Jerry Rubin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Do It: Scenarios of the Revolution, 1970 |
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| Born: | July 14, 1938 Cincinnati, Ohio, United States  |
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| Died: | November 28, 1994 Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Occupation: | high-profile American social activist Author, Do it! – Scenarios of the Revolution entrepreneur, businessman |
Jerry Rubin (July 14, 1938 – November 28, 1994) was a high-profile American social activist during the 1960s and 1970s.
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[edit] Education
Rubin attended Walnut Hills High School, co-editing the school newspaper, The Chatterbox. While in high school Rubin began to write for the Cincinnati Post, compiling sports scores from high school games. He later went on to graduate from the University of Cincinnati, receiving a degree in sociology. Rubin attended University of California, Berkeley, in 1964, but dropped out to focus on social activism.
[edit] Early life
Rubin was the son of a bread delivery man and union representative. Born in Cincinnati, Rubin grew up in the then-upscale Avondale neighborhood. Rubin's parents died within 10 months of each other, leaving Rubin the only person to take care of his younger brother, Gil, who was 13 at the time. Jerry wanted to teach Gil about the world and decided to take him to India. When relatives threatened to fight to obtain custody of Gil, based on his plans to go abroad with his brother, Jerry decided to take his brother to Tel-Aviv instead. Gil learned Hebrew, later decided to stay in Israel and moved to a kibbutz. In 1964 Jerry visited Cuba where the revolution was still young.
[edit] Social activism
Rubin began to protest after dropping out of Berkeley. Jerry's first protest was in Berkeley, protesting the refusal of a local grocer to hire African Americans. Soon Rubin was leading protests of his own.
Rubin organized the VDC (Vietnam Day Committee), led some of the first protests against the war in Vietnam, and was a cofounder of the Yippies (Youth International Party) with Abbie Hoffman, and Pigasus, the pig who would be president. He played an instrumental role in the disruption of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Along with six others (Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, John Froines, David Dellinger, Lee Weiner, and Tom Hayden; Bobby Seale was part of the original group but was excluded later), Rubin was put on trial for conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intention of inciting a riot.
Julius Hoffman was the presiding judge. The defendants were commonly referred to as the "Chicago Seven" (after Seale's exclusion). The defendants turned the courtroom into a circus and although five of the seven remaining defendants were found guilty of inciting a riot, the convictions were later overturned on appeal.
[edit] Author
Jerry Rubin's anti-establishment beliefs were put down in writing in his book Do it! – Scenarios of the Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 1970, ISBN 0-671-20601-X), with an introduction by Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and unconventional design by Quentin Fiore. In 1971 his Journal, written while incarcerated in the Cook County Jail, was published under the title "We are Everywhere", by Harper & Row, SBN: 06-090245-0, LOC 77-154054. The book includes an inside view of the trial of the Chicago Seven, but otherwise focuses on the Weatherman Underground, the Black Panthers, LSD, Women's Liberation and the coming revolution that never came. In 1976, Rubin wrote another book entitled "Growing (Up) at Thirty-Seven," which contained a chapter narrating his experience at an Erhard Seminars Training (EST) that was later included in the reader "American Spiritualities." "Growing (Up) at Thirty-Seven," is described as "tracing his personal odyssey from radical activist of the 60's to a practitioner in the growth potential movements of the 70's."
[edit] Change of political views
After the Vietnam War ended, Rubin changed his political views and became an entrepreneur and businessman. He was an early investor in Apple Inc.
In the 1980s he embarked on a debating tour with Abbie Hoffman entitled "Yippie versus Yuppie". Rubin's pitch in the debates was that activism was hard work, that abuse of drugs, sex and private property had made the counter-culture "a scary society in itself", and that "wealth creation is the real American revolution - what we need is an infusion of capital into the depressed areas of our country".
Rubin's differences with Hoffman were political not personal (despite the popular 60s adage equating the two things). When Hoffman died apparently by suicide in 1989, Rubin was the only member of the Chicago Seven to attend his funeral.
[edit] Death
On November 14th, 1994, Rubin jaywalked on Wilshire Boulevard, near UCLA in Los Angeles, California, approximately thirty feet from an intersection. It was a weekday evening and as typical, the street was very busy with three lanes in each direction. A car swerved to miss Rubin and a second car (immediately behind the first car) was not able to avoid Rubin. Rubin was brought to the UCLA Medical Center and died 14 days later. He is interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.
[edit] Quotations
"I am a child of America. If ever I'm sent to Death Row for my revolutionary 'crimes', I'll order as my last meal: a hamburger, french fries and a coke." Do It
"A hip capitalist is a pig capitalist...They are traitors to their long hair."
"What would happen if the white ideological Left took power? The hippie streets would be the first cleaned up by the 'socialist' pigs. We'd be forced to get haircuts and shaves every week. We'd have to bathe every night, and we'd go to jail for saying dirty words. Sex, except to produce children for the revolution, would be illegal. Psychedelic drugs would be capital crimes and beer drinking mandatory. Rock dancing would be taboo, and mini-skirts, Hollywood movies and comic books illegal."
"The New Left sprang, a pre-destined pissed off child, from Elvis's gyrating pelvis."
"A young person without an arrest record has been living his life in a closet."
[edit] Century of the Self
Jerry Rubin appeared in the 2002 British documentary by Adam Curtis, The Century of the Self. He appears in episode part 3 of 4. This segment of the video discusses the Est Training in great detail, and includes interviews with New York Times columnist Jesse Kornbluth, Werner Erhard, and Est graduate John Denver. Jerry Rubin himself was a graduate of Erhard Seminars Training.
[edit] Trivia
- Jerry Rubin appeared on Saturday Night Live's second episode of its first season (in one of the few comedic moments in a show almost entirely devoted to a Paul Simon musical performance). His sketch is a fake commercial for wallpaper featuring famous protest slogans from the 1960's and 1970's (i.e., "Make Love, Not War", "Off The Pig!", "Give Peace A Chance", "Hell, No, We Won't Go!", etc). He ends the sketch by parodying a famous radical slogan as "Up against the wall-paper, motherf---ers!"
- In the motion picture about Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Movie, Rubin was portrayed by Kevin Corrigan.
- When he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Rubin turned up one day dressed as a bare-chested guerilla armed with a plastic rifle, and the next day as Santa Claus. Finally he cut his hair and shaved his beard to appear as a soldier of the American Revolutionary War, while reminding the legislators that George Washington grew and smoked pot.
- Jerry Rubin appeared on TV in Cleveland in an infamous interview by veteran broadcaster Dorothy Fuldheim about his book Do It!. He started to purposefully antagonize the no-nonsense Fuldheim, who threw him off the set when he repeated used profanity.
- The title of his book Do It! may have inspired the titles of two unrelated works:
- Eat It is a cookbook written by Dana Crumb with illustrations by her husband Robert Crumb (The book has been followed by a second volume; Still Eatin' It).
- Grow It, by Richard Langer, is a guidebook on small-scale farming.
[edit] External links
- Cincinnati Post article: Jerry Rubin: Activist changed his rap
- Minneapolis Tribune article: April 1970: Jerry Rubin leads Honeywell protest
- Obituary in The Guardian newspaper (UK) by Martin Walker, 30 November 1994
- Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968, ISBN 0-297-17627-7)
