Testimony of Abbie Hoffman (Chicago 7)

Streetlight

If anyone's seen the new Netflix show about the Chicago 7 - which is pretty entertaining - Abbie Hoffman, the anarchist activist played by Sasha Baron Cohen, has a great scene giving testimony during the trial. As it happens, the real testimony was even wilder than the fiction.

Posting here for the sake of interest: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Chicago7/Hoffman.html

Sample:

MR. WEINGLASS: Will you please identify yourself for the record?

THE WITNESS: My name is Abbie. I am an orphan of America.

MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, may the record show it is the defendant Hoffman who has taken the stand?

THE COURT: Oh, yes. It may so indicate. . . .

MR. WEINGLASS: Where do you reside?

THE WITNESS: I live in Woodstock Nation.

MR. WEINGLASS: Will you tell the Court and jury where it is?

THE WITNESS: Yes. It is a nation of alienated young people. We carry it around with us as a state of mind in the same way as the Sioux Indians carried the Sioux nation around with them. It is a nation dedicated to cooperation versus competition, to the idea that people should have better means of exchange than property or money, that there should be some other basis for human interaction. It is a nation dedicated to--

THE COURT: Just where it is, that is all.

THE WITNESS: It is in my mind and in the minds of my brothers and sisters. It does not consist of property or material but, rather, of ideas and certain values. We believe in a society--

THE COURT: No, we want the place of residence, if he has one, place of doing business, if you have a business. Nothing about philosophy or India, sir. Just where you live, if you have a place to live. Now you said Woodstock. In what state is Woodstock?

THE WITNESS: It is in the state of mind, in the mind of myself and my brothers and sisters. It is a conspiracy. Presently, the nation is held captive, in the penitentiaries of the institutions of a decaying system.

----

MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, the Guards and the troops were trying to keep the people from entering into the Pentagon for two days, isn't that right?

THE WITNESS: I assume that they were there to guard the Pentagon from rising in the air possibly. I mean, who knows what they are there for? Were you there? You probably watched it on television and got a different impression of what was happening. That is one aspect of myth-making---you can envisualize hoardes and hoardes of people when in reality that was not what happened.

MR SCHULTZ: Did you see some people urinate on the Pentagon?

THE WITNESS: On the Pentagon itself?

MR. SCHULTZ: Or at the Pentagon?

THE WITNESS: There were over 100,000 people. People have that biological habit, you know.

MR. SCHULTZ: Did you symbolically urinate on the Pentagon, Mr. Hoffman?

THE WITNESS: I symbolically urinate on the Pentagon?

MR. SCHULTZ: Yes.

THE WITNESS: I didn't get that close. Pee on the walls of the Pentagon? You are getting to be out of sight, actually. You think there is a law against it?

MR. SCHULTZ: Are you done, Mr. Hoffman?

THE WITNESS: I am done when you are.

MR. SCHULTZ: Did you ever state that a sense of integration possesses you and comes from pissing on the Pentagon?

THE WITNESS: I said from combining political attitudes with biological necessity, there is a sense of integration, yes.

MR. SCHULTZ: You had a good time at the Pentagon, didn't you. Mr. Hoffman?

THE WITNESS: Yes I did. I'm having a good time now too. I feel that biological necessity now. Could I be excused for a slight recess?

THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we will take a brief recess.

---

The whole thing makes for fantastic reading.

Hippyhead

If anyone's seen the new Netflix show about the Chicago 7 - which is pretty entertaining — StreetlightX

Yes, watching it now, agreed. Particularly of interest to we geezer hippies.

Hippyhead

Posting here for the sake of interest: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Chicago7/Hoffman.html — StreetlightX

Yes, very interesting! I see now that I've dramatically underestimated Hoffman my entire life. My only excuse is that I was about 17 or so during the time he was most famous. Sadly, the movie reports that Hoffman committed suicide in 1989, the fate of many who are simply too intelligent for this world. Rubin died when he was hit in traffic while jaywalking.

It's also perhaps interesting that they demonstrated at the Democratic Convention (the Dems were responsible for Vietnam) thus handing Nixon the presidency on a silver platter.

I see now that Hoffman was a pioneer. At least the concept of a political movement with no leaders is increasingly relevant today.

All that said, I can see Hayden's point too. People like Hoffman alienated the "silent majority", those who would have to be persuaded to achieve any real change. He even alienated me, and I was on LSD at the time.

Hippyhead

And of course the saddest thing of all is that once the hippies and yippies became old enough to have their own children we largely abandoned so many of our ideals and became the biggest resource sucking greedy hogs in human history. Let that serve as a note of caution to today's young people.

Still, with all our so many faults, the hippies helped open up society to a degree which is probably impossible for today's young people to grasp, as they've never known anything but the world which we created. The sixties have since been overhyped to death, but those were truly revolutionary times on almost every cultural front.

Our nieces relate to hippy culture, but they think being a hippy is going down to the mall to buy a tie dye shirt mass produced by a global corporation. Oh well, I guess it's one of those "you had to be there" things...

Pantagruel

↪StreetlightX

:up:

Hanover

↪StreetlightX

Thanks for posting that. I saw the movie just a week ago or so.

When I first saw the movie I was struck by how things haven't changed so much in in the past 50 years, with race relations still so volatile. Assassinations and violence were worse back then, but I think that's mostly because the authorities today realize that it's better just to let things fizzle out than to directly combat them. Where they used to beat in heads with batons, now they let cities burn until the protestors tire. Charges aren't even pressed anymore, so no one gets their stage.

One thing that has changed, to the extent Hoffman's antics were characteristic of yesterday's left, is that today's left is smug, chastising, lecturing, insulted, and offended. They are the refined and intellectual and bewildered by the coarseness of the right.

What has happened to that creative zaniness, where you expect at least one protestor to show up in a multi-colored Cat in the Hat hat, another on stilts, and at least one naked guy with gold chains? There are no more bongo drums, poetry recitals, or prayers to made up gods or goddesses anymore. That's not to say that the protests of the 60s weren't deadly serious and meaningful, but there has been a full circle shift in the persona of the rebel, where it began as the audacious and impudent school boy and now it's the prim schoolmarm at its best, to an outraged rioter at its worst.

Hippyhead

What has happened to that creative zaniness, where you expect at least one protestor to show up in a multi-colored Cat in the Hat hat, another on stilts, and at least one naked guy with gold chains? There are no more bongo drums, poetry recitals, or prayers to made up gods or goddesses anymore. That's not to say that the protests of the 60s weren't deadly serious and meaningful, but there has been a full circle shift in the persona of the rebel, where it began as the audacious and impudent school boy and now it's the prim schoolmarm at its best, to an outraged rioter at its worst. — Hanover

It's the revenge of the Catholics. While everyone is falling all over themselves to leave the Church, meanwhile we are also becoming more sanctimoniously moralizing with each passing day.

Just when you think you're out...

They pull you back in!

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Testimony of Abbie Hoffman (Chicago 7)

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