Youth International Party Manifesto!
New Left
The Youth International Party, known as the "Yippies," was founded in 1967 by Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Nancy Kurshan, and Paul Krassner. Other activists involved with the Yippies included, Stew Albert, Ed Rosenthal, Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Robin Morgan, Phil Ochs, Robert M. Ockene, William Kunstler, Jonah Raskin, Steve Conliff, John Sinclair, Dana Beal, Betty (Zaria) Andrew, Matthew Landy Steen, Judy Gumbo, Ben Masel, Tom Forcade, David Peel, Wavy Gravy, Aron Kay, Tuli Kupferberg, Jill Johnston, Daisy Deadhead, Leatrice Urbanowicz, Bob Fass, John Murdock, Alice Torbush, Judy Lampe, Walli Leff, Steve DeAngelo, Dennis Peron, and Brenton Lengel. According to Krasner, who coined the term, Yippies were “radicalized hippies.” In a 2007 essay in the Los Angeles Times, Krasner explained, "We needed a name to signify the radicalization of hippies, and I came up with Yippie as a label for a phenomenon that already existed, an organic coalition of psychedelic hippies and political activists. In the process of cross-fertilization at antiwar demonstrations, we had come to share an awareness that there was a linear connection between putting kids in prison for smoking pot in this country and burning them to death with napalm on the other side of the planet." Further, Anita Hoffman liked the term, but felt that "strait-laced types" needed a more formal name to take the movement seriously. She came up with "Youth International Party," because it symbolized the movement and made for a good play on words. Some referred to the group as "Yippie!," as in a shout for joy (with an exclamation mark to express exhilaration). As Abbie Hoffman wrote, "What does Yippie! mean?" Energy – fun – fierceness – exclamation point!"
The Yippies were influenced by The Diggers in San Francisco and often used guerilla theater, pranks, absurdist forms of protest, as well as political and cultural disruption in their activism. They sought to merge the personal with the political… and have fun in the process. ABC News once stated, "The group was known for street theater pranks and was once referred to as the 'Groucho Marxists'." Among their many storied antics, the Yippies suggested lacing the New York City water supply with LSD, sent joints to hundreds of random people in New York from the telephone book, threw fake money on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and suggested a circle of hippies could “levitate” the Pentagon during an October 1967 protest. The Yippies understood the dominant role of mass media and television in contemporary society and often went on television, but refused to obey the normal rules of corporate TV production, hoping to “break the frame” and reveal to audiences the constructed nature of mass media. The Yippies were also involved in the underground press movement. Much of the writing and visual culture they produced consisted of obscenity-laced diatribes against mainstream society, but made few serious calls to militant action.
Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies first suggested a “Festival of Life” in the park outside of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. They also planned to nominate a pig, nicknamed “Pigasus,” for President. Other New Left organizations joined the effort, which ultimately descended into chaos when Chicago police, at the order of authoritarian Democratic Mayor Richard Daley, attacked and brutally beat demonstrators in front of reporters and television cameras, causing an international controversy. In the melee, many Yippies were injured and arrested, including Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, who were put on trial as a part of what become known as the Chicago 7.
In 1970, an estimated 200-300 members of the Yippies descended on the Disneyland amusement park in Anaheim, California, to hold what was billed as their “First International Pow-Wow” to protest the U.S.’s continuing involvement in the Vietnam War and to liberate Disneyland as a symbol of the establishment. Hoffman authored a pamphlet in 1967, titled, “Fuck the System”; two books, “Revolution for the Hell of It” (1968) and “Steal This Book” (1971); and an LP record, “Woodstock Nation: A Talk-Rock Album” (1969).
The Yippies began to fragment and disintegrate during the 1970s. A disillusioned Hoffman committed suicide in 1989. Jerry Rubin became a “Yuppie” during the 1980s, embracing capitalism and starting a number of businesses. He was killed in 1994 when he was struck by a car. Even so, a number of Yippie followers have carried on in the same spirit.
Along the bottom right of this poster, it reads: “more copies: YIP 333 East 5th Street, NYC."
