Once in the gallery above the trading floor, the protesters threw the dollars over to the stock traders. Since the media weren’t allowed inside the stock exchange, they were forced to wait until the protesters returned from their foray into the belly of the beast.īefore entering the stock exchange gallery, Hoffman had passed out handfuls of dollar bills to each of the protesters. “Descriptions of the event differ, and to this day it’s uncertain exactly how much money was dropped and precisely how many people took part in the event,” writes Jonah Raskin in For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman. What happened next is a matter of dispute. “It became obvious that the contrast between the creatively dressed hippies and the well-tailored Wall Street stockbrokers was an essential message of the demonstration,” Jezer wrote. But Hoffman’s response was to claim they were Jewish, not demonstrators, and the guard, uncomfortable by the prospect of being deemed anti-Semitic, let the group pass-and Jezer realized the costumes were just another piece of the theatrical nature of their protest. Sure enough, the guard told them the stock exchange didn’t allow demonstrations. At first, Jezer was sure they would be rejected by the security guard. “Because I associated Marxism with conspiratorial politics and assumed we would have to look respectable to get into the stock exchange, I got a haircut and put on a suit and tie.”īut Jezer’s straight-laced appearance was at odds with Hoffman, Fouratt and the others, who had donned their most ostentatious hippie outfits. “I saw Abbie’s idea as simply a funny Marxist zap to expose the greed of capitalism,” Marty Jezer wrote years later in Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel. Among those invited were Marty Jezer (editor of WIN magazine, a publication of the War Resisters League), Korean War veteran Keith Lampe and Berkeley peace activists Jerry Rubin and Stewart Albert. Working with gay-rights activist Jim Fouratt, Hoffman assembled a group of protesters to meet outside the NYSE for a tour of the building.
Hoffman’s group had a broader message in mind-they wanted to target capitalism in general.
They wanted to force the bank to divest its holdings in South Africa, where apartheid was still in place.
Hoffman wasn’t the first to target the financial industry two years earlier, activists from the Students for a Democratic Society organized a sit-in at Chase Manhattan Bank. As Hoffman later said, “If you don’t like the news, why not go out and make your own?” The NYSE seemed like the perfect stage for his commentary on greed. From them, Hoffman learned the value of spectacle in conveying a specific message.
#STOCK PHOTO THEATER FREE#
A community-action theater group called the Diggers believed everything should be free, giving clothing and food to homeless people and hippies on the streets of San Francisco as well as throwing free concerts with musicians like Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane. Like the New York “be-in,” the inspiration for Hoffman’s earliest protest came from San Francisco. It was the era of LSD, antiwar demonstrations, Civil Rights activism and Central Park “be-ins” (gatherings meant to create solidarity and openness between people).
His involvement with social activism increased with his move to New York City, where he worked at Liberty House (a store that sold products made by black women in Mississippi, who couldn’t find a market in their hometowns) and became immersed in-but also remained critical of-hippie culture. They were mocked and admired for the trick they’d played on Wall Street, showering the traders with dollar bills-and it cemented Hoffman’s reputation for a new form of political agitation: guerrilla theater, a form of protest that harnessed absurdity and humor to make a point.īefore coming to New York, Hoffman was a psychologist and a participant in community theater. But by the time he’d finished his stunt in the New York Stock Exchange, he and his collaborators were well on their way to becoming media celebrities. Abbie Hoffman was just a protester with something to prove the morning of August 24, 1967.
0 kommentar(er)
