Counterculture pranks deliberately baited police into violent response.

Evidence

The current issues of the Voice and a new underground newspaper, the Rat, both ran stories on the Yippies when a Yip-In organized by Abbie Hoffman and Paul Krassner, largely publicized by Radio Unnameable, brought some 3,000 revelers, many of them suburban or outer-borough teenagers in “colorful costumes” per the New York Times, to celebrate the solstice in Manhattan. Sublimely irresponsible, the Yippies made no attempt to coordinate their celebration with municipal authorities. Nevertheless, police presence was considerable. When sometime after midnight several Motherfuckers climbed up on the station’s central information booth and began spinning the hands of the large, four-sided clock overhead—“Time is … Dead!”—nightstick-wielding cops attacked. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1208

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s broader thesis about counterculture scenes forming through oppositional gestures against authority; also classic avant-garde tactic.