My Comment to the NY TIMES in response to David Brooks op-ed comparing Abbie Hoffman to Donald Trump

I was a founding member of YIPPIE I knew Abbie and Jerry as well as the 50 so people at the core of YIPPIE. David Brooks does not get who we were back them culturally or politically.   Fine, i suppose. But to drag TRUMP and CLINTON into the same frame shows his real ignorance of who we were and our intentions. We believed in creative imagination, having fun while trying to wake up the public to how they had been hypnotized and fooled.Marshall McCluan, Che, Grouch Marx and for me, Madame Binh, were our role modes in how to disrupt public conception of revolution. The media's fixation on Abbie and Jerry obscured the people who actually did most of the work. Similar to the how the mainstream media covered the Black Panthers. Too bad Brooks has not talked to Nancy Kurshan (Jerry's partner) or me the out Yippie when homophobia was alive and viral in the New Left as it was in the old left
jim fouratt

The Abbie Hoffman of hte Right: Donald Trump

a version of this comment appeared in the NY Times

there are two books I would recommend if you want to know about Abbie Hoffman :

American Rebel  by Marty Jeezer

Steal This Dream: Abbie Hoffman and the Countercultural Revolution in America by Larry "Ratso" Sloman 
in,
I am anticipating reading DID IT by Pat Thomas about Jerry Rubin ,

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Essential: watch in a dark room, please

Alex Ross Perry, filmmaker writes about how growing up movies saved his life

Red hot indie filmmaker Alex Ross Perry opens up and talks about why on a very personal level films saved his life growing up.

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