Jerry Rubin (July 14, 1938 – November 28, 1994) was a high-profile American social activist during the 1960s and 1970s.

Rubin began to protest after dropping out of Berkeley. Jerry's first protest was in Berkeley, protesting the refusal of a local grocer to hire African Americans. Soon Rubin was leading protests of his own.

Rubin organized the VDC (Vietnam Day Committee), led some of the first protests against the war in Vietnam, and was a cofounder of the Yippies (Youth International Party) with Abbie Hoffman, and Pigasus, the pig who would be president. He played an instrumental role in the disruption of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Along with six others (Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, John Froines, David Dellinger, Lee Weiner, and Tom Hayden; Bobby Seale was part of the original group but was excluded later), Rubin was put on trial for conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intention of inciting a riot.

Julius Hoffman was the presiding judge. The defendants were commonly referred to as the "Chicago Seven" (after Seale's exclusion). The defendants turned the courtroom into a circus and although five of the seven remaining defendants were found guilty of inciting a riot, the convictions were later overturned on appeal.

Jerry Rubin's anti-establishment beliefs were put down in writing in his book Do it! – Scenarios of the Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 1970, ISBN 0-671-20601-X), with an introduction by Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and unconventional design by Quentin Fiore. In 1971 his Journal, written while incarcerated in the Cook County Jail, was published under the title "We are Everywhere", by Harper & Row, SBN: 06-090245-0, LOC 77-154054. The book includes an inside view of the trial of the Chicago Seven, but otherwise focuses on the Weatherman Underground, the Black Panthers, LSD, Women's Liberation and the coming revolution that never came. In 1976, Rubin wrote another book entitled "Growing (Up) at Thirty-Seven," which contained a chapter narrating his experience at an Erhard Seminars Training (EST) that was later included in the reader "American Spiritualities." "Growing (Up) at Thirty-Seven," is described as "tracing his personal odyssey from radical activist of the 60's to a practitioner in the growth potential movements of the 70's."

After the Vietnam War ended, Rubin changed his political views and became an entrepreneur and businessman. He was an early investor in Apple Inc.

In the 1980s he embarked on a debating tour with Abbie Hoffman entitled "Yippie versus Yuppie". Rubin's pitch in the debates was that activism was hard work, that abuse of drugs, sex and private property had made the counter-culture "a scary society in itself", and that "wealth creation is the real American revolution - what we need is an infusion of capital into the depressed areas of our country".

Rubin's differences with Hoffman were political not personal (despite the popular 60s adage equating the two things). When Hoffman died apparently by suicide in 1989, Rubin was the only member of the Chicago Seven to attend his funeral.

On November 14th, 1994, Rubin jaywalked on Wilshire Boulevard, near UCLA in Los Angeles, California, approximately thirty feet from an intersection. It was a weekday evening and as typical, the street was very busy with three lanes in each direction. A car swerved to miss Rubin and a second car (immediately behind the first car) was not able to avoid Rubin. Rubin was brought to the UCLA Medical Center and died 14 days later. He is interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.