IT IS FRIDAY. So please, if I may, a story. This is the story of The Exorcism of the Pentagon. (1/X) - ThreadSky

recordedvoice.bsky.social • 47 days ago

IT IS FRIDAY. So please, if I may, a story.

This is the story of The Exorcism of the Pentagon. (1/X)

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In 1967, a bunch of beautiful weirdos, mad about the war in Vietnam, decided that they needed something more than a protest — they needed an exorcism.

Of the Pentagon.

They weren’t just going to cast out some warmongering demons, however. They were going to *levitate* it.

300 feet in the air.

arachnereid.bsky.social•33 days ago

Ooo, I was hoping to find this video off meta. Thanks for sharing here anyway! 😊📌

recordedvoice.bsky.social•47 days ago

These guys were beatniks — hippies, on their way to becoming Yippies. The word “counterculture” hadn’t even been coined yet.

The main exorcists: Abbie Hoffman, Ed Sanders & Jerry Rubin, capitalizing on an event organized by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

recordedvoice.bsky.social•47 days ago

Hoffman and Rubin would go on to fame as two of the Chicago 7 (among other things); Sanders was leader of the proto-punk noise-folk downtown New York band The Fugs, proprietor of the Peace Eye Bookstore and publisher of “Fuck You / A magazine of the arts.”
https://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/fuck-you-press-archive/

recordedvoice.bsky.social•47 days ago

The ritual at the Pentagon was planned to branch off from a (much larger) protest at the Lincoln Memorial and march across the Potomac, which involved between 50,000 and 100,000 protesters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggbfkeVl9D4

recordedvoice.bsky.social•47 days ago

Whose idea was it to do an exorcism? According to Allen Ginsberg, it was originally poet Gary Snyder.

But once Hoffman and Sanders had the idea, they had some practical considerations to attend to.

(from Hoffman's "Soon To Be A Major Motion Picture":)

recordedvoice.bsky.social•47 days ago

For example, how many people do you need to surround the Pentagon?

Hoffman and a friend went to D.C. to find out. Strolling the perimeter & doing some counting, they got arrested for littering, on account of some leaflets.

The friend, Martin Carey, wrote about it in the "East Village Other":

yosabra.bsky.social•47 days ago

Amazing thread. I had no idea!

wyvern.bsky.social•47 days ago

I do believe that #witchsky may find some inspiration from this thread.

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