November 6, 1970: The Seattle Seven

The Seattle Seven and friends

“Did you ever hear of ‘The Seattle Seven’? … That was me … and six other guys.”

And that stonily-intoned quote, culled from the script of the Coen Brothers movie classic The Big Lebowski, has likely introduced many to the memory of Seattle’s radical-historical counterpart to the Chicago Eight, the antiwar troublemakers so famously indicted for their role in disrupting the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The quoted character, “The Dude,” was closely based on the personality of Jeff Dowd, these days an independent screenwriter and movie-preservation activist, a close friend of the Coens and, yes, one of the Seattle Seven back in the day.

The Seven were all members of the Seattle Liberation Front, a radical anti-Vietnam War organization formed in January 1970 at the University of Washington. One of the co-founders of the SLF, and one of the most outspoken members of the Seattle Seven, was Michael Lerner, then a 27-year-old visiting philosophy professor at the UW whose academic (and activist) home was the University of California at Berkeley. Along with Dowd and Lerner, the other five of the Seven were Michael Abeles, Joseph Kelly, Roger Lippman, Charles “Chip” Marshall III, and Susan Stern. They all ironically achieved their collective infamy due to their involvement in a February 1970 protest demonstration in Seattle in support of the Chicago Seven, whose verdict was due that month. The demonstration, held at Seattle’s Federal Courthouse on February 17, attracted a turnout of roughly 2,000–many more than expected–and the crowd, mad about the bum rap given to the Chicago Seven the day before, quickly got out of hand. Rocks, bottles, and paint bombs were thrown, 20 were injured, and 76 (not including the Seven-to-be) were arrested.

Two months later, on April 16, a federal grand jury indicted the aforementioned SLF members on charges of inciting the February 17 riot, along with an eighth, Michael Justesen, who immediately went into hiding. Justesen’s disappearance denied Seattle our own Eight, and thus our Seven, with their name’s alliteratively superior scansion, were born. The case was assigned to Federal District Judge George H. Boldt, whose Tacoma courtroom hosted a pre-trial hearing on the date in focus here.

One noteworthy moment in the November 6 hearing came when Lerner and Marshall attempted to make the case that the political implications of the pending trial–much like the Chicago Seven trial, according to its respective defendants–reached far, indeed, beyond the geopolitical confines of its legal jurisdiction. Lerner, directly addressing Judge Boldt, declared:

“The key issues [in this trial] are the war in Vietnam and the use of the courts as an instrument of repression in this society. … You [as a member of the U.S. federal judiciary] are a party to the initial dispute. … The federal judiciary has its hands dirtied by not declaring the war immoral and unconstitutional.”

The actual trial, which formally began (after certain delays, mostly legal in nature) on November 23, was equally marked by such ideological drama. While roughly 200 protesters picketed outside the Tacoma courthouse in support of the Seven, defendants and supporters alike inside the courtroom refused to stifle either their emotions or their political opinions. To add to the ideological weight of the legal proceedings, one of the Chicago defendants, David Dellinger, came to Tacoma in person to aid the Seattle defendants in making their case, but Judge Boldt denied a request by Lerner and Marshall to allow Dellinger to speak in the Tacoma courtroom towards that end.

Eventually, on December 10, Boldt declared a mistrial, citing all the defendants for contempt of court. The contempt charges were settled out of court in 1972, and the Seattle Seven, save for Lerner, all served brief sentences in federal minimum security prison.

As for the other aftermath, the SLF disbanded acrimoniously in 1971; Stern (b. 1943) died in 1976 (reportedly of an accidental drug overdose); Justesen was arrested in 1977 in California by the FBI as part of an infiltration of the Weather Underground; and Lerner is currently editor of the progressive Jewish journal Tikkun.

The Dude, meanwhile, likely remains in his own very stony kind of limbo.

