Rubin, Jerry Clyde

(b. 14 July 1938 in Cincinnati, Ohio; d. 28 November 1994 in Los Angeles, California), 1960s radical, antiwar protester, and cofounder of the Youth International Party (popularly known as the Yippies). He was best known as a defendant in the 1968 Chicago Seven trial and for his theatrical use of the media, especially relating to the anti-Vietnam War movement.

Rubin was born in Cincinnati, the son of Robert Rubin, a truck driver turned union organizer, and Esther Katz, a homemaker. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to New York City, where Robert operated a small candy store. In 1944 Robert joined the merchant marine, and Esther returned to Cincinnati, where she became a secretary. After the elder Rubin returned from World War II, he began working as a truck driver and the family lived mostly with Esther’s parents, who gave their grandson considerable attention. After failing the entrance exam requirements at the exclusive Walnut Hills High School in 1950, Rubin attended Samuel Ach Junior High School. Two years later he met the admission standards of Walnut Hills. He excelled as a sportswriter on the staff of Chatterbox, the school newspaper, for which he served as coeditor in his senior year. He used the paper to voice his negative opinion of high school fraternities.

Following graduation in 1956, Rubin worked for the Cincinnati Post for the summer before entering Oberlin College. He left in 1957 when the Post offered him a full-time position as sportswriter. He also carried a full load at the University of Cincinnati, graduating with a degree in history in 1961. Afterward, he left for India to attend graduate school at the University of Lucknow. En route he learned of his father’s death and returned home. Upon his return, Rubin assumed guardianship of his fourteen-year-old brother, since his mother had died in 1960. His parents, who had inherited money from Esther’s parents, had left him a sizable trust, much of it in stock; in a stroke of irony, this income enabled him to become a radical protestor who often railed against capitalism. In June 1962, Rubin, along with his brother, went to Israel, where they attended school. Rubin studied sociology at Hebrew University but did not graduate. After only one year they returned to the United States; Rubin had decided to attend graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley.

After six weeks there, Rubin joined a group of radicals and journeyed illegally to Cuba, which he viewed as a land of idealism. Arriving back in Berkeley, he became active in the Free Speech Movement and in 1965 helped organize the Vietnam Day Committee against growing American involvement in Vietnam. The organization sponsored teach-ins, organized marches, and protested the transportation of troops through Berkeley, an early sign that the antiwar movement had intensified. At that time, Rubin adopted the street-theater tactics that made him famous. He also shed his clean-cut appearance and began to sport a beard and long hair. In like manner, his personality underwent a transformation; he began to make such bold and memorable statements as “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.”

Subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1966 for his Vietnam War protest in Berkeley, Rubin appeared dressed as a Revolutionary War soldier to show that protest was American. He believed it was his right to question the country’s leadership, especially its commitment to the Vietnam War. He was not called to testify and was arrested for his actions. In 1967, Rubin campaigned to elect a pig as president of the United States and protested capitalism by dropping dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. On 31 January 1967, he, along with Abbie Hoffman and Paul Krassner, cofounded the Youth International Party. Their most publicized demonstration came at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago (Rubin was a vice presidential candidate on the Peace and Freedom ticket). It resulted in the arrest of Rubin, along with seven others, for conspiracy to incite violence and riot. During the trial, the group became known as the Chicago Seven, because one of the eight original defendants was tried separately. The accused group filled the court proceedings with mockery and unruliness. Five of the seven defendants, including Rubin, were convicted of riot provocation instead of conspiracy. An appeals court later overturned the convictions.

Afterward, Rubin toured college campuses lecturing and working on his first book, Do It!: Scenarios of the Revolution (1970). In the summer of 1970, he served a sixty-day sentence in Chicago’s Cook County Jail for his role in the 1968 Chicago convention demonstration. While he was incarcerated, he wrote We Are Everywhere (1971). Both of these books were political statements of the 1960s, filled with the revolutionary language and radical thought of the times. In 1972 he coauthored Vote with Abbie Hoffman and Ed Sanders, which supported the Democratic presidential candidacy of George McGovern. In the early 1970s, Rubin found himself falling from the spotlight as the Vietnam War ended. In 1976, he published Growing Up at Thirty-seven, an autobiographical account of the changes he had experienced in the early 1970s. During this time he took part in self-awareness programs and continued to lecture. In the late 1970s he worked as a therapist for the Fischer-Hoffman psychic therapy clinic, which was not a physical clinic but a self-help process he taught everywhere in the country.

Rubin married Mimi Leonard in 1978; they lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and had two children. In 1980 he denounced his anticapitalist beliefs and worked briefly for the Wall Street firm of John Muir and Company. He then promoted networking until 1991, when he moved from New York to Los Angeles, where he began working for Omnitrition International, marketing nutritional products. His marriage ended in divorce in 1992. On 14 November 1994, an automobile struck him in Los Angeles; injuries sustained in the accident led to cardiac arrest two weeks later. He is buried at Hillside Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

In the 1960s, Rubin understood that the antiwar movement depended on the media. In the 1970s he proved that he had the ability to adapt to changing times. In a 1980 article in the New York Times, he proclaimed that he still held many of his values and beliefs of the 1960s. He stated that money is power and that to develop power one needed to control money. In a 1993 interview with Ron Chepesiuk, he declared that money could be a tool for positive action and that he had not realized its value in the 1960s. Rubin understood that in present-day society it is easier to reform the system from within. His belief that he had made a difference in the 1960s never left him. Furthermore, he thought that the 1990s would be a decade of change, when the generation of the 1960s came to power in business, government, and politics. Consequently, he believed that he was doing his part by embracing the system and joining the business world.

See Rubin’s Growing Up at Thirty-seven (1976), which is packed with information but lacks specific dates. Rubin’s New York Times article of 30 July 1980, “Guess Who’s Coming to Wall Street,” covers well the changes he underwent through the 1960s and 1970s. Ron Chepesiuk, Sixties Radicals, Then and Now: Candid Conversations with Those Who Shaped the Era (1995), has a short interview with Rubin. Paul Krassner, Confessions of a Raving, Un-confined Nut (1993), includes a useful chapter titled “The Rise and Fall of the Yippie Empire.” For a social history of the 1960s, see Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (rev. ed., 1993). Esquire (Nov. 1969) has an article by J. Anthony Lukas, “The Making of a Yippie,” that contains information about Rubin’s early family life and career. The Los Angeles Times (29 Nov. 1994) provides a short but informative tribute to Rubin. See also the article “He Didn’t Need a Weatherman” in People (Dec. 1994), which pays tribute to Rubin’s ability to adapt to the times. An obituary is in the New York Times (30 Nov. 1994).

Barrett Richardson