2020-05-10
A defendant in the notorious Chicago Seven trial offers a candid view of the times—and the embattled present.
“We were about as famous as you could be before the internet, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram,” writes now-retired political consultant Weiner. The “we” in question included Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, and Bobby Seale, among others. Weiner traces the path that led him onto the Chicago streets in 1968, protesting at the Democratic National Convention and facing down police and National Guard troops. That path included a memorable time in Israel, where he “studied political philosophy, met Jewish and Arab members of their Communist Party, visited kibbutzim and Arab villages, and talked politics endlessly,” along with radicalization wrought by the Vietnam War. The trial clearly wasn’t meant to go their way: “The judge…was small, old, crinkled, bald, and absurdly supportive of the prosecution.” Given the likely outcome, the Seven were determined to turn the trial into a noisy critique that would in itself protest the war and celebrate the First Amendment. The judge, writes the author, clearly wasn’t amused. At the end of a trial that included visits by Dustin Hoffman and Nicholas Ray (who got Groucho Marx’s number to the defendants in the hope that he could be recruited to testify about satire), he threw the lot into jail for their endless acts of contempt. The denouement of the story is anticlimactic: family issues, job changes, an accommodation to the straight life. Still, in a book that should be shelved alongside Mark Rudd’s Underground and Pat Thomas’Did It! Weiner closes with a stirring paean to activism. “While a political life isn’t easy,” he writes, “and while frustration, anger, disappointment, fear, and confusion are sometimes pieces of it, I believe there is no more self-respecting, fulfilling life to try to lead.”
A welcome addition to the library of the countercultural 1960s left.
"A book that should be shelved alongside Mark Rudd's Underground and Pat Thomas's Did It! Weiner closes with a stirring paean to activism. ... A welcome addition to the library of the countercultural 1960s left."—Kirkus Reviews
"Looking back on the trial and the generational convulsion it was a part of, Weiner refreshingly doesn’t swear off his old allegiances or political ideals."—Chicago Book Review
"The vigor and solidarity involved are all feelings that make the work infectious—and keep it ongoing. Conspiracy to Riot chronicles the moments from Lee Weiner’s life that forged him as someone willing to jump atop cars with a bullhorn, be a helping hand for families in Woodlawn and Cabrini-Green, fend off police officers to de-arrest comrades, and inspire a generation of movement organizers to continue fighting for a more equitable America. The stories in this memoir could serve as a mirror for some, and a starting point for others. "—Malik Jackson, South Side Weekly
