The Yippies of 2008

The Yippies, led by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, were primarily responsible for the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Like today’s pretenders to the Yippie mantle, such as Recreate-68, Unconventional Action, and Tent State University, they were shunned by the mainstream Democratic Party.

The Yippies’ platform in 1968 sounds strikingly familiar to the issues voiced by today’s protest groups:

1. An immediate end to the War in Vietnam (Sound familiar?)
2. The legalization of marijuana and all other psychedelic drugs
3. A prison system based on rehabilitation rather than punishment
4. Abolition of all laws related to crimes without victims
5. The total disarmament of all the people beginning with the police
6. The abolition of money
7. Elimination of pollution
8. Free birth control information & abortions on demand
9. An end to all censorship
10. We believe that people should f*ck all the time, anytime, whomever they wish
11. Decentralization of power & authority with many varied tribal groups

Would any of today’s leftist groups disagree with any of this?

Just as in 1968, today’s leftists just can’t all get along. Tent State University has parted company with Recreate-68. During the convention in Denver, Tent State will offer its followers “Ruckus” trainings. The Ruckus Society trains radicals in how to effectively “demonstrate” and disrupt events such as political conventions. Meanwhile, these groups have adopted a public face promoting non-violence, and blaming the police in advance if things somehow get out of hand anyway.

Even though it is likely Obama will be the assured Democratic nominee before the convention begins, that doesn’t matter to the protest groups, who have their own separate agenda, which is to turn the Democratic Party in an even more radical direction—never mind that Obama is the most liberal senator in the Senate.

Recently we have seen large anti-war demonstrations that changed nothing, so the reasoning of the protesters that theirs will somehow be different is absurd on the face of it. Peaceful demonstrations will not get them what they want. The question remains how far they are willing to go, in addition to standard demonstrations, to “get what they want.”