Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin
Yippie vs. Yuppie: The Great Debate (1986)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AgYYhYFa7s
Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were both on the leading edge of protest in the 1960’s. Rubin became an entrepreneur and the chief spokesman for the Baby Boom generation. Hoffman remained active in environmental issues and grass roots politics, maintaining his anti-establishment stance until the end of his life.
The 1986 debate featured in this one-hour video was the “final” debate for these two eloquent speakers, following 18 months of touring North America. Though many years had passed since their heyday as counterculture icons, thousands flocked to auditoriums to hear the opinions of Hoffman – idealistic, unrelenting champion for truth and justice – and Rubin – ‘the pragmatic voice of the new right’.
This was ripped from a DVD, but the DVD’s original source was apparently a VHS tape. There is a slight video flicker at the bottom of the screen. I think you can see it in the screenshots, but this is rare footage, and definitely worth a watch.
Song Intro: [I’d Love To Change The World by Ten Years After]
… tell me, where is sanity?
Tax the rich, feed the poor
‘Til there are no rich no more
I’d love to change the world
But I don’t know what to do
So I’ll leave it up to you
Population keeps on breeding
Nation bleeding, still more feeding, economy
Life is funny, skies are sunny
Bees make honey, who needs money? No, not poor me
I’d love to change the world
But I don’t know what to do
So I’ll leave it up to you
Oh, yeah
World pollution, there’s no solution
Institution, electrocution
Just black and white, rich or poor
Them and us, stop the war
I’d love to change the world
But I don’t know what to do
So I’ll leave it up to you
Introducer: Boy, I’m up here with the big boys tonight it looks like. Good evening. I’m Fanny Keeffer. I left my business card in the lobby. My bandana is in my pocket. Just so I’m in both camps.
Tonight, we’re going to talk about yuppies and yippies the idealism of the 60s versus the challenges we face. In the 80s. As you probably guessed by now, excuse my voice. The players are Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Reuben and Hoffman were on the leading edge of protests in the 60s. Today, they are not on the same bus, Norman Mailer once wrote. Jerry Rubin is the most brilliant, unpredictable, creative, therefore dangerous hippie oriented leader in the new left and 65, want to clap? Go ahead.
In 65, Jerry pioneered the anti war movement. He blocked some troop trains and ran for mayor of Berkeley on the Anti War Pro marijuana ticket, of course. None of us would know anything about that, right? Ruben and Hoffman, after marching on the Pentagon, gave birth to the Yippies, the Youth International Party. Mr. Nixon was not impressed with their demonstrations outside the Democratic Convention in 1968, which led to the Chicago 7 trial, it was a trial filed by the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, the most important political trial of the century in the 70s.
Jerry became involved in fitness and self-awareness. In the 80s after taking. A shot at Wall Street. It’s all right. It’s all right. Great body. He became an entrepreneur and pioneered business networking events today more than 5000 yuppies, to coin a phrase, have a party every Tuesday night at the Palladium in New York City, they discuss careers, life and gourd. Many babies, but also also make valuable contacts with each other. The very word yuppie, in fact, was coined at one of these events. Jerry has written five books, and over the years being a major spokesperson for the baby boom generation.
Abby Hoffman. Not to be left behind began his career fighting for civil rights in the South. Active against the Vietnam War since 64, he developed his own style of counter-culture politics, which led to the formation of the Yippies. In ‘73 Abbey went underground, but still managed to stay politically active. Stranger things have happened. When the Army Corps of Engineers proposed turning the Saint Lawrence River into a year round of barge. Panel he organized a successful grassroots campaign to defeat the project. The Governor of New York and US Senator Monahan praised his leadership and he was appointed to a federal Water Resource Commission while still a fugitive. Abby is the founder today of several environmental groups throughout the northeast. He has escorted many delegations to Nicaragua, campaigning against U.S. policy in Central America. He has written seven books, obviously had a little more time than Jerry. Who knows? Newsweek recently wrote Abby Hoffman has emerged from 2 decades of activism with his Marxist humor and idealism intact.
Abbie: Groucho Marxist.
Introducer: Oh, Groucho Marxist. I’m sorry it’s a great line. I left it out. What can I tell you about my typewriter? Groucho Marxist humor and idealism intact. You’re moderator this evening will be Sue Watson, and she’ll try and keep the boys in tow.
Jerry: It’s really good being here in Vancouver and I want to thank Joseph Roberts for putting together such a fabulous. Evening. You may Remember Me from the 1960s. I lived thousands of young people to the streets and presidents fighting wars quivered at the sound of. My name. I was known and not wanted in many states in the USA. I the government spent millions of dollars to try to put me and many others in jail for quite a long time. I was the cause of thousands of arguments around the family dinner table. Between parents and their children’s parents wanting their children not to be like me. Then came the 1970s, and things changed and I shaved off my beard and wherever I went, no one recognized me anymore. So today I never. Leave home without my American Express card. It’s a joke, OK? I gotta. And that’s my jokes because people think if you have a credit card, you’re in favor of apartheid in South Africa. I I believe that too. That was kind. Of one of the true beliefs that we had going into the 1970s, I think it took me until 1976, of course. At that time. I was living with a girlfriend at the time and I was just using her credit card, but we didn’t worry about contradictions. Like that. Now this is a debate between being stuck in the past and I know how tempting it is to be stuck in the past, because when your legends like Abby Hoffman and I were in the 60s, you don’t want to give that legend up. It’s exciting to be a hero, and it’s very difficult to change and especially difficult because there’s a lot of people who are still. Stuck in the 60s and some of them may even be here tonight. They may even been the few people who I like earlier. Earlier someone mentioned fitness and self-awareness and the few people assist in boot. I guess if you’re booting fitness and self-awareness you got to count me out of that revolution. A revolution that excludes being fit and excludes being self aware. But anyway this is a date as far as I see it between the past and adapting to the present. And creating the future if you still think of the old slogan TuneIn, turn on and drop out, then you’re going to be on. His side. If you believe time is money, then you’re going to be more tempted toward my side anyway. Basically, basically I want to say that I’m very proud of what I participated in in the. 60s. And nothing. Nothing that I’m doing today in any sense takes away from from that appreciation. I think there’s a contradiction here and that is that when somebody seems to change. On on a surface level or the forms change, the media makes a big sensationalistic thing about it, and people therefore assume that it’s an it’s not an evolution, but it’s a break with the past. And I think that everything I’m doing today is a natural evolution from the past. And I’m just extremely proud of of what we accomplished in the 60s. But I don’t want to dwell on that and I could list those accomplishments from force, the United States out of Vietnam, toward racial ending, racial segregation, to the women’s movement. But then came the 1970s. And unfortunately, we thought the 60s was going to continue into the 70s. And there was going to be a worldwide revolution and it didn’t take place. And when the 70s happened, a lot of the people that were active in the 60s were forced, first of all, to look at themselves. And we didn’t do that in the 60s because because. It wasn’t part of the 60s to be self reflective. Whenever anything was wrong, you kind of pointed to the government and blame the government. Everything was always the government’s fault. But in the 70s we found that there was something wrong with us. First of all, the male chauvinism that was rampant in American Society was also true inside the movement. And women rebelled from the political movement in the 1970s, and that’s one of the things that ended the. Activism of the 60s. And women. Forced men to look at themselves. And one thing about. The 60s is we are very macho. We were kind of rambos of the