Abbie Hoffman: A Present Day Monologue :: essays research papers fc

My call in is Abbie Hoffman. Steal this speech while square dancing in the Ice ages, its soon to be a study motion pictureYippie Do you know what that means? That means that theres a revolution on, that we provoke change an H to a Y., that we can bring more than 10,000 people to Lincoln Park in Chicago on a myth, a rumor, a story. Yippie It means the home of the FREE and the land of the BRAVE. Chicago was a place for the brave to fight for their freedom. When we came to chicago, we thought, hey, theyll put up some resistance, but theyll give us a permit to have our picayune Yippie get-together in the park. I mean shit, its our right. Mayor Daley, he didnt give a shit about our rights he didnt want champion god anathematise hippie in his city, let alone 10,000. He didnt want chicago to have that reputation, HE didnt want to have that reputation. Do you know what happened in Chicago? According to Mayor Daley, only a few minor injuries due to resisting arrest and rioting accordin g to some international sources, and my own count, a couple people died and a lot of people were wounded because the pigs were beating on us for practicing our right to assemble peacefully. Hell, we were peaceful, a damn sight more peaceful than the cops. We were assembled to protest war, all we cherished to do was get together and smoke a little weed. The cops, they came at us with arm swinging. But I get ahead of myself. Youre all so young, you dont know about Chicagos other, meaner side. In Chicago, we Yippies wanted to have a rally, and Chicago was really central to the movement, so we petitioned the Chicago Parks Department for a permit to have bands come play during the hebdomad of the Democratic Convention in 1968. They stalled, and pretended to have little problems with the permit. No one was fooled. We sued them for denying us our constitutional rights but we withdrew our suit when we saw who our judge was. His name was prove Lynch, and he was mayor Daleys friend or cou sin or something. Very ironic...the next judge that we went before because the city was stalling was Judge Stahl. S-T-A-H-L. So in a nutshell, we said can we have a get-together in the park?