Steal This Book

One of the most influential and recognizable American activists of the twentieth century, Abbie Hoffman was born in 1936 in Worcester, Massachusetts. After graduating from Brandeis University in 1959 with a degree in psychology, Hoffman became active in the civil rights movement of the early 1960s. Along with many others determined to make a difference, he traveled to Mississippi to help register voters. In New York City, he founded Liberty House, a crafts store that sold goods made by cooperatives in Mississippi. In the mid-1960s, Hoffman became an organizer in both the growing U.S. counterculture and the anti-Vietnam War movement. In his autobiography, Hoffman wrote: "A semi-structure freak among the love children, I was determined to bring the hippie movement into a broader protest." With his unique political wit and humor, and his knowledge of television's growing importance in shaping social awareness, Hoffman helped organize such memorable acts of 1960s protest as dropping dollar bills onto the New York Stock Exchange in April 1967, and "levitating" the Pentagon in October of that same year. In 1968, together with his then-wife Anita, Jerry Rubin, Nancy Kurshan, Paul Krassner, and others, Hoffman founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies!") and began organizing a Festival of Life outside the Democratic Party's 1968 national convention in Chicago. Following what investigators later called a "police riot," Hoffman and seven others (the "Chicago 8") were put on trial in what became known as the Chicago Conspiracy Trial-"the most important political trial of this century," according to the ACLU. In 1973, Hoffman went underground, and using aliases like Barry Freed still managed to stay politically active, working successfully with his "running mate" Johanna Lawrenson on Save the River!-a campaign which stopped the Army Corps of Engineers from dredging the St. Lawrence River for winter navigation. He emerged from the underground on national television in September of 1980 and continued his work, in his own words, as "an American dissident and a community organizer" throughout the 1980s. His projects included working with environmental groups throughout the Great Lakes and the Northeast, taking delegations to Central America to question American policies in the region, and opposing workplace drug testing in the U.S. Student activists gained much from Hoffman's experience-the veteran organizer dedicated considerable time and energy to passing along the skills he had developed. Arrested in 1986 with Amy Carter and other students at the University of Massachusetts while protesting CIA recruitment on campus, Hoffman yet again shaped a precedent-setting trial. Hoffman and the students successfully pleaded not guilty using the "necessity defense," convincing a jury that their minor crime of trespass was needed to stop larger crimes of CIA covert actions in Central America and elsewhere. In his closing argument, Hoffman told the jury: "I grew up with the idea that democracy is not something you believe in, or a place you hang your hat, but it's something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles and falls apart.... Young people, if you participate, the future is yours." Throughout the '80s, Hoffman traveled extensively across the country speaking on college campuses and was the major adviser for such activist groups as National Student Convention '88 (at Rutgers University) and Student Action Union-helping student activists learn tools and strategies for building effective, democratically structured movements for social change. Hoffman married three times, to Sheila Karklin, Anita Kushner, and Johanna Lawrenson. He had three children: Andrew and Ilya (with Sheila), and america (with Anita). He wrote seven books, including several classics that have since helped to define the culture and politics of his times. Abbie Hoffman will forever be remembered as an activist who inspired young people to question authority, as an American radical who introduced humor and theatre into political organizing, and as an embodiment of a hopeful era in which millions of people throughout the globe embraced their democratic potential to help create a better world. Lisa Fithian worked with Abbie throughout the 1980s at Save the River! and against the U.S. war in Central America. A union organizer with the Justice for Janitors campaign during the 1990s, she now organizes non-violent direct action in the growing global justice movement. In November 2001, Lisa was arrested, searched and detained while preparing protests for the G-20 summit in Ottawa. She was released after two days because authorities "didn't have a case" against the non-violent activist.Hoffman, Abbie is the author of 'Steal This Book' with ISBN 9781568582177 and ISBN 156858217X.