left and. We had the feeling we had the feeling that the clenched fist was going to transform society and we were aggressive. And we were not sensitive and we were not open to self criticism and the 70s was a time when men, forced by women, were forced to begin to look at other parts of their nature. And it was a very positive thing. And of course, we thought in the 60s that drugs was going to liberate human beings, that if only Richard Nixon would smoke marijuana. If only Richard Nixon would take LSD, he would develop a new consciousness and everything would change course. I think today I believe that. Drugs are part of the problem, that part of the solution and that we are wrong about drugs. And although drugs may have played a role in creating a consciousness that were crucial to the 60s and the 70s and 80s, drugs are a scourge of of, of human beings and anything that I did to contribute to that. I I’m I feel it’s one of things I feel sorry about. But something else happened in the 70s and that is that we found that our reality was not going to come home because we saw the world divided into two. All evil emanated from. The White House. And around the world were peasant communities that we’re going to have revolutions. And create new societies and then of course Vietnam. The north did take power over the South. Cambodia tremendous genocide took place. Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan, Cuba. Sending troops out everywhere and we begin to say now what’s going on here. Maybe. Maybe our vision of the world isn’t exactly right. And then in 197374, the United States did something that we didn’t think was going to happen. The United States got its troops out of Vietnam and we were shocked about that because we thought the Vietnam was the essential expression of racist and cureless American Society. And then in 74 course came the climax of the 60s. Because if we ever thought in the 60s that Richard Nixon was going. To be forced out of. The White House, we would have said the revolution has happened, but it happened in 74 but it happened because American democracy worked and then in the then in the mid 70s, then in the mid 70s, we came to realization. And that realization was that we’re not a minority. We’re not a minority, we’re majority in the United States, but the baby boom generation, 75,000,000 Americans who participated in the 60s and are going through these changes that I described in the 1970s. We can control the future of the United States. We can control the future United States because we’re the majority, but if they come to us in the 60s and said, OK, you’re right, you run the country, we want to know how to run anything because we weren’t preparing ourselves for that kind of leadership. And so in the in the 70s, I think millions of individuals. Made individual decisions to go into the system in one form or another. And the entrepreneurial explosion took place in the middle of the late 70s as the baby boom generation. Began becoming entrepreneurs, starting their own businesses. 60,000 businesses started in America in the mid sixties. 800,000 businesses started every year today and the transformation of Western Society from an industrial society to an Information Society, a historical transformation. And that transformation is taking place because of the baby boom generation. Action. So I see the baby boom generation as an innovative history making generation. That in the 70s created the women’s movement and the self-awareness movement and the entrepreneurial explosion and is about to take political power in the United States in the last election, neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party, in any sense appealed to this generation. Ronald Reagan, the Republicans nominated the candidate of the 19th century, Ronald Reagan. And even though Ronald Reagan says he’s for the entrepreneur and none of his policy support entrepreneurship, we’re talking now about post Reagan America, because post Reagan America will be the baby boom generation America I predicted in 1988, you will see a baby boom. Oriented candidate elected President, United States and all the values that we fought for in the 60s. All the things that we talked about and carry picket signs for we will be implementing implementing with specific programs implementing with vision facing the contradictions that we that that we faced in the 70s and the 1980s and 1990s, turning them into policies that transform the world. Thank you very much.
Moderator: Thank you. Thank you, Jerry. And now, Abby, do you have something to say?
Abbie: well, first I should say how happy I am to be in the Peoples Republic of Vancouver, the. The home of Wobblies, birthplace of Greenpeace and in the Vietnam War era, the Canadas headquarters for the Youth International Party, the Yippies who had the courage and The Who had the courage and initiative on one. Fine day to declare war on the United States and to attack. No one had done that since Pancho Villa, so I want to compliment the people that took place in that action. At first I should say something. I have a confession to make because I don’t see Jerry much. I don’t see him socially. I only see him on the stage. In fact, Press will always. Asked me do you see many of the Chicago seven? I see. Well, I only see him, but it’s just to yell at him right here and he’s announced that this is the last debate. So I want to announce that this was rigged. It is not a difference of political opinions. We have been homosexual lovers for 16 years and. This is a sexual disagreement that we have. Anyway. Anyway, I am the broken record. I am the has been the one that hasn’t changed his underwear in 20 years. I’m 50 years old. This year I pay my taxes. I have three kids. I have all the hang ups of of being a middle-aged, middle class American. But I still know **** from shoe Polish. I I do not. I believe by the way, Jerry, that if you have a credit card, you’re a supporter of apartheid in South Africa. But I do believe if you have stocks and corporations that do business in South Africa, it doesn’t matter whether you believe in apartheid or not. You support it with your action. I still, I still have not been big chilled. I still believe in the value and effectiveness of grassroots organizing and political activism for the last eight or nine years, I’ve been active around environmental issues back East. I have formed 1/2 a dozen groups that I work with as a dollar a year consultant, one group save the river which I started as a fugitive. Named Barry Freed worked to protect the Thousand Islands the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes from the ravages of the Army Corps of Engineers beat them hands down. That organization has been in the forefront to get New York State to be the first state in the Union to have an acid rain control bill. I founded a group called Great Lakes United. Canadians and Americans, United States ANS. That’s a little we have a little problem there, but South Americans to protect the largest body of water on the face of the planet AG group in New York City, citizens against nuclear trucking fighting the shipment of high level waste and groups on the Delaware River. The Black River the Moose River fighting utility companies, toxic polluters and the like. It was all these strategy and tactics of the 1960s, but they were far more than people with painted faces running through the streets. The 60s began in 1960, not 1968. It included electoral politics. It included door to door organizing, grassroots canvassing, in addition to guerrilla communication tactics, in addition to civil disobedience in direct action. It was not enough, knowing what I did about the Vietnam War. Having fought against that war for so many years, having traveled throughout Central America, having lived in Mexico when I was a fugitive, one of the advantages of fugitive life is you get to travel a lot. And I spent three years in that part of the world and I couldn’t help but see that these signs, the beginning signs of Vietnam, the 1st, 10 years of high and mercenaries of billions of dollars being sent and military aid of of, of peppering with the American public. The domino theory of inventing border incidences of inventing borders. Was not unlike the emanations coming out from the State Department and the media, getting us ready for the next Vietnam in Central America. And so I started organizing trips. I’ve made four trips to Nicaragua and I’ve brought more than 100 people down to see with their own eyes. Revolution in what Jerry calls here in Vancouver, a Russian satellite developing. To see the revolution and compare that with what they’re reading in the press and come back and mobilize against US intervention in Central America. I debate people from the right on all the major issues of the day, abortion, environmental issue, nuclear arms race, but this debate. Like my old companion from the foxholes is not really about issues because Jerry has really declared himself out of being a political