A

HOFFMAN, ABBIE 1936-1989

SOCIAL ACTIVIST

Revolutionary Hedonism

Abbie Hoffman was a countercultural leader whose commitment to radical politics spanned the civil rights, antiwar, and environmentalist movements. When the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee expelled all whites in 1964, Hoffman moved into the hippie movement, seeing the counterculture as an arena for political change. He pioneered the idea that experimental use of sex, drugs, clothing, and communal living were revolutionary activities.

Street Theater

Hoffman, who was born in a middle-class Jewish family in Worcester, Massachusetts, and graduated from Brandeis University, was influenced by both Marshall McLuhan and Herbert Marcuse. His political career demonstrated his dramatic flair in using the media to promote himself as well as his unconventional Marxism. The generation gap, not class conflict, sparked his social and political revolution. With fellow hippie-radical spokesman Jerry Rubin he created the Yippies—the Youth International Party, which pioneered the use of street theater as a means of political protest. They made the 1968 Democratic National Convention a show-case for antiwar politics, parading a pig, "Pigasus," through the streets as a potential presidential nominee and calling for the legalization of drugs, free sex, and the abolition of work.

Outlaw

After a sensational trial for conspiracy to in-cite a riot during the Democratic convention in Chicago, Hoffman was acquitted in 1973. He was disillusioned by the dissipation of the intellectual fervor and political intensity of the 1960s but refused to market his celebrity. In New York City he was arrested for selling cocaine, went underground for eight years, and taunted the FBI like an outlaw hero. The movement's underground permitted him to create a new identity as a community organizer, Barry Freed, in upstate New York. In 1980 he negotiated a settlement of his legal problems with the police and joined the talk-show circuit after a brief prison term.

Suicide

But the 1980s were not fertile ground for a 1960s hippie media star, and after a lackluster campaign against the conservative policies of President Ronald Reagan, Hoffman suffered manic-depressive episodes and committed suicide in 1989 in a New Jersey motel.