The main text on the poster is the Youth International Party Manifesto and it reads:
YOUTH INTERNATIONAL PARTY
MANIFESTO!
WE ARE A PEOPLE
We are a new nation.
We believe in life.
And we want to live now.
We want to be alive 24 hours a day.
Nine-to-five Amerika doesn't even live on weekends.
Amerika is a death machine. It is run
on and for money whose power
determines a society based on war,
racism, sexism, and the destruction
of the planet. Our life-energy is the
greatest threat to the machine.
So they're out to stop us.
They have to make us like them.
They cut our hair, ban our music
festivals, put cops and narcs in the
schools, put 200,000 of us in jail
for smoking flowers, induct us,
housewive us, Easy-Rider murder us.
Amerika has declared war on our New Nation!
WE WILL BUILD AND DEFEND OUR NEW NATION
But we will continue to live and grow. We are young, we have beautiful
ideas about the way we should live. We want everyone to control their
own life and to care for one another. And we will defend our freedom
because we can’t live any other way.
We will continue to seize control of our minds and our bodies. We can't
do it in their schools, so we'll take them over or create our own. We
can't do it in their Army, so we'll keep them from taking our brothers.
We can't make it in their jobs, so we'll work only to survive. We can't
relate to each other like they do - our nation is based on cooperation
not competition.
We will provide for all that we need to build and defend our nation. We
will teach each other the true history of Amerika so that we may learn
from the past to survive in the present. We will teach each other the
tactics of self-defense. We will provide free health services: birth
control and abortions, drug information, medical care, that this society
is not providing us with.
We will begin to take control of drug manufacture and distribution, and
stop the flow of bad shit. We will make sure that everyone has a decent
place to live: we will fight landlords, renovate buildings, live
communally, have places for sisters and brothers from out-of-town, and
for runaways and freed prisoners. We will set up national and
international transport and communication so we can be together with our
sisters and brothers from different parts of the country and the world.
We will fight the unnatural division between cities and country by
facilitating travel and communication
. We will end the domination of women by men, and children by adults.
The well-being of our nation is the well-being of all peace-loving
people.
WE WILL HAVE PEACE
We cannot tolerate attitudes, institutions, and machines whose purpose
is the destruction of life and the accumulation of "profit.”
Schools and universities are training us for roles in Amerika's empire
of endless war. We cannot allow them to use us for the
military-industrial profiteers.
Companies that produce waste, poisons, germs, and bombs have no place in
this world.
We are living in the capital of the world war being waged against life.
We are not good Germans. We who are living in this strategic center of
Babylon must make it our strategic center. We can and must stop the
death machine from butchering the planet.
We will shut the motherfucker down!
WE WILL MAKE OUR NEW NATION FIT FOR LIVING THINGS
We will seize Amerika’s technology and use it to build a nation based on
love and respect for all life.
Our new society is not about the power of a few men but the right of all
humans, animals and plants to play out their natural roles in harmony.
We will build our communities to reflect the beauty inside us.
People all over the world are fighting to keep Amerika from turning
their countries into parking lots!
WE WILL BE TOGETHER WITH ALL THE TOGETHER PEOPLES OF THE EARTH
Pig Empire is ravaging the globe, but the beautiful people everywhere
are fighting back. New Nation is one with the black, brown, red & yellow
nations.
Che said:
'You North Americans are very lucky. You live in the middle of the
beast. You are fighting the most important fight of all, If I had my
wish, I would go back with you to North Amerika to fight there. I envy
you.' "
Yippies
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1968
poster
Stop the Trial
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This button refers to the trial of the Chicago 8. Following the turbulent demonstrations and police repression outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, eight antiwar activists – David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International Party (“Yippies”); Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party; and two less well-known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines – were indicted by a grand jury indicted on March 20, 1969, and put on trial for conspiracy to cross state lines to cause a riot, teach the making of an incendiary device and commit acts to impede law enforcement officers in their lawful duties. Sixteen alleged co-conspirators - Wolfe B. Lowenthal, Stewart E. Albert, Sidney M. Peck, Kathy Boudin, Corina F. Fales, Benjamin Radford, Thomas W. Neumann, Craig Shimabukuro, Bo Taylor, David A. Baker, Richard Bosciano, Terry Gross, Donna Gripe, Benjamin Ortiz, Joseph Toornabene, and Richard Palmer - avoided prosecution.
