat and you're happy for to try spaghetti for once. Find us. Don't come to us looking for help next time. Next time you get invaded by England or whatever happens in 2030. You people, you people are unbelievable. You people always think like this, huh? You're so blind, huh? Your eyes are open, but yet you cannot see.

When you're ready, my boy, I'll have a plate of spaghetti waiting for you and some parmesan cheese and some pepper. And I will tell you to say when and when you say when I will stop putting pepper upon it. So Abby joins in this protest. He does know what it is. Hey, what is this? Where are we going? What are we shouting about? Yeah. Yeah. The whole area came alive with swarming, shoving students. I got clubbed to the ground, staggered up and ran following racing bodies. It was my first political demonstration, my first beating by police. To this day, I have no idea what the marching and clubbing was about. That's the best. That is amazing. Yeah.

Yeah. Back at college, he's all about politics and psychology and sports. He's a big sports guy, captain of the tennis team, chairman of the film society, president of the psychology club. He graduates with a degree in psychology and then goes to Berkeley to get his masters. Now that's San Francisco in, you know, 60. So there's a lot of shit going on. What's going on there? Something? A lot of angry poetry readings, Alan Ginsburg types in the city, stuff like that. Abby's still mostly a straight and narrow dude. A classmate at some point tries to tell him about the CIA and what it's up to. And this Abby responded, the CIA, what the hell is that? Like he just had no... I really thought he was going to take like a stance of like,

they're there to defend us. But instead he's like, I've never heard of it before. Those letters are out of order. Are you trying to do the alphabet? Yes. So Carol Chesman was a prisoner who had been convicted of rape and given a death sentence on completely circumstantial evidence. So a lot of people who were against death penalty were really rallying around him. And Abby became one of those people who thought he was innocent. And like tons of people, all these celebrities, even people in government, the government of California was like, I think he's innocent, but we still have to kill him because those are the rules. I mean, we need to find who's in charge and we'll stop them.

I swear to God, if I ever see myself, I'm going to give myself a piece of my own mind. I can't believe I'm overseeing this shit. So he's executed and Abby was outside the prison at a candle vigil and then they're driving home and he's like mad and he says, quote, how does this work? In a democracy, I mean, no one wants to see him die and the state still kills him. Like, yeah, I mean, it's an understandable issue with democracy love to be around today. He would be like, oh, cool. I often think about what it would be like if we had an Abby Hoffman. So two weeks later, he went to a protest of the Un-American Activities Committee that was being held in San Francisco and it ended with all the protesters being attacked by cops. So

it's first like beating by American police. Sorry. So I think you misspoke because you said it was a riot. No, no, it was a protest, the cops. Right. But we can edit this out, but you're slipping again because the police beat them at the end. Yeah. So they were rioting. It's a riot. No, no, no, no, they were protesting. The police would not intervene unless there was, it's a riot. So it's a riot. It's a police riot. No, Dave. Dave, no, no, the protesters are not peaceful. They're rioting. So go ahead, keep going with your story. No, they were just trying to get in and being there being held out and they wanted to get in and the police attacked them. So it's different. But they had a right to go in and watch, but they weren't allowed to. So they, I'll tell you what

they had was a riot to stay outside and get beaten because that's, it just, it wouldn't make sense. So what you're saying is I'm, I cannot connect the dots there. My mind is very little. Around this time, Abby's girlfriend, Sheila, who was still in Worcester, got pregnant and Abby drops out of college out of his graduate program and he goes back to Worcester and he marries Sheila. Right. Which might, which might still be Worcestershire. It's just, yeah. Yeah. At the wedding, his dad got drunk and kept talking shit about Brandeis. Yeah, the problem with Brandeis is, can I get another couple of ice cubes in here? I'll have one on the Brandeis. But I'm a Brandeis. They, you know, they, they tell you, Carl Marx is, I'm

forgotten Marx brother, if you ask me. It's probably, I'll tell you what I hate about Brandeis, it's a bunch of bullshit. A toast, a toast. Everyone gather around. To toast to everywhere that's not Brandeis, which is a total shit show and garbage. And yeah, that's good. All right. All right. Who wants to smoke a J-Bone? Abby's uncle walked around with one sleeve rolled up saying, quote, the kid's got a shlong the size of an elephant. What the, what the fuck? Wow. I should have, I went and sunk my teeth into the dad bit, but you didn't tell me that Uncle Cocktease was coming around the corner. Hey, he's, he's sung like an, he's sung like an elephant. And I ain't talking about the dick. I'm talking about the trunk. Huh? Who's with me?

Huh? This kid, I'll tell you what, when, I'll tell you what, when the mob gave birth, she said, is it a boy or a girl? He said, it's a dick. Oh wait, there's a baby attached to it. Hey, I'm telling you, I'm not kidding guys. I'm not kidding. I mean, this kid's dick is so big. One time he fucked the Queen of England, then he didn't leave America. This kid's cock is huge. He's got the biggest dick. Tiny little balls though, but they're probably just regular size, because comparatively to his cock, ooh la la. Wow. I'll tell you what, a lot of people think he built the railroads because boy can this kid lay wood. So, hey, good luck to the married couple, by the way, huh? And good luck to you, especially my dear, because ooh la la, this kid's cock is

huge. I do not envy you and I'm not, I don't want to get too deep into what's going on with you guys, but if rumor has it right, tonight you're going to be having fun, tomorrow you're going to look like you teach horse riding classes on the weekend. Ooh la la, ouchy mama wowie. So, the marriage turned out not to be great. They had, I know why, they had politics in common, they liked to fuck, but then that was about it. Their son Andrew was born on December 31st, 1960, and Abby got a job as a psychologist at the Worcester State Hospital. He started a softball game for patients and they didn't understand the rules, so sometimes they would hit the ball and run straight to third or straight to the pitcher's mound, and then Abby would just give him a big

hug and then walk him over to first. Well, that's pretty adorable. Yeah. Sliding into the pitcher's mound. Hey, you're safe, right here in my arms. Come over here, pal. Stand here. But the better his work life got, it seemed like the worst his home life was getting. Now, at one point, Abby convinced his brother Jack to see a psychologist, and it turned out the psychologist was just dosing people with LSD. Well, that, I've covered some of that territory in my last one. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was such an easy prognosis. I mean, just an easy diagnosis back then was like, well, it seems like you need to trip your balls off. That'll help. Put on some rolling stones and take this. So Jack tripped a couple of times with his, I guess, with his psychologist. Jack

