Episode 208 - THE YIPPIES with Gemma Birnbaum | The Wreckage

SEASON TWO: AMERICAN SUBVERSIVES - EPISODE 208 THE YIPPIES with Gemma Birnbaum
HUAC’s continued targeting of activists spread to Jewish Americans and other groups at the forefront of the anti-Vietnam War movement. In 1967 – a year that would become one of the deadliest in the conflict, as more than 11,000 American soldiers and 34,000 Vietnamese civilians perished – counterculture activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were among those subpoenaed. In response, Hoffman and Rubin were openly defiant, and their highly visible antics, which included arriving dressed in outrageous costumes and waving toy guns, helped to further erode the public’s trust in the committee.

This week’s episode, narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones, chronicles the anti-Vietnam War movement’s role in the 1975 termination of the House Un-American Activities Committee, a body whose power and prestige had largely lost its luster by the 1960s. With rising tensions at home over Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, and the war’s impact on American communities and Vietnamese civilians, the United States was at a crossroads, divided with an intensity that was arguably not experienced since the Civil War.

What didn’t make it into the episode were some of the more prominent antics of the Youth International Party – or the Yippies – including those of Aron Kay, a Yippie and the son of Holocaust survivors who became known for throwing pies into the faces of prominent politicians, activists, pundits, and others, including Andy Warhol, William F. Buckley, and most famously, Conservative activist and politician Phyllis Schlafly, who was perhaps the most prominent female opponent to the Equal Rights Amendment, and frequently trafficked in racist and antisemitic rhetoric. Kay’s first pie-throwing target was none other than Rennie Davis, an anti-war activist and defendant in the trial of the Chicago 8 that is explored in this episode. By the early 1970s, Davis had become involved with conspiracy theorist and controversial spiritual leader Guru Maharaj Ji, the motive for the pie incident.

Historian:
Originally from Queens, NY, Gemma R. Birnbaum holds a bachelor’s in history and Judaic Studies from New York University and a master’s degree in the History of Twentieth Century Labor and Civil Rights from Tulane University. She is the Executive Director of the American Jewish Historical Society in New York City, where she serves as its chief executive as well as producer and writer for the AJHS Digital podcast, The Wreckage. She previously spent 10 years at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans where she oversaw education and distance learning, media production, and interpretation, and served as creator and executive producer of the podcast “To the Best of My Ability.”