REBEL

16. The Verdict

Rebel 348 The Verdict We became known as the “Conspiracy.”The seven remaining defendants camped in apartments in the Hyde Park area near the university, about forty-five minutes from the Federal Building. If Chicago meant living under siege, these were the barracks. Leonard Weinglass and I rented a railroad apartment; besides ourselves, a few staff members moved in during the trial. The place was barren. At night it became the central headquarters of the legal defense team. It quickly became known that Kunstler was better at giving seat-of-the-pants speeches and partying at night than at the drudgery of preparing the legal defense. Therefore, after court each day, we would spill into a local bar, drink and eat, then return to our apartment to prepare for the next day. We would often be preparing witnesses, writing memos, and arguing the case until well after midnight. We lived on junk food, coffee, wine, and bourbon. The “Yippies” stayed mostly to themselves in an apartment nearby, preferring marijuana and plotting their adventures late into the night as well. At our apartment, a kind of “camaraderie-of-the-damned” continued until we dropped in exhaustion, people often crashing on the floor in sleeping bags. Sometimes we were joined by sympathetic celebrities like Dustin Hoffman, my hero from The Graduate, who was interested in learning to mimic both his namesakes, Julius and Abbie. Very few friendships could blossom in these stark conditions, and many were strained and abandoned. Women in our ranks—whether they were lovers and/or “Conspiracy” staff—were especially frustrated, since all of them were forced into the classic secondary, supportive roles that their feminist consciousness was rejecting. Abbie, Jerry, and to a lesser extent, Rennie, were aroused by their roles as defendants, and actually dreamed of forming a permanent national organization if we survived the trial, which was developing a national television audience several times a week. I thought it was a crazy idea for 16. 16. 349 several reasons: We were not likely to be vindicated; we couldn’t agree among ourselves politically; our egos were blindly competitive; we were all men; and none of us had real constituencies to be accountable to. I felt that organizations like the Mobe and the “Yippies” were beginning to outlive any useful purposes, and we would be perpetuating little more than our own image and notoriety. What I really wanted was a home. Almost every Friday afternoon, I caught a five PM. plane to Berkeley, adding to my distance from the other defendants. But coming from the harsh, and usually freezing, reality of Chicago made forty-eight hours in Berkeley seem even more unreal. I could see Anne and Christopher and a few friends, but before I could feel relaxed and close to anyone, it was time to catch the Sunday night red-eye back to O’Hare Field. I would take a cab to the apartment, shut my eyes for an hour, shower, and leave for the courtroom again. One weekend was a particular nightmare. The Rolling Stones were performing at nearby Altamont. I wanted to stay home with Anne and Christopher, but most of our friends went. They were full of anticipation that this would be another Woodstock, a time of good vibes and the music of revolution, but they returned a day later, shaken. Bad drugs, probably cut with speed, were being passed out free, causing people to flip out and get sick. Mick Jagger’s lyrics, oozing with violence toward women (“Under My Thumb”), made one of my friends flash for twelve hours on being raped; around her, women were being raped. And around the prancing Jagger were hulking Hell’s Angels, one of them wearing a wolf’s head, serving as bodyguards. At the climax of the concert they beat up and stabbed to death a black man. My scared friends were throwing up and taking Thorazine. During the same few days, the Charles Manson “family” was indicted for the sadistic murders of actress Sharon Tate and others in Los Angeles. Anne and I were nauseated by the report of Tate’s stomach cut open with a fork;Tate was pregnant at the time. It was the ultimate act of barbarism. But many people, including several underground papers, fell into the illusion that Manson was a persecuted and misunderstood hippie. Jerry Rubin was one. He and Phil Ochs went to see Manson in prison. Manson told them that he wanted to conduct himself defiantly...