The high-profile trial, which began on September 24, 1969, and lasted five months, quickly turned into a circus. The defendants, known initially as the Chicago 8, were represented by radical attorneys, William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass of the Center for Constitutional Rights. The judge was Julius Hoffman, and the prosecutors were Richard Schultz and Tom Foran. Bobby Seale repeatedly disrupted the trial because he could not have the lawyer of his choice, calling Judge Hoffman “racist” and a “fascist pig.” In response, Hoffman, who displayed a disdain for the defendants and the anti-war movement, more generally, bound, gagged and chained Seale to his chair in front of the jury for several days. Kunstler lambasted Judge Hoffman’s actions, saying, "This is no longer a court of order, Your Honor, this is a medieval torture chamber." Hoffman ultimately severed Seale’s case from the other seven defendants for a later trial, which never took place. He also sentenced Seale to four years imprisonment for contempt of court, one of the harshest punishments for that offense in U.S. history to that time. A U.S. Court of Appeals quickly overturned the ruling.
The trial of the seven remaining defendants, now known as the Chicago 7, became a cause celebre among New Left activists. The prosecution relied primarily on the testimony of undercover police officers and informants, who told the jury that they had heard various defendants state that they were planning to confront police during the convention and fight back against police aggression. Some claimed to have heard Froines and Weiner speak openly about making stink bombs and other incendiary devices.
According to a history of the case written for the Federal Judicial Center by historian, Bruce Ragsdale, “The defendants and their attorneys went well beyond the rebuttal of the criminal charges and sought to portray the proceedings as a political trial rather than a criminal prosecution. In their legal arguments, in their courtroom behavior, and in their numerous public appearances, they challenged the legitimacy of the court and the judge as well as the substance of the indictment. The trial became for the defense an opportunity to portray the dissent movement that had converged on Chicago for the Democratic Convention.” Defense attorneys called more than 100 witnesses to the stand, including a number of anti-war and countercultural celebrities, like Phil Ochs, Judy Collins, Dick Gregory, William Styron, Arlo Guthrie, Country Joe McDonald, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Rev. Jesse Jackson. SDS leader, Tom Hayden, attempted to observe courtroom decorum and offer reasonable arguments to refute the prosecutions claims, but Yippie leaders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, exploited the trial for political theater, consistently disrupting the proceedings, dressing in costumes, eating jelly beans, blowing kisses at jurors, cracking jokes and insulting the judge. As civil rights attorney, Ron Kuby, recalled at William Kunstler’s 1995 funeral, “While defending the Chicago Seven, [Kunstler] put the war in Vietnam on trial—asking Judy Collins to sing "Where Have All The Flowers Gone" from the witness stand, placing a Viet Cong flag on the defense table, and wearing a black armband to commemorate the war dead.”
Much of the trial turned on procedural arguments that usually went against the defense counsel. Again, Ragsdale explains, “Even before the trial started, Judge Hoffman granted only thirty days for pretrial motions rather than the six months requested by the defense. The judge denied the defense attorneys’ access to government evidence obtained without a warrant and barred the defense from submitting the Lake Villa document in which Hayden and Davis set out their non- violent strategy. Judge Hoffman prohibited former Attorney General Ramsey Clark from testifying about his opposition to prosecution of demonstrators, and Hoffman sharply limited the defense lawyers’ ability to question Mayor Daley. Frequently the trial was interrupted by arguments over seemingly petty questions: Could the defendants distribute birthday cake in the courtroom? Could the defendants use the public restrooms, or should they be limited to the facilities in the holding rooms? Could the musician witnesses sing the songs they performed at demonstrations, or was the judge correct in insisting that they recite lyrics?”