Tripper. Yeah. Abby's marriage ended in 1962, and then after that, he started working on a Democrats campaign for a Senate in Massachusetts. So this is when the Democrats were in opposition party. I'll stop. He ended up, he ended up leading the effort in central and western mass, and he borrowed ideas from the civil rights movement on how to organize. But then the Cuban Missile Crisis came and the candidate attacked JFK for having a standoff with Russia or the USSR. Now, that would be like attacking Hillary Clinton and Deborah Messing's house. It's not, you don't attack, back then you didn't attack JFK in Massachusetts. So he was being in progress, but after he did that, he was just fucking annihilated. But during the campaign, Abby had

learned and he'd made a lot of connections. Sorry, he moved to New York City and he worked in a theater. So he went to shows. He watched Lenny Bruce all the time. He walked, you know, all that Greenwich Village sort of stuff. Powerful influence to have. Yeah, totally. So Lenny Bruce is like his idol. Wow. And then he and Sheila, she let some point decide to give it another shot. And they do and she gets pregnant again really quick. So I'm not surprised. So Abby needs a better job. So he gets a job as a pharmaceutical salesman. Okay. And Sheila decides Abby needs a cause to fight for and that'll help their, their home life. If he's putting all his energy into something that means something. Right. So she wants,

she thinks with a project, he will be a little less overbearing at home. Yeah, I think that's it. Now, Abby realizes with this pharmaceutical salesman job, he can get away with working about 10 hours a week and then doing, using the rest of this time for activism. Okay. Wow. It's amazing to think of a time where someone would work in pharmaceuticals and then be like, and I'm an activist. So Sheila's obviously encouraging him. This is their life for a little while. He buys a house, their second kid, Amy is born 11 days after Amy is born. JFK is assassinated. Abby quote, Kennedy often lied to our generation, but nevertheless, he made us believe we could change the course of history. Inspiration can come from strange and unusual places. Abby focused on

civil rights now. He organized a takeover of the local NAACP chapter by recruiting new members. Him and another guy, I think it was a Irish priest and then like a sort of radicalized black dude. So the three of them set about taking over this chapter. That sounds like a really one of those bad like rabbi priest jokes. Got an Irish Catholic priest, a black radicalist and Abby. Walk into the NAACP. Well, so they get new members to join, more younger radical members, and then they set up a direct action committee within the NAACP that bypasses the old leaders when they're making decisions on stuff. And meetings went from 20 people to hundreds of people. Pretty soon, the Worcester chapter of the NAACP is the most militant in the country.

Wow. Okay. Wow. Interesting. So they would file lawsuits. They would pick it. They would boycott the civil disobedience. One medical company who was doing business with Abby's dad's medical supply store called up one day to say Abby was lying in the front of their trucks, refusing to let them go by. Wait, who did that? So the company, so Abby's dad owns a medical supply store. Right. And they're saying... And a medical supply company calls up and says, hey, your kid is laying in front of our trucks. It's like, well, not my Abby. Good lord. His dad is furious. His dad thinks it's shameful that he's doing this. He absolutely hates it. But Abby's not going to stop. He published an activist pamphlet on how to get stuff done.

He raised money to send to people protesting for civil rights in the South. Okay. And then Abby went to Mississippi himself in July 1965. The FBI started keeping and filing, started making reports and filing them on the day he left. They had already been tapping his phones because of all the stuff he was doing in Worcester. Good lord. In Mississippi, he taught at a freedom school and then he marched at least once a day. He would often get arrested. And then... I'm just marching to work. Sorry. This is over. That's work. The thing is, you should have walked and not marched. But it was more of a trot. I'm just in a rush. Your knees wrap a little bit and that's...

Barely. Can may I show you my march stance? My march stance is this. That is marching. This is trotting. This is a trot. This is the South. We don't have trotting here. That's an arrest thing. We arrest you also. Are you trotting for black people? I was trotting to a movie this time, but I marched for black people. The black people in the movie? Yeah. Yeah, you're under arrest. God damn it. Why didn't they get you in the face? Ow. Jesus Christ. Hey, not so smart. Now are you? That's right. I moved here. Yeah. So when he comes back to Worcester, he knew tons about organizing and...

Sorry, New York City. No, wait. He's in Worcester? Yeah, Worcester. So when he returned to Worcester, he knew tons about organizing and protesting. And he was all doing the SNCC, which is the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee. So that's a more young, radical group who thought MLK and his movement was going too slow. So more on the Malcolm X end of things. Yeah, a little more Malcolm X-y, a little more like, yeah, let's just get shit done. We don't have time for your slow bullshit. Stuckley Carmichael was one of those leaders. Abby became friends with him. Carmichael popularized the term black power, which included black self-reliance and using

violence as a means of self-defense. So they were actually together at the Newport Folk Festival and Abby and Stokeley were beat up together by cops. You just put a little best friends song over that. Just a couple of guys getting to know each other. Because we're best friends. Yeah. You know, you don't really have a good friend unless you're beaten bloody by cops together. I mean, that's sort of how... So Vietnam is really starting to get going. Abby and Sheila went to their first peace protest together in Worcester.

Not a peace protest. That's right. Take that hall steps of Congress, puddles of urine everywhere. The peace protest was at home. That was a different thing. I like carrots. So this is a time when you didn't protest wars in America. It just wasn't done. You were just immediately a traitor and a communist. That was it. The cops did nothing when local white guys beat up the protesters. Which sounds crazy. How could that happen? Yeah, it'd be just hard to put that anyway.

And then Abby starts experimenting more with drugs. An old friend, Manny, is now an army psychologist and the government, of course, is doing LSD experiments. So they have access. And so Manny and Abby start doing acid. In 1966. And then the drug company that he was working for suddenly realized how little he was actually working and he was fired. So all this time, all this stuff he's doing, he's been working. I don't know what happened when he went to the south. I don't know if he totally was still working. That's quite a meeting, Abby. So I've been going over your work log here. And well, it doesn't appear that... Did you move to Mississippi?

No, that's just a filing error. I've been here working pretty hard, putting it about 50 hours a week. Love this company. Love it. Just a lot of evidence to suggest that you are a full-time radical at this point. Oh my God, your head just got like five feet. I just, it just... What? What does that mean? Nothing. I'm good, man. I'm riding it out. Look, okay. We are in drug sales. That's what we do here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know, I know, I know.

Let me finish, please, and stop opening your eyes so wide for a minute. It's just your hand. There's no need to wave in front of that. Well, when you wave it, you can see after it. Abby, look, listen. Yeah, we were looking for someone who would actually work for the company. We're all looking for someone. We all are looking... It's come to my attention. Get off the desk. Get off of the goddamn desk. I was hiding there. We are looking for someone who's going to work for this company.

Oh, that's me. Coming up here. No, it's... You've already been hired by the company. We hire... This is not a hiring meeting. We hired you. Huh? Let me just say one thing. I don't think anyone's hired you. No, no, what? It's in anyone else. I think that we're all equal. There's no one higher or lower. Everyone's equal. No, you are absolutely higher than I am. Not in the echelon of the company,

but as far as what is going on with you. You're clearly on drugs. You've not been working. Yeah. Since we had you hired, you moved to Mississippi. You've been fighting for the NWACP. This is a far... You're a salesman, goddamn it. I mean, look at this. A lot of your receipts say, I owe me. What the fuck does that even mean? It means I owe me. This is just a unicorn drawn in crayon.