–Jeff Stevens. Sources: “Conspiracy Trial Delay Expected,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 6, 1970, p. 1; Larry McCarten, “Tacoma Trial Judge Won’t Step Down,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 7, 1970, p. 1; “Correction: Defendant in Seattle,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 7, 1970, p. 3; Don Hannula, “Judge refuses to disqualify self in conspiracy trail of 7,” The Seattle Times, November 6, 1970, p. A 4; Don Hannula, “Judge ousts two at conspiracy trial,” The Seattle Times, November 23, 1970, p. D 6; Stephen H. Dunphy, “Selection of jury for conspiracy trial begins,” The Seattle Times, November 23, 1970, p. D 6; Paul Henderson, “8 arrested at beer party for trial defendants,” The Seattle Times, November 23, 1970, p. D 6; Larry McCarten, “Conspiracy Trial Disrupted,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 24, 1970, p. 1; “Conspiracy Trial Opens to Shouts Of 200 Picketers,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 24, 1970, p. 2; Don Hannula and Stephen H. Dunphy, “Conspiracy-trial defendant shakes fist at attorney,” The Seattle Times, November 24, 1970, p. A 10; Don Hannula and Stephen H. Dunphy, “Social, political queries delay trial,” The Seattle Times, November 24, 1970, p. A 10; “150 protest outside trial,” The Seattle Times, November 24, 1970, p. A 10; Larry McCarten, “Conspiracy Trial Juror Is Removed,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 25, 1970, p. 1; “Marriage Query Lightens Trial,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 25, 1970, p. B; “Courthouse emptied,” The Seattle Times, November 25, 1970, p. A 15; Don Hannula and Stephen H. Dunphy, “10 storm out of courtroom,” The Seattle Times, November 25, 1970, p. A 15; Larry McCarten, “Jury Set at Tacoma; Wild Court Melee,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 26, 1970, p. 1; Walt Crowley, “Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle” (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995).

February 17, 1970: SLF vs. SPD

Same as it ever was: police vs. protesters in downtown Seattle, Feb. 17, 1970.
Photo credit: Alan Lande, Helix, Vol. 11, No. 8

The following story could have aptly been titled either “Chicago Echoes in Seattle” or, alternatively, “Rashomon Echoes in Seattle’s News Media.” The former potential title would be due to the story’s instigation by the provocative verdict in the “Chicago Seven” trial–crucially revealed nationwide on the date in focus here–and the latter due to the story’s wildly conflicting accounts given by, respectively, the organizers of the protest event involved and Seattle’s then-two leading daily newspapers.

In the conveniently short version, a large group of anti-Establishment protesters would display the worst tendencies of the American Left of their time by recklessly vandalizing a crucial section of downtown Seattle, clashing along the way with cops and, eventually, prosecutors.

The necessarily longer version would more accurately resemble Akira Kurosawa’s classic cinematic tale, in which a similarly contentious event is re-told by three of its key participants in three wildly conflicting versions, leaving the ideal of an “objective” account hopelessly washed away like a fragile sand sculpture after a violent rainstorm–much like the storm that crucially frames Rashomon‘s finale.

All involved in the story would likely agree, at least, that the “Chicago Seven” trial was at the heart of the clash that shook Seattle that day. In mid-February 1970, the trial of the seven infamous defendants charged with “interstate conspiracy to incite a riot” during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago was obviously winding down towards a highly anticipated verdict. The “Seven” in question, cueing the nation’s anti-Establishment masses, had then called for their many disparate supporters to organize local demonstrations nationwide on “The Day After” the impending verdict.

Enter the Seattle Liberation Front. The SLF was a brazenly “radical” organization formed one mere month prior to the impending “Day After,” inspired by a provocative public appearance in Seattle on January 17 by Chicago defendant Jerry Rubin. (See the RSR entry “January 17, 1970: Jerry Rubin Brings the Chicago Noise to Seattle” for details.) The SLF wasted no time in planning a “TDA” demonstration to be held at Seattle’s U.S. Federal Courthouse downtown at Fifth Avenue and Spring Street–never mind the inconvenient mystery of the Chicago verdict’s exact date.

Seeking to effectively promote Seattle’s “TDA,” one member of the SLF, Charles “Chip” Marshall, approached the office of Helix–then Seattle’s leading counterculture newspaper–with a copy of a manifesto calling for a “Stop the Courts Day” at 2 p.m. in front of the courthouse on the still-unknown day of the verdict, seeking its publication in the paper. As Helix editor Walt Crowley (1947-2007) would recall in his 1995 book Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle, “While Marshall’s [manifesto] never explicitly called for a violent action, it all but invited it, and this made us very nervous.”

Crowley’s anxiety, along with that of his kindred Helixistas, would soon prove well founded. On the Sunday prior to “TDA,” Julius Hoffman, the judge in the Chicago trial–already reviled by then by much of America’s radical youth–sentenced all of the Chicago Seven, along with their attorneys, for contempt of court.

This, mind you, before the Chicago jury had yet reached a proper verdict.

For the Seven’s nationwide supporters, this served as both a deadline cue and an inflammatory catalyst for the impending “Day After.” Despite pacifist pleas for genuinely cool reason–such as, in Seattle, the earlier, written pledge of SLF co-founder Michael Lerner “that we have no intention of introducing violence into [Seattle's] demonstration”–Hoffman’s pre-emptive legal strike had apparently infused the nation’s antiwar movement with a profoundly frustrated rage that no pacifist leadership could possibly contain.