At the end of the chaotic trial, the jury, made up of eleven whites and two African Americans, acquitted all seven defendants of conspiracy, but found Hoffman, Rubin, Dellinger, Davis and Hayden guilty of crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot. Froines and Weiner were acquitted of all charges. Judge Hoffman sentenced the remaining five defendants to the maximum penalty, five years in prison and a $5000 fine All seven defendants were also sentenced to prison time for contempt of court, including their attorney, William Kunstler. In a separate trial, a jury acquitted seven of the eight indicted policemen. The case against the eighth was dropped.
The contempt convictions were ultimately overturned on an appeal in 1972 and in a separate appeal all of the criminal convictions except for Bobby Seale’s were overturned. The appellate court cited the judge’s “deprecatory and often antagonistic attitude toward the defense’ as cause for the reversal. They censured Judge Hoffman and the government attorneys for their open hostility toward the defendants and their failure to fulfill “the standards of our system of justice.”
The legacy of the Chicago 8 trials was less legal than cultural. No clear legal precedents emerged from the cases, particularly with regard to the Anti-Riot Act of 1968, which was the main legal foundation for the prosecutions. Instead, the case has lived on as a cultural touchstone of a turbulent period in American history, adapted numerous times on the stage, in documentary form and as feature films.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1969
button
Revolution for the Hell of It
Counterculture and Anti-Vietnam War Movement
Revolution for the Hell of It, a guidebook by Abbie Hoffman, chronicles his involvement in the Youth International Party as well as his trial as a part of the Chicago Seven following the turmoil surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Youth International Party
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
Button
Physical Object
NLG v. FBI
Civil Liberties and Legal Justice
The National Lawyers Guild was formed in 1937 as a network of progressive lawyers interested in “human rights over property rights.” During the 1930s and 1940s, the NLG was involved in defending labor rights, fighting fascism in Spain and helping prosecute Nazis during the Nuremburg Trials. They also fought for racial justice and helped draft the U.N.’s Declaration on Human Rights. In the late-1940s and 1950s, the NLG pioneered storefront law offices for low-income people and defended many victims of the McCarthyite attacks on civil liberties, the Rosenbergs and Hollywood Ten.
According to the NLG website, “In the 1960s, the Guild set up offices in the South and organized thousands of volunteer lawyers and law students to support the civil rights movement long before the federal government or other bar associations were involved. Guild members represented the families of murdered civil rights activists Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman, who had heeded the Guild’s call to join the civil rights struggle and were assassinated by local law enforcement/Ku Klux Klan members.
Lawsuits initiated by the National Lawyers Guild brought the Kennedy Justice Department directly into the civil rights struggle in Mississippi and challenged the seating of the all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic Convention. Guild lawyers defended thousands of civil rights activists who were arrested for exercising basic rights and established new federal constitutional protections in groundbreaking Supreme Court cases such as Dombrowski v. Pfister, which enjoined thousands of racially motivated state court criminal prosecutions; Goldberg v. Kelly, the case that established the concept of “entitlements” to social benefits that require Due Process protections; and Monell v. Department of Social Services, which held municipalities liable for brutal police officers.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Guild members represented Vietnam War draft resisters, antiwar activists, and the Chicago 7 after the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. Guild offices in Asia represented GIs who opposed the war. Guild members argued U.S. v. U.S. District Court, the Supreme Court case that established that Nixon could not ignore the Bill of Rights in the name of “national security” and that led to the Watergate hearings and his eventual resignation.
Guild members defended FBI-targeted members of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and the Puerto Rican independence movement and helped expose illegal FBI and CIA surveillance, infiltration, and disruption tactics that the U.S. Senate Church Commission detailed in the 1975-76 COINTELPRO hearings, which led to enactment of the Freedom of Information Act and other specific limitations on federal investigative power.” (https://nlgmass.org/nlg-national-history/)
National Lawyers Guild
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
late-1960s or early-1970s
Button
Physical Object
National Lawyers Guild
Social Justice, Civil Rights
The National Lawyers Guild was established in 1937 as "an association of progressive lawyers and jurists who believed that they had a major role to play in the reconstruction of legal values to emphasize human rights over property rights." The Guild, which continues its work today, is considered "the oldest and most extensive network of public interest and human rights activists working within the legal system."