That's one of the things I owed me. I said... Look, you are terminated. Okay? That's it. You're done. We're done. You're done. Can I just ask you a question now? I really would rather if you didn't. Can anybody really be terminated? Absolutely. You, right now. Okay? We've paid you a lot of money. And yet, I'm still here, right? So have I been terminated?

Yes. We're at the end of this meeting. You will now leave. Okay? Get out. Do you want me to, like, just, like, break off into molecules? I don't have the tools to answer the question you just asked. Okay. I have a tool that'll help you answer the question. No, no, no, no. Just put this... No, no, no.

Put this on your tongue. Put it on your tongue. Hey, so I was talking to Abby and, like, while I was firing his ass, he made a great point that we're actually all just galactic rainbows pulsating through these forms that are not real at all. And the soul is actually what flies, baby. The soul's the fucking kite, man. That's what we're after. So while firing, Abby, I made him the fucking CEO, dude. Wow! So... Let's get this skin off.

He does get fired. And... He didn't, Dave. Didn't you just hear the recollection? Yeah, yeah, I know. But in reality... He gets promoted, CEO. No, it doesn't happen. So he gets fired, and when he gets fired, he turns in his company car, and that's when they realized he had SNCC, personalized license plates, and that he...

Wait, he had the nonviolent... He had the militant version of application. Jesus Christ! How did we let this happen? But... And then they realized that he had paid for the plates with his expense account. God damn it! Look at the side! But I just love... Black Panther! I just love that he's living in a time when it's...

It's incomprehensible to a company that someone would do that. Yeah, yeah. And he's just like, well, I wonder if they'll notice. Yeah, that's the way you do it. Yeah, no, it is always enviable of like to go back to... It's probably like being a murderer before DNA. It's just like to be able to like have the ability to just be like, wow, this system is actually so easy to cheat.

Yeah, so Lenny Bruce dies, and if you don't know about that, he was basically slowly killed, his spirit by police. And Abby really identified with Lenny Bruce. His brother believes that Bruce's death urged Abby to get more involved. And then Abby and Sheila split up again, and he moves to New York City. And as he's driving in New York City, he tells the guy he's riding with that he felt like, quote, a kid's shortstop being called up to the majors. So he's 33 years old.

He's been an activist for 10 years, and now he's like, I'm gonna fucking dive into this shit. It's time, right. So 1966, it's going off. It's the 60s, the sexual revolution, drugs, music, crazy clothes, long hair. It's all counterculture, like, you know, we're blowing it up. Abby's not a hippie. He still looks like a straight-laced SNCC staffer, like a political guy, you know.

Undercover, it's important to have those. But he's open to stuff. And he began saying he's a Marxist. That winter, all white members were kicked out of the SNCC when Stokely Carmichael became the leader, and Abby was livid. And he wrote an essay, and it was published in The Village Voice, and it said, most poor people were still white, and the struggle should be about class struggle, not racial.

Quote, trust is a sharing thing. And as long as Stokely says he doesn't trust any white people, I personally can't trust him. It doesn't matter how beautiful he thinks I am. Stokely had said publicly that he thought he was beautiful. So everyone reads this, and tons of leftists are pissed, and liberals fucking love it. Liberals are like, yeah, so all these New York City liberals love him. Abby gets a little bit of notoriety.

He's like the talk of cocktail parties. And then media starts reaching out to him for quotes to get him to talk shit about the SNCC. He's like, you're the problem. That's right, Abby. We heard about your revolutionary tactics, and we just had to have you over to the house. God, you really are quite a warrior, aren't you?

So then Abby writes a longer piece and said, when any of these people had reached out, he told them, quote, President Johnson is a bastard. This is a family quarrel, and you are not members of my family. Well, Abby, I speak for the press when I say that only makes us want you more. So then a little while later, Carmichael and Abby found themselves together in someone's house in DC, and Carmichael ribbed him about writing the articles,

and then Abby gave him shit back. And so they're just like old friends again. They just had a disagreement, still on the same team, still fighting establishment. Nothing has changed for them. So Abby read a lot and soon believed. I would like to think that that moment was set to music where they both sang.

Yeah, something, you know. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, we got the powers that we're trying to fight. You are black, I am white. It's like the Sinatra Stevie Wonder sketch. Yeah, yeah, it's good. Thank you. So Abby's been reading a lot, right, for a while,

and he now believes that communication is as important today as labor was to Marx's industrialized world. Okay. Quote, a modern revolution group headed for the television station, not the factory. If you were serious about politics, you could not ignore entertainment because then you're not taking it seriously.

That's right, right? So, quote, if we were the TV generation, wasn't there a way of speaking that evoked visual images rather than spewing forth dead words in rhythmic religious procession that bounced off dulled eardrums and dissipated into empty space? So he's understanding. So basically, he's like, their system sucks,

but we need to use it. Well, I think it's a, I think it's a very sort of valid thing, which is if you go in the 1800s and you watch a guy speak, why would you do the same thing now when you have television? Take it to the next place. Well, and when the country is completely captivated by it, too, and it's being used, it is being used to manipulate. I mean, you know.

Yes, 100%. So he understands there's a powerful new media. So at the time, there was a San Francisco performance group called the Diggers, and the Diggers started using performances that saw revolution as a celebration. So they encouraged people through their performances, they point out the terribleness of our system, the terribleness of capitalism, but they do it in a fun way,

hoping that we'll make people aware of the problem and draw them in at the same time. Right, right, right. Right. Seriousness of protest was out and replaced with fun. One time when San Francisco was too slow to respond to a rat crisis, the Diggers came to City Hall blowing whistles dressed as pied pipers. Okay.

It's, I can see it's just, when you look at it through the prism of today, you're like, well, that seems crazy because it's like today, they'd be like, beat them. The Diggers opened a soup kitchen and had, they had music and dancing in the soup kitchen. They believed in a cash to society, free clothes, free housing. And at one point some Diggers came to New York, Abby had heard about them and liked their work,

and he met them and then kind of co-opted their thing. Okay. With other activists, Abby opened a free store, the Liberty House, mostly clothes, but just free stuff for people in the Lower East Side. Right. And now local media is catching on Abby and they love Abby. He's very infectious person.

Okay. Okay. The New York Post called him their favorite happy, which was a take on hippie, like he was a good hippie, as opposed to happy hippies. Right. Right. Same with the yuppies. That's right. Never good.

