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

anti-war views, and movement leaders such as David Dellinger would give speeches.They were nervous about groups willing to engage in violence, such as the notoriouslyaggressive UATW/MF and the Black Panther Party, whose members had brought rifles toa May, 1967, protest against a weapons law in California (Gitlin, Sixties 348). With theeyes of America on the political conventions during election year, Mobe imagined theChicago convention as an excellent opportunity for rational dissent, a time to takeadvantage of the inevitable media presence to protest the Johnson administration’shandling of the war.At the same time, Mobe began to wonder if the Yippies might distract from theirpacifist and anti-war platform. Mobe represented older, established peace groups whowere skeptical about the newly-formed Yippie movement. At the Pentagon March, thesemore serious activists were frustrated that their message was obscured by the tongue-incheek,headline-grabbing Yippie exorcism. Yippie actions at Lake Villa increased thedivide between the Yippies and other activists: Rubin declared he was preparing for streetviolence, and Hoffman, ever the joker, announced that “critical to the Yippierevolutionary program was the abolition of pay toilets” (Viorst 447). The Yippiesstormed a vote on mass action, tossing Yippie posters in the air, and shouting theirslogan: “Abandon the Creeping Meatball, Come to Chicago!” 59 Despite their attendanceat the Lake Villa conference, it was clear that the Yippies were going to do their ownthing in Chicago, heedless of Mobe’s plans for ordered protest.59 A “creeping meatball” was a Yippie term for an oppressive political or social phenomenon: theEstablishment, the military, the draft, parents, schools, social norms.151