According to the NLG website, "In the 1960s, the Guild set up offices in the South and organized thousands of volunteer lawyers and law students to support the civil rights movement long before the federal government or other bar associations were involved. Guild members represented the families of murdered civil rights activists Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman, who had heeded the Guild’s call to join the civil rights struggle and were assassinated by local law enforcement/Ku Klux Klan members. Lawsuits initiated by the National Lawyers Guild brought the Kennedy Justice Department directly into the civil rights struggle in Mississippi and challenged the seating of the all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic Convention. Guild lawyers defended thousands of civil rights activists who were arrested for exercising basic rights and established new federal constitutional protections in ground-breaking Supreme Court cases such as Dombrowski v. Pfister, which enjoined thousands of racially motivated state court criminal prosecutions; Goldberg v. Kelly, the case that established the concept of “entitlements” to social benefits that require Due Process protections; and Monell v. Department of Social Services, which held municipalities liable for brutal police officers. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Guild members represented Vietnam War draft resisters, antiwar activists, and the Chicago 7 after the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. Guild offices in Asia represented GIs who opposed the war. Guild members argued U.S. v. U.S. District Court, the Supreme Court case that established that Nixon could not ignore the Bill of Rights in the name of “national security” and led to the Watergate hearings and his eventual resignation. Guild members defended FBI-targeted members of the Black Panther Party (including Angela Davis), the American Indian Movement, and the Puerto Rican independence movement and helped expose illegal FBI and CIA surveillance, infiltration, and disruption tactics that the U.S. Senate Church Commission detailed in the 1975-76 COINTELPRO hearings and that led to enactment of the Freedom of Information Act and other specific limitations on federal investigative power."
The button reads, “…more dangerous than those… who throw the bombs.”
National Lawyers Guild
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
undated
Button
Physical Object
Los Siete de la Raza
Chicano Movement
In 1969, two plain-clothesed San Francisco police officers stopped several young Latino men moving furniture in the Mission District of San Francisco. An altercation ensued, resulting in one of the police officers, Joe Brodnik, being shot and killed with the other officer, Paul McGoran's, gun. Six of the young men (Gary Lescallett, Rodolfo Antonio (Tony) Martinez, Mario Martinez, Jose Rios, Nelson Rodriguez, and Danilo Melendez) were arrested and charged with murder, while another man (George Lopez) accused of the crime was never apprehended. Their court proceeding, which ran parallel to Huey Newton's more well-known trial, became a cause celebré within the Latino community and the New Left. Some of the accused had participated in local pan-Latino political activist groups, like the Mission Rebels, COBRA (Confederation of Brown Race for Action) and the Brown Berets. Member of the Black Panther Party and two of the Chicago 7 attended the trial. The men, who were ultimately acquitted, came to be known, popularly, as "Los Siete de la Raza," or "Los Siete."
Free Los Siete
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1969
underground press
Daley's Media
Yippes
This satirical flyer from the Yippies addresses politics repression during the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention.
Chicago Defense Fund
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1968
mimeograph
flyer
Bank of Amerika Check
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
On February 25, 1970, radical New Left attorney, William Kunstler, gave a talk at Harder Stadium on the campus of the University of California-Santa Barbara. At the time, Kunstler was the defense attorney for the “Chicago 7,” who were charged with conspiracy to instigate a riot during the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention. During his speech, Kunstler noted recent local controversies, including the firing of Anthropology Professor, Bill Allen, as well as scattered violence between students and police in the student enclave of Isla Vista. During his remarks, Kunstler said, “I have never thought that breaking of windows and sporadic, picayune violence is a good tactic. But, on the other hand, I cannot bring myself to become bitter and condemn young people who engage in it.” The crowd whistled and applauded. Following the talk, as those in attendance walked toward a park in Isla Vista for a rally, police, who patrolled Isla Vista in what was termed a “saturation patrol technique,” arrested Rich Underwood, mistaking a bottle of wine he was drinking for a Molotov Cocktail. When Underwood resisted, police beat him. The arrival of more riot clad police set off clashes with students who shouted and threw rocks and bottles. Santa Barbara City College student and radio broadcaster, Malcolm Gault-Williams, explained, “Imagine being in Harder Stadium and having the lawyer of a high-profile national trial … draw connections between what has been happening nationally with what has been happening on campus. And then imagine a large part of those attendees leave the stadium and … watch as police not just arrest a student but beat the shit out of him.” Another student, John Riley, echoed that interpretation, saying, “Cops arrested this guy and set everything off. It was like throwing a match into a gasoline can, everybody just went nuts.”
