Article by Yippie figure Stewart Albert on Pigasus and the 1968 Festival of Life. The Yippies had called for a Festival of Life in Chicago from 25-30 August in order to coincide with the Democratic National Convention, where the Yippies intended to present a pig called Pigasus as their presidential nominee. Major clashes broke out between various protesters and the Chicago police, national guards, and US Army, with Pigasus also being arrested. Article originally appeared in the Berkeley Barb, Vol 7 No 8 Issue 158, August 23-29, 1968.
The presidential candidate causing the most uproar in Chicago currently is a 200-pound pig, Yippie presidential nominee.
The pig represents the true essence of the candidates of both major parties—closet-pigs wearing men's clothing in public but making it in a gay mud-pen when the press is not around.
Chicago is a very real and therefore ugly city. Street people are hassled by cops and storekeepers. You get refused service and you can be expected to show your ID both day and night. The underground here is small and not yet self-confident enough to take on the establishment openly.
The Mayor of the town is Richard Daley, who comes about as close to being Trujillo as is possible within a bourgeois democracy. He strikes me as someone who is just aching to remove the liberal figleaf and show off his fascist balls.
At a press conference called by the Democratic Chairman John Daly, I asked him if the pig could address the Democratic Convention. He asked if the Yippie pig could speak English and I gave the logical response—"Can your pig candidate speak it?"
The Yippies are going to parallel the Democrats and have a rigged convention, nominate the pig and take him to the Hilton Hotel to meet the other delegates.
The Yippies will create grooviness in Chicago, but we are prepared to defend it. Thousands of people are pouring into the city and nobody knows how many will be here when the Democratic Convention begins.
The people coming here are not naive. They have brought their dope with them but they are also willing to take a session or two in self-defense—they know they cannot love the Chicago cops out of existence.
Every afternoon in Lincoln Park snake-dancing and karate are being taught to a monitor squad, and the teachers and students represent a Yippie motorcycle gang alliance. TV closeups of one guy wearing beads and another guy with chains around his neck practicing side-kicks is blowing a lot of preconceived "what the love generation is about" minds.
Thousands will be sleeping in the Park in an atmosphere closer to Havana on May Day than a flower-power be-in. Hundreds of posters of Huey Newton, Che, and Malcolm X will be posted all over the place. Thousands of Viet Cong flags will be waving at a Free Huey rally.
For cooling it there will be nude swimming in the park, rock music and a massive barbecue. The idea is that affinity groups—revolutionary gangs—will grow out of the common park living experience. This will be strengthened by action workshops dealing with how to handle the cops during an insurrection, how to form an underground newspaper, how to use I Ching, and about 25 other subjects.
No permit has as yet been granted for the Park, but the Yippies believe that if 5,000 people show up they will be their own permit.
Different kinds of radicals and cultural revolutionaries are coming to Chicago, producing tensions among Yippie leadership. It is a difference more of tendency than of essence. Both factions believe that to be serious you don’t have to be dull and that the best way to communicate is through guerrilla theatre.
But one group wants to cutefy, to fight the revolution—on CBS and in the Chicago Daily News. The "horrifier" section wants to fight it out in the streets. They are more concerned with revolutionizing people’s heads than giving Walter Cronkite an absurd five minutes.
The cutefiers want to keep Yippie essentially a park-bound festivity. The horrifiers want to lead actions at hotels at which the delegates are staying and join the march to the barbwire-enclosed Chicago Amphitheatre where the Democratic Convention is being held. Both sides have agreed to coexist and to do their own thing, letting those coming to Chicago decide which they want to get involved with.
The events during the Democratic Convention are going to be of major historical significance. Nobody really knows what is going to happen.
Mayor Daley has summoned 5,500 National Guardsmen, 1,000 dogs, and police vacations have been canceled. The convention is like a fixed wrestling-match, in which for some reason the script has been thrown away and now they are doing it for real. Nobody knows who the Democrats are going to choose, but whatever happens America will be taking a turn.
If McCarthy gets the nomination the revolution will be stalled a bit. There will be four years of social democracy and a new lease on life for the system. If Humphrey gets it, there will be in the not too distant future civil war.
The various groups that have called for action in Chicago—Yippie, National Mobilization [Committee to End the War in Vietnam] and others—are attempting to work closer together.
If you missed the fall of Babylon, the barbarians smashing their way through the gates of Imperial Rome, and Fidel marching into Havana, then come to Chicago. It’s going to be a groove—but come prepared!
Illustration of Pigasus, Yippie presidential nominee. Taken from the Berkeley Barb Vol 7 No 7 Issue 157.
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