Jerry Clyde Rubin (July 14, 1938 – November 28, 1994) was an American social activist, anti-war leader, and counterculture icon during the 1960s and early 1970s. Despite being known for holding radical views when he was a political activist, he ceased holding his more extreme views at some point in the 1970s and instead opted for a successful career as a businessman.Timothy Stanley (May 14, 2008), In the 1960s, during his political activism heyday, he was known for being one of the co-founders of the Youth International Party (YIP) whose members were referred to as Yippies, and standing trial in the Chicago Seven case.
Early life and education Rubin was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Esther (Katz), a homemaker, and Robert Rubin, a trucker who later became a Teamsters' union official.Jerry Rubin, 56, Flashy 60's Radical, Dies; 'Yippies' Founder and Chicago 7 Defendant by Eric Pace in International New York Times, November 30, 1994. Retrieved February 12, 2015.
Rubin attended Cincinnati's Walnut Hills High School, co-editing the school newspaper, The Chatterbox and graduating in 1956. While in high school Rubin began to write for The Cincinnati Post, compiling sports scores from high school games. He attended Oberlin College, and Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and later went on to graduate from the University of Cincinnati, receiving a degree in history. Rubin attended the University of California, Berkeley in 1964 but dropped out to focus on social activism.
Rubin's parents died within ten months of each other, leaving Rubin to take care of his younger brother, Gil, who was 13 at the time. Jerry wanted to teach Gil about the world and planned to take him to India. When relatives threatened to sue to obtain custody of Gil, Jerry decided to take his brother to Israel instead, settling in Tel Aviv. There, Rubin worked on a kibbutz, and studied sociology while his brother, who had learned Hebrew, decided to stay in Israel and moved permanently to a kibbutz. Before returning to social and political activism, Rubin made a visit to Havana, to learn first-hand about the Cuban revolution.
Social activism Rubin began to demonstrate on behalf of various left-wing causes after dropping out of UC Berkeley. Rubin also ran for mayor of Berkeley, on a platform opposing the Vietnam War, and supporting Black power and the legalization of marijuana, receiving over 20 percent of the vote. Rubin turned his attention to political protest, his first in Berkeley, protesting against the refusal of a local grocer to hire African Americans. Soon Rubin was leading protests of his own. Rubin organized the Vietnam Day Committee, that led some of the first big protests against the Vietnam War. He took part in planning the world's largest teach-in against the war, organized rallies and demonstrations that attempted to stop a train transporting troops to the Oakland Army Base, as well as trucks carrying napalm. The Vietnam Day Committee was a unique early antiwar organization in that it enjoyed large local participation and is believed to be a forerunner to the national movement against the war in Vietnam.
Rubin was one of the founding members of the Youth International Party (YIP) or Yippies, along with social and political activist Abbie Hoffman and satirist Paul Krassner. The Yippies were not a formal organization with a membership list or a direct relationship with constituency but played upon the media's appetite for anything new and different. They were influenced by Marshall McLuhan's ideas on the importance of electronic communication and believed that if radical events were made more entertaining the media, especially television would give them greater coverage.
As Rubin recollected:
... [T]he more visual and surreal the stunts we could cook up, the easier it would be to get on the news, and the more weird and whimsical and provocative the theater, the better it would play.Can't Find My Way Home 2004, p. 229.
Rubin's appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings is a good example of the Yippies’ emphasis on conducting political protest as theater, and drawing as much attention as possible to their dissent by turning it into a spectacle. Rubin was subpoenaed by HUAC in Washington but instead of pleading the Fifth Amendment as was common, he entered the room dressed in a rented 18th-century American Revolutionary War uniform, proudly claiming to be a descendant of Jefferson and Paine. "Nothing is more American than revolution," he told the committee. Rubin, showing a total lack of concern or worries, lightheartedly blew soap bubbles as members of Congress questioned his Communist affiliations. He subsequently appeared before the HUAC as a bare-chested guerrilla in Viet Cong pajamas, with war paint and carrying a toy M-16 rifle, and later as Santa Claus.A Yippie Manifesto by Jerry Rubin . History & Political Science Department. Montgomery College. Retrieved April 21, 2014.Ron Chepesiuk, Sixties Radicals, Then and Now: Candid Conversations with Those Who Shaped the Era (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1995), 182.
As Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain remark in their book Acid Dreams:
It was a political ploy designed to make a mockery of the HUAC proceedings; the congressmen were caught off guard, and Rubin's stunt became page-one news throughout the country.Acid Dreams 1992, p. 202.
Another media stunt that gave the Yippies free publicity, not only in the United States but all over the world, was when Rubin, Hoffman and others brought the New York Stock Exchange to a halt by tossing money into the air and watched gleefully as stockbrokers scrambled to collect bills.