activist. His opinions are just that they are a cocktail opinions, but it is a debate that goes on. It is a debate that goes on inside of us. Those of our generation, we can talk now because I can see, you know, we’re all this is the middle-aged generation now. We’re usually used to doing this. So with young kids and I’m usually prone to say things like I don’t trust anyone under 30. But we are faced with the problems of the economic squeeze. The 80s are different than the 60s. And how do we grant grow old? How do we mellow without eating our soul with a shovel without gobbling up all our political principles? How much money do we need to lead a comfortable life? And how is a comfortable? Life to be defined. How is our society going to change for more social justice, more peace? And what role is each of us going to play in that kind of a change? Now? This is the debate that goes on with inside of us. I am not Mother Teresa. So when people stop me in the hall and say, aren’t you selling out, you’re getting paid. And stand up here in the spotlight and yell and everything. Isn’t that some sellout? I am not Mother Teresa. I don’t go around the country calling on people to take vows of poverty. I call on them to. Make a balance between their individual needs for a comfortable life and the responsibility they have as citizens of a community and partners in a world out there. When the most common. Question I’m asked is just Jerry Rubin. Believe everything that you’ve just heard. He does believe it. He’s been born again. He’s 110% believer. The problem is the yuppies. I’m not a real political movement. The yuppies are a mythology created by the media in order to push over consumption, to get people to devour more Rolex watches, more Mercedes-Benz, more condominiums. Then they need to have a comfortable life. They so accepting the label by saying that I am a yuppie means that you are saying essentially I am a greedy, self-centered schmuck. I mean, go out there. Who out there goes around and says says that I am a yuppie. It’s not like saying I’m a feminist or I’m a Jew or a black, or I’m a worker or I’m an environmentalist. You have a political program attached to it, so it is not a political movement with a political program. That does not mean there’s not a lot of people out there jogging through the era of design. Your brains. Trying to pile up a lot of money and lose a lot of weight. But this is not this does not a political movement make? This is not even an attack that I’m making on young urban professionals. They’re I young, urban professionals in our societies, just as. There are old rural. Farmers. But that does not a political movement make. It is not something new. And one of Jerry’s. Big complaints is that I haven’t changed that. I’m not new, that I’m not with it, that I haven’t got gotten into the decade ISM of the 1980s, that I don’t fit in, that I was underground, that I was lost, and I didn’t go through any changes of consciousness. Then I’m fixated and so. Luck. There’s nothing new about the yuppies. We had the yuppies in the 1950s, they would call statistic as they were caught on the upwardly constantly upward escalator. The rat race. We made fun of it. It was the shopping mentality. Give me the career. Give me the diploma. That’s all I need. I’m going to keep my nose. Clean. I’m gonna dress right. I’m gonna dress the success and the whole empire. Three hours, the same hyper nationalism in the US that we’re #1 and screw the rest of the world. It’s only there to serve us. People like Jerry and myself took a look at that vision and said it was spiritually unrewarding for ourselves and it was unjust to those less fortunate who couldn’t participate in that dream. And because of that, the greatest decade of activism in our country happened because us and others like us have made that decision. And now Jerry wants to bring that back. Essentially, he’s stuck in the 1950s. If I’m stuck in the 1960s. He said he’s proud of what he did in the 60s, but if you redo it, you will say that he’s eaten every single page alive. He’s born again. Capitalist entrepreneurs are his new heroes and just like Ronald Reagan, he goes around to campuses. That tells the Horatio Alger rags to riches stories last year. It was Apple computer. The two hippies tinkering with a toy in their garage made millions of dollars, all new content. This this the apple went out, went a little rotten. Now it’s Ben and Jerry’s ice cream or Rachel’s cookies, or the new pet rock. Everyone strikes it good. He said 800,000 businesses were started last year. Statistics. So 3/4 of those are going to go bankrupt. But that doesn’t matter. This is an Amway convention. You are listening to this is. This is a. This is a lottery. This is a lottery ad. Everyone comes up roses. This is the New York magazine. You are reading. This is USA TODAY. It’s all rosy. It’s cheery, you know, it’s upbeat in color. Ladida quite modern. This is all a very interesting, rosy picture, but this is not reality. He does an interesting game by making all the baby boom generation not only activists, which is not true. The majority of us were not in the streets, they did not. To jail for what they believed in, they did not make the choice of coming to Canada. 20,000 came to Canada, 3 1/2 million went to Vietnam. So it’s not the majority, it’s it’s a. It’s a moral minority that makes a conscious decision to go against the grain and to go against the the government. And he equates all those activists with the baby boom generation and all the baby boom generation with entrepreneurs that are cashing in. There’s 75 million people in our country, and the baby boom generation 3.6 million of those are in $35,000 US or. Four, while at the same time 32,000,000 earned $10,000 or less each year. In other words, for ending every entrepreneur riding around in a Porsche, there are eight single mothers with kids sucking the glue off food stamps. They just happen not to make the pages of People magazine. Now I maintain that you cannot go up to an unwed mother in Harlem with 10 kids or a farmer that’s been kicked off his land by the banks and tell these people to go out and invent Lotus software. That’s a. That’s a fairy tale solution. I also don’t see any point in glorifying entrepreneurs as carrying the banner of the 1960s and 1960s was a vision of sharing, of community. The word entrepreneur comes from the French, one who enters into. Thanks. I don’t see that as a very a generous task. We don’t need more entrepreneurs in our society. We need more entry donors, people that are willing to enter and give of their time. Jerry says. Jerry promises that this will happen because we listen to Beatles records because we saw that wall was icky because we have the clean air and environment and all. Because we went through the 60s, this new social consciousness will go with the with the higher economic earnings. It’s the these people are not active now politically because they’re too busy making money. But when they make millions of dollars, they’re going to be generous. They’re going to give their money. Way and the US society is going to change. Why? Because the Jerry now money comes as the only power that is not the vision from the 1960s, the vision was that power can also, in a democracy, come from the people, and it should, in a democracy, go through the government and go back to the people. It is not a vision of change occurring from the top down. Of change being manipulated by rich professionals, often the capitals of our country, making all the decisions for me change still comes from the. Come up. Change is not something we delegate to people like Brian Mulrooney and Ronald Reagan every four years. When we go into a booth and pick either the evil of two lessers or the lesser of two evils, that’s a very small element of democratic participation. It is that balance between the individual. Needs to live a comfortable life and our responsibilities to the Community and the world around us. How we divide up our time, our energy and our money and our creative ideas, how we strike that balance, that’s what politics is all about, and that’s something we do every single days of our life. Life how does change come about? Does it come about through conforming to the latest fad? And that’s all the yuppies. Our effect is the dying fad this year. It’s really just last year’s term. It’s like, gone in the next fad will be coming in. Does it come to people who are going to glorify the present, who are going to rationalize? Self-centered greed and concede. Is it gonna come just from taking care of your? Body. Is that how change is gonna come about in our society? Is it gonna come about from glorifying the establishment from saying ohh the system works because Richard Nixon on the grace of the after reading the constitution decided to leave office? Is that how it is that how? It all happened. I don’t remember those years happening in those ways. In fact, Jerry has taken. Some credit by helping to drive Richard Nixon out from the streets from from the streets change comes from the bottom up. It comes from people who are willing to go against the grain from dissidents, from agitators who are willing to go in and stir things up from troublemakers willing to take chances with their careers. With their reputation in the community, that’s how change comes about. I can see that some things. Changed in our society for the better. Yes, individual women and individual minority group members have gotten ahead over the years, especially because of the battle against legal segregation in the South, in our country, and because of the feminist movement. But if you look at people as a group, and I would rather look at how groups are doing. Rather than how individuals are doing. And the gap the economic gap between blacks and whites has increased in the United States in 20 years, it has not decreased, and it’s getting worse. It’s 50% now among young black males, and that projection is by the end of this century, 14 years from now, it will be 70%. In other words, the problem is getting worse. Got better? Women earned $0.61 to the male dollar in 1983. The latest Labor Department statistics in 1965. That was $0.64 and 60. 