“This is a personal statement. There are no spokesmen for the Yippies. We suggest to all reporters that they ask each and every Yippie in Lincoln Park why they have come to Chicago. We are all our own leaders. We realize this list of demands is inconclusive, they are not really demands. For people to make demands of the Democratic Party is an exercise in wasted wish-fulfillment. If we have a demand, it is simply and emphatically that they, along with their fellow inmates in the Republican Party, cease to exist. We demand a society built along the alternative community in Lincoln Park, a society based on humanitarian cooperation and equality, a society which allows and promotes the creativity present in all people and especially our youth.” – A. Yippie

For those of you “in the know”, I don’t have to explain the big anniversary coming up this summer.

For those of you who aren’t, here’s a quick introduction:

At Wikipedia: The Youth International Party
At Wikipedia: The 1968 Democratic National Convention protests
At The Anarchist Library: Revolution Towards A Free Society: Documents from Chicago 1968

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A few weeks ago my “baby sister” (now 51) finally finished straightening out our late mother’s estate and got the house sold. The Sunday after we signed off on the sale, Sis and I met up out at Mom’s house to grab a last few things we wanted to save before the Salvation Army guys cleared the place out.

It turns out my sister had found and put aside for me a couple of boxes filled with old reprints of my high school and college newspaper cartoons and old studio class sketchbooks from my senior year of college. Among the sketchbooks was one nearly half full of old comic strips and cartoons I’d done for Outlaws, the old DC Yippie ‘zine, the summer after the notorious 1978 White House Smoke-In — work I thought had been lost forever.

I was surprised at how little I winced as I flipped through the sketchbooks. Granted, the gags are rather obscure and unarguably dated, but technically the work itself still actually holds up rather well.

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Continue reading "Blast From My Past: summer ‘78" »