Rennie Davis, ‘Chicago 7’ anti-war activist, dead at 80
KATE FELDMAN
Rennie Davis, one of the most prominent opponents of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and one of the activists tried in the “Chicago 7″ trial after the 1968 Democratic National Convention, died Tuesday. He was 80.
Davis had been diagnosed with lymphoma just two weeks ago, his wife, Kirsten, wrote on Facebook.
Rennie Davis died Tuesday.
Rennie Davis died Tuesday. (Syvonne Kozuch/)
“He will be missed beyond words, but I know he has other grand things to do,” she wrote. “His beingness will always be a trail-blazer and visionary forging the path for humanity’s evolution to fully wake up and enter a new paradigm of existence.”
The son of a labor economist in former President Harry Truman’s Council of Economic Advisers, Davis radicalized in college at Oberlin, where he joined the Students for a Democratic Society and helped Tom Hayden draft its founding document, the 1962 Port Huron Statement.
But it was the Vietnam War that turned Davis into one of the most prolific activists in the country, when he and thousands of other protesters descended on Chicago and the 1968 DNC.
After the convention, during which Vice President Hubert Humphrey defeated U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy for the presidential nomination, demonstrators clashed with police and Illinois National Guardsmen, turning the rally into a bloody riot.
Davis is most remembered as a defendant in the trial of the Chicago 7 after the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Davis is most remembered as a defendant in the trial of the Chicago 7 after the 1968 Democratic National Convention. (JLP/)
Davis was charged with conspiracy to incite a riot, along with Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, David Dellinger, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner, John Froines and Bobby Seale, although Seale’s trial was eventually separated from the others, leaving the Chicago 7.
Davis, Hayden, Rubin, Hoffman and Dellinger were convicted, while Froines and Weiner were acquitted. A federal appeals court later overturned the convictions.
Seale, a Black Panther leader, was convicted of contempt and sentenced to four years in prison, but that was also overturned.
Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” which premiered on Netflix in September, retold the events of the convention, with Alex Sharp playing Davis.
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In the early 1970s, Davis pivoted to the teachings of Guru Maharaj Ji, a teenage Indian mystic with an international following, although that movement faded away.
Davis later became a venture capitalist and founded Foundation for a New Humanity, which aims to help people “regenerate ourselves into a vibrant, thriving, creative wellbeing inspiration,” according to its website.
