Yippie Election Day Protests in San Francisco (Berkeley Barb)

Second Coming But Not Last

We were the Yippie freaks of Richard Daley's madness born again in San Francisco. On Erection Day, a thousand Yippies pulled together in the Civic Center to smoke pot, get blasted on electrical sounds, and groove on Pigasus.

While the vast multitude of America's internal prisoners reluctantly twitched their way to the polls, and finally decided that both Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon should be vice president, we decided that it really didn't matter, and voted by freaking out in the streets.

There really must be some international conspiracy, because I thought I recognized everybody's face from Chicago's Lincoln Park. But things were a lot less uptight in the Civic Center than in the tear-gassed greenery of the Democratic Convention.

The only two-legged pigs on the scene were from the Humane Society, but for some fantastic reason they were all wearing guns. They told us that they generally only wore guns on the most dangerous jobs. It never came out whether they were guarding Pigasus from us or us from Pigasus.

Pigasus was in a cage and there were those madmen of marijuana who wanted to free him immediately. Others feared assassination at the hands of the power structure. Suddenly a second Pigasus appeared, a carefully selected double who oinked into the microphone as Phil Ochs accompanied him on the guitar.

Then, some two-legged hog brothers showed up and grabbed the Pretender. They thought they had our candidate but he was well protected by the Yippie militia.

At 3:30 in the afternoon, we moved out of the Center and down Market Street heading for the moneyboxes of Montgomery Street.

Peering out of the windows of hamburger restaurants and various offices of boredom, San Franciscans were too stunned to even curse. They just looked on in programmed bewilderment. Passing by on a bus, Emory Douglas gave us a revolutionary salute.

Some old lady tried to kick a Yippie in the shins. There were a few arrests on the way to Montgomery Street, a few got their heads cracked open for jaywalking.

When we got to Montgomery Street, that Tactical pigtroll moved in, closing off sidewalks and blocking us from crossing the street. Our intention was to play monopoly on the sidewalk but we discovered that our fake money had been stolen.

Angered, we started fires and threw cherrybombs. When the cops moved in to put out the fires, we chanted ‘‘Smokey the Pig!"

As the wage slaves left their desks at five o'clock, we greeted them with nickel handouts and rumors that Eugene McCarthy had been arrested, and that the Alabama highway patrol had seized Washington, D.C.

When things got to be a drag, a lot of us split and headed to Humphrey and Nixon headquarters on Market Street. We wanted to invite personally all the campaign workers to a Pigasus victory pot party, but the Tac Squad was on the set with their four-foot Japanese riot clubs.

It was getting very cold and we started drifting back to the Civic Center. By nine o'clock, the pigs were all over the place, and we were sitting in front of television sets turning on and checking out the results.

[Joseph] Alioto played it a lot slicker than Daley, and backed off from his original denial of a permit. There was no San Francisco massacre and the Yippies had a pleasant day in the sun.

There are going to be many more Yippie happenings in the streets of the Bay Area, and the murder of the Haight-Ashbury is going to be revenged.

A yippie is a hippie who has been clubbed over the head by a pig. There are plenty of them around.

Text by Stewart Albert and Judy Gumbo. Taken from the Berkeley Barb, Vol. 7 No. 20, 8-14 November 1968.

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Erection Day Was a Stand-Off, Dig?

The Yippie Erection Day in San Francisco Tuesday was, as confrontations go, mostly a stand-off. Yippies gestured with a few small fires on financial district sidewalks. Tac Squad bulls ges[t]ured back with several haphazard arrests.

Neither side seemed to know what to expect. Perhaps that's why, according to the daily press, 200 cops were brought to the scene when the Yippies flowed into Montgomery Street pavement.

That's about one cop for every three Yippies.

By the time the day was done, at least 21 people had been arrested, a dozen token fires gasped out, and motorcycle police were strung out from Montgomery Street to the Civic Center.

Before the march along Market to the financial district, the afternoon at the Civic Center was just fun, with rock music, grass, Agit-Prop Theatre, Phil Ochs, and a pitch for Pigasus for president.

Then, shortly after 3 p.m., someone announced it was time to go to Montgomery street "to play Monopoly." Most of the, say, 800 people walked that way along Market Street, losing and gaining participants on the way.

Unexpectedly, at Kearny, a fight erupted between Yippies at the head of the line and traffic cops on the corner. (See article this issue.) That fracas slowed and split up the group.