That evening, the unrest spread, as student broke the windows of several real estate agencies, set police cars on fire, and then began targeting the Isla Vista Bank of America building, ultimately burning it down. UCSB Sociology Professor, Dick Flacks, recalled, “By evening I would guess hundreds of people were in the street and at some point people lit a trash dumpster and pushed it through the bank doors.” During the incident, several waves of riot-clad police were repelled by protesters. As one student recalled, “All of the sudden, all you heard out windows of the houses right next door was the Rolling Stones’ ‘Street Fighting Man.’”
It was the second consecutive night of disturbances in Isla Vista. The previous day, 150-200 people set trash cans on fire and vandalized local real estate offices, including the front window of the Isla Vista Bank of America branch, after the arrest of “Lefty” Bryant, a well‐known black student radical, and three other campus activists, Greg Wilkinson, Jim Trotter and Mick Kronman.
Students targeted Bank of America as a symbol of American capitalism. Bank of America had branches in Vietnam, helped fund the war industry and also side with California grape growers, rather than striking workers in the United Farm Workers. Becca Wilson, a student and editor of El Gaucho, explained, “It was the biggest capitalist thing around. It was a symbol of the corporations that benefited from war and were oppressing people all over world, in whose interest government was acting.” Another student, Greg Desilet, offered a slightly different interpretation, “The day afterwards a lot of it was rationalized as anti-war. The bank was seen to be in league with defense corporations providing armaments for Vietnam. That was the rationale given, but in my view it was more. It was locally centered with a lot of local anger toward police that had developed over time. People were just pissed off. They were really pissed off.” The Isla Vista Bank of America incident received national media attention, prompting Governor Ronald Reagan to declare a state of emergency and call in the National Guard, who made an estimated 300 arrests.
On April 18, 1970, unrest again hit Isla Vista, this time with tragic results. The Bank of America had established a new temporary branch and students again protested. Police arrived in armored trucks, dressed in riot gear and armed with tear gas. Radical activists over-turned cars and again began burning buildings. As Gault-Williams recounted, “The college’s student body president called on more moderate students to head down to the protest to try to calm some of the more radical students who were rioting and lighting fires. Kevin [Moran] and his roommates headed down to the scene. After helping put out a fire in a Taco Bell, Kevin ran to Bank of America, which had also been torched. While the students attempted to put out the fire, police officers moved in and began tossing tear gas into the crowds. During the confusion, police reported at the time, an officer’s rifle accidentally went off and fragments of the bullet struck and killed Kevin.” Initially, local police claimed a sniper bullet killed Moran, but ballistic tests showed that it came from an officer’s rifle. He was later exonerated. In June, 17 students, most well-known campus activist leaders, were indicted for the Isla Vista unrest, despite the fact that several had solid alibis. That same month, a third incident of unrest struck Isla Vista, prompting a harsh response from Los Angeles police. That police response attracted a rebuke from conservative writer, William F. Buckley, in the Los Angeles Times.
In his 1979 tell-all book, Deep Cover, former FBI agent, Cril Payne, claims the FBI was very active in Santa Barbara at the time and played a role in instigating the burning of the Isla Vista Bank of America building as a part of their COINTELPRO operations.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1970
bank check
Anti-War Referendum
During the mid-1960s, the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade organized dozens of peace and anti-war groups in a series of anti-war parades, “peace-ins,” an anti-war referendum, and other events. Like many organizations during this period, the group targeted university and college campuses in order to rally support against the Vietnam War. Dave Dellinger, who would later gain notoriety as a member of the Chicago 7 during the 1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago, and Norma Becker, who worked for the War Resisters League, led the group.