Abby came up with, Abby came up with ideas to help people on the Lower East Side, like blocking traffic on St. Mark's place and replacing it with a walking mall and bands, but cops came in and beat everybody up and broke it up. So by 1966, Abby had pretty much become a hippie. Okay. But he was organized and wanted a sociopolitical movement,

as opposed to just dropping out. He at one point led a group to Macy's, and they all had free clothes to give out to shoppers. But every time they tried to give a shopper a free piece of clothing, the shopper rejected it. So to Abby, this showed that they were living in a closed, miserable existence compared to the generous and accepting diggers who were just like, yeah, I'll take it.

Meanwhile, Macy's was like, we're not sure how to handle this. We have, well, no, they're not stealing our clothes. They're giving, it's not okay, but it's fine, but it's illegal, but hard to prosecute. But it's such a great way to point, because you can argue with someone forever, but if you go in and say, oh, you need clothes, here's clothes, and people go, no,

then you're pointing out that they want something more, right? They don't just need clothes. Right. So one day a group of kids in his neighborhood were arrested for smoking pot. So Abby led a group to the precinct to demand their release. And he laid down and blocked the precinct door. He's just laying there and saying a recipe for laying here.

Okay. And then the captain says, look, those are kids, you guys are hippies, you have nothing to do with each other. And then Abby was detained, but not arrested, when he said, I smoke pot with the kids. So he's trying to make it so he's with the kids. Right. They're like, this is a really legal gray area.

So he's still not arrested. So then Abby says, look, I'm going to burn down the precinct. And the cop's like, no, I'm not going to arrest you. No, that's what a great game that must be to play. I'm going to burn down the precinct. No, I'm going to kill you. Nope, I'm going to kill your family. Stop it, but no, I'm going to burn your family alive.

Knock it off. No, I'm going to blow up earth. No, how so in the lobby, he yelled at the captain to arrest him and the captain ignored him. And then he saw a trophy case and he kicked it to pieces. And the captain yelled, now you're under arrest. And Abby yelled quote about fucking time. Jesus Christ. I mean, there surely there was like a black person going like, oh, cool.

That's cool. Arrest me. Like, oh, so that's how it works for that. Oh, that's awesome. That's cool. That's cool. What Abby was trying to show is that the police were trying to divide the hippies and the kids. And he was trying to say, no, we're all, we're all together.

Right. Right. He spends a night in jail, points out, keeps pointing out this is divide and conquer. This is what they do. After this, Abby fell in love with Anita Kushner in 1967. She was volunteering. Jared's mother. That's right.

That's right. She was volunteering at the Liberty House, the place where they gave away free stuff. And pretty soon they're living together. It's fast. It's hot and heavy. She had never done drugs or been to a demonstration and he got her in all that really fast. Oh, wow. Now the diggers in SF had held what was called a bee in in January 1967 in the park.

It was a one day event. It was basically what the summer love would become, but it was one day. Right. And Abby and some others put one together for Central Park and 30,000 people shut up and they just hung out and they got high and they made out and they just did shit. Right. Yeah. They're just there.

They're being. Yeah. A bee in Abby quote. Everybody high on something. Balloons, acid, bananas, kids, skyflowers, dancing, kissing. I had a ball totally zonked. Dude, you've got to hit this banana, dude. This shit will fucking you will trip your balls off, dude.

This banana is like next level, Nana, dude. I'm on so much be right now. I'm like, not sure which one to peel anymore. Well, he said you get high on anything you wanted and he had a radio show for a little while and a guy called up and said, I know how to get high on a grapefruit, man. You just cut it in half and eat it. All right. We're going to go back to the phone lines.

Call her to. Hey, man, it's me again. Oh, God damn it. It's a pretty complicated process, man. You got to cut it open and then you got to eat it and then say good night to earth. Dude, it's blast off. On April 29th, 1967, a support the Vietnam War March was being whatever was called support Vietnam.

Age as well. I don't think it was officially a war. Oh, not support the war. Support the war. This is a support the war. But it's not, but it's not a war. So they had to be called like support Vietnam, I suppose. So it's being put on by the veterans of veterans of foreign, foreign wars.

Okay. Who I think, who I think if I'm not, who I think didn't allow Vietnam vets in afterwards because it was never officially a war. Anyway, so it's this big pro war march and Abby and another activist put together a little group which they called the flower brigade who had flowers. There were about less than 20 of them. And then when the march started, they just kind of slipped into the middle of the march. And the day before, Abby had called the media and he had told them where to be and when to

be there. And sure enough, at exactly that place, the veterans of foreign wars started beating the shit out of the 20 flower brigade people. And it's all recorded by the media. So the pro go war guys look like fucking monsters. Yeah. Because he's got the other people carrying flowers and saying, getting beaten.

Right. Yeah. So Abby and another activist managed somehow to become the mayor's paid liaisons between City Hall and the East Village. Okay. Wow. So as part of his job, he wrote a pamphlet called Fuck the System, which was a guide how to get free stuff and how to steal stuff, which is what he learned from the diggers.

They were immediately fired after they did that by the mayor. That's not okay. So the diggers co-founder Peter Coyote was furious. Quote, Abby, who was a friend of mine and always a media junkie, we explained everything to those guys and they violated everything we taught them. Abby went back and the first thing he did was publish that book that blew the hustle of every poor person on the Lower East Side by describing every free scam then current in New York, which were then sucked dried by disaffected kids from Scarstale.

So yeah, right. So I mean, was his goal, his goal was not to do that, obviously. His goal was to promote it to sort of show the faults within the system. Yeah. There's two different things happening. One thing is like just on a base level, how to get what you need to get to survive and get by. And then Abby is taking it to the level like, well, I can undermine society and how it thinks by doing this.

So it's like, I'm right. Yes. And yes. And then the short term completely undercutting it and right. And of course we can do it. Yeah. Yeah. What is in the long term, right?

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Abby thinks he's creating a revolution by doing these things. He thinks that these things are going to have a profounder effect and make people think about

how they're doing things. Wake up, yeah. Yeah. It turns out people never think about how they're doing things. No. So Abby and Anita got married on June 8th and Abby came up with more and more ideas to get media attention and reach people. He hated it when people said he was getting attention for himself instead of what he was

doing, which was being political and making points. Mm-hmm. He saw his performances and events as organizing and revolutionary acts, right? Mm-hmm. They were fun, but they were very serious at the same time. In August, Abby called the New York Stock Exchange and said he was George Matesky, and he was asking about tours of the Stock Exchange. Now, George Matesky was known as the mad bomber, and he had bombed a bunch of places in New York,

or Wall Street, being one, in the 40s and 50s. He's like, hey, it's me, the bombing guy. Can you walk me through how the floor is laid out there? So hilariously, probably just a little inside joke for himself, and they didn't notice. So they gave him the tour info, and then on August 30th... What? George, we'd love to have you. You sound like a real diligent fellow.

