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

It didn’t matter if there was dissent about tactics within the network, because the abilityto disagree and do one’s own thing was one of the hallmarks of the Yippie idea: at thePentagon March many of the future Yippies were involved in the theatrical exorcism inthe parking lot, but Rubin instead spent most of his time at the Mall entrance sit-in,watching the action from the fourth row of demonstrators (Hoagland A17). The Yippienetwork was made of individuals with the same basic desire to change the political andcultural status quo, but not dependent on leadership to tell them how to do it. It was up toevery individual in the vast Yippie network to decide what action to take. This emphasison individual responsibility owed a great debt to the student activists of the New Left.We are the people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort,housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.—first line of the “Port Huron Statement” (SDS 329)Although leaders like Dellinger, Wilson, and Rubin organized the 21 October,1967, rally against the war and led the thousands of participants on the march to thePentagon, the actual sit-in at the steps of the Pentagon was characterized by a lack oftraditional leadership. Leaders at the vanguard of the march, like Dellinger, Wilson, andMailer, were quickly arrested for crossing into restricted territory and missed most of thesit-in. Other organizers were too involved in logistical issues to lend much support to thedemonstrators facing off against the rifle-toting soldiers. In his spatial analysis of thePentagon March, cultural geographer Clark Akatiff notes that “by the time the lines of71