<h4>This cannot be right, WikiPeadier Wrong Again. My Friend here in San Francisco, "Diamond" Dave Whittiker [Jewish; Minnesota] was a BEAT NIK who Introduced Bob Dylans Music to Allen Ginsberg. Dave is 10 Years my Senior, I think he was even born in December! That would be 1939. Abbie Hoffman was 100% Beat Generation, he just Found His Place in the '60's Peace/ Weatherman/ Anti Capitalist Hippies. Beat Niks did NOT Protest Violently against American Hedgemoney, they merely were Bohemeins, as were found in Euroupe.</h4>
He described his childhood as "idyllic" and the 40s as "a great time to grow up in". On June 3, 1954, the 17-year-old Hoffman was arrested for the first time, for driving without a license. During his school days, he became known as a troublemaker who started fights, played pranks, vandalized school property, and referred to teachers by their first names. In his sophomore year, Hoffman was expelled from Classical High School, a now-closed public high school in Worcester. He wrote a paper declaring that "God could not possibly exist, for if he did, there wouldn't be any suffering in the world." The irate teacher ripped up the paper and called him "a communist punk". Hoffman jumped on the teacher and started fighting him until he was restrained and removed from the school.[2] After his expulsion, he attended Worcester Academy, graduating in 1955. Hoffman did many of the things typical of rebellious teenagers in the 1950s such as driving motorcycles, wearing leather jackets, and sporting a ducktail haircut. He enrolled in Brandeis University, where he studied under professors such as noted psychologist Abraham Maslow, often considered the father of humanistic psychology.[3] He was also a student of the Marxist theorist Herbert Marcuse, whom Hoffman said had a profound effect on his political outlook after studying his philosophy. Hoffman would later cite Marcuse's influence during his activism and his theories on revolution. Hoffman graduated with a B.A. in psychology in 1959. That fall, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he completed coursework toward a master's degree in psychology. Soon after, he married his pregnant girlfriend Sheila Karklin in May 1960.
Early protests
Prior to his days as a leading member of the Yippie movement, Hoffman was involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and organized "Liberty House", which sold items to support the Civil Rights Movement in the southern United States. During the Vietnam War, Hoffman was an anti-war activist, using deliberately comical and theatrical tactics.
In October 1967, David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam asked Jerry Rubin to help mobilize and direct a March on the Pentagon.[4] The protesters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial as Dellinger and Dr. Benjamin Spock gave speeches to the mass of people.[5]
From there, the group marched towards the Pentagon. As the protesters
neared the Pentagon, they were met by soldiers of the 82nd Airborne
Division[5] who formed a human barricade blocking the Pentagon steps.[4] Not to be dissuaded, Hoffman vowed to levitate the Pentagon[5] claiming he would attempt to use psychic energy to levitate the Pentagon until it would turn orange and begin to vibrate, at which time the war in Vietnam would end.[6] Allen Ginsberg led Tibetan chants to assist Hoffman.[5]
Hoffman's symbolic theatrics were successful at convincing many young people to become more active in the politics of the time.[6]
Another one of Hoffman's well-known protests was on August 24, 1967, when he led members of the movement to the gallery of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The protesters threw fistfuls of real and fake dollars down to the traders below, some of whom booed, while others began to scramble frantically to grab the money as fast as they could. [7] Accounts of the amount of money that Hoffman and the group tossed was said to be as little as $30 to $300.[8] Hoffman claimed to be pointing out that, metaphorically,
that's what NYSE traders "were already doing." "We didn't call the
press", wrote Hoffman, "at that time we really had no notion of anything
called a media event."
The press was quick to respond and by evening the event was reported
around the world. Since that incident, the stock exchange has spent
$20,000 to enclose the gallery with bulletproof glass.[9]
In late 1966, Hoffman met with a radical community-action group called the Diggers[10] and studied their ideology. He later returned to New York and published a book with this knowledge.[10] Doing so was considered a violation by the Diggers. Diggers co-founder Peter Coyote explained:
Abbie, who was a friend of mine, was always a media junky. We explained everything to those guys, and they violated everything we taught them. Abbie went back, and the first thing he did was publish a book, with his picture on it, that blew the hustle of every poor person on the Lower East Side by describing every free scam then current in New York -- which were then sucked dry by disaffected kids from Scarsdale.[11]
