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Free New York - Fuck The System by Abbie Hoffman for New York Free Press (1968)
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I’m a huge fan of the Yippies in general and Abbie Hoffman in particular, but you can’t ignore the fact that he made a name for himself by ripping off the Diggers and routinely dry snitching on the counterculture. Here’s Peter Coyote in Sleeping Where I Fall:
The deeper implications of anonymity were lost on Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, both of whom came to investigate our activities in 1966. Abbie returned to New York and published a book (for sale) called Free, which catalogued every free service in the city of New York that supported truly needy people; these services were immediately swamped by an influx of suburban kids into the Lower East Side. He plastered his own name and picture on the book, thus advertising himself as a “leader” of the free counterculture. While egocentricity may be as authentic as anything else, performing under its influence does not represent a new form of any kind, and we criticized Abbie for confusing the issue.
Abbie was and remained a close friend of mine until his disappearance underground after selling drugs to an undercover narcotics cop, but a friend with whom the Diggers had pronounced disagreements. One morning he woke up Peter Berg by pounding on the door and shouting in his pronounced New England twang: “Petah, Petah, I bet you think I stole everything from you, doncha?” This was indisputably true. Berg stumbled to the door, regarded the cheerful hairball before him as if he were sucking a lemon, then responded sleepily, “No, Abbie. I feel like I gave a good tool to an idiot.” He closed the door, and that was the last time they spoke.
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In the fall of 1967 Jerry Rubin who cofounded the Yippies together with Abbie and Anita Hoffman had moved to the East Coast to coordinate an antiwar demonstration at the Pentagon that was to take place in October. An acid mystic had advised Rubin that the Pentagon, as a five-sided building pointing east, was a magical symbol of evil. So Rubin and Hoffman concocted a plan with aim of levitating the Pentagon and exorcising the evil spirits with the help of thousands of protesters. The building would rise three inches in the air, the demons would flee, and the war would be over. Approximately 75,000 hippies showed up for the October event chanting “Out Demons Out!”.
