"Head and shoulders above any recent 60's history." --Abbie Hoffman
"Entertaining and scrupulously researched, Chicago '68 reconstructs the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago--an epochal moment in American cultural and political history. By drawing on a wide range of sources, Farber tells and retells the story of the protests in three different voices, from the perspectives of the major protagonists--the Yippies, the National Mobilization to End the War, and Mayor Richard J. Daley and his police. He brilliantly recreates all the excitement and drama, the violently charged action and language of this period of crisis, giving life to the whole set of cultural experiences we call 'the sixties.' Chicago '68 was a watershed summer. Chicago '68 is a watershed book. Farber succeeds in presenting a sensitive, fairminded composite portrait that is at once a model of fine narrative history and an example of how one can walk the intellectual tightrope between 'reporting one's findings' and offering judgements about them." --Peter I. Rose, Contemporary Sociology
Excerpt
The War Is Over had been organized by Hoffman, Krassner, Rubin, and Phil Ochs, the well-known folksinger and political activist. The name came from a challenge beat poet Allen Ginsberg threw at the National Student Association convention in 1966. At the convention of college student body presidents, Ginsberg ended his poetry reading by screaming at his audience, "I declare the end of the war." This became a sort of strategy that Ginsberg, who was by then a prophet figure to both the movement and hippie communities, employed with increasing regularity to challenge the reality and inflexibility of power and authority. Ochs saw the poetry of the statement and wrote a semipopular song that anthematically proclaimed, "I declare the war is over." The demonstration itself involved about three thousand young people who massed in Washington Square and then ran down the streets from Grand Central Station to Times Square back to Washington Square and over to Thompkin Square, screaming over and over, "The war is over"--an Armistice Day, only this victory was completely in the heads of the kids and the people they got to rethink the war in Vietnam.
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Of these figures, topical folk singer Phil Ochs was the most dependable. As early as January, he had assured Rubin that he'd be in Chicago come what may, a statement no other performer would make. By 1968, Ochs had recorded half a dozen successful, if not Billboard Top Ten, record albums. Ochs was a popular performer at universities and peace and civil rights demonstrations around the country. In style and desire, Ochs was a sometimes uncomfortable mixture of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger, aiming for the popularity and artistry of the one while trying to maintain the political consciousness and dedication of the other. More often than not Ochs was willing to put his political dedication above his performing career.