Rubin, Jerry (1938–1994)

US activist, financier, and entrepreneur. A radical political activist in the sixties, he cofounded the US Youth International Party, whose members were known as ‘Yippies’. He gained international fame for his disruptive actvities for the anti-Vietnam War protest movement.

Following a visit to Cuba in 1964, Rubin became active in the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, California. In 1967 he campaigned to have a pig elected president. In 1968, along with Abbie Hoffman and Tom Hayden, he became the media focus in the ‘Battle of Chicago’, the conflict between the police and protesters around the National Democratic Convention. At the subsequent trial in 1969, he was a member of the ‘Chicago Seven’, tried for conspiracy and inciting riots, although all seven were later aquitted. He wrote about his activism in a best-selling autobiography Do It! Scenarios of the Revolution (1970).

In the 1980s he renounced his earlier anti-capitalist activities and became a successful Wall Street securities analyst and later an independent entrepreneur, claiming that power ‘really comes out of the cheque book’.