Steve Conliff

Biography Steve Conliff attended Miami University of Ohio, where he worked extensively with the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, known as "the mobe". It was during his time with the mobe that he began to question the effectiveness of "politics as usual" and at about the same time, met up with the Youth International Party (Yippies). It was as a newly-converted Yippie that Conliff moved to Columbus, Ohio, in 1970, briefly attending Ohio State University. Most of his activities revolved around politics and political organizing; he was a gifted and tireless organizer. One of his first experiences passing out anti-war leaflets at a local campus burger-joint got him arrested for vagrancy; he immediately challenged the constitutionality of the vagrancy laws as discriminatory against youth and poor people.

In the summer of 1970, Steve Conliff started his first Yippie publication, Purple Berries—which later morphed into the publication Sour Grapes. Conliff was also one of the founders of the Columbus Free Press (to which he contributed up until his passing) and the public-education-critical Subversive Scholastic (1978–84). He regularly wrote for YIPster Times (1972–78), HVPTA / Bite Magazine (1978-80), and Overthrow (1979–98). In addition, Conliff's work also appeared in High Times, News From Indian Country, Akwesasne Notes, Open Road, Take Over, Fifth Estate, In These Times and The Mohican News—among numerous other zines and underground newspapers, frequently writing under the pseudonym "Leon Yipsky." He also contributed American Indian ethnography to Notable Native Americans (Gale 1995) and Volume 1 of the Gale Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes (Gale 1998).

Steve Conliff was an important leader of the Yippies' second wave, which included well-known activists such as Tom Forcade, Ben Masel, A.J. Weberman, Aron Kay (another famous pie thrower), David Peel, and Dana Beal. He was also the transatlantic coordinator of the Rock Against Racism USA campaign of 1979, helping to organize concerts in Columbus, Dayton, Madison, Detroit, Chicago, and New York City.

The Pie and the Gubernatorial Campaign Poster advertising Yippie-sponsored Smoke-In at Ohio State University, April 29, 1978. This event also served as an unofficial "Conliff for Governor" rally. Steve Conliff's decision to throw a pie at Governor Rhodes was due to Rhodes' direct role in the Kent State shootings; particularly 1) the ordering of Ohio National Guard troops onto campus, and 2) his angry speech given the day before the shootings (May 3, 1970) to assembled news media. Rhodes' infamous speech was said to inflame conservatives as well as the guardsmen occupying campus, thereby lighting the fuse of an already-incendiary situation: We have seen here at the City of Kent especially, probably the most vicious form of campus-oriented violence yet perpetrated by dissident groups and their allies in the State of Ohio ... these people just move from one campus to the other and terrorize a community. They're worse than the Brown Shirts and the communist element and also the Night Riders and the vigilantes. They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America. And I want to say that they're not going to take over the campus. And the campus now is going to be part of the County and the State of Ohio. In 1977, the Kent State University Administration decided to build a gymnasium on the exact site of the Kent State shootings, where there was already a small but respectful memorial to the four slain students erected by B'nai B'rith. This provoked a series of protests: there were numerous demonstrations and an infamous "Tent City" erected on the site that eventually had to be bulldozed down, its 193 inhabitants forcibly removed and arrested. It was in this carnival atmosphere that the pieing of Governor James Rhodes took place.

After pieing Rhodes and the generally-positive reaction, Conliff decided to run for governor against Rhodes, as a Republican. This campaign was not treated very seriously by Ohio media, but gave Conliff access to various conservative venues in which he delivered anti-war, anti-capitalist and pro-marijuana speeches to decidedly-unfriendly audiences with aplomb, which he seemed to enjoy:Yippie Conliff says he's too young to serve as governor even if elected, but sees no problem with the state not having a governor. When his Lieutenant Governor candidate, yippie Leatrice Urbanowicz, was thrown off the GOP ballot for being a registered Democrat, that was also an occasion for more Yippie hoopla.

Zorba the Freak

One of Conliff's continuing characters throughout his work was an alter ego, "the Leader of the Street People", named Zorba the Freak. Zorba liked to dish about other Yippies (who often recognized themselves in his stories) and became locally legendary, as well as an inside joke among the Yippies.