Remembering Jerry Rubin

Remembering Jerry Rubin

Writer and health food advocate Jerry Rubin, an anti-war activist in the 60s, recently died after being hit by a car while crossing a Los Angeles street. Thus passed a man who was controversial to folks from across the political spectrum.

Rubin grew up in Cincinnati. There were leftist influences present in his youth--some of his funniest writing was about an aunt who plied him with commie ideas over chicken soup. His parents died when he was young, and he worked as a reporter for The Cincinnati Star to support his younger brother.

As his aunt was inspired by meeting Stalin, Jerry's life was changed by a trip to Cuba where he met Che Guevara. After that he moved to Berkeley.

Many point to the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement as the start of the 60s youth revolt. It began when regents tried to ban the local civil rights movement and its leaders from campus. Rubin was in the thick of that movement, a talented writer among an unusually gifted set of activists, at a time when it wasn't chic to be a student rebel. Though Mario Savio was the media-recognized leader and Stew Albert was the person whom the regents most wanted off campus, Jerry was the Free Speech Movement's ace pamphleteer.

Rubin then stepped to the fore as the radical candidate for mayor of Berkeley. He exposed the incumbent's racist hiring policies and paved the way for more successful electoral efforts in later years.

As the Vietnam War expanded, Rubin helped to mobilize opposition. He threw his writing skills behind the 1967 Stop the Draft Week, wehn Bay Area activists tried to close the Oakland draft induction center. The protesters failed in their stated aim. But a militant youth movement, hippies alienated from the stodgy old left, had begun to flex its muscles.

At a 1968 New Year's party, activists and cultural rebels conceived the idea of Yippe! (aka Youth International Party), a militant anti-authoritarian challenge to Johnson and his war. Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin became the movement's media-identified leaders, spearheading protests at the Chicago Democratic Convention. Chicago's mayor and cops were spoiling for a fight, which they got, and when Nixon took office he moved to prosecute Rubin, Hoffman and six others for conspiracy and crossing the state lines to riot. Rubin and Hoffman, aided by an outrageous judge, turned the trial into a circus. The partial guilty verdict was met by rioting across the land.

This made Jerry a celebrity. His books "Do It!" and "We are Everywhere" were great successes. He adopted the lifestyle of a decadent rock star, hanging out with John Lennon in New York. Feminists cited him as an example with what was wrong with the male-dominated left, and at about the time that Yoko Ono threw John Lennon out of the house, Rubin's wife at the time, a brilliant activist in her own right, left him.

This initiated a period of soul searching and therapy in which Jerry withdrew from politics. It is documented in his book "Growing (Up) at 37." By the 80s Jerry and Abbie debated Hoffman's social activism vs. Rubin's focus on self-improvement. Jerry took a job on Wall Street, while Abbie stuck with activism until depression took his life. When Abbie died, Jerry was the only Chicago conspiracy defendant at the funeral. When Rubin died, he was selling health food products with former Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, another Chicago co-defendant.

It's easy to dismiss Jerry Rubin. Those attracted to a media illusion were disillusioned by his flaws. Those who advanced with him in the antiwar movement felt abandoned when retreating to the political margins without him. But activists, like everyone else, have feet of clay.

Give the man his due. Jerry Rubin was a decent man and one hell of a writer. He served his planet better than most, giving his all in the historic effort to end an atrocious war. That washes away a lot of sin.