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

Even though many of the demonstrators did not self-identify as Yippies, the Yippies weredelighted with the “blending of pot and politics” that the activists represented (Hoffman,Revolution 102). Each group set about its own activities: the earnest “Clean for Gene”supporters of Senator Eugene McCarthy dressed in sober business wear and distributedpamphlets, the Mobe and SDS leaders organized speeches and rallies, and the hippiespassed around marijuana-laced brownies in the park. 68 Abbie Hoffman and Rubinparticipated in workshops on snake-dancing, karate, and street tactics in betweenspeaking to the media and trying to lose their police tails. Sanders passed out from toomany drugs (Hoffman, Revolution 124). Ginsberg, the Beat poet who practiced Yoga, ledchants of “Om” and “Hare Hare Krishna” on the beaches of Lake Michigan. This wasboth a way to teach his young disciples about Eastern religious customs, and for them torehearse a soothing crowd control method. Jean Genet, Terry Southam, and William S.Burroughs, authors idolized by young activists, strolled about taking notes for EsquireMagazine.Yet despite the differences in political philosophy and protest tactics, thedemonstrators in Chicago were connected by their mutual desire to make some kind ofstatement about the Convention and the state of the nation. Ramparts commented that“the demonstrators were first of all a community, in a sense of that word which has beenlost to most older Americans—a group united in the joy of being together and in theastonishing liberation of the discovery that the streets are truly, and not in a merelyrhetorical sense, theirs” (“Decline” 23). The sheer number of people, even if less than the68 McCarthy’s youthful supporters purposefully adopted a clean-cut look to emphasize their seriousness ofpurpose and to distance themselves from the long-haired hippies.175