The Chicago 7

You have to be a certain age to remember the Chicago Seven Trial and the uproar it caused. The Trial was perfect reduction of the generational and cultural clash that defined the '60s. The defendants (originally there were eight, but the Black Panther Bobby Seale's trial was severed).

BTW, the Black Panther Party still exists, but there is also a legacy and alumni web site . The original Soledad Brother, George Jackson is buried in my hometown of Mt. Vernon, Illinois.

Anyway, I took a continuing legal education course last week entitled Trials of the Century II and the Chicago 7 was one the trials covered. The trial was turned into political theater by Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and their attorneys, especially William Kuntsler. The defense witness list was a virtual 'who's who' of the '60's counterculture movement and included Sarah Diamant, teaching fellow Phil Ochs, folksinger Allen Ginsberg, poet Bobby Seale, defendant Dick Gregory, comedian Timothy Leary, psychologist and psychedelic drug expert Abbie Hoffman, defendant Richard Daley, mayor Arlo Guthrie, folksinger Ed Sanders, festival publicist Cora Weiss, co-chair of New Mobilization Committee Linda Morse, peace activist Judy Collins, folksinger Rennie Davis, defendant Norman Mailer, author Jesse Jackson, minister.

This exchange between the seemingly clueless Judge Hoffman and defendant Hoffman sums it up:

TESTIMONY OF ABBIE HOFFMAN
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you please identify yourself for the record?
THE WITNESS: My name is Abbie. I am an orphan of America.
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, may the record show it is the defendant Hoffman who has taken the stand?
THE COURT: Oh, yes. It may so indicate. . . .
MR. WEINGLASS: Where do you reside?
THE WITNESS: I live in Woodstock Nation.
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you tell the Court and jury where it is?
THE WITNESS: Yes. It is a nation of alienated young people. We carry it around with us as a state of mind in the same way as the Sioux Indians carried the Sioux nation around with them. It is a nation dedicated to cooperation versus competition, to the idea that people should have better means of exchange than property or money, that there should be some other basis for human interaction. It is a nation dedicated to--
THE COURT: Just where it is, that is all.
THE WITNESS: It is in my mind and in the minds of my brothers and sisters. It does not consist of property or material but, rather, of ideas and certain values. We believe in a society--

THE COURT: No, we want the place of residence, if he has one, place of doing business, if you have a business. Nothing about philosophy or India, sir. Just where you live, if you have a place to live. Now you said Woodstock. In what state is Woodstock?
THE WITNESS: It is in the state of mind, in the mind of myself and my brothers and sisters. It is a conspiracy. Presently, the nation is held captive, in the penitentiaries of the institutions of a decaying system.

***

MR. WEINGLASS: When were you born?
THE WITNESS: Psychologically, 1960.

***

MR. WEINGLASS: Between the date of your birth, November 30, 1936, and May 1, 1960, what if anything occurred in your life?
THE WITNESS: Nothing. I believe it is called an American education.

***

THE WITNESS: Jerry Rubin told me that he had come to New York to be project director of a peace march in Washington that was going to march to the Pentagon in October, October 21....I said that the Pentagon was a five-sided evil symbol in most religions and that it might be possible to approach this from a religious point of view. If we got large numbers of people to surround the Pentagon, we could exorcize it of its evil spirits. So I had agreed at that point to begin working on the exorcism of the Pentagon demonstration.
MR. WEINGLASS: Prior to the date of the demonstration which is October, did you go to the Pentagon?
THE WITNESS: Yes. I went about a week or two before with one of my close brothers, Martin Carey, a poster maker, and we measured the Pentagon, the two of us, to see how many people would fit around it. We only had to do one side because it is just multiplied by five. We got arrested. It's illegal to measure the Pentagon. I didn't know it up to that point. When we were arrested they asked us what we were doing. We said it was to measure the Pentagon and we wanted a permit to raise it 300 feet in the air, and they said "How about 10?" So we said "OK". And they threw us out of the Pentagon and we went back to New York and had a press conference, told them what it was about. We also introduced a drug called lace, which, when you squirted it at the policemen made them take their clothes off and make love, a very potent drug.

***

MR. WEINGLASS: Did you intend that the people who surrounded the Pentagon should do anything of a violent nature whatever to cause the building to rise 300 feet in the air and be exercised of evil spirits?
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you indicate to the Court and jury whether or not the Pentagon was, in fact, exercised of its evil spirits?
THE WITNESS: Yes, I believe it was. . . .

Amidst the humorousness of the trial, I had to wonder what would happen to these same defendants in today's atmosphere.