Got a bunch of head full of questions. On August 30th, Abby got 12 friends together, and they dressed in the most exaggerated, crazy hippie clothes that they could find. Which is saying something. And they had $301 bills, and on the tour, when they get to the gallery, which overlooks the Stock Exchange floor, they take all the money out, and they just throw it over. That's like throwing bird feed to pigeons. And so some of the stock boogers were like, boo, but a bunch of them still scrambled and

fucked with the money. Give me that dollar, give me that fucking dollar, I'll fuck your dick or I'll kick your ass, just give me the dollar. So that's a pretty fucking hilarious site. These guys scrambling for dollar bills. Yeah, meanwhile, one guy's dressed like a flower. They're like, what the hell's going on? The press has been alerted.

They can't have TV cameras inside, so it's all written. But it exposes Wall Street and Capitalist America. But the truth is exaggerated when people write things. Some people said it was $100 bills. Some people said it was monopoly money. But that all works into what Abby wants. The first trillion dollar bill ever thrown. But his whole thing is to like, if you can break through the system and make it seem

fantastical and ridiculous, then you're winning. Different versions of it are fine. After the New York Stock Exchange, after that happened in the New York Stock Exchange, they installed bulletproof glass around the gallery. Because do you know that George Matesky came in here and threw a bunch of money on the ground? We'd give him a tour. That also makes his point, right? Like then they put a bulletproof glass, which is just like a stupid, pranky thing.

And that's your answer. There was not a gun. That's it. So it all plays into what he's talking about. Anti-war organizations are demonstrating in DC in October. And Abby comes up with the idea to surround the Pentagon with people and perform an exorcism to get rid of evil. Think of some of my favorite ideas ever.

Okay. So activist Jerry Rubin loves the idea so much that he invites Abby to be part of the press conference announcing the protests. And during the press conference, Abby just starts talking and adding to the idea. And he says that the exorcism is going to raise the Pentagon 100 feet in the air. It's going to, he's going to levitate the Pentagon. And then, so if you've like invited this guy to your press or you're like, well, hold on a second, Abby. Let's, let's answer the questions right down the money.

We're going to make it levitate, dude. I'm going to have it floating over the whole. We're going to rotate it once and put it backwards. It's funny. We're going to give it a six side. It's funny to me at this point, how people can't understand. They see this is bullshit, but they don't see that the Pentagon is bullshit. The, the having to invade Honduras or whatever is equally as bullshit.

It's all, what he's doing is saying this thing is all bullshit. So leading up the protests, he tries to figure out how many people would be needed to surround the Pentagon. He's trying to figure it out math wise. And at one point he gets the press to report that he was trying to get a permit for levitation. From, from the magic council. He said he was negotiating with generals and would probably only raise it 10 feet if he got the permit.

All right. So where the a hundred feet is absurd. Abby, you're not going to raise it a hundred feet. There's people doing business. We can meet you at five. It's 20, yeah, 20, 20 is far too high. That's a, if someone were to walk out there thinking they were going to go for a little stroll through the park in the center, well, that just would not work.

We could do seven feet. But again, that says that's absolutely our maximum. We're, I'm going to be able to go. I'm, I'm, I'll meet you at 10. I'll do 10 and then give me a second. Let me talk to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a second. Get the levitation. Just to be clear for the last time, they do not have actual joints on them.

Yep. He's saying 10 feet. It's dangerous. Yeah, but we should probably. All right, Abby. Yes. Okay. Yeah.

10 feet. Cool. So I'll just get the permit then. Right. Yep. Never drawn one of these up before. I guess we'll just get the stationery out here. Legally allowed to levitate government buildings while staff inside.

John, you're a notary, right? Yeah. All right. All right, my friend. Real pleasure. You are out of your tits. Yeah. Take it easy.

Take care now. So the DC police announced that they were going to use Mace on the protesters. If he starts to levitate it, we will Mace him immediately. The second that it begins to break from its foundation, we will not hesitate to beat him. It's going to be pretty hard for him to levitate it when he's behind bars. We'll beat the magic right out of this guy. So Abby held a press conference and said he had a chemical that was actually called Lace. And he sprayed it on four couples and the journalists watched as they tore off their

clothes and started having sex. Oh, my God. It's like it just was so much better to be a journalist then. Just imagine if that's what you were coming. You're in some press corps and then you're just like, my God, he's railing her. So I have a question for the couple that's 69 in place. I know it'll be hard for them to answer. But if one of them could spit the thing out of their mouths, maybe they could.

What the hell's happening? I'm trying to make her come, man. Yeah, I'm trying to make him come. Okay. Just quote you on that. That's come. C U M. Yep.

Great. Great. Okay. Don't stop at all. Oh, by the way, yesterday was one of those things you don't expect as a parent. One of my son asked me what come was. Oh, my God. Did you were you like, well, son, you were come.

I mean, I broke it all down for him. Did you really? Yeah. Man, you just got to get me in on those sessions, man. I'm the best. You need a guy with this facial hair to explain what come is. All right, dude, look, come, you're going to have a love-hate relationship. Love-hate relationship with come.

I mean, do you know how we got to it? Jerking off. He said Canada and then the US and then Mexico. He goes, what does Canada start with? I go, I see. He goes, come. And I go, and he goes, wait, what is come? What?

So not only does your boy not know what come is, he doesn't know what segues are. Or does he know more than you? Yeah, but I mean, still, that's like, so, so Abby is opposing the materialistic world by creating an alternate fantasy for a world. That's what he's doing. Right. And you, he, so he believed TV got into people's fantasy world. Like that's what TV was.

It was a thing that got into your fantasy world. And then if you wanted to deal with Americans, you had to address them on that level because they watch TV seven hours a day. That's, I mean, so just, just talking directly to them, isn't it? But you have to get into this crazy world that they're existing in. Yeah, you have to hypnotize them with your message. So he believed a revolutionary had to learn how to use this medium. On October 21st, Abby dressed as an in a Native American outfit with an Uncle Sam hat.

He took acid and then levitated to Pentagon as he did. Poet Alan Gidsburg led Tibetan chants and for the rest of his life, Abby claimed he did raise the Pentagon at dawn after they raised it. He held a 24 hour sit in on the Pentagon steps. Don't sit under it. Now, what's the difference? What's the difference between saying, uh, uh, I raised it. I raised the Pentagon.

I raised the Pentagon and saying something like we had to invade Granada. I would say the differences in Abby's lie. Nobody died. Right. But what he's saying is they all lie. So what are you? Okay, so the next month, thousands of protesters showed up outside the Hilton in Manhattan because Secretary of State Dean Rusk was giving a speech.

