In the 15 years since Max Yasgur's farm played Independence Hall to the Woodstock nation, nothing in the counterculture has fared worse in the public eye than some of the leaders who massed the troops and sent out the slogans. Sneerfully noted in celebrity magazines were Jerry Rubin selling stock, Eldridge Cleaver selling pants, Bob Dylan selling God and Tom Hayden selling himself for a seat in the California Assembly. To many of the once loyal, it was simply the All-American sellout; to many of the once enshrined, the problem was a bit more profound. "The trouble with superheroes," said '60s icon Ken Kesey, "is what to do between phone booths."
Yippie cofounder Abbie Hoffman, virtually alone among his vaunted comrades, has consistently danced to the old-tunes beat that made him famous. Now 47, he has emerged from two decades of activism, 26,000 pages of FBI files, several jail terms and seven years underground -- with his Groucho Marxist sense of humor and idealism intact. "Square Dancing in the Ice Age," a collection of essays written by Hoffman during his fugitive run, was recently published in paperback, and he will soon be hitting the lecture circuit with former Black Panther leader and fellow Chicago Eight defendant Bobby Seale to discuss blackJewish relations. He continues to work on the environmental campaigns he launched while living underground and, after a recent trip to Nicaragua, is gearing to mobilize public resistance to U.S. military involvement in Central America. "I've got my second wind," laughs the neatly bearded, slightly baldish Hoffman. "A natural evolution for someone like me would be to go from being a Yippie to a Yuppie. But that's not my story. I've still got the fire in the belly."
Four years ago Hoffman turned himself in to face 1973 cocaine-dealing charges -- charges that could have sent him to prison for life. He had hopscotched three continents during his first years as a fugitive, teaching school in Mexico, posing and writing as an American food critic in Europe, free-lancing articles to any magazine that would have them. He finally settled in upstate New York in the persona of Barry Freed, a genteel environmental activist. As Freed, Hoffman successfully spearheaded a three-year grass-roots effort to keep the Army Corps of Engineers from dredging the St. Lawrence Seaway for winter navigation, for which he was lauded personally by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and then New York Gov. Hugh Carey.
'Designer Brains': When Freed's battle was won, he went into the phone booth and came out as Abbie Hoffman. His autobiography was published in 1980, three days after Hoffman surrendered to the authorities, and reports circulated that Hollywood was angling to pay Abbie six figures for the chance to turn his life into celluloid. Charred by the press as a huckster, Hoffman was convicted and sent to prison. He was free a year later, but still rankled by the reception he got once aboveground. "A lot of people," says Hoffman, "think I cynically weaved the whole surrender so I could beat the bust or promote my book. I came up as I did because I wanted to crack the ice age of cynicism. I knew that young people were heading into the era of designer brains, and I wanted to be able to tell them that fashion wasn't everything."
Ex-con Hoffman began touring the campus chautauqua with the '60s sermon that students must organize. The message from the civil-rights and antiwar movements, he lectured, was that the little people could channel their drives and ideals to beat city hall. He soon discovered, however, that a large percentage of the assembled wanted to hear old war stories, not new battle plans. "The young people are a bit in awe of me; I've been arrested 41 times and they call me Mister," says Hoffman, shaking his head. "They know I represent a period when young people were doing something exciting. They're not exactly sure what, but they think it had to do with sex, drugs and rock and roll."
Abbie, still an engaging shtikmeister, usually manages to get the crowds going with his charge for organized action against the bureaucracy. Sometimes, however, he gets the feeling that his message doesn't stick: "I'm like a Chinese meal to these students. An hour after my talk, they're back to watching 'Dallas' and playing video games. I think the reason a lot of the young people are against nuclear war is because it would screw up their careers. The situation has been reversed from the '60s. It's now the young people who are cynical and in despair, while the older generation, the '60s people, are the ones working for change. I now think it's legitimate to wonder whether people under 30 can be trusted."
Sitcom: He has returned to live in a tiny cottage in upstate New York with Johanna Lawrenson, a photographer who burrowed underground with Hoffman after he went on the lam. He owns no stocks, bonds or real estate and says he made only $45,000 on his autobiography, which took three years to write. The heavily publicized movie of his life ended before it began when the sitcom writers hired by Hollywood were unable to fashion an acceptable script. "A lot of people think I'm rich," Hoffman intones in his Worcester, Mass., twang, "but I'm not. I don't even have health insurance."
Hoffman says he harbors no bitterness against his old allies who have opted for middle-aged security. He still sees Jerry Rubin occasionally but travels in different circles from the majority of his former counterculture buddies. "I'm not going to insult all the people who made important contributions to social movements, then went on to mainstream life," he announces. "That could still happen to me." And though Hoffman contends that nostalgia is just a form of depression, he looks back on his past battles with a sense of accomplishment. "In 100 years, when people look back on the 20th century," Hoffman says, "the '60s will be the decade that will stick out. Einstein said that if you jump up and down, the earth jumps up and down, too. Well, during those years we just jumped up and down a little harder -- and some things got changed."