American protest singer and songwriter (1940-1976)
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mr. Ochs, have you ever been associated with what is called the Youth International Party, or, as we will say, the Yippies? THE WITNESS: Yes. I helped design the party, formulate the idea of what Yippie was going to be, in the early part of 1968. MR. KUNSTLER: Can you indicate to the Court and jury what Yippie was going to be, what its purpose was for its formation? THE WITNESS: The idea of Yippie was to be a form of theater politics, theatrically dealing with what seemed to be an increasingly absurd world and trying to deal with it in other than just on a straight moral level. They wanted to be able to act out fantasies in the street to communicate their feelings to the public.
I for one don't even believe that he's president. In order to have a president you need to have an election, in order to have an election you have to have a choice, and if you remember back to the primaries there were people running against the war, Kennedy and McCarthy. They often got 85 to 90% of the votes, but when it came time for the parties, that was totally ignored, so in point of fact, there really was no election. For a man who's always wanted to be president, and now that he's president, he's not even president.
Leave the old and dying America and use your creative energies to help form a new America, which would be de-militarized, more humanistic, where the police are less hostile and closer to the community, where the wealthy are not given unleashed power for the exploitation of the people. And, mostly because it's now a matter of life and death, reassert an ecological balance with the environment, which means the people in the oil companies and the car companies and the space industry and all the other industries will have to be brought into account, so that there will be a new definition of government which has to be closer to the people and less close to special interests which are far more harmful than any revolutionaries.
In every American community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally. Here, then, is a lesson in safe logic.
Before the days of television and mass media, the folksinger was often a traveling newspaper spreading tales through music.... There is an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their actions, and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song.