Yet another successful act in Yippies "guerrilla theater" was when during the Democratic National Convention of 1968 the Youth International Party nominated their own candidate for the presidency. The nominee was Pigasus the Immortal, a 145-pound (66 kg) pig that they felt was an appropriate alternative to Richard Nixon, Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Alabama governor George Wallace. At the official introductions at Pigasus' first press conference, Rubin, while holding the candidate in his arms, demanded he be given Secret Service protection and be brought to the White House for a foreign policy briefing. He also promised, on behalf of Pigasus, a fair election campaign and if Pigasus won the election he would be eaten. This would, maintained Rubin, reverse the usual democratic process in which the pig is elected "and proceeds to eat the people."Quoted in Acid Dreams 1992, p. 215.
In his book DO IT!: Scenarios of the Revolution Rubin says "media does not report "news," it creates it. An event happens when it goes on TV and becomes a myth." He goes on to say:
TV time goes to those with the most guts and imagination. I never understood the radical who comes on TV in a suit and tie. Turn off the sound and he could be the mayor! The words may be radical, but the television is a non-verbal instrument! The way to understand TV is to shut off the sound. No one remembers any words they hear; the mind is a technicolor movie of images, not words. I've never seen "bad" coverage of a demonstration. It makes no difference what they say about us. The picture is the story.The Sixties Papers 1984, p. 443.
In October 1967, David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam asked Rubin to help mobilize and direct a March on the Pentagon.Levitate the Pentagon The protesters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial as Dellinger and Dr. Benjamin Spock gave speeches to the mass of people.The Day The Pentagon Was Supposed To Lift Off Into Space
From there, the group marched towards the Pentagon. As the protesters neared the Pentagon, they were met by soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division. who formed a human barricade blocking the Pentagon steps. Not to be dissuaded, Hoffman vowed to levitate the Pentagon while Allen Ginsberg led Tibetan chants to assist. Eventually, things turned ugly. By the time the group's 48-hour permit expired, approximately 680 protesters had been jailed and 50 hospitalized.
As one member of the march recalled:
In spite of the brutality of the police, the spirits of the demonstrators were not dampened. Many were exhilarated by what had transpired and some felt it was an event that would mark a turning point. "It made me see we could build a movement by knocking off American symbols," said Rubin.Acid Dreams 1992, p. 205. He added:
Rubin later played an instrumental role in the anti-war demonstration that accompanied the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago by helping to organize the Yippie "Festival of Life" in Lincoln Park. He spoke along with Hoffman at an anti-war rally at the Grant Park bandshell on August 28, 1968, and instructed demonstrators to resist if a riot broke out. The extent of violence between Chicago police and demonstrators (which an official government report called a "police riot") was not anticipated by the Yippie leaders. Some 1,500 people were injured. The arrest and trial of the Yippie leaders (known later as the Chicago Conspiracy Trial) which began on September 24, 1969, eventually led to the trial of Rubin and seven others on charges of incitement to riot, including Hoffman, Rennie Davis, John Froines, David Dellinger, Lee Weiner, Tom Hayden, and Bobby Seale.
The defendants were commonly referred to as the "Chicago Eight". Seale's trial was severed from the others after he demanded the right to serve as his own lawyer and was sentenced to four years in prison for contempt of court, making the Chicago Eight the Chicago Seven. The trial developed into a quiet spectacle, or "hippie-guerillas theater" as Rubin described it. Rubin, Hoffman and other defendants made a mockery of the court, widely covered by the press, with The New York Times and The Washington Post reporting on it. Rubin, who had declared the trial to be "the Academy Award of protest"The Sixties Papers 1984, p. 42. at one point paraded back and forth in front of Judge Julius Hoffman (no relation to defendant Hoffman), thrusting his arm in a Nazi salute and shouting "Heil Hitler!" Jerry Rubin. "The Chicago Seven" Trial 1969–1970 Homepage. Retrieved April 1, 2014. Another time he and Hoffman wore judge's robes to court. Judge Hoffman ordered both men to remove the robes. They did – but underneath they wore blue Chicago police shirts. "The day Abbie and I came in wearing judges' robes was a stoned idea," Rubin said later. "It was a turning point in the trial in terms of theatrics, and it just went on from there."Can't Find My Way Home, p. 237.
In spite of the danger of being busted, Rubin smoked marijuana before the trial. "I got stoned a lot for the trial because it was such complete theater – a front-row seat to history – and marijuana intensifies every experience."Can't Find My Way Home, pp. 236–237. Judge Hoffman added to the spectacle. Among other things, Judge Hoffman ordered for Black Panther leader Bobby Seale to be bound, gagged, and chained to his chair for a sizable portion of the trial.60s Activist Jerry Rubin Dies After Auto Injuries by Shawn Hubler in Los Angeles Times, November 29, 1994. Retrieved April 13, 2014.
Rubin, along with the six other defendants, was found not guilty on the charge of conspiracy but guilty (with four other defendants) on the charge of incitement. He was also sentenced by the judge to more than three years in prison for contempt of court. All of the convictions for incitement were later overturned by an appeals court, who cited judicial and prosecutorial misconduct. The contempt of court citations were also overturned on appeal. The contempt charges were re-tried in 1972 however the U.S. Justice Department declined to retry any of the defendants for either conspiracy or incitement.