Youth: The Politics of YIP

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But what the Yippies are really pointing toward is Chicago. There, come the last week of August, they intend to hold a six-day "Festival of Life" in comic contrast to what they call the Democratic Party's "National Death Convention," which will be running concurrently. The Yippies aim to set up a lakefront tent village in Grant Park, where they can groove on folk songs, rock bands, "guerrilla" theater, body painting and meditation. Through the park they will bear on a blue pillow their very own presidential candidate: Lyndon Pigasus Pig, a ten-week-old black and white porker now afattening at the Hog Farm, a hippie commune in Southern California. Other possibilities being considered: a lie-in at Chicago's O'Hare Field to prevent Democratic delegates from landing or, failing that, a fleet of fake cabs to pick up delegates and dump them off in Wisconsin.

Looking back on the melee at Grand Central, many non-Yipping hippies are wondering if the politics of YIP are not already too controversial for comfort. The Chicago shindig, they fear, could well result in a far larger number of clubbed and lacerated heads. Yippie leaders themselves are in a mood for "better communication with authorities." Last week, promising to behave themselves, some Manhattan Yippies opened talks with the Mayor's office about holding a YIP-out with rock bands and theater troupes in the Sheep Meadow on Easter Sunday.