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The Chicago Seven Posted September 18, 2009 @ 12:19 am In Editor's Choice,Numbers,Seven | No Comments “The Chicago Seven” was the name given to the individuals arrested on charges of inciting a riot at the 1968 Democratic Convention [1] in Chicago, Illinois.
Perhaps the three most prominent were Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin of the Yippies [9], and Tom Hayden [10], who later married the actress Jane Fonda and served in the California State Assembly from 1982-2000. They were eventually acquitted on February 18, 1970, but not until going through a trial [11] that included one defendant, Bobby Seale [12], being bound and gagged and eventually having his case severed from the others turning the Chicago Eight [13] into the Chicago Seven. “Years later Rubin confessed that he had secretly agreed with the government when in March 1969 it indicted him, along with Hoffman, Hayden, Davis, Dellinger, Bobby Seale [14], and two others, for conspiring to riot in Chicago. ‘We wanted exactly what happened,’ Rubin wrote. ‘We wanted the tear gas to get so heavy that the reality was tear gas. We wanted to create a situation in which the Chicago police and the Daley administration and the federal government and the United States would self-destruct. We wanted to show that America wasn’t a democracy. That the convention wasn’t politics. The message of the week was of an America ruled by force. This was a big victory.”—quoted in Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s, (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), p. 422 from Milton Viorst, Fire in the Streets: America in the 1960s, (1979), pp. 458-9.  [15]Portrait of the Chicago Seven |
How It's Used
"Young people helped lead the way in the U.S. civil rights movement, white college students joining with African Americans to sign up voters in the Freedom Summer of 1964. The feminist movement was revived after half a century of dormancy by a cadre of young, idealistic and politically savvy women. Same for the antiwar movement: Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden of the Chicago Seven were ages 17 to 22 when they were charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot while protesting at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago."
—Naomi Wolf, "Hey, Young Americans, Here's a Text for You," The Washington Post, November 25, 2007.
"Forty years ago—before Richard Nixon was president, before the Chicago Seven were tried, before the shootings at Kent State—a 19-year-old Brooklyn man was shipped to Vietnam.
"His name was Jose Ramon Sanchez and he was a private first class with the First Battalion, Fourth Regiment of the Third Marine Division, Headquarters and Support Company. On June 6—D-Day—of 1968, his CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter was sent to extract a team of fellow grunts who were pinned down by the enemy in the mountains seven miles southwest of Khe Sahn. The craft took small-arms fire from a hillside. It crashed and burned. Private Sanchez and four others were D.O.I. Dead on impact."
—Alan Feuer, "Returning a Marine, Shot Down in 1968," The New York Times, November 6, 2008.
"Forty years ago, Mr. Hayden was a co-founder of Students for a Democratic Society, a driving force behind the movement against the Vietnam War. He was also a member of the Chicago Seven, who were tried on charges of conspiring to incite a riot at the Democratic National Convention in 1968."
—Manny Fernandez, "1960s Radicals Predict Rebirth of Social Activism," The New York Times, November 9, 2008.
"After directing three movies ('Reality Bites,' 'The Cable Guy,' 'Zoolander') that were entirely snubbed by Academy members, [Ben] Stiller can now claim to have directed an Oscar-nominated performance: Robert Downey Jr. in 'Tropic Thunder.' While we're happy for the Stiller clan, we fear this news will give traction to the notion of his next project being a docudrama about the trial of the Chicago Seven, written by Aaron Sorkin, which seems like an awfully grown-up movie for Derek Zoolander. Baby steps, Ben, baby steps."
—Simon Houpt and Liam Lacey, "Ben Stiller Legitimized; Simon Houpt pores over this year's nominations and reports on some of Oscar's weird tastes and strange blind spots," The Globe and Mail (Canada), January 24, 2009.
"To help the case, Graham Nash has authorised a reworking of his song 'Chicago', written when he was part of Crosby, Stills and Nash in the wake of the violent 1968 Democratic party convention in Chicago and the subsequent trial of the so-called Chicago Seven."
—Duncan Campbell, "Pink Floyd star David Gilmour joins fight to halt extradition to US of hacker Gary McKinnon," The Guardian (UK), May 26, 2009.
Links
Related on eAlmanacThe Black Panthers
Beyond eAlmanac
Wikipedia article on the Chicago Seven
Richard Avedon photograph of the Chicago Seven (1969)
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Chicago 10 (2007)
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URLs in this post:
[1] 1968 Democratic Convention: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Democratic_National_Convention
[2] Davis, Rennie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rennie_Davis
[3] Dellinger, David: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Dellinger
[4] Froines, John: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Froines
[5] Hayden, Tom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hayden
[6] Hoffman, Abbie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbie_Hoffman
[7] Rubin, Jerry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Rubin
[8] Weiner, Lee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Weiner
[9] Yippies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_International_Party
[10] Tom Hayden: http://tomhayden.com/
[11] trial: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Chicago7/chicago7.html
[12] Bobby Seale: http://www.bobbyseale.com/
[13] Chicago Eight: http://www.ealmanac.com/numbers/the-chicago-eight/
[14] Bobby Seale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Seale
[15] Image: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Chicago7/Chicago7.html
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