Celebrating Women's History Month
presented by Veterans for Peace PDX Chapter 72
RSVP NOW: bit.ly/yippiegirl
Smith Memorial Student Union
La Casa Latina RM 228
Access via main entrance at 1825 SW Broadway. Exterior lobby doors will be unlocked. Box Office Window staff grants access to the interior doors.
In 1968, a 24-year-old woman moved to Berkeley, California and immediately became enmeshed in the Youth International Party, aka The Yippies, a recently-formed satirical protest group. In the next few years, Judy Gumbo (a nickname given her by Eldridge Cleaver), was soon at the center of counter-cultural activity—from protests in People’s Park, to meetings at Black Panther headquarters, to running a pig for President at the raucous Democratic National Convention in Chicago, a protest that devolved into violent attacks by the police and arrests that led to the notorious Chicago Conspiracy Trial.
In this insider feminist memoir, Gumbo reveals intimate details of her fellow radicals Jerry Rubin, Anita & Abbie Hoffman, Eldridge Cleaver, Paul Krassner, Stew Albert, and more, detailing their experiences in radical anti-war protests and her own skirmishes with and victory over illegal FBI surveillance. Yippie Girl explores Gumbo’s life as a protester to show that, while circumstances always change, protesters can stay loyal to the causes they believe in and remain true to themselves. She also reveals how dogmatism, authoritarianism, and interpersonal conflict can damage those same just causes, offering a timeless and strategic guide for activists today protesting against injustice in all its forms.
Judy Gumbo is one of the few female members of the original Yippies, a satirical protest group founded in the 1960s and involved in organizing Chicago 1968 protests that led to arrests, and the Chicago Conspiracy Trial. As part of her activism, Judy was involved in notorious feminist organizations, radical environmentalism, visited North Vietnam during the war, and traveled the globe agitating against the war and for the liberation of women. Her activism led to illegal surveillance by the FBI; she later successfully sued to obtain copies of their extensive records on her. Judy has a Ph.D. in Sociology and spent the majority of her professional career as an award-winning fundraiser for Planned Parenthood. She currently lives in a co-housing community in Berkeley, CA.
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High Praise for Yippie Girl
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"I too have great respect for Judy Gumbo. She's an excellent thinker...her thinking is many times more advanced than my own which is patently naïve at times."— Abbie to Anita Hoffman, December 10, 1974. Letters from Underground.
“Gumbo delivers a sharp-edged memoir of years of protest and resistance . . . A welcome addition to the literature of radical activism in the age of Johnson, Nixon, and beyond.” — Kirkus Reviews
“The best account in existence of what life was like for a woman in the theatrical, goofy, messianic world of the Yippie boys . . . A fun read and a valuable political document, long overdue. It’s cause for celebration.” — Counterpunch
“We have to get our history right, so young folks can see where we were coming from. These stories have got to be told. And Yippie Girl tells it like it is.” — Bobby Seale, founding chairman and national organizer of the Black Panther Party
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