Shawyer dissertation May 2008 final version - The University of ...

wasn’t just their situation that had brought them together, it also was the feeling that theyhad done something worthwhile. “We really felt at that time we were making history,”Rubin explains. “We were at the center of action. Our lives were relevant [sic]. . . Wehadn’t physically levitated the Pentagon, but we had spiritually levitated it” (287). TheYippie movement wanted to extend those feelings of communitas and relevance thatemerged at the March on the Pentagon, to offer opportunities to continue it for months tocome leading up to the Chicago convention. Although the exorcism and March may nothave been efficacious in the sense that it turned its target audience to the anti-warmovement point of view, it did achieve a spirit of togetherness that inspired the anti-warmovement. Hoffman recalls leaving jail in Washington, surrounded by other releaseddemonstrators: “Everybody’s making the sign of the V. The battle is over. The questioneveryone’s asking is when’s the next happening?” (Revolution 47). The next step was theformation of the Youth International Party, and its first implementation of its networkedparticipatory street performance form at the Grand Central Station Yip-In of March, 1968.97