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Who the Hell is Stew Albert?

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Author Larry "Ratso" Sloman was appearing on 'The Howard Stern Show' plugging his book
"Steal This Dream," a biography of activist Abbie Hoffman. During the course of the interview, Sloman declared, "Well Stew Albert likes my book," to which Stern replied, "Who the hell is Stew Albert?" Answering this question in full would take me well beyond the scope of this thought provoking memoir. In retrospect, 'Stew might have continued to be an "almost"-nice, blonde haired, Jewish boy living in the basement of his mother's house in Brooklyn, but something very important happened' - we called it "The Sixties," and no one has ever been the same. It has been suggested that "if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there," - Stew Albert was most certainly there, and "there" for all of us who longed for social change. Change is hardly the most descriptive word for the complete dismemberment of the existing socio-political hierarchy, and Stew placed himself squarely on then radical front line in Berkeley. Those of us who were there in any capacity can well remember the smell and feel of the intriguing air surrounding the little card tables set up along Sproul plaza. Madeline Murray (O'Hare) was there in the first support for abortion rights, Mario Savio was there warming up for the moments that would freeze the university system and much of the nation in free speech, as Stew was there representing The Vietnam Day Committee (VDC), which became the prototype to anyone and everyone with the sand and heart to step up against our government's illegal war in Southeast Asia. The trenches were not very deep in those days and suffering the consequences of freedom at the end of a billy club breathing tear gas was not an uncommon way to end the day. Stew was there for the rest of us - and didn't give in to the strain of being under the gun. The fun was only just beginning.

It was the Pranksters, the Hippies, Diggers, Yippies, Pacifists, Provocateurs, Black Panthers, Alternative Press, Beat poets, the Weather Underground, the FBI and finally, the CIA who were making and molding the scene, LSD was the sacred ritual of transit, money was a grand illusion, a pig named "Pigasus" was about to make a run on the presidency, and Chicago was just around the corner. All history now, well documented in the past, yet as I read Stew's more than reasonable accounting I became so incredibly angry I had to put the book down at least twice - remembering so clearly how I felt about the government, conscription, the war and its benefactors at a time when my own revulsion was far more than an emotional rebound. Stew's personal rendering of socio-polical upheaval, as an anti-establishment consort standing up for the betterment of mankind with his shoulder hard pressed to the wheel brings back to life the emotional roller coaster experienced on so many levels throughout the sixties and seventies. And there is a rejoicing here as well, tempered to the page in humorous vignettes including many of the visionaries, poets and pundits of the day, all garnered from out Stew's unrelenting participation, and courageous leadership in the agit-prop bringing down the house within the rather psychedelic comedia del arté that filled our lives on a daily basis.

This is a timely and important memoir.

So who the hell is Stew Albert?" He is a gentle and honest man of his times, harboring a politically astute, intuitive mind - a collaborative man with a Marxist's edge on the past, and a Futurist's eye on the heartbeat of (r)evolutionary change.

READ THIS BOOK!

© 2004 - Hammond Guthrie

For the Youth International Party-YIP or Yippies-the word "party" meant
both political group and outrageously good time. The Yippies merged progressive activism and freak culture in the late 1960s. Their most infamous "non-leaders" were Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Paul Krassner, but the other party animal---equally irresponsible for the chaos and comedy---was Stew Albert. A fierce soldier for justice as well as subversive prankster, Albert `s exploits have been recounted in dozens of other books by, among others, Hoffman, Rubin, Krassner and Larry Ratso Sloman. He's finally written this autobiography and recounted an adventure story brimming with thrills and troublemakers. (Note: Albert also co-edited the finest collection of documents from that era with his wife Judy Albert called The Sixties Papers.)

Albert was actively involved in all the major Yippie stunts: the showering of
money onto the floor of the Stock Exchange while stockbrokers stopped trading to catch it, the attempted levitation of the Pentagon, and the running of a pig for President in Chicago in 1968 and the police riots that ensued. With his pal Rubin, they enlisted John and Yoko in a "Beatle/Yippie pact" that resulted in Lennon's radicalization and near-deportation.

Beyond YIP, he became one of the few white revolutionaries befriended by the
Black Panthers' inner circle, he ran for Sheriff of Alameda County (and lost,
but carried Berkeley), and tripped on a beach in Algeria with Tim Leary after
the latter's escape from prison. With comrade and folksinger Phil Ochs, he
traveled to Chile before the CIA-backed coup. When he implemented DIY
egalitarianism by helping create People's Park in Berkeley, then-Governor Ronald Reagan responded to the unsanctioned green space by bringing in the National Guard and shooting at Park supporters (killing one).

He eventually sued the FBI for harassment -- and won. Though the `60s
momentum dissipated, this memoir serves as powerful inspiration for contemporary merde stirrers. Motivated by "an uncontainable need to test my bravery," Albert perfectly captures the time when "eros and courage came together in an unbeatable combination."

This individual was active and in the eye of the storm of chaos during the second revolutionary war. Who the hell is Stew Albert? well he was one the founding members of the Yippies, as well as an amazing organizer, writer, teacher, and of course revolutionary, activist, and socialist. The book reads kinda like a good dream. I was grabbed from page one. one minute your with stew getting his head bashed in by the army of u.s. imperialists, and the next minute your dropping acid in Algeria with Timothy Leary. It is heavy and informative. It strikes a mighty blow against all the corporate, capitalist, slanted, re-writing of this powerfull era. That said there were a couple of things I dis-agree'd with, one was the length, I was left salty for more. Teach this book in your school, please, Stew is an american hero. I am so happy to read a book about someone who stood up to the white male capitalist war mongers and lived to tell the tale, many other authors of the period are NOT so lucky.

I think this review is excellent and I am passing it along.
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Stew Albert offers a riotous insider's tour of the inspired chaos that was the Yippie movement in his thoroughly engaging memoir, Who the Hell is Stew Albert? His account of how an "almost-nice Jewish boy" from Brooklyn ended up getting beaten by cops in Chicago, hanging out with Timothy Leary and Eldridge Cleaver in Algeria, and juggling a friendship with both Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, reads like a Horatio Alger story on hashish. It also traces in fine detail the rise and fall of the great protest movements of the 1960s, including the Black Panthers and the Weathermen, in an analysis of politics and personalities that is both fond and somewhat rueful.
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In Thomas Berger's fine novel of the Old West "Little Big Man" the hero, Jack Crabb, goes everywhere and knows everybody, including being the sole white survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. It's an excellent premise for a historical novel, and appears to have inspired Stew, whom I met when he was briefly in the Progressive Labor Party in San Francisco in the 1960s. The rest of his "revolutionary" adventures are imaginary. He's clever enough to have waited until most of the famous people he fantasizes about knowing are dead, and cannot refute his claims. If he were as good a writer as Berger we could forgive his fibs; unfortunately he's not.