The demonstrators threw bags of blood, some fake, some cows blood. They played sounds of battle and played sounds of fire alarms. And pretty soon, so there's always people walking with tuxedos to see him speak. And pretty soon demonstrators on the street are fist fighting with people in tuxedos as well as right wingers who came and then the cops joined in. Oh, good. So Abby gets into a fist fight with a guy. He thinks he's a right winger, turns out to be an undercover cop and he gets arrested.

Oh, wow. Okay. Now the Democratic National Convention is going to be in Chicago and anti-war groups are preparing for it. But now one night, Jerry Rubin, Nancy Kirshan, Paul Krasner were in Anita and Abby's apartment trying to come up with a new name for a new group. They wanted a new group to sort of go to Chicago and make a big announcement and do a thing. And they're not really hippies anymore.

Being a hippie has sort of changed. We're out of 67. Like everything's kind of become something different. Like I think it's the same thing as like time is moving in crazy ways now. It's the same thing then. Time is moving in crazy ways. So they're anarchists, they're artists, their society dropouts, they embrace crazy performances. So Paul was thinking and they're really just, I think they're high and they're just trying

to come up with different ideas. And he thinks when you make, he holds up and he's like, so you make a peace sign, it's a V. But then if you raise up your arm, it's a Y. And then someone else says, what about the youth international party? Yip. And then someone said hippies were dead and Paul yelled yippy. And that's when they came up with the yippies. Soon all leftist papers are using yippie.

Within a couple of weeks, it's come out of them and it's just going everywhere. The yippies, the yippies. A month later, Newsweek writes, quote, the yippies are coming. Wow. So yeah, I mean, within a month. I mean, they knew, I don't know how many of them did this. He knew how to manipulate media and he knew how to make that a new thing. Oh my God, what's the new thing?

He knew they all wanted to write about the new thing. So he took what was a loose sort of chaotic movement and they just said, now we're a group, we're called this. And everyone like, oh, okay, I can hate that. I can love that. Like they all just fucking ran with it. Right. Abby said being a yippie meant you were, quote, a flower child who's been busted.

In truth, the word had all kinds of definitions and they could pretty much all work. In 1968, the anti-movement, anti-war movement just explodes. Thousands and thousands of people are in the streets. A majority now opposes the Vietnam War. Abby loves it. He saw old America crumbling and this was a new beginning. The yippies held a yippin. So it's like the BN, but they're calling it a yippin.

And they think they're all just going to go down and there's going to be a Grand Central Station and they're going to do the same thing at Grand Central Station. It's going to start on March 22nd at midnight. So thousands of people show up and they're coming. And when they arrive, they find cops are blocking 42nd Street. And then there are hundreds of cops everywhere. But the yippies aren't really scared by the threat of violence like previous people had. They've changed in the past couple of years.

So many get into the station. It's packed with yippies and then one yippie climbed on top of a kiosk and ripped the hands off the clock in the station and then the cops attacked. They use the shape of the building to corner yippies so they could beat them. Cops through kids through plate glass windows. Abby was beaten so bad. He was beaten unconscious with an a vertebrae was smashed. A lot of people are seriously injured, but the yippies did not run.

All night, they came back in waves and fought the cops and it went on for hours. So this was a new, this was a new phase. This is a new thing. Right. This is Tyler Durden in the basement. Well, as you've seen, as we've seen lately, if you attack people, the crowds actually get bigger. Yeah. So after leaving the hospital that night, Abby went on Bob Fast's late night show where he spun

it his way and he called it the Grand Central Massacre and said yippies fighting back was a turning point and showed they were going to end the war. And then the New York Times printed what he said on the front page. It's very true. I mean, it is very, I mean, that's so effective. I mean, if you can control media, you have power. So, uh, Lennon Johnson is the Democrat in, uh, office and he says he's not running for reelection. So Minnesota's Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy, both became candidates and both said they would

end the war. And then there's Hubert Humphrey who says he will keep the war going. So those are the Democrats. Abby doesn't believe change is coming from the establishment and he focused on protests for the DNC. So he's watching these two candidates vie for the anti-war vote and he's like, that's, that's not going to do anything. The yippy event at the DNC in Chicago was to be called the Festival of Life. And the plan was the festival to take attention away from attention away from the convention. Right. So they want to show that there's a whole different thing happening.

Right. So on April 4th, Martin Luther King was a sat Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. And there were riots 126 cities after and people who had not taken sides now took sides. Right. And now everything just went down the middle. Abby thought people would see his movement as an alternative, which made him focus even more on organizing the festival. So he's like, people are picking sides. I got to get out there and do this thing.

He helped organizers at the time with a Columbia University protest over military support and housing. So these kids reached out to him and they said, hey, we need help from some of you older guys with this thing we're doing. So he goes up there. But the university saw that and the university decided to crack down on quote outside agitators. So Abby and some experienced protesters were isolated and then badly beaten by university cops and arrested. And the cops did this in front of all the other protesters. So they could watch it happening. Okay. So they're sending a message in their heads.

They're sending a message. Now Bobby Kennedy's campaign was picking up a momentum and started draining the hippie movement. All right. People are like, okay, this isn't the thing I'm going to go work on the campaign. Right. They believe in him. They believe Bobby when he talked, he's taken up their issues. They're believing in it. It's interesting to hear because it is interesting when I think of him. And I think of that time. I, and I'm probably wrong, but I see it through

that he was, that he was going to, I mean, he, he did have the heart of the Democratic party and the left. They think the hippie movement is over. That's how many people are getting sucked into Kennedy's campaign. Quote, by the end of May, we decided to disband hippie and cancel the Chicago festival. But on June 5th, Bobby was assassinated. So now the real world is fucking insane. Quote, Abby, the US political system was proving to be more insane than hippie reality and unreality had switched sides. Calls began pouring into our office. They wanted to know one thing, when do we leave for Chicago? Right. So all of the anti-war groups, which they're all over the place, right? They get together and meet the leaders to coordinate a protest in Chicago.

