Pictures at a Prosecution: Drawings & Text from the Chicago Conspiracy Trial Review

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Pictures at a Prosecution: Drawings & Text from the Chicago Conspiracy Trial ReviewIt was my sophomore year in high school when I first learned about the Chicago conspiracy trial. There was the local connection, growing up in the Chicago burbs, knowing people who claimed to have been there. And there was the hippie connection.
Even as a very young kid, I held a jaundiced view of the government. A product of the times and the environment around me. Of course the President, Senators, Representatives, Mayors, Governors could be slimy. You could see it on the news every night.
But the courts were different. I guess I had somehow bought into the notion of the distinguished, wise Judge, hearing the case and knowing the right thing to do. I'm not sure if I even had any models of this outside Judge Wapner on the People's Court, and the judge from that Brady Bunch episode where the father throws the suitcase to expose the fraudulent whiplash claim. This was before Judge Judy, whose arrogant abuse of power would quickly disillusion anyone. And, of course, this was way before the Supreme Court rather transparently anointed our current President. I doubt young people today hold the kind of respect for the legal system that I did during this naive phase.
It wasn't until I studied this case in school and read these transcript excerpts that I got it, that I appreciated how human, how personal, how flawed the legal system is. I realized it wasn't a whole lot different from my hot-headed classmates, red in the face screaming at each other over safe or out, fair or foul. The arguments are more elegant and better articulated, but it's still all a game. The hot-headed participants, blind in their shallow self-interest, are the same characters.
Feiffer selects excerpts from the transcript and they accompany his court sketches. Feiffer tells us in the introduction that it is a biased selection. He is on one side of this generational, cultural clash. But what happened really did happen, it's on record. Judge Hoffman, acting in impressive arrogance, dismisses and trivializes every objection from the defendants side, and scolds the defendants repeatedly, admonishes, punishes their contempt. In the beginning, one could almost have sympathy for Judge Hoffman. The very public nature of the case must add some pressure, and he has defendants on trial who are going to try and turn the trial into guerilla theater. But once the trial is well underway, the level of contempt Judge Hoffman has for the youth movement is exposed, and it is ugly. I don't know quite how to describe it, but you can feel it, you can feel it on the page. The antics and commotion of the trial are quite humorous and entertaining at times, but, more than anything, the transcripts leave you feeling indignant. It's the kind of indignation you feel when the people in a superior position of power act dismissively- or worse- derisively. Come to think of it, it's the same arrogant bullying that infects the current political climate, and I'm not sure why more people aren't enraged.
But back to the Chicago Conspiracy Trial. As if the generational aspect of the youth movement wasn't obvious enough, as if we needed our symbolism poured in concrete directly before us, the rebellious son growing up and challenging the aged Dad are there for us, personified by the two generations of Jewish Americans. Albert Hoffman, the conservative Judge, from the love-it-or-leave-it assimilate-into-waspiness generation, versus Abbie Hoffman, the Yippie non-leader leader. The father and son. Is there anything worse than the preening, macho tension between a father and son? There is a back-story if you've chanced upon it: Abbie Hoffman, in Revolution for the Hell of it, has posited that his generation of American Jews are so disproportionately activist because they perceive the generation of European Jews who died in the holocaust as being too passive for too long. Abbie's language is more inflammatory, more victim-blaming than anything I'm comfortable even paraphrasing, but that's Abbie Hoffman's style. That's why you loved him or loathed him. Abbie famously accuses the senior Hoffman of being a "shanda fer de goyim," in other words, he is accusing him of embarrassing the Jewish people in front of the gentiles. He also approaches the bench at one point and challenges Judge Hoffman to step outside with him, forget this legal stuff, and duke it out man-to-man.
Hey, the Chicago Eight- then Chicago Seven- defendants were no angels. They were definitely provocateurs. And the establishment reacted just the way they were meant to, rewarding every pushed button with self-defeating anger and retaliation. Just like frazzled parents in the process of losing control over their oppositional teenagers.
In the end, the Yippies self-destructed. What do you know? As bad as the rest of us. They proved to be the same bunch of irrational, battered egos as the silverbacks they dethroned. But the culture, the politics, the collective consciousness is changed.
If you need a primary source to help understand the youth movement, the intersections of the cultural and political torrents that defined the War at home, I recommend this book.
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