On This Day — Without Illusions

Free Money Knows No Social Class…

August 24, 1967 — Abbie Hoffman, Wall Street, and the strange pull of free money

A handful of one-dollar bills falls onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. At first, people watch. Then someone bends down — and suddenly the dollar is no longer quite the same dollar. Abbie Hoffman wanted to provoke Wall Street. What he exposed was something rather less convenient: the strange moment when value becomes desire, desire becomes competition, and the crowd quietly makes the ridiculous feel perfectly normal.