Ten Years Later

Notes from the underground

There they were, four of the Chicago Seven, on trial all over again, exactly ten years after their uproarious visit to Chicago for the 1968 Democratic Nation al Convention. Former Black Panther Bobby Scale, originally the eighth member and now a touring lecturer at $1,500 a shot, did not shout interruptions or end up in handcuffs, however. In stead, the only disturbances at the mock trial in Manhattan's Felt Forum last week, written by Candy Author Terry Southern, came from rock bands, nostalgic slide shows of the '60s, impersonators of Richard Nixon and Judge Julius Hoffman and a re-enactment of the Chicago riots, complete with imitation tear gas. The most notable presence was that of the man who wasn't there--or was he?--Abbie Hoffman, 41, onetime noisemaker and co-founder of the Yippies, who has been on the lam for over four years on a charge of selling cocaine. The $10-a-head event, billed as a "Bring Abbie Home" rally, was in his honor, and Lawyer William Kunstler gave the impression that he might show up and turn himself in to police. Said the radicals' favorite attorney: "He's tired of running. We're hopeful." Many of those who came to the festivity wore Abbie Hoffman masks and signs claiming that they were the fugitive, but Hoffman himself merely sent a taped message.

Said he: "Help me get back so I can do the work I'm supposed to do." Any FBI agents who came in search of the missing Yippie had to settle for a lot of '60s humor and the dim hope that Hoffman might yet show up at the Yippies' forthcoming Tenth Annual Festival of Life at the original scene of the crime, Lincoln Park in Chicago.

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