When the main body rounded the corner onto Montgomery, four cops were standing ready at Sutter, a block away. The Yippie line was stopped for a moment, but then some of the gro[u]p crossed Montgomery to skirt the short line of cops. A moment later, more cops on cycles arrived and the demonstrators were halted again.

It was freaky. Hundreds of people with probably more hair and patchwork clothing than has ever been seen on SF’s money street were clustered at the base of a sleek multistorey aluminum-faced fiscal shrine, held at bay by die-cast blue figures from a Ron Cobb cartoon.

They looked at each other. They waited. Most of the crowd was still light-hearted, but that was overcome by worry as rumors spread that cops were sealing off both ends of the block.

Finally, the tension was broken by a sidewalk fire lit from papers. The crowd cheered, but the glass and metal building seemed unimpressed. The blue helmets nevertheless charged in and made a bust, 24.08 Fire Code, a misdemeanor.

Then another pause, and another bust. Off and on for a couple of hours, charges ranging from public obscenity to—dig it—suspicion of assaulting an officer.

The cops weren't particularly nasty, although they were so eager to arrest a guy with a toy gun that they trampled the ankle of a straight chick bystander. It didn't really look like 200 cops, but they were scattered in groups in the district guarding the entrances of banks.

A group of about 20 people split for the Stock Exchange. They burned some money and tried to sell the Exchange to passerby. The building was closed for some holiday.

Back at Montgomery and Sutter, rush-hour traffic was gawking at the novelty. A paunchy middle-aged flawless suit with a costly cigar and homburg was telling a beard to leave the country if he wasn't happy here. He voiced the usual attitude expressed by onlookers.

A girl screamed in terror as two cops carried her to the part-filled paddy wagon. People at the wagon got her name and gave her a number to call, the Movement Liberation Front.

The MLF got 21 names throughout the day, and arranged contacts for bail, and got lawyers to represent the arrestees Wednesday at arraignment. Several people got out on their own recognizance. Some misdemeanor charges were dropped.

The people busted for suspicion of assaulting an officer were apparently being held the 48-hour legal limit. An MLF attorney said it was probably intended to keep them off the streets for a while, since the charge is weird.

Bail for all those arrested totaled around $40,000. In a few cases, the arrestees will probably be stuck in jail unless bail contributions can get them out.

Some of the arrests happened after the protestors left Montgomery Street. After the sun was well down and the crowd had thinned to a few hundred, the cry went up to go to the Humphrey headquarters on Market near Van Ness.

The long procession brought more bemused looks as it whooped and hollered past hogdog stands and skin flick houses. Motorcycle cops kept pace with the Yippie parade.

The cops were already lined up in front of the HHH Hq. [Hubert Humphrey Hq.] No entry. A campaign worker suggested they go help out at another headquarters. Yippies hooted and explained their preference for the honest pig, Pigasus.

On to the Civic Center, where it had started hours earlier. A few bags of trash were set aflame on the way, and dragged away from a car parked nearby.

As the remainder of the group arrived at the plaza, a squadron of cyclecops blatted by, showing their force. Only about 150 Yippies were left. Four Tac Squad cops walked around in the crowd.

Someone set some paper on fire. The four cops came in. A can clattered. The fire died. The cops busted a guy for something. A little later they busted a chick for something.

The scene didn't much resemble the afternoon there, when the only cops were in plainclothes, except for the two uniformed animal protection men wearing sidearms.

The animal men had kept a sharp eye on the caged Pigasus III, explaining that they'd confiscate him if he was let loose and bust whoever let him loose. So someone brought in another pig who squealed into the microphone.

Later someone noticed that the cops had a pig in their clutches but a speaker reassured the crowd that it was only the vice-president. The president was safe.

But now, at night, the crowd had no hint of leaders or purpose, and no source of entertainment. It was cold and quickly a drag. A few kazoos, passed out that afternoon, played patriotic tunes in the dark.

Before the group dwindled to nothing, a slender long-haired young man stood on the curb looking up at a beefy cop standing in the street. They exchanged cold taunts as the cop held his three-foot club at ease.

The young man agreed when the cop said, "You didn't do too well today."

"But I'm learning," the young man said, "I'm learning."

Text by "jas." Taken from the Berkeley Barb, Vol. 7 No. 20, 8-14 November 1968.

Photos taken from the Berkeley Barb, Vol. 7 No. 20, 8-14 November 1968.