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

I approve of letters to the editor . . .—Jerry Rubin, speech to Socialist Workers Party (“I am the Walrus!” 5)From the inception of the Yippie movement, the Yippies hoped that their Chicagoactions would “turn on” vast numbers of people all across the nation to political action.Their wild predictions of 100,000 people descending on Chicago increased security andset the stage for confrontation. The Festival of Life, with its free rock concerts andworkshops in the parks, brought together the disparate Chicago demonstrators under thecommunitas of the crowd. The guerrilla theatre nomination of Pigasus demonstrated in ajoyful and comic way that the streets could belong to the people. The mass spectacle ofthe Battle of Michigan Avenue worked as Theater of Cruelty, breaking through veneer ofDaley’s promises of law and order to reveal utter chaos instead. The resulting flood ofletters to the White House proved that this worked, as outraged citizens expresseddisbelief and horror over police actions in Chicago.The Yippies could not have been happier: here were hundreds of their fellowAmericans turning onto the Yippie message, and taking direct action. Letter-writing wasvery much a Yippie-approved method of direct action. The Yippies understood thatpolitical action took many forms, from writing letters to peaceful teach-ins to violentconfrontations with the police. Yippie didn’t care what you did, as long as you didsomething. Some of the letters even promised further action beyond the political act ofwriting the letter. Ronald L. Minotto from California, writing to the President on the198