5 and 55 that was $0.65. Basically, there’s been no difference over the decade with all the new consciousness. Jerry’s talking about the new liberation that is taking place in yuppie Dum. I’m really interested. Who does the house cleaning in the yuppie condominiums? More often than not, it’s a Haitian man. The we’ve already talked about the entrepreneurs out there. I see the movement towards monopolization greater than the so-called explosion of entrepreneurialism in the United States. 200,000 entrepreneurs called farmers in our country. That went bankrupt last year. Baby boomers as a whole in the United States cannot afford to buy the home their parents lived in 20 years ago. In fact, I read an interesting study last week where our generation helped to support. The parents today parents help to support the next generation. In other words, even on the famous 2 income family, the yuppie income because they can’t make it on one income, they need additional support from the older generation to carry on their lifestyle. The percent of unemployment has more than doubled in both countries. I see the headlines in Canada. They’re all cheering. Only one in 10. Canadians is out of work. In the 1960s, we would have been angry if it was one in five Canadians that was out of work. So there’s twice the willingness to tolerate high unemployment in the area in which I live in. Yeah, and. The work, the environmental issues, we peaked in 1972 with the Clean Air and Clean Water Act in Washington, the Office of Technology Assessment estimates that within 5 to 10 years we will pass the halfway point and more than half the water in the United States will be contaminated with toxic chemicals. So what’s the upping? Answer to that we’re going to move to Aspen, Co we’re going to drink Perrier. Basically, that’s symbolic of the answers that Jerry Rubin proposes for all the social problems out there, a social problem for Jerry now is when the caterer doesn’t show up at the networking salon with the proper hardres. And that’s that is a yuppie position. It’s a jungle out there, society. Social darwinianism it’s dog eat dog. I gotta be upwardly mobile, and if I? Can’t use you. In making a deal then I can’t be your friend because all success is defined in material terms and career. In terms of being constantly upwardly mobile, and if society is not to be manipulated, it’s to be avoided as a jungle. It’s not something that you in fact are a part of and people that care about society that call attention to the fact that there are two million homeless people in the richest country on earth and things like that. Well, they’re wimps. They’re losers. They’re not really equipping themselves for the. Tough, hard life ahead of ******** deal making in the upwardly Mobile World. We have serious problems in the United States and Canada, and the only places we can get that the money and the technology and the talent to address those is from the wall budget. And it’s from the rich because the rich by definition. Have the money we have to restructure our tax system flat, progressive taxes, no loopholes. Get the churches out of the free real estate business. Legalize marijuana and tax. Penalize runaway corporations that run off to the Third world. The countries in the third world, like Canada and want to plunder their natural resources and their workers so that they can stick the workers back home in the US.
Moderator: So you’re going to have time to respond to Jerry. You have about 5 minutes.
Abbie: Well that’s ok, 5 minutes Canadian is how much?
Moderator: 2.3 U.S.
Abbie: Well, I’ll just conclude with saying that there is no problem in our society to which there is not a creative, workable, workable, practical solution. We have the technology, we have the money, we have the. Brains. We simply lack the will to address. To ourselves, to the public problem, we didn’t invent the cry of peace and justice in the 1960s, and we certainly didn’t write its final chapter. Those people that still have their shoulders to the wheel, that are still political activists, I salute you. I’m with you. The battle is not over. Thanks for bringing me here Vancouver.
Moderator: Thank you very much. OK, you guys taking notes about what kind of questions or comments you want to make, this is exciting, all right.
Jerry: How much time do I have?
Moderator: You have 15 Minutes. And this man now has four.
Jerry: All right. Thank you. This spring, there’s going to be a political action in the United States in which thousands of people from went into the country are going to hold hands and and what’s called hands across America to raise money and call attention to the issue of the homeless that political action is being organized by the people that Abby Hoffman just spent, the better part of 20 minutes satirizing and attacking by young professionals. For example, Ken Kragen, who started we are the world, is a very rich man. There’s a lot of yuppie toys, whether he calls himself a yuppie or not, I don’t know. And I don’t care because that’s not the issue. But Ken Craig and is Leon Ritchie’s manager. And he did. We are the world organized it. He just resigned as Leon Ritchie’s manager so he could do. We are the world. But Abby Hoffman says all these yuppies, all they care, is deal making. They don’t wanna call any attention to the homeless. That’s what saddens me about Abby Hoffman. And that is not only does he not listen to what I’m saying because. His entire attack is not on me, but it’s on some phantom vision of me that he’s inventing for, for, for for the debates, because it’s not my politics he’s talking about because. Percent 3/4 of what he said. The end we need, we need the will. We have the technology, all we need is the commitment. Hey, that’s what I that’s what I’m saying. Matter of fact, sometimes Abby sounds like a a kind of a neoliberal Gary Hart kind of politician. Look, the young urban professionals, where did they first burst into national consciousness? They burst into national consciousness behind the Gary Hart campaign in the United States in the last election, and that campaign, unfortunately, was smashed by the bureaucracy of the Democratic Party. But that campaign talked about hands off Central America. It talked about taking the vision of the 60. And turning it into the reality of the 80s, it talked about retraining workers that were discarded by industrialism, and it was really a new vision of American politics. And what was the social base of that movement? The social base of that movement were yuppies. Now I’m not going to argue. And I what your image of the word yuppie is because we can just put. The word yuppie aside. But let’s talk about. This and that is that the generation of the 60s is about to take power, probably in Canada. You know that better than I do, but definitely in the United States of America, the people that have just reached the age of 40 are about to take economic and political leadership in this country. And in that country and to spend time satirizing them and making jokes. Got them saying to me because Abby and I in the 60s. We were part of a mass movement and we talked to that mass movement and now in the 80s and this is my criticism with Abby. Not that he’s not with it, but that in a sense he has separated himself from where the energy of of that generation is and instead is really playing to the 60s cultists. And there’s an Elvis. Cult there’s a flying saucers cult and there is a 60s cult. And what is the 60s cult? Do the 60s cult? Well, you know what they do? They Boo rich people. They laugh at them at at at at at success. The buzzwords, I mean, I’d be that speech Abby gave. I heard in 1968. Pretty much the same speech has nothing’s changed. The the anger is the same, that the jokes are the same, but unfortunately the reality is different. And