Fifth Ave. Vietnam Peace Parade Committee
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
Button
Physical Object
A.J. Muste at 5th Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade (1 image)
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
Roz Payne photograph of legendary pacifist and anti-war activist, A.J. Muste, during a 5th Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade in New York City, perhaps in 1965 or 1966.
During the mid-1960s, the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade organized dozens of local peace and anti-war groups in a series of anti-war parades, “peace-ins” and other events. Dave Dellinger, who would later gain notoriety as a member of the Chicago 7 during the 1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago, and Norma Becker, who worked for the War Resisters League, led the group.
A.J. Muste was born in the Netherlands in 1885 and emigrated to the United States in 1901, where his father was a factory worker at a plant in Michigan. Muste was ordained as a Dutch Reform minister in his young adulthood and moved to New York City with his wife and three children. There, he was introduced to liberal theology and pragmatism and joined the local chapter of the National Civil Liberties Union, which would later become the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a pacifist organization formed in opposition to WWI by Muste, Jane Addams and Bishop Paul Jones. Muste’s stance against the war compelled his more conservative congregation to oust him.
Following his rejection by the church, Muste focused his peace and justice work on the political left. During the late-1910s and 1920s, Muste worked within the labor movement, famously leading striking textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and serving as the director of the Brookwood Labor College, a training school for the militant Congress of Industrial Organizations. In 1929, the more conservative American Federation of Labor accused Muste of being a communist, prompting him to found the Conference for Progressive Labor Action, a faction dedicated to organizing for militant industrial unionism. The CPLA ultimately evolved into the Trotskeyite, American Workers Party, which Muste led until a religious experience in 1936 prompted him to break with Marxist-Leninism and rededicate himself to Christian pacifism.
As national secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Muste dedicated himself to training a new generation in nonviolent direct action against racial segregation. He also published an important book, Nonviolence in an Aggressive World, in 1940. As the southern black freedom movement gained steam, Muste became an important adviser and ally to prominent advocates of non-violence, like Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King, Jr.
During the post-WWII era, Muste was also focused on opposition to the Cold War and U.S. militarism. He continued to write and counseled draft and tax resistance to oppose those policies. In 1941 he said, “The problem after a war is the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?” Later, he argued, "We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life. Disarmament cannot be achieved nor can the problem of war be resolved without being accompanied by profound changes in the economic order and the structure of society.” Muste helped form several organizations dedicated to militant nonviolence and the creation of a New Left.
As a new generation of young activists rose in opposition to the war in Vietnam, Muste gained a new following and influence. In an article in a 1965 issue of Liberation, titled, “Who Has the Spiritual Atom Bomb, he wrote, “It is said that if the United States were to stop shooting and withdraw its troops from Vietnam, the Viet Cong would then stage a great purge of the people who we have been seeking to protect — have pledged to protect. First of all, so far they have been getting precious little protection from us. The Vietnamese people as human individuals have been shot at by the French, by us, by Communists, by guerrillas for years. Maybe, if only somebody would stop shooting at them that would be something to the good.” In a 1967 New York Times article, “Debasing Dissent,” Muste was famously quoted, “There is no way to peace; peace is the way.” In defense of dissent, Muste wrote in 1967, shortly before his death, “There is a certain indolence in us, a wish not to be disturbed, which tempts us to think that when things are quiet, all is well. Subconsciously, we tend to give the preference to 'social peace,' though it be only apparent, because our lives and possessions seem then secure. Actually, human beings acquiesce too easily in evil conditions; they rebel far too little and too seldom. There is nothing noble about acquiescence in a cramped life or mere submission to superior force.” Muste played a central role in organizing the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Muste died in 1967.
Roz Payne
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1965 or 1966