Abbie Hoffman


Abbot Howard Hoffman, better known as Abbie Hoffmann, was an American political and social activist, anarchist, socialist, and revolutionary who co-founded the Youth International Party. He was also a leading proponent of the Flower Power movement.
Hoffman was arrested and tried for conspiracy and inciting to riot as a result of his role in protests that led to violent confrontations with police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, along with Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Bobby Seale. The group was known collectively as the "Chicago Eight"; when Seale's prosecution was separated from the others, they became known as the Chicago Seven. While the defendants were initially convicted of intent to incite a riot, the verdicts were overturned on appeal.
Hoffman continued his activism into the 1970s, and remains an icon of the anti-war movement and the counterculture era. He died by suicide, via a phenobarbital overdose in 1989.

Early life and education

Hoffman was born November 30, 1936 in Worcester, Massachusetts, to John Hoffman and Florence Schanberg. Hoffman was raised in a middle-class Jewish household and had two younger siblings. As a child in the 1940s and 1950s, he was a member of what has been described as "the transitional generation between the beatniks and hippies". He described his childhood as "idyllic" and the 1940s as "a great time to grow up in."
During his school days, he became known as a troublemaker who started fights, played pranks, vandalized school property, and referred to teachers by their first names. In his second year, Hoffman was expelled from Classical High School, a now-closed public high school in Worcester. As an atheist, Hoffman wrote a paper declaring that, "God could not possibly exist, for if he did, there wouldn't be any suffering in the world." The irate teacher ripped up the paper and called him "a Communist punk". Hoffman jumped on the teacher and started fighting him until he was restrained and removed from the school. On June 3, 1954, 17-year-old Hoffman was arrested for the first time, for driving without a license. After his expulsion, he attended Worcester Academy, graduating in 1955. Hoffman engaged in many behaviors typical of rebellious teenagers in the 1950s, such as riding motorcycles, wearing leather jackets, and sporting a ducktail haircut.
Upon graduating, he enrolled in Brandeis University, where he studied under professors such as noted psychologist Abraham Maslow, often considered the father of humanistic psychology. He was also a student of Marxist theorist Herbert Marcuse, who Hoffman said had a profound effect on his political outlook. Hoffman would later cite Marcuse's influence during his activism and his theories on revolution. He was on the Brandeis tennis team, which was coached by journalist Bud Collins. Hoffman graduated with a B.A. in psychology in 1959. That fall, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he completed coursework toward a master's degree in psychology. Soon after, he married his pregnant girlfriend Sheila Karklin in May 1960.

Early protests

Before his days as a leading member of the Yippie movement, Hoffman was involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and organized Liberty House, which sold items to support the civil rights movement in the southern United States. During the Vietnam War, Hoffman was an anti-war activist, using deliberately comical and theatrical tactics.
In late 1966, Hoffman met with a radical community-action group called the Diggers and studied their ideology. He later returned to New York and published a book with this knowledge. Doing so was considered a violation by the Diggers. Diggers co-founder Peter Coyote explained:
One of Hoffman's well-known stunts was on August 24, 1967, when he led members of the movement to the gallery of the New York Stock Exchange. The protesters threw fistfuls of real and fake dollar bills down to the traders below, some of whom booed, while others began to scramble frantically to grab the money as fast as they could. Accounts of the amount of money that Hoffman and the group tossed was said to be as little as $30 to $300. Hoffman claimed to be pointing out that, metaphorically, that's what NYSE traders "were already doing." "We didn't call the press," wrote Hoffman. "At that time we really had no notion of anything called a media event." Yet the press was quick to react and by evening the event was reported around the world. After that incident, the stock exchange spent $20,000 to enclose the gallery with bulletproof glass.
In October 1967, David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam asked Jerry Rubin to help mobilize and direct a march on the Pentagon. The protesters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial as Dellinger and Dr. Benjamin Spock gave speeches to the mass of people. 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 claiming he would attempt to use psychic energy to levitate the Pentagon until it would turn orange and begin to vibrate, at which time the war in Vietnam would end. Allen Ginsberg led Tibetan chants to assist Hoffman.
Hoffman's theatrical performances succeeded in convincing many young people at the time to become more politically active.