you know something? When you don’t agree with something, what do you do? You blame the media. It’s a mythology the yuppies are in mythology. Young professionals are in mythology. But of course, Abby says. You can’t go up to a. Unwed mother and Harlan with 10 kids and say to her go out and vent Lotus software. Sounds interesting. I guess you can’t go up to her kid either and say to her kid and you don’t invent loader software and you can’t say to anyone out there. Don’t be an entrepreneur, we don’t need more entrepreneurs. That’s what Abby said. We don’t need. What do we need? Intruders. Now, what is that exactly? In fact, he tempted me. Earlier in this talk, when he said how are we going to change society? But I haven’t heard how it’s going to happen if the millions of people who are poor are going to stand up and demand their rights and transform society, is that going to happen? I don’t see that happening. I think that the poor people. Are as victimized by the ideology as wealthy people are, and unfortunately, what Abby has, what Abby has really, when you really think about, I think the key came out this and this is a real key philosophic difference between us and that is he said it a minority did the 60s. And a moral. Minority changes society, so really he doesn’t have faith in the majority. He doesn’t have faith that he has enough ideas and enough persuasion that he can convince the majority of society to build a majority coalition. We were a minority at first in the 60s, but when 1969 and 70 and seven, certainly when 71 and 72 came around, by that time we were the majority of the baby boom generation. They weren’t all in the streets, but their hearts were the people in the streets. We won the majority, the soul of our generation. Now in the 1980s, we can win a majority again because the things that ABC’s for. The majority of the baby generation is 4/2. The question is how do we implement it and if you spend your time attacking success and making fun of upward mobility, you’re cutting yourself off from the majority of the people because the majority of the people and maybe that’s wrong. Maybe that’s too bad about those people, but they. Want success? They want material things. People want, material things, something wrong with that. There might be a few people in this room who like material goods. There might be people in this room who want to be rich or are rich, or the rich. The problem tax. The rich rich is the. The word it doesn’t. It really doesn’t make sense to just isolate out success and then Abby says that I’m stuck in the 50s. Well, let me tell you what I see is different between the 50s and the 80s. The 50s was the organization, man. The 50s was the organizational structure. It was the other directed personality. It was you join these. The the, The, the company and you stay there for the rest of your life and you get a gold watch and there’s no hope of any kind of change. The 60s and the 50s was racial darkness. The 50s was male chauvinism. That was the 50s. The 60s exploded that vision complete. See. And we’re living in a different time. Right now, we are living in an entrepreneurial period. 800,000 businesses go out. That’s right. I mean, it gets started 3 force them go bankrupt, right. But 3/4 of the entrepreneurs don’t go bankrupt. He didn’t. He didn’t add. That what do those entrepreneurs go? Do they go out and start another business, businesses go bankrupt and individuals don’t go bankrupt. Now I’m not saying that. By being healthy, by exercising, you’re going to change the world. But if you don’t take care of yourself. If you don’t. Become the best person that you can be, and that’s being a healthy person and I don’t think you’re in a position to change anyone else, and I don’t think we’re going to change America through anger. I don’t think we want to change America through making fun of the rich and by appealing. To a minority consciousness. Because even in. The poor communities today there’s a debate going on, have very serious. The tactics that Abby and I used in the 60s that Abby, I think still thinks is the only way to change in the 80s. We’re effective when the issue was racial discrimination, but they’re not effective when the issue is. Who has the money in society? They’re not effective when the issue is the kind of poor educational differences between rich and poor. Now comes the debate. What is the role of self-reliance in changing society now? self-reliance used to be and historically has been kind of a right wing cop out idea. Don’t blame the government. It’s your responsibility. But I’m proposing that we take that idea of self-reliance and marry it to the concept of community. And I know when Jesse Jackson goes to black high schools and the press is not there and he’s talking to black teenagers, his message is something like this. It’s stop blaming ******. Stop blaming capitalism. Stop blaming the government. Look at yourselves. Look at the drugs. You’re. Taking. Look at the unwanted pregnancies. Look at how you put yourselves down. Change yourselves. So a A a superficially right wing message of changing yourself. Is, I believe, an explosive philosophy that people from the 60s should adopt and inculcate into a new method to change society. We do need more entrepreneurs and young urban professionals today are politically active. We are the world. Live Aid Band-Aid. I consider those two things to be new examples of where society can turn. It’s people saying governments not doing it. We’re going to do it ourselves. It’s people caring and who’s doing it. Professionals, successful people, the kind of people that Abby often just spent 20 minutes laughing at and making jokes at, there’s now a group of people that are going to March from one end of this country to the other, called Pro Peace, stunned by upwardly mobile professionals and the hands across America. Richard Nixon didn’t read the Constitution. Richard Nixon was forced out of the White House by the press and by the people we learned in the 70s. That American democracy is a little more vibrant than we thought it was, and even Che Guevara said that people don’t turn to. Actions outside the electoral process. When a society has elections. That people feel are viable. In a way. The people with power in this country have very little fear from Abby Hoffman. And. Because the Republicans, the Republicans, know. Republicans know very well. Well what power is? Power is who occupies and I’m talking about the United States right now and adapter to Canada power powers. Who? Who controls the reigns of power in the White House and the Congress and Abby said elections every four years. Lester, 40, of 1 evil. Evil of other lesser lessers. You know, but Ronald Reagan’s too smart for. That he, he, he, he. He had patience. He had patience for 10. Years and went. After the White House. For 10 years, he went to the White House. He planned to get that White House and when he got it, he was able to use it for his political ends. I say that baby boom generation is making that same determination. The baby boom generation is aiming after power and seeming after power for a positive viewpoint, a positive viewpoint based on. Changing themselves, changing society and. Creating a situation creating a situation where there’s a possibility for everyone. There’s a new group in this country in America called neoliberals that are the baby base of the baby boom generation. I think you’re going to see in the next few years the baby boomers taking power in America and transforming society and leading back. The old ideas of the 60s, I challenge Abbie often to tell us tonight if he wants to attack me all night. That’s fine. I’m willing to be the target because I think that I’m giving at least a theory of how society is going to be changed and I’m challenging the myths and prejudices of many of the 60s cultures who come here. However, I like him to tell me how is change going to take place? What is the social basis? What’s the political basis of the people are going to make change? What changes is he talking about? I think when you hear his changes are going to find that it’s basically the program of the Liberal Democratic Party. And if that’s fine, but let’s that’s OK then maybe he’s right. We don’t have any political disagreements. But I’m saying those changes are going to be made by rich and poor, like using all the tactics, including community organizing, but including. Including elections. And it’s gonna be made by people who believe that if you become successful, you can still have values. Abby Hoffman agrees with Ronald Reagan. He agrees with Ronald Reagan. And that is very simple. You make money, you become successful in America. You should do one thing, become a heartless conservative, because that’s what success does. I say he’s wrong. You can become successful, America and not become a heartless Republican. You can be successful and still want to change the world. And that’s where the 80s and night is. You’re going to be about. Thank you very much.