There's over a hundred groups. Some are pacifists like Moab. Some are more militant like the Students for a Democratic Society. And throughout this, Mayor Daley of Chicago is already scared off a lot of protesters by just saying the cops are going to be violent and fucking kick the shit out of you. Right. So on August 8th, the Yippies meet with the deputy mayor and they submit an application for the Festival of Life to take place in Lincoln Park. Now they've been trying to get permits to do the festival this whole time and not getting any answers. And again, now they do it in person, they get no reply. It's amazing to get it. I mean, the idea, it's shocking to be like, we need a permit for our meeting. Yeah. I mean, I think it was just a, I mean,

they want a permit, but it's also a way just to fuck with them because the thing they keep saying, like Tom Hayden, I can't remember if this is the movie or reality, but because I just watched the, I just watched the Aaron Sorkin thing, but I can't remember it. But anyway, they're basically saying like, you need a permit. Oh, we're coming without a permit. Can we have a permit? You're not coming if you don't have a permit. No, no, we're coming without a permit. Can we have a permit? And it just keeps going on like that where it's literally just, there's so many ways you can fuck with the ridiculous rules of the system to make the system look stupid. So they go ahead with it, obviously, without the permit. Now the first day,

it's not even the first day, it's the leading up to the first day. There's more cops than protesters in the city itself. There's like 25 or 30,000 cops and a couple thousand protesters. And the cops are fucking hyped up. I mean, you can imagine now our cops are mostly all on steroids. Well, these guys are not, but they're fucking fired up. And they thought protesters were going to lace their drinking water with acid. And they believe that yippies were going to pose as taxis and kidnap DNC delegates. Sure. Yep. And it turns out what they were doing was any yippy joke that was made, they were taking his truth. Right. And again, a lot of that, a lot of that we see today with the cops, the cops think all that stuff too. Oh, for sure. Yeah. So Abby

realized it would look better if there were far more cops than protesters because of how the inevitable crackdown would look on TV. And as more and more protesters backed out because of Mayor Daley, he became more insistent the festival happened. So the less protesters were, the more he was like, we really got to fucking do this. While the other guys were like, I don't know, should we, he's like, yeah, this is when we do it. We're amazingly outnumbered. So on the 23rd, two days before Abby holds a protest workshop in Lincoln Park, there's 50 yippies there. And there's about 250 cops. And so later that day, the cops come out with signs and they post them around the park. And it says the park is going to have 11pm curfew. And that day,

they also arrested Jerry Rubin, singer Phil Oaks. And they took the yuppie candidate for president, which was a large pig named Pegasus. The yippy candidate for president was a pig named Pegasus. That's right. Okay, sure. Sure. Sure. Did he know what he was running for? He did not have a lot of speeches, so we don't know. Okay. Okay. All right. Pegasus, a quick question, village voice. Now, your foreign policy has come under fire recently for the fact that you actually don't seem to have one. As far as Vietnam goes, what are three changes you would make and how soon would you be able to make them? All righty. I've got my quote. You're on record, my friend. You are on record. I have a press pass, so I'm actually allowed to ask that question.

So there you go. Good Lord. I mean, I'd rather live under an authoritarian human swine. So the next day, there's even more yippies in the park, about 2,000. And the leaders decide not to break curfew. They all have a meeting. Abby is like, we need to break curfew, but the moderates in the yippies, Paul Krasner, Alan Gidsburg, all those guys outvote him. They want to avoid violence, and Abby's like, we're not going to avoid violence, so why are we doing it? And then at curfew, as the last demonstrators leave the park, they are all chased and then beaten by police. Weird. Yeah. So the next day was the official first day of the festival light, and now there's tons of cops in the park. There's tons of journalists.

Abby starts a dialogue with the chief of police who lets them use park electricity for their rock show that they want to put on. Okay. And so it goes on for a little while, and then the chief disappears. And then at 6.30, which is way before 11 p.m., at 6.30, the cops move in and just start beating all the yippies in the park. Jeez. I mean, there was a second there where I was like, you know, Dave, I don't think the police nowadays would even say yes to that park. But it's all just a trap. It's all, yeah. Now, TV crews have come to tape what they thought was going to be ridiculous, a spectacle of yippies, not respecting authorities, doing that fucking in the park, doing nasty things, which is what Abby wanted. He created this fantasy of seeing

a bunch of crazy yippies. But what they got was stark reality. So now the stories on the news are all about Chicago cops beating peaceful protesters brutally. I mean, it's terrible, but it's even better for what you're after. Yes. People all over the country are horrified. They're basically seeing kids or seeing teenage kids being beaten. And that night at 2 a.m., Abby called the deputy mayor at home and said to him, quote, Hey, Dave, how's it going? Your police got to be the dumbest and most brutal in the country. That's great to call him at home. But again, he's just poking. He's poking the fucking bear, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, the truth is to that, like, if you're even with anything like this, the people in power and authority, they don't know the

answer there. I mean, they're constantly that's that's how they operate. They're constantly in fear that people are going to take away the establishment because that's what they thrive upon. So they don't know. And when they see what's going on, they're nervous, you know, when they see people in the street. So if you have like the balls or the dick in this case to be like, Hey, dude, you're fucking up. It's like you are. That is going to be in their head. I mean, they are going to be like they're human. They are, believe it or not. So the next night, a thousand demonstrators stayed after curfew. And again, I'm probably saying this a million times, but when you beat people, the response isn't they usually don't go away. Right. They come back. So now there's a good

sign of them being like, Oh, you're going to beat us for leaving the park. Well, now we're in the fucking park. Right. Police attack, clubbing, tear gassing all over again. News records it all over again. So it's all the same shit. The next morning, Abby goes to Lincoln Park and Lincoln Park has a part on the beach and he goes down to the beach park because Allen Ginsberg is there with 200 protesters and they're chanting and they're meditating. And Abby speaks quote, what is going on here is very beautiful, but it won't be on the evening news tonight. The American mass media is a glutton for violence and only shots of what is happening in the streets of Chicago will be on the news. America can't be changed by people sitting and praying. And this is an unfortunate reality

that we have to face. We are a community that has to learn to survive. We have seen what has happened in Lincoln Park. I will never again tell people to sit quietly and pray for change. It's a big lesson. So he'd never been violent before this. He'd never advocated violence, but the brutality in Chicago over these three or four days is changing him completely. Abby was told he is going to be arrested the next morning. So when he woke up, he drew fuck across his forehead in pen to stop the papers from printing his arrest pictures. That's fucking genius. And then he went to breakfast with friends and of course the cops came and he was arrested. That moment when he sits down before the cops show up and he's just like got fuck on his head. You're all right, buddy. Now, why would

they arrest Abby? Well, because that's the night the Democrats are officially nominating Hubert Humphrey. So it's preemptive. And the guy they want gone is Abby fucking Hoffman. Right. That's the guy they want off the streets on this night because that guy is fucking waving this like a guy, a conductor in an orchestra. So he's now gone. And that night the Democrats do nominate Hubert Humphrey as news crews at the same time get footage of protesters being brutalized by cops. So Abby helps show the brutal inhumanity of the U.S. government, which he believes is going to lead to change. He got what TV was. He understood TV. Jack, his brother, quote, the head of CBS News said Abby understood television

better than the networks did at the time. And then he was in fact ahead of the networks. Abby knew that you had to make the news, not just talk about it. Right. So Humphrey's now the Democrats pro-war candidate. Nixon was the GOP's pro-war candidate. So you have a war that is the majority are opposed to, but the two candidates that are chosen by the parties are for the war. Many protesters voted for Dick Gregory instead because they were so angry. Others didn't vote at all. So Abby finishes writing his book, Revolution for the Hell of It, and the House Un-American Activities Committee then calls Abby to testify about what happened in Chicago. And he's watching TV and he sees a country singer wearing a shirt that is made out of an American flag.