Chicago Eight conspiracy trial

Hoffman was arrested and tried for conspiracy and inciting to riot as a result of his role in anti-Vietnam War protests, which were met by a violent police riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He was among the group that came to be known as the Chicago Seven, which included fellow Yippie Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, future California state senator Tom Hayden and Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale.
Presided over by Judge Julius Hoffman, Abbie Hoffman's courtroom antics frequently grabbed the headlines; one day, defendants Hoffman and Rubin appeared in court dressed in judicial robes, while on another day, Hoffman was sworn in as a witness with his hand giving the finger. Judge Hoffman became the favorite courtroom target of the Chicago Seven defendants, who frequently would insult the judge to his face. Abbie Hoffman told Judge Hoffman "you are a 'shande fur de Goyim' . You would have served Hitler better." He later added that "your idea of justice is the only obscenity in the room." Both Davis and Rubin told the Judge "this court is bullshit." When Hoffman was asked in what state he resided, he replied the "state of mind of my brothers and sisters".
Other celebrities were called as "cultural witnesses" including Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, Arlo Guthrie, Norman Mailer and others. Hoffman closed the trial with a speech in which he quoted Abraham Lincoln, making the claim that the president himself, if alive today, would also be arrested in Chicago's Lincoln Park.
On February 18, 1970, Hoffman and four of the other defendants were found guilty of intent to incite a riot while crossing state lines. All seven defendants were found not guilty of conspiracy. At sentencing, Hoffman suggested the judge try LSD and offered to set him up with "a dealer he knew in Florida". Each of the five was sentenced to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
However, all convictions were subsequently overturned by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The Walker Commission later found that in fact, it had been a "police riot".

Controversy at Woodstock

At Woodstock in 1969, Hoffman interrupted The Who's performance to attempt to speak against the jailing of John Sinclair of the White Panther Party. He grabbed a microphone and yelled, "I think this is a pile of shit while John Sinclair rots in prison ..." Pete Townshend was adjusting his amplifier between songs and turned to look at Hoffman over his left shoulder. Townshend shouted "Fuck off! Fuck off my fucking stage!" and reportedly ran at Hoffman with his guitar and hit Hoffman in the back, although Townshend later denied attacking Hoffman. Townshend later said that while he actually agreed with Hoffman on Sinclair's imprisonment, he would have knocked him offstage regardless of the content of his message, given that Hoffman had violated the "sanctity of the stage", i.e., the right of the band to perform uninterrupted by distractions not relevant to the show. The incident took place during a camera change, and was not captured on film. The audio of this incident, however, can be heard on The Who's box set, Thirty Years of Maximum R&B.
In 1971's Steal This Book in the section "Free Communication", Hoffman encourages his readership to take to the stage at rock concerts to use the pre-assembled audience and PA system to get their message out. However, he mentions that "interrupting the concert is frowned upon since it is only spitting in the faces of people you are trying to reach."
In Woodstock Nation, Hoffman mentions the incident and says he was on a bad LSD trip at the time. Joe Shea, then a reporter for the Times Herald-Record, a local newspaper that covered the event on-site, said he saw the incident. He recalled that Hoffman was actually hit in the back of the head by Townshend's guitar and toppled directly into the pit in front of the stage. He does not recall any "shove" from Townshend, and discounts both men's accounts.

Underground

In 1971, Hoffman published Steal This Book which advised readers on how to live for free. Many readers followed his advice and stole the book, leading many bookstores to refuse to carry it. He was also the author of several other books, including Vote!, co-written with Rubin and Ed Sanders. He was arrested on August 28, 1973 for intent to sell and distribute cocaine. He always maintained that undercover police agents entrapped him into a drug deal and planted suitcases of cocaine in his office. In the spring of 1974, he skipped bail, underwent cosmetic surgery to alter his appearance, and hid from authorities for several years, abandoning his family in the process.
Some believed that Hoffman made himself a target. In 1998, Peter Coyote stated:
Hoffman lived under the name Barry Freed in Fineview, New York near Thousand Island Park, a private resort on the St. Lawrence River. He helped coordinate an environmental campaign to preserve the Saint Lawrence River. He also was the travel columnist for Crawdaddy! magazine. On September 4, 1980, he surrendered to authorities, and he appeared the same day on a pre-taped edition of ABC's 20/20 in an interview with Barbara Walters. He received a one-year sentence but was released after four months.

