Greed at the New York Stock Exchange and the Levitation of the Pentagon: Early Protest Theatre by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin

This paper focuses on the theoretical and scholarly influences upon Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin in the years prior to 1967, and how that affected their motivations and decisions regarding their pre-Yippie activism in the fall of 1967. It focuses on two events: the August demonstration at the New York Stock Exchange and the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam’s March on the Pentagon in October (specifically on Jerry Rubin’s role and Abbie Hoffman’s intent to levitate the Pentagon). In providing details about these two events in relation to their theoretical and scholarly influences, this paper analyzes how these two demonstrations laid the foundation for their post 1967 Yippie activism. Both men, as college graduates taught by progressive and left-wing scholars and theorists, chose to protest in anti-intellectual ways in order to enact the ideas they were exposed to in their educational backgrounds. Sources for this paper include Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin’s own published books and writings; segments from underground newspapers and magazines, such as The Realist and The East Village Other; and sources related to the scholarship and theory of Antonin Artaud, Abraham Maslow, Herbert Marcuse, and Marshall McLuhan