Jerry Rubin
Jerry Rubin was very active as a peacemaker during the Vietnam War. War is a common theme of negative peace. This is because once a war starts, people suddenly want peace but they have to create it. How a person reacts to stopping the war speaks a lot to their work as a peacemaker. In negative peace, we often see protests being organized as a way to show a mass audience and the government that people do not agree with something. Not only do protests have the ability to reach a lot of people, they also bring people together- many people uniting for a cause they believe. People coming together also creates peace related organizations, such as Rubin’s organization, the Vietnam Day Committee, or, the VDC. Read more to see how Jerry Rubin took a more radical approach to his peace activism, with more “in your face” type tactics.
Jerry Rubin at Flamingo Park for the 1972 Republican National Convention. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Rubin’s argument about peace can easily be summed up by the title of the book he published in 1970: Do It! Jerry Rubin took an approach to peace where he just “did it.” A very intriguing man, Rubin was not afraid to crazy things in order to stand up for what he believed in- he went after everything full force. In Do It!: Scenarios of the Revolution, there is a section on protests stopping the soldier trains. The VDC had thousands of people running up to these trains, sitting on the tracks, jumping on them, etc. Rubin and his people did anything they physically could to stop these fast moving trains. It was a huge statement.
VDC Teach In leaflet Courtesy of the VDC and Wikimedia Commons.
"Highly theatrical... symbolic politics"
Rubin was all for an end to the war As the leader of the Vietnam Day Committee and member of the Yippies, he was involved in and organized many protests that aimed to end the war, such as the train protest previously mentioned. In his book, Rubin writes about receiving a subpoena from the HUAC: “Those who got subpoenas became heroes. Those who didn't had subpoenas envy. It was almost sexual.” This demonstrates a mindset that if the government doesn’t get mad at you, you’re not doing enough. In fact, when testifying before Congress because of said subpoena, Rubin dressed up in a Revolutionary War soldier’s costume.
"The VDC was an outgrowth of the New Left political and cultural rebellion," (DeGroot page 95). It grew to be a large organization, but was based out of a house in Berkeley, which volunteers working around the clock to answer phone calls, make flyers, and spread their message to stop the war. It grew into a spiderweb of organizations: political groups, student groups, labor organizations, etc. Abbie Hoffman described protests by the VDC as highly theatrical and a type of symbolic politics. Organizations like the Yippies and the VDC had a special way of bringing people together for a cause. Rubin and his peers were not afraid. They did countless sit ins in hopes of being arrested. The VDC did teach ins to educate people on the war and other important issues.
"About The Berkeley Revolution." The Berkeley Revolution. Accessed April 05, 2019. http://revolution.berkeley.edu/about/.De Groot, Gerard J. “The Limits of Moral Protest and Participatory Democracy: The Vietnam Day Committee.” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 64, No. 1 (Feb., 1995), pp. 95-119. University of California Press.Rubin, Jerry. Do It: Scenarios of the Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970.Thomas, Patrick O., Kathy Wolf, and Jacob Covey. Did It!: From Yippie to Yuppie: Jerry Rubin, an American Revolutionary. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2017.