Stew Albert, 66, Who Used Laughter to Protest a War, Dies
NY Times
Stew Albert, who with Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and a handful of similarly scruffy, leftist anti-establishmentarians formed the Yippie party to protest the Vietnam War, mock institutional authority and nominate a pig, Pigasus, for president, died on Monday at his home in Portland, Ore. He was 66.
The cause was liver cancer, said his wife, Judy Gumbo Albert.
Mr. Albert was not as famous as Mr. Hoffman or Mr. Rubin, nor did he dream up the nickname for their Youth International Party: Paul Krassner did.
But Mr. Albert was a leader of the Yippies, inasmuch as there were leaders, from before the formal hatching of the self-styled gang of political absurdists in January 1968 until they faded away after Vietnam.
It was he who lectured the 82nd Airborne on the larger lessons of the Lone Ranger during the March on the Pentagon in 1967, and he who caused considerable laughter after Yippies were arrested after nominating Pigasus outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968.
Afterward, he quoted a policeman’s comment while he was in jail: “I have bad news for you, boys. The pig squealed on you.”
When it came to what were called New Left politics, Mr. Albert did not miss much. He participated in demonstrations for free speech at Berkeley; dropped money from the balcony of the New York Stock Exchange to satirize capitalism; befriended Black Panthers; and was investigated in connection with bombing the United States Capitol but never charged with it.
His close friends included Tom Hayden, a protest leader who became a conventional politician; Phil Ochs, the folk singer; Allen Ginsberg, the poet; William Kunstler, the radical lawyer; and Bobby Seale, the Black Panther. He went to Algeria to facilitate the introduction of Timothy Leary, the LSD advocate, to the exiled Eldridge Cleaver, a Panther leader.
When the police clubbed Mr. Albert in the head at the Chicago convention, he felt it was almost worth it when the rogue writer William Burroughs patted him on the back and Jean Genet, also a writer known for unconventionality, said, “Not bad.”
In 1970, shortly after being released from the Alameda County jail in California, Mr. Albert campaigned to replace the sheriff who had supervised his incarceration. He lost, but got 65,000 votes, and carried the city of Berkeley.
Steward Edward Albert was born in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn on Dec. 4, 1939. His father worked as a clerk for New York City, and his mother’s strong anti-Communism came about partly because the Communists had a picnic on the beach on Yom Kippur. As a teenager, the young Mr. Albert enthusiastically supported the United States in the Korean War, but joined local protests against the execution of Caryl Chessman in California in 1960.
He attended James Madison High School and graduated from Pace University with a major in politics and philosophy. He worked in the city welfare department before buying a $99, 30-day bus ticket to go to San Francisco and heal a broken heart. He headed straight to City Lights bookstore, famed for its beatnik heritage, and met Mr. Ginsberg.
He soon went to Berkeley and befriended Mr. Rubin, who was a graduate student and social activist. Mr. Rubin wrote that the man he called Socrates Stew was a more effective educator than most professors as he sat behind a table for the Vietnam Day Committee engaging students.
After participating in Mr. Rubin’s unsuccessful campaign for mayor of Berkeley and becoming a friend of Bobby Seale and other Panthers, Mr. Albert moved to New York in the spring of 1968 to organize antiwar demonstrations with Mr. Hoffman.
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