November 28: Do It!

Jerry Rubin, who partnered with Abbie Hoffman to form the Youth International Party (Yippies) and helped lead flamboyant protests against the war in Vietnam, died on this date in 1994, two weeks after being struck by an automobile. “To call on Rubin,” wrote Norman Mailer, “was in effect to call upon the most militant, unpredictable, creative — therefore dangerous — hippie-oriented leader available to the New Left.” His books included DO IT! Scenarios of the Revolution (1970) andWe Are Everywhere (1971). After the war ended in 1975, Rubin became a hippie capitalist devoted to self- improvement products and therapies, and even took up a career as a stockbroker. In the early 1980s. he and Hoffman went on a debating tour titled “Yippie versus Yuppie.”

“[W]ealth creation is the real American revolution. What we need is an infusion of capital into the depressed areas of our country.” —Jerry Rubin