It Was 50 Years Ago Today: Abbie Hoffman Threw Money at the New York Stock Exchange

To denounce the Vietnam War and bring about the “death of money,” the protest took a playful turn.

By Jon WienerTwitter

August 24, 2017

Abbie Hoffman, left, and Jerry Rubin wear boxing gloves as they meet newsmen in rainy Washington outside the Justice Department to publicize their cause on October. 27, 1969 (AP Photo / Harvey Georges)

Fifty years ago, on August 24, 1967, Abbie Hoffman and a group of friends invaded the heart of American capitalism, the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. They threw money from the visitors’ gallery onto the floor, and the brokers and traders there leapt into the air to grab the dollar bills floating down. Trading was interrupted, briefly. News coverage was massive.

At the time, the Vietnam War was reaching a peak—486,000 Americans were fighting there by the end of that year. Lyndon Johnson was president, and Donald Trump was a 20-year-old student at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. He was getting a student deferment that kept him from being drafted and sent to Vietnam. That summer, he was working for his father’s New York City real estate firm, refusing to rent to black people.

Read more: https://www.thenation.com/article/it-was-50-years-ago-today-abbie-hoffman-threw-money-at-the-new-york-stock-exchange/