Thus, even before “The Day After,” the stars, it seems, were already crossed; the dice already cast.

When 2 p.m. on “TDA” arrived in Seattle, some roughly 2,000 agitated youth–most ranging in age from “juvenile” to twenty-something–had assembled downtown in front of the federal courthouse. While some there may have represented the best kind of “radical”–i.e., wielding a deeply-rooted understanding of the injustice of the Chicago verdict–all too many were, by many accounts, all too young, and simply thus looking for gleefully reckless trouble. Seattle’s then-acting police chief Frank Moore would later sum up the grim situation for Seattle’s news media thusly:

“The demonstrators came prepared for war … They were armed with pipes, clubs, chains, paint and tear gas … and they used them all.”

Thus, what could have been a relatively peaceful demonstration against injustice in the American court system became instead an anti-everything free-for-all, with protesters tossing paint bombs, breaking windows, and violently scuffling with police, from the courthouse to the Federal Building at First Avenue and University Street, and several storefronts in between.

One major point of contention between the protesters’ accounts of the mêlée and those of The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer concerned the massive use of tear gas, which was plentiful enough for clouds to be seen rising over downtown from Interstate 5. While the Seattle Police Department officially denied using tear gas, and the Times and the P-I both dutifully reported the SPD’s allegation that it was the protesters who had brought the tear gas with them, eyewitness accounts published in Helix two days later declared the opposite: the police had used the tear gas, and one sole demonstrator at one point lobbed a gas bomb into the courthouse–after it had been thrown outside by police inside the building.

Helix on the march: Seattle's counterculture newpaper covers the TDA fiasco, Feb. 19, 1970

In addition, despite initial statements from the SPD and the Mayor’s Office commending the officers on the scene for their “restraint,” the degree of police violence was allegedly drastic enough that the P-I, at least, joined Helix in reporting several instances of police recklessly attacking protesters and innocent bystanders alike.

When the smoke finally cleared, up to eighty-nine people had been arrested, scores were injured, and an estimated $75,000 worth of property damage had been done downtown. Among the other results of Seattle’s “TDA” fiasco, our city would soon claim its own anti-Establishment “Seven,” as that same number of people would soon be named as protest organizers responsible for the riot. The “Seattle Seven” would then be tracked down, arrested, and put on trial later that year in an odd local microcosm of the Chicago trial. And, unfortunately, the whole affair would give the reputation of Seattle’s antiwar movement a black eye that would not soon heal.

–Jeff Stevens. Sources: “Stop the Courts,” “bertold brecht” (a.k.a. Charles “Chip” Marshall), Helix, Feb. 12, 1970; “U.S. Courthouse Attacked; 80 Arrested, Score Injured,” Larry McCarten, Don Carter and Craig Smith, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Feb. 18, 1970, p. 1; “Gas Lingers, Charges Filed,” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Feb. 18, 1970, p. 3; “Rioters’ Damage Put At $30,000; 75 Arrested,” Don Hannula, The Seattle Times, Feb. 18, 1970, p. 1; “Uhlman Praises Police Conduct, Warns ‘Hooligans’,” The Seattle Times, Feb. 18, 1970, p. 1; “14 Juveniles Are Arrested,” The Seattle Times, Feb. 18, 1970; “Window Glass Is Major Casualty,” The Seattle Times, Feb. 18, 1970; “Hospitals Too Close For Gas–Moore,” Lou Corsaletti, The Seattle Times, Feb. 18, 1970, p. A 4; “Militants Vow More Protests,” The Seattle Times, Feb. 18, 1970, p. A 4; “Demonstrators Were Prepared For Battle,” Don Hannula, The Seattle Times, Feb. 18, 1970, p. A 5; “Police Praised–Witness Tells of Officer’s Restraint,” The Seattle Times, Feb. 18, 1970, p. B 1; “Who Is The Real Conspiracy? This Is!,” Helix, Feb. 19, 1970, p. 2; “Outside Leaders Hinted Behind Seattle Violence,” Larry McCarten, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Feb. 19, 1970, p. 1; “Mayor Warns Future Confrontation ‘Hooligans’,” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Feb. 19, 1970, p. 4; “Stiffer Laws, Stronger Protest Reaction Urged,” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Feb. 19, 1970, p. 4; “UW Students Reflect Confusion, Anger at Protest Violence Here,” Frank Herbert, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Feb. 19, 1970, p. 5; “49 Adults, 13 Juveniles Charged in Protest,” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Feb. 19, 1970, p. 5; “Tuesday’s Trouble: Public Defender Asks Probe Of Reported Police Excesses,” Don Hannula, The Seattle Times, Feb. 19, 1970, p. A 8; “Out-Of-Towners May Have Led Demonstration, Says Uhlman,” The Seattle Times, Feb. 18, 1970, p. A 8; “Youths March To Clean It Up,” Larry McCarten, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Feb. 20, 1970, p. B; Walt Crowley, “Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle” (University of Washington Press, 1995), pp. 168-169.

January 17, 1970: Jerry Rubin Brings the Chicago Noise to Seattle

The "Chicago Seven," tryptichally photographed by Richard Avedon, Sept. 25, 1969. L-R: Lee Weiner, John Froines, Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, and David Dellinger.

Who else but Jerry Rubin would tell a large crowd of college kids that their failure to get thrown out of school was evidence of their failure to truly learn?

That delightfully wild slice of advice was one of many similar zingers that the infamously flamboyant antiwar agitator, Youth International Party co-founder and, at the time, member of the “Chicago Seven” would offer up in Seattle on the date in focus here. On that Saturday, in the early afternoon, Rubin (1938-1994) addressed an overflow crowd of 4,000 in the University of Washington’s Husky Union Building (HUB), where he pontificated on the “Chicago Seven” trial, among other then-controversial subjects.

The “Chicago Seven” were, of course, a group of antiwar activists then on trial in federal court in Chicago for interstate conspiracy to incite a riot in that city during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Along with Rubin, the other defendants in the highly publicized trial were Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, David Dellinger, John Froines, Rennie Davis, and Lee Weiner.

Rubin first gained nationwide fame sufficient enough to attract such a crowd to the HUB when, as a younger and more austere antiwar activist at the University of California at Berkeley in May 1965, he organized the Vietnam Day Committee (VCD), an ad-hoc coalition which then held a reportedly massive antiwar teach-in attended by an estimated 30,000 people. The VCD teach-in was one of the first major public expressions of protest against the U.S. military presence in Vietnam, then rapidly being escalated. In January 1968, after his antiwar tactics had grown more strategically absurdist, Rubin (along with Hoffman and others) co-founded the “Yippies,” a group of intentionally irreverent ideological pranksters, later self-designated with mock pomposity as the Youth International Party.

Rubin was invited to speak at the UW by Michael Lerner, then a 27-year-old visiting UW philosophy professor and a former VCD comrade of Rubin’s at Berkeley. Lerner was then trying to organize a new antiwar group at the UW to fill the void left there by the nationwide implosion of Students for a Democratic Society (including the UW chapter) the previous summer; Lerner reportedly hoped that Rubin’s appearance in Seattle would be a sufficient catalyst for such a group.

It should be noted here that, as the Chicago Seven trial unfolded, many among the American antiwar movement had begun to view Rubin as a liability to the cause, viewing his increasingly reckless and (truth be told) profoundly inarticulate anti-authoritarianism as counterproductive to more serious and studied arguments against the Vietnam War and the military-industrial complex in general. No one at the time seemed to deny, however, that Rubin, for all his apparent self-infatuation, was an unusually magnetic public speaker, as amply evidenced by his HUB speech, in which he proved, by turns, equally flippant, poignant, and provocative.

For example, the flippant Jerry Rubin, on the proceedings in Chicago: “The court is like a classroom. We’re there to see if we’re bad or good. At the end of the trial we’ll get a grade.”

The poignant Jerry Rubin, on the prosecution’s deeper motivations: “The Establishment is afraid of youth. But the only weapon they have against us is punishment. The court system is a messenger for the political system, and people are beginning to see that the political system in America is a farce.”

And the provocative (and previously paraphrased) Rubin, urging the students in the audience away from superficially “liberal” passivity and towards genuinely radical activism: “If you’re still in college today, you haven’t done enough. Because if you had, you’d have been thrown out by now.”

After Rubin returned to Chicago to resume his role in the conspiracy trial, Lerner’s gambit soon worked: two days after Rubin’s HUB appearance, Lerner hosted the first formal organizing meeting for the “Seattle Liberation Front,” a group whose own local Yippie-like antics would soon, for better or worse, guarantee Seattle its own aggressively radical and courthouse-bound “Seven.”

–Jeff Stevens. Sources: “Conspiracy Seven’s Rubin Speaks Here Tomorrow,” University of Washington Daily, January 16, 1970, p. 1; “Rubin Plays Youth Or . . . Consequences,” Richard Simmons, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 18, 1970, p. 11; “‘Future on Trial,’” Bruce Olson, University of Washington Daily, January 20, 1970, p. 3; Walt Crowley, “Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle” (University of Washington Press, 1995).