Moderator: OK, you have 4 minutes. Thank you.
Abbie: It’s impossible to see you. I know you’re out there. Actually, are a little rowdier than the typical Canadian audience. I think I was right about Peoples Republic of Vancouver. Vancouver, I, I think, is an island in a sea of. Mush. An island of sanity, I might add. Anyway, I do attack Jerry personally. He does not get angry. He does not insult me when he says things like I’m irrelevant. Like I’m a broken record playing in the sandbox. A Russian apologist. He’s called a sand saying. I don’t know. Whatever all these things. They they are not themselves, because he’s been asked and he’s able to. Control his anger. Well said. He’s still been too low and he calls me a Liberal Democrat. Kind of wonder what he is. Not the particularly interested in the labels. I know what he is. He’s he’s a yuppie. And I’ve already said what I thought a yuppie is the kind of changes I want. I want universal medical care hospital care in the United States. I want a I want a system in the United States that inspires the system that got in Canada, Jerry. He thinks the US is number one in every single field. I want the basics provided for everybody. Along with their birth certificate when they’re born, I mean a decent education, decent medical care, shelter to live in. I don’t want to see homeless people in the United States. I I don’t want to see a country controlled by the military industrial complex. I don’t want to. See a country. Whose water and air? Polluted. And I don’t want to see a country that feels it has to control the rest of the world in order to build its own standard of living. And I don’t think. You touched on that at all. All this glorious attitude of entrepreneurialism does not exactly explain the economic relationship between the United States, Canada and the rest of the developing world. What I don’t want is to see people defined. Success. As money alone, I know if you don’t have any gas in the car, the car don’t go, but you are defining success strictly along financial gains. It is not successful to go out and beat the Philadelphia Electric Company a very the most powerful utility company. In the state of Pennsylvania and prevent them from destroying the Delaware River, I did that. Other people that I passed on, the skills of activism, I did that. That’s not a success. Up for you. It’s not a success if somebody goes out and paints a painting that gives them intrinsic value because those are not successes in life. Success only has to do with earning the American Express credit card. And I am against that. What you said about Jesse Jackson is a joke. Jesse Jackson is not out there pushing self-reliance, Jesse Jackson said. And I quote the American economic system is built on corporate greed. I’m quote Jesse Jackson is organized, was organizing protests and picket lines around Burger King, and they were successful. And that’s how that’s how change came about in Burger King. You seem to think that apartheid’s going to come down in South Africa because the banks are out of good consciousness all of a sudden. Say that it’s not exactly right. It’s coming because unions, churches, Community Schools are pulling their money out of the corporations and holdings in South Africa. That’s how change is coming. About on the Delaware River battle, we had 800 people that lie down in front of the bulldozers. We occupied the courthouse, we had a voter referendum. Dr. We got 70,000 votes. We also kicked the congressman out of office, electoral politics and not out of my daily work. That’s how change comes about. It’s going to come about in the relationship of the developing world and the. United States, when dictators like Duvalier and Marcos and Pinochet are thrown out of office by the people and all of a sudden you look in the press in the United States and and, well, it’s the US wants Deval here out, wants Marco. I mean, what ********? the US supported the Duvalier for 20 years. It was in Haiti occupying it. For 30 years in the Philippines, the same ******* thing all of a sudden, when the people are outraged to the extent that they can push these people out, now your interpretation is that it’s the United States that’s come to its senses, which is the nice guy in Washington, et cetera. How is this all going to come about? This new change that. Say, well, well, the yuppies are going to take political power. Where’s the evidence that, that, that, this new generation of rich is going to be any different than the old generation of rich? I want to see the votes in Congress. If you look at the MX missile vote, there’s no difference in the Under 45 vote. And the older 45 vote. It’s the old it’s old geezers like Tip O’Neill that are holding back aid from the Contras. It is people like the Kennedys and Alan Cranston and and and loyal like her that are sponsoring bills of sanctions against South Africa. Where is this younger generation that you’re talking about? Change does not come about. By generations passing into other generations in 1968, the most popular Americans among young people were John Wayne and Richard Richard Nixon, number one, and John Wayne. It wasn’t the majority of the generations, and if Jerry perpetuates that mythology that all the people were there, that naturally all those people. Have have you know left the streets and have gone into the copper world and you know he’s right there, leading them on the long March back into the bosom of the system. Thank you.
Jerry: I asked that be two questions and he answered one of them but not the other. But when he answered was what. He. Wanted and what he wanted was basically I think what I want. What I think most yuppies want. I think most people want decent education for everybody. Medical care, no homeless people. The Society not run by the military industrial complex, no dictators in Central America. I want all those things, Abby. So nothing you said. Difference. I want you to answer sometime tonight. How you think it’s going to come about now? He sort of walked into something here where he talked about Burger King because Jesse Jackson led a lot of protests against a lot of corporations. But he won one protest and that was against Burger King. But what Abby didn’t tell you was a 35 year old baby boomer who was active in the anti war movement, happened to become the vice president of Burger King in. Annoy. And when when Jesse Jackson started protesting, he immediately called a meeting with Jesse Jackson and he gave in to all of Jesse Jackson’s demands, agreed that a certain number of entrepreneurs would be black and the Burger King Empire agreed in certain amount of minority hiring and caved in completely. And I think that proves my point. You can protest. What you want, but unless we move into the establishment because the Burger King had not been set, then the old guard have been in charge of Burger King, and Abby knows that because I used the example in the base that Burger King shows how when the baby boomers ruined the corporate structure, they’re going to adapt to different kinds of. Changes there is change going on in this country that Gary Hart campaign showed it pulls up the of of people in their 30s and 40s, shows they have a different attitude toward American foreign policy. The generation of the 60s, where did it go? It went somewhere. It went into business. It went into the establishment and unfortunately let Abby Hoffman stand outside and. Criticized. But I want him to tell me tonight at some point. How is change going to take place? How are we gonna not get all the dictators? How are we gonna do it if we don’t occupy the White House? If we don’t build the majority consciousness, he wants to rewrite the 60s and say the 60s was a minority movement and that’s why I feel comfortable. Everybody today world minority will always be a minority. I have a different message. I say that we can be a majority and we are going to be a majority and I say that you can go out and get economic and political power from that position, have a social conscience and implement all those things, all those. Apple pie, all those mother, all those wonderful things that Abby’s against. Wonderfully. He’s against them. The question is now, how are we going to change things? How are we going to? Implement them. I’m giving you a program to do that. Thank you.
Audience Questions
Moderator: Thank you. OK. If we could please have the House lights up and I will tell you how we’re going to do the. Questions and answers. There are microphones placed in various places. There are two in this aisle and two in this aisle. We ask you to stand in front of a microphone and line up if you have a question or comment. There are two microphones up here, also in the balcony at the foot of the aisles. And can we? Are the oh good? You are bringing the House lights up. Thank you.