Back to visibility

In November 1986, Hoffman was arrested along with 14 others, including Amy Carter, the daughter of former President Jimmy Carter, for trespassing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The charges stemmed from a protest against the Central Intelligence Agency's recruitment on the UMass campus. Since the university's policy limited campus recruitment to law-abiding organizations, the defense argued that the CIA engaged in illegal activities. The federal district court judge permitted expert witnesses, including former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and a former CIA agent who testified that the CIA carried on an illegal Contra war against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua in violation of the Boland Amendment.
In three days of testimony, more than a dozen defense witnesses, including Daniel Ellsberg, and former Contra leader Edgar Chamorro, described the CIA's role in more than two decades of covert, illegal and often violent activities. In his closing argument, Hoffman, acting as his own attorney, placed his actions within the best tradition of American civil disobedience. He quoted from Thomas Paine, "the most outspoken and farsighted of the leaders of the American Revolution: 'Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it. Man has no property in man, neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow.'"
Hoffman concluded: "Thomas Paine was talking about this Spring day in this courtroom. A verdict of not guilty will say, 'When our country is right, keep it right; but when it is wrong, right those wrongs.'" On April 15, 1987, the jury found Hoffman and the other defendants not guilty.
After his acquittal, Hoffman acted in a cameo appearance in Oliver Stone's later-released anti-Vietnam War movie, Born on the Fourth of July. He essentially played himself in the movie, waving a flag on the ramparts of an administration building during a campus protest that was being teargassed and crushed by state troopers.
In 1987 Hoffman summed up his views:
Later that same year, Hoffman and Jonathan Silvers wrote Steal This Urine Test, which exposed the internal contradictions of the War on Drugs and suggested ways to circumvent its most intrusive measures. Although Hoffman's satiric humor was on display throughout the book, Publishers Weekly wrote that "the extensive, in-depth research and a barrage of facts and figures... make this the definitive guide to the current drug-testing environment."
Stone's Born on the Fourth of July was released on December 20, 1989, more than eight months after Hoffman's suicide on April 12, 1989. At the time of his death, Hoffman was at the height of a renewed public visibility, one of the few 1960s radicals who still commanded the attention of all kinds of mass media. He regularly lectured audiences about the CIA's covert activities, including assassinations disguised as suicides. His Playboy article outlining the connections that constitute the "October Surprise", brought that alleged conspiracy to the attention of a wide-ranging American readership for the first time.

Personal life

In 1960, Hoffman married Sheila Karklin and had Andrew and Amy, who later went by the name Ilya; she committed suicide. Hoffman and Karklin divorced in 1966.
In 1967, he married Anita Kushner in Manhattan's Central Park. They had one son whom they named Hoffman, deliberately using a lowercase "a". He and Kushner were effectively separated when he became a fugitive in 1973, although they were not formally divorced until 1980. While underground, Hoffman's companion was Johanna Lawrenson.
His personal life drew a great deal of scrutiny from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and its file on him was 13,262 pages long.

Death

Hoffman was 52 at the time of his death on April 12, 1989, which was caused by swallowing 150 phenobarbital tablets and liquor. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1980. He had recently changed treatment medications and was reportedly depressed when his 83-year-old mother was diagnosed with cancer. Some who were close to him claimed that he was also unhappy about reaching middle age, combined with the fact that the liberal upheaval of the 1960s had produced a conservative backlash in the 1980s. In 1984, he had expressed dismay that the current generation of young people was not as interested in protesting and "social activism" as the youth had been during the 1960s. His body was found in his apartment in a converted turkey coop on Sugan Road in Solebury Township, Pennsylvania, surrounded by about 200 pages of handwritten notes, many about his moods.
His death was officially ruled a suicide. The New York Times reported, "Among the more vocal doubters at the service today was Mr. Dellinger, who said, 'I don't believe for one moment the suicide thing.' He said he had been in fairly frequent touch with Mr. Hoffman, who had 'numerous plans for the future.'" Yet the same New York Times article reported that the coroner found the residue of about 150 pills, and quoted him as saying: "There is no way to take that amount of phenobarbital without intent. It was intentional and self-inflicted."
A week after Hoffman's death, 1,000 friends and relatives gathered for a memorial in Worcester, Massachusetts at Temple Emanuel, the synagogue that he attended as a child. David Dellinger and Jerry Rubin were among them, his co-conspirators from the Chicago Seven. The New York Times reported that those who had once been radical protesters among the mourners had become typical members of the very "establishment" which they had once vilified, that the attenders were "more yuppie than yippie".

Works

Books

Interviews

Hoffman is featured in interviews and archival news footage in the following documentaries: