Lee Weiner (born 1939) is an author and member of the Chicago Seven who was charged with "conspiring to use interstate commerce with intent to incite a riot" and "teaching demonstrators how to construct incendiary devices that would be used in civil disturbances"[1][2][3] at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
[8] As a caseworker, Weiner witnessed dire poverty in Black neighborhoods, and wrote in his memoir, "Every day ... the work I did drove punishing truths into my head about what was wrong in America.
"[11] First dubbed the "Conspiracy 8" and later the "Chicago 7", the defendants included Abbie Hoffman and Bobby Seale, as well as "little-known community activist and social worker" Lee Weiner.
The alternative image – one of a popular insurrection rooted in the experience and desires of people that was put down by the deliberate exercise of state-controlled violence – too clearly focuses public attention on what America is all about.
The government effort is intended to punish and frighten a growing, insurgent mass movement of both the young and concerned adults, and to protect the official myths of political reality in America.[14]J.
"[15][3] According to Professor Douglas Linder at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law, "Weiner rarely attended defense strategy sessions, perhaps out of a belief that their cause was hopeless.
[19] After being taken to jail following their convictions for contempt on February 14, 1970,[20] the defendants "almost immediately" stood on top of tables in the common areas and gave speeches of "defiance", getting applause and laughter from fellow inmates, and were quickly put into isolation cells.
'[21][22] Weiner recalls Abbie Hoffman "yelled that we should fight, force them to pay a price, that our hair was a symbol of our freedom and of everything we believed and we couldn't just acquiesce," before being held down by guards for the haircut.
Woods showed pictures of the defendants after their haircuts to an audience that according to John Kifner of The New York Times included "about 100 laughing and applauding members of the Elk Grove Township Republican organization at a meeting in the suburban Mount Prospect Country Club.
[10] After the trial, Weiner left Chicago after accepting an offer to teach in the sociology department of Rutgers University,[28] and moved to Brooklyn with his girlfriend at the time, Sharon Avery.
[30] According to Malik Jackson, writing for South Side Weekly, "when reading Weiner's recollection of the demonstrations, which mostly took place on Michigan Ave. and in Grant Park, one is struck by the similarities between this imagery and the events we've witnessed on our own streets in recent years.