24/09/2025
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These are the “Yippies”, members of the Youth International Party (YIP) that was founded in New York in 1967 by Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Paul Krassner. They were a radical, highly theatrical, intellectual, anti-authoritarian and anarchist youth movement that dramatically embodied the free speech and anti-war movements of the late 1960s.
Known for street theater, the Yippies protested the criminalization of cannabis with “smoke-ins” and politically themed pranks. They were referred to as “Groucho Marxists”. Their slogan: “Ideology is a brain disease”.
Unlike the hippies, who tended to be apolitical, Yippies was a label for the organic coalition of psychedelic hippies and political activists united against putting young people in prison for smoking pot or sending them to fight and die in Vietnam. "Yippie!" was also a shout for joy, energy, exhilaration, fun and fierceness.
Inspired by groups such as the West Coast Diggers, the Merry Pranksters and the Hog Farmers, the Yippies called for the creation of alternative counterculture institutions like food co-ops, underground newspapers, free clinics, artist collectives, support groups, and free stores.
Yippie guerrilla theatrics culminated at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The Yippies planned a six-day Festival of Life, to counter the “Convention of Death”, whereby YIP threatened to put L*D in Chicago’s water supply. Chicago police violently clashed with peaceful protestors, and arrested 7 key protestors, including Hoffman and Rubin, for inciting a riot.
Their infamous trial - the so-called Chicago Seven Trial - became the countercultural performance of the Sixties as the Yippies brought their guerrilla theater into the courtroom. The Yippies continued as a small movement into the early 2000s.