Pie Thrower: This is more of a statement. Jerry Rubin. You once spoke of being in contempt of money, corporate power, the judicial system and other aspects of capitalism. Now you feel happy to have joined the apathetic death culture of capitalism, the happy good energy people who meditate or consume. Whenever this is, there is a problem. We believe you haven’t grown up, but. Contracted premature senility with the desire for secure. Pretty this is sickening. When the money system that you now work within the American fascist economic empire is 1, which is based on the Super exploitation of Third World and native peoples and is the major cause for their poverty, lack of food, education, Medicare and freedom. Jerry, we’re disgusted at your sellout. We believe you need a righteous pie in the face for your hypocritical stand.
Abbie: OK, that was stupid. That was stupid. She’s not. That was just a stupid thing to pay. Pay 12 bucks to.
Moderator: Yeah, come on, you guys. If, if if this is going to happen, Jerry and Abby will have to leave.
Jerry: Anyway, let me respond.
Moderator: Jerry, do you want to respond to that? OK.
Jerry: Anyway.
Moderator: Now, there’s a waste.
Jerry: Anyway, my comment is the following. I think it’s actions like that, it’s actions like that that really convinced me that the leftovers of the 60s have really very little to say that we’re not going to make any positive changes. First of all. First of all. Well, there was the gentlemen’s statement, which was filled with preconceptions and which was filled with so many loaded terms that in a sense the 60s was a was a lively and exciting period. But it’s been reduced to a cult. It’s been reduced to. The sloganeering it’s been reduced to rhetoric and unfortunately I really don’t see much. Difference. Honestly, between Abby’s statement and what that person is saying, and I also feel. You can yell all you want. I don’t care. Yell all you want. I don’t care. Also, I want to point out that the the previous time that this happened, which was in Madison, WI, where a group of people started throwing pennies at me and then through and then through a pie, Abby Hoffman pugged the guy who did it.
Abbie: That’s a lie.
Jerry: As far as I’m concerned. Those tactics, those tactics, are the tactics of the past. They’ve got. They’re they’re juvenile, they’re adolescents. And they don’t prove anything, and it doesn’t make any difference. It’s it to me, it’s kind of.
Abbie: I saw the person that threw that pie. I have three kids that are older than that person. I don’t exactly consider that person a 60s left over the ideology. That was reality.
Jerry, I have only had a pie thrown at me once. You did it. But, I have an anti-pie position.
Questioner 1: It seems I have to. I have to listen to you tonight. And it’s been really interesting. There’s only three types of people in the world and they are left or right and I’m not either of those or any of those. I don’t think anybody else is around here either. Baby boomers. I just thought that that was kind of dogmatic of both you, but it seems like I have a question for Abby and it seems like the the, the, the stance that you take is one of a of a political watchdog or somebody that’s that decides to pull the brake from the train after it’s run away and Jerry is the stance is let’s make the train. Let’s get it on the tracks and let’s get. It. Rolling. So I think there’s a like a. There’s a give and take there. That’s what I see. I’m an entrepreneur and one of the reasons I am.
Moderator: Excuse me, it’s a little hard to hear up here for the echo. Can you repeat your your what is..?
Questioner 1: OK, I said. I said. I’m an entrepreneur. One of the reasons I am is because I get sick and tired of hearing or having my paycheck taken away from the from the government. I I have my paycheck taken away. I pay pension to a government plan that’s that’s broke. When I get to pension age.
Moderator: Your question for asking. What? What is? What is your question for Abbie?
Questioner 1: A little bit. So I like to go.
Moderator: On my own, excuse me. You said you had a question. For what?
Questioner 1: Yes, I do. I have.
Moderator: Is it please?
Questioner 1: I have one for pardon.
Moderator: You. You said you gave a question to Abby, did you not?
Questioner 1: Yes, yes, I.
Moderator: Already. Have one. Ohh good. But he didn’t hear it, so would. You please give a question.
Questioner 1: Well, what I’m what I’m saying to Abby is that I believe that in this day and age, the pendulum has swung and I want to find out if that’s. If that doesn’t, he concede, doesn’t he believe that the pendulum is starting to swing from a political watchdog back to the type of people that forged the country when it first came here? Watchdogs didn’t form this country. They want to get out there and work for. It and and went. For it, they didn’t say stop. Stop. And I’m just wondering, don’t you think that that’s that’s? Now.
Abbie: I hope I get what the question was because the acoustics are just murder, the sound just goes right around here. So I think you were defending entrepreneurship. The small businesses, the working within the system. Is that right? Basically what the question was. I don’t want to answer long. I think we’re setting up a small dichotomy, if you. Define what’s going on here as working outside the system or inside the system. This is not the division that’s going on at all. In fact, the system is a hypothetical construct. I don’t. I don’t know what it means to be working inside the system or out. I’m not here barefoot. I have socks on. I have underwear. That’s just a joke about I haven’t washed my underwear, etcetera, etcetera. I do have a credit card. I have a visa, I have a Cuisinart. I’m not interested in building a cult around those particular objects and having those objects to find or what my political point of view. Is I work with electoral candidates. I worked with them in Pennsylvania. I was the environmental advisor to Jesse Jackson. I went out and gave speeches for him. The Attorney General of New York State. I worked with him on the acid rain control bill. Jack Jerry supports Gary Hart. He didn’t. Go out and register. Vote is for gallery hot. He didn’t go out and raise money for Gary Hot. He Gary Hot had more support from his jockstrap, so this is not. A debate about what the strategy is. Joey is saying that everyone went into business. I believe that that everyone in the 60s went into business. The business of America is business and every one of us, even the rebels, own business. But not everybody is doing well. I mean, not everybody is cashing in. Not every entrepreneur. But there is making a bundle. There were also there were 60s activists who were very good that are driving taxi cabs in New York City. There were 60s activists who are real good, who’ve got six kids and are getting welfare in Alabama. And that is just not in this reality, and unless it’s in that reality, it is his reality is not prepared to relate to that other reality. I mean, we all, we all construct globes around us. We also construct, we construct little plastic worlds. And I’m saying that this world has gotten so narrow. And so elitist, that is, is not seeing the reality of the world in the United States. And this is a very dangerous situation in which we find ourselves. I’m not calling on you to take a vow of poverty. I’m getting money for being up here. Good money. It’s not money that I get every single night. I don’t want to be rich in American. Society I want to survive in American Society. Economically. I want my kids to have a decent education. I want shelter over my head. I want medical care. When I’m older. Those are the kinds of things I want and I want it for everybody else out there. And unless everybody else has it, I’m not gonna have it.
