The Youth International Party YIP , whose members were commonly called Yippies , was an American youth-oriented radical and countercultural revolutionary offshoot of the free speech and anti-war movements of the late s. It was founded on December 31, Since they were well known for street theater , protesting against the criminalization of cannabis in the United States with smoke-ins , and politically themed pranks , they were either ignored or denounced by many of the Old Left.
The Yippies had no formal membership or hierarchy. A Yippie flag was often seen at anti-war demonstrations. The flag had a black background with a five-pointed red star in the center, and a green cannabis leaf superimposed over it.
The red star is for our five point program. And the leaf is for marijuana, which is for getting ecologically stoned without polluting the environment.
Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin became the most famous Yippiesβand bestselling authorsβin part due to publicity surrounding the five-month Chicago Seven Conspiracy trial of They both used the phrase "ideology is a brain disease" to separate the Yippies from mainstream political parties that played the game by the rules. Hoffman and Rubin were arguably the most colorful of the seven defendants accused of criminal conspiracy and inciting to riot at the August Democratic National Convention.
Hoffman and Rubin used the trial as a platform for Yippie anticsβat one point, they showed up in court attired in judicial robes. We needed a name to signify the radicalization of hippies, and I came up with Yippie as a label for a phenomenon that already existed, an organic coalition of psychedelic hippies and political activists. In the process of cross-fertilization at antiwar demonstrations, we had come to share an awareness that there was a linear connection between putting kids in prison for smoking pot in this country and burning them to death with napalm on the other side of the planet.
