American anti-war political activist of the turbulent ’60s, a long-haired, bearded, vegetarian Yippie leader, radical member of the Chicago Seven, who urged his countrymen to “never trust anyone over 30.” In later years, he morphed from yippie to yuppie entrepreneur, and died from injuries sustained in a jaywalking accident.
Born, appropriately, on Bastille Day, Rubin was the son of a union organizer. He grew up in Cincinnati, graduated from the University of Cincinnati and studied sociology in graduate school in Israel. Returning home with an interest in leftist politics, he moved to Berkeley in 1964 and joined his first protest, against a grocer who refused to hire blacks.
Considered to be the “P.T. Barnum” of the protest movement, he founded the Youth International Party (hence the name Yippies) in 1967 with fellow radical Abbie Hoffman. He and Hoffman were major players in the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations that erupted outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968. He and others became known as the Chicago Seven, who in 1969 were prosecuted unsuccessfully on charges of conspiracy to disrupt the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
In 1970, Rubin’s book, “Do It!” became a best-seller, and he later admitted that money in his pockets mellowed out his radicalism. After 1969, he spent six years in pop psychology, est and yoga, bioenergetics and Zen. In the ’70s, he joined the capitalist world with books and lectures, promoting new-age therapies such as est and Rolfing.
He joined a brokerage firm in 1980 and threw networking parties for young business executives in New York City. By the early ’90s, Rubin became a prosperous independent marketer for a Dallas firm that sold nutritional drinks called WOW and FOCUS. He wrote several other books, including “Growing (Up) At 37,” 1976.
He was married to Mimi Leonard from 1978 to 1992, and they had two children, Juliet (1987?) and Adam (1989?)
Rubin died of cardiac arrest late on 11/28/1994 several weeks after being struck by a car while jaywalking at 8:30 PM on 11/14/1994 in Los Angeles.
Link to Wikipedia biography