And he decides that that's the shirt he wants to wear, so he gets the exact same shirt. On the first day of the hearing, some hippies are dressed as witches and they're in the aisle and they're moaning. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Abby walks into the building and he's holding a yoyo. He's also a yoyo champion when he was a kid. Sure, of course. It tells you how packed this story is with information that the fact that he's a yoyo child and has a yoyo walking in is a throwaway. And he's immediately arrested for desecrating the flag as soon as he walks through the door. You can't wear it. A law had been passed that summer against desecrating the flag. So there's a struggle. The cops ripped the shirt from his back, which he knew was going to happen,

and that's why on his back he had the Viet Cong flag painted. Oh, my God. What? He was also charged for resisting arrest and Anita jumped on a cop's back and she was also arrested. So they take Abby to a maximum security penitentiary where they deloused him and took a blood sample against his will and used a dirty disposable syringe. Oh, my God. Jesus Christ. The next day, Jerry Rubin came shirtless with a Viet Cong flag bandana on and carrying a toy M16, and he sat in the gallery. What? So they just made... That would sound a lot crazier if we hadn't seen pictures of the Michigan courthouse and if we weren't having an election where armed citizens were going to be showing up soon, but that's

still crazy. I think a lot of people still don't get this about protests. A really great example of modern day is Kaepernick. So Kaepernick, you show the world what your enemies are by doing an action, a simple action, and then your enemies react and show themselves to be the monsters they are. Spin themselves out of control. And Kaepernick's act has... Who can ever look at the NFL again the same way? Who can ever look at the fans of the NFL the same way? He has completely tainted those human beings. That's what a really good protest action does. So when they wear the Viacong flag, the reaction to such a stupid little thing will always be more insane. Yeah. And then also Kaepernick... I mean, by just being, he continues to ruin the NFL.

Yes, it's... Year by year that he's not in the league. The very existence of a skilled quarterback that took a team to the NFL not being allowed to play because he kneeled makes a mockery of your entire system. Two months later, Abby was hospitalized with hepatitis, most probably from the syringe. That is crazy. When the flag shortcase goes to trial, his defense attorneys ask if Uncle Sam was desecrating the flag when he marched dressed up in Fourth of July parades. And the prosecutor argued Uncle Sam was a national symbol and a national symbol could not desecrate a national symbol by wearing a national symbol. Wow. So again, by really simple actions make a mockery of your system when it's

based on, I mean, what is the flag? It's a piece of fucking cloth at the end of the day. Yeah. When you start really holding on to it, you start to look like a fucking moron at some point. Yeah. Yes. When you're valuing the life of cloth versus humans. Yeah. When you're beating people because someone wore a flag, like you've completely lost your blood. Yeah. So Abby explained the arrest to the judge. Quote, I was playing with a yo-yo and I had on a shirt that resembled the American flag. I wore the shirt because I was going before the Un-American Activities Committee of the House of Representatives. And I don't particularly consider that American committee American. And I don't particularly consider that committee American.

And I don't consider that House of Representatives particularly representative. And I wore the shirt to show that we were in the tradition of the founding fathers of this country. It's so true. I mean, it's like whenever, when people tell people to leave the country because they don't love it, it's like that's literally what this country was founded upon. Right. Like this country is literally people who hated the country and left and then created the country that you love and are saying get the fuck out of. And does the House of Representatives represent us when they're mostly millionaires? No. These people are all rich. It's the House of Non-Representatives. Yes. He said the cops grabbed his yo-yo and it was pulling his finger hurting

him. And that led to the struggle and he was worried about his finger. So he was found guilty. And after he said, quote, I only regret that I have but one shirt to give for my country. Wow. It must have been nice to get into the yo-yo minute. Now, Mr. Hoffman, what technique were you doing around the world? Have you taken it for a walk? What was the actual technique at the time? I was trying because they were going to break my yo-yo finger. Well, now that is a good defense. An appeals court would eventually reverse the decision which led years and years later to kid rock dressing in giant glittering flag gloss. Oh, Jesus Christ. Great legacy. That's what did it. He broke the whole fucking thing open. I know. Yeah. But I mean, when people think it's just so

dumb because when some people think of kid rock, they think pure, adrenalized patriotism. And you're like, yeah, but if it happened and the person wasn't saying the things you like, then it's a crime. Yeah. And it's very funny in the Chicago 7 movie that's on Netflix and the Aaron Sorkin one, he has a scene where he's wearing an American flag but doesn't do anything with this. That's so fucking annoying. And well, because the movie is a bit of a hit piece on Abby Hoffman. Right, of course. So God, that, I mean, obviously you and Josh fully recognize how much that guy has broken the mind of a liberal, but I mean, it's fucking crazy. So J. Edgar Hoover, who's the FBI emperor drafted a memo urging the Chicago protest leaders to be

prosecuted. Quote, a successful prosecution of this type would be a unique achievement for the bureau and should seriously disrupt and curtail the activities of the new left. Now the Justice Department at this point is still Lyndon Johnson's Justice Department. And a report comes out that basically says it wasn't a protesters riot. It was a cops riot. So the Justice Department is like, we're not going near it. Abby at the same time was having to go to Chicago to face smaller charges on the other things he was arrested for. And sometimes he could find sometimes he could get a week or two in jail. And then Nixon was elected. Here we go. And that means a new Justice Department. And on March 20, 1969, eight leaders of the Chicago protests were charged

with conspiracy to riot. David Dellinger, Renny Davis, Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner, John Freunds, Bobby Seale, and Abby Hoffman. They wanted to show the left as a dark conspiracy that was trying to overthrow the government of the US. The charges came from a civil rights legislation that was passed in which Southern Democrats had added an amendment that made it a crime to cross state lines to incite or promote violence. So it's a pure political prosecution. And it is not a civil rights bill. It's an addition to a civil rights bill that makes it more difficult for protesters to go to the South to help black people get their freedom. Right. And get their rights. And now that's being used against the left, which is generally

what happens to any laws in our country that are against terrorists or whatever they eventually used against the left. That's the history, anyway. So that's the end of part one. I wanted to take this up to the Chicago 7 trial. And I want people to understand who Abby Hoffman is before they watch. Sources, the book Run, Run, Run by Jack Hoffman, the child of Abby Hoffman's shirt by Paul Krausner. History. The trial of his shirt. That's our sign out thing. Stay safe out there. What do we do? I mean, we used to say we sign cars, but we don't go. We sign cars. Well, nobody don't do that anymore. We can't. We don't go. We don't sign cars because we don't fucking go anywhere because we can't fucking go anywhere because everything's so fucking fucked.

So sign, zoom, zooms. We'll have another live show soon. There's some good news. Hey. Hey. Fiddlesticks.