Jerry: I don’t think Abby Hoffman answered the question or even heard the question. As I understood the question. What he said was that in a sense, there’s two positions here tonight. One position is the kind of the position of the watchdog. Here’s what’s wrong. Here’s what’s wrong. Here’s what’s wrong. And the other position is the position of someone who’s saying. Here’s how we can change things. Here’s what we need to do. And don’t you think at some point we have to move from being a watchdog to moving on and changing things. And I think Abby helping defended his watchdog position, which is all right. He could keep saying that there’s nothing wrong, but I really I really have no disagreement with it. The problem is that it really doesn’t talk about how we’re going to change society. I think. I think it’s gonna be given the same speech five years from now, going to be giving the same speech 10 years from now, going to giving the same speech 20 years from now. And it’s in the sense the same 60s. Two, which is going to be recycled in the 80s and the 90s. I think that’s fundamentally different than the generation that made another decision and that decision was to go into the corporate. To go into business and I never said they’re all succeeding. He’s distorting. A lot of. What I say, but I’m not going to cover all of that, but to go into business, to go into the corporation, to go into the political system and to build for economic and political power. And Abby says that when you go for economic power, you try to get rich, then you’re absolutely part of the problem. Then you’re a sellout. Then, then you’re all this. Then you’re all this. And I’m saying no to something different. City right now, when you look at, we are the world and look at hands across America and look at what’s going on inside corporations. Burger King giving in to Jesse Jackson, the Gary Hart campaign. There’s a new spirit that’s happening in the United States of America of baby boom. 1st and I’m not saying everyone’s a baby, remember, that’s what we’re debating of the 60s generation that is now in the process. Of amassing political and economic power, not to say what I’m against, but to say what I’m going to do. What’s different? What? I’m for and how? I’m going to do it and I predict that in the next election, a baby boomer is going to be elected president of the United States. This happen the next election is gonna happen. The election after that. And when that when that happens, we’re going to see our. Generation that generation, that create. The 60s finally holding the reins of power in America, and it won’t make any sense for them to then have a soapbox and say, and all your rich people and and, you know, kind of whining all you this and and have this and people Americans are look. At them and say. These crazy instead, they’re just say. Look, let’s not talk about how we’re different. Let’s talk about what we. Can do positively together. Let’s try to build something positively together. A whole new vision of saying things. The attitude of division and it’s fine for a speech and so forth, but it’s not gonna build a majority coalition in America or in Canada. And I think the challenge, the real challenge of the activists of the 60s is to build a majority coalition in the 1980s and 1990s. If we don’t do that, then we will really have sold out. Because we have real sold out on a historical opportunity and we can be pure, Andy dinners can be fewer on being right, he’d rather be right than be effective.
Moderator: Thank you very much. On this issue, I want to give I want to give both of these guys at and Paul financial a chance to respond for 30 seconds.
Abbie: I’ll take it. I’ll take a quick thirty. First of all, I don’t see unbridled optimism. The class of young urban professionals that Jerry’s talking about that voted for Gary Hyde when Gary Hyde was out of the Democratic Party, they voted for Ronald Reagan. My theory is they they they switched their vote because Ronald Reagan. Better than Walter Mondale, he acted like a president, basically because they’re not interested in the issues that that they’re not paying attention to the issues out there. Maybe I don’t. Know how it’s going to going to change it, but this is the this is the formula for social change. When Jerry speaks on his own. When he came here to Vancouver, this is what he talks about. How to realize that time is money? Why dressing for success is important to gaining wealth? How to meet people who will help you succeed? The importance of yuppie toys? This is going to change our societies.
Moderator: Thank you.
Jerry: Abby has never heard me speak alone. I don’t talk about those things. They give a very political talk. Abby’s not interested in that. Faced with a serious political question, he resorts to personally attacking Jerry Rubin. That’s what he wants to do on my fine. He’s got a very cynical attitude. The yuppies are not interested. The yuppies this, he’s an expert on the yuppies, he’s knows. All the yuppies, and he concludes. All about the epics, they’re. Interested. The man is just selling cynicism tonight. As far as I’m concerned, cynicism about people trying to change things tells me people are into the homeless. Well, look what’s gonna happen in May, where there’s going to be a hundreds of thousands of people who went into the country. The other organized by. Calling attention to the homeless, that’s an act. I mean, you’re going to see it. You can sell cities at them all you want. You have become, unfortunately, as citizens of peddler, that’s what you’ve become. That’s what you’re doing tonight. And every question comes to an attack on Jerry Rubin. It’s silly.
Moderator: Thank you. Let’s stop. Number one.
After the show comments
Interviewer: Do you have any comments on the performance as you’ve seen tonight.
Interviewee 1: Well, I’ll start from the from the end and I’ll work my way back. It got a bit rhetorical near the end. Then I began to feel like they both slipped into certain positions and and I I felt like it was. There’s a certain amount of repetition that was going on, but I found it was very stimulating and the early part and it really stimulated. A lot of thought for me about what does work and what doesn’t work, and I have to agree. As I was discussing earlier with some friends that I agree with with both sides, and I agree with certain amount of action from both points of view and I really don’t think between the two of them there was all that much. Discord, I think sometimes what it really boiled down to is just the method of approach.
Interviewee 2: I thought that the debate tonight was pretty good, but I think what they’re failing to realize now is. That. What they might have thought was good for them back then might not be good for the generation that’s growing up now.
Interviewee 3: I thought it was a good debate. I didn’t really like that pie throwing bit, I thought it was kind of stupid. But Abby Hoffman and I’ve made a lot better points than Jerry. Rubin. Is Jerry Rubin. ‘S opening remark wasn’t very, very good, but. He made a few good comments.
Interviewee 4: It was a good debate and I glad I was here.
Interviewee 5: I thought it was a good example of American democracy at work in the American democratic process. That kind of debate where there really isn’t. That much difference between their positions. But they will stoutly maintain them within within that narrow confines. And yet that also makes possible coalitions. It also makes the whole process work. One needs the other. They’re all part of the they’re like a tumbling act in which one Tumblr holds the other’s legs and the other and the other’s hands, and they go around in the circle. One can’t act without the other.
Interviewee 6: Well, I was in Berkeley with Jerry Rubin when we sought the troop trades back in 1960. 5. And I dropped out and went back to the country and lived without power for seven years. And I came back and I finished law school. I’m just about a lawyer now and I think he’s quite right that if you want to change things, you got to get inside. And Hoffman kept attacking Ruben and seeing positions that Ruben didn’t hold and I think he lost.
Interviewee 7: It was great.
Interviewee 8: It was well, I come from St. John’s in Finland, so when I first came here I made quite know the definition of a yuppie and a yippie. That’s a great pronunciation of it. I’m not quite sure, but now I do. And it’s a great experience for me to actually sit down and see people grouping together and getting both sides of. Two different types of people I could say or labels.
Interviewee 9: I thought it was rather interesting. I, in my opinion, I felt Abby Hoffman was using the old usual rhetoric and I feel that Jerry Rubin is a little more advanced in his thinking, in the sense that he’s projecting transformation, whatever that looks like.
Interviewee 10: I thought it was very interesting. Although a lot of the ideologies from the 60s, late 60s and 70s haven’t changed, I think each of these people in their own way have changed and have grown one, perhaps a little more radical in his approach and joining the system and the other one still trying to fight the underdog.
Interviewee 11: I thought that, you know, they both had really good ideas. And if they had coincided their positive points, you know, and come to an understanding, they could have presented something more constructive than they did to us.