The Chicago 8 Trial Transcript, Testimony Of Abbies
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In December 1967, Abbott Hoffman, or Abbie as he was known, met with Jerry Rubin for the first time . They talked about the possibility of having anti-war demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. This meeting led them to become the founders of the YIPPIES, or the Youth International Party, which was named out of irony, as Hoffman would later explain in his testimony. The name Yippie was come up with first, and what it stood for was made up to make it be taken seriously by “straight newspapers,” but it was supposed to be considered a “party you had fun at,” instead of some sort of political party (Chicago 8 Trial, Chicago 8 Trial Transcript, Testimony of Abbie Hoffman, p. 4). The Yippies grew with the joint effort…show more content… Albeit the trial was unfair and biased, it’s hard to say that none of them had any intentions of not causing trouble and starting riots, as Norman Mailer stated; "They understood that you didn't have to attack the fortress anymore. You could just surround it, make faces at the people inside and let them have nervous breakdowns and destroy themselves" (The Chicago Eight Trial: In Their Own Words, p. 2). As much as some of them claimed to have no intentions of becoming violent or causing riots, they had to have known that this was the most likely outcome, but regardless of what they had thought would come out of it, it doesn’t change the response it…show more content… In only a few months, the Yippie get-together would turn into one of the biggest things to happen to Chicago at the time. The riots would create one of the most controversial trials of the era, several months after the Festival, when the Chicago Eight would go to court. Abbie Hoffman knew that this trial would become something of legend, something people would talk about for years to come just by the sheer unfairness of it all. He stated "It's going to be a combination Scopes trial, revolution in the streets, Woodstock Festival and People's Park, all rolled into one," basically trying to say it would be the hippie version of the Scopes trial that would create such a media spur that it would hopefully create a uprising of new anti-war children to help the cause (Chicago 8 Trial, In Their Own Words, The Chicago Eight Trial: In Their Own Words, p. 2). Although it may not have created a huge hippie revolution, it certainly created a spur in the media and got people talking, and two years after being sentenced, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals overturned all contempt convictions for all five of the convicted and their defense attorneys, and a few months later, finished the job by reversing all convictions on the five from the Chicago Seven