January 14th, 1967: The Human Be-In Marks The Beginning Of The End
by Alex Maiolo
Everybody talks about The Hippies when The Diggers were the real heros.
We’ve all seen the trope footage of The Hippies dancing in circles, clearly out of their minds on LSD, while the eternally misunderstood “Eight Miles High” plays. These kinds of scenes were mostly shot at The Human Be-In, which happened in San Francisco, on this day in 1967.
The idea was to “gather the tribes” to address factioning. You know, some of the growing counterculture participants were dedicated to “peace and love.” Others were like “if we don’t make the pigs fear us, it won’t work, so arm up!”
Then you had the quasi-buddhists, BS-shamen, drop outs, hangers on, poets and “poets,” plus of course the organized students who focused on Vietnam.
It was a noticeably white and middle class happening. While there were some Black faces in the crowd, had the Black Panthers been invited to the Be-In? After all, they were headquartered right across the Bay, in Oakland. Perhaps they were asked, and took a pass, because they felt their struggle was different.
Like a lot of things, on paper The Human Be-In was a good idea. What the organizers were asking for was basic human rights and dignity. That extended to checking American imperialist tendencies, and our race policies.
You can’t drag anyone for that.
I hold the belief that many of these people were both correct and selfish.
As the first generation to live with the pill, sexual freedom felt like a step in the right direction for women, but patriarchal predators took advantage of this as well.
As a generation that was brought up in the most prosperous time in American history, they were protesting Vietnam both because it was wrong, but also for “I don’t wanna go” reasons, which challenged the longtime contract of war.
And it meant you could smoke weed, see rock bands, and do what you want, which sounded a lot better than getting shot in a jungle in Southeast Asia.
In no way am I saying this was what was driving all of the Hippies – not at all. The very first people involved in the movement had the right idea, but just as my Gen-X generation helped build an indie rock infrastructure, only to see it co-opted by the very jock-types we were trying to avoid, the Hippie movement attracted a lot of people who were looking for an excuse to live the Id life, and the ’67 Be-In was the spark that lit the fuse, igniting the next phase.
It’s what encouraged the next wave to gooooooo to Saaaaannnnn Franciscooooooo.
Dig It, Man
But who were the first wave?
The Diggers.
Very little has been written about The Diggers, who organized around 1965 in the now-famous Haight Street area of SF. They named themselves after a proto-socialist group that started in England, years prior.
The OG Diggers were interested in communal farming, and making sure everyone ate. They set up a form of community healthcare, and eschewed the idea that sex for anything other than procreation was not ok with baby Jesus, and his very judgemental dad.
How many “years prior” to 1965?
Many.
Drop the “9,” shift the numbers, and add a “0.”
We’re talking 1650, mates.
People had just stopped wearing suits of armor 100 years prior.
So, assuming you like socialistic tendencies, as I do, these were pretty good people to admire, right?
The San Francisco Diggers organized free health clinics. They set up shops you could just walk into, to take what you need for free. You could trade out for something you no longer needed, or just take it, no strings attached. The inventory was mostly used stuff that still worked. My former home of Carrboro. North Carolina, honored this with the Really Really Free Market, which still happens today.
The Diggers would make meals from food waste, to be distributed to anyone who was hungry. They baked huge batches of healthy Digger Bread in coffee cans, or Digger Stew, and gave it away.
They believed in tapping into the good in human nature.
They also engaged in intellectual political theater. Like the Fluxus Movement, they were perhaps too clever for most normies, but the vanguard often is. We depend on people like this to influence vectors, and those vectors spread the message to the masses. The problem is the message often gets diluted.
No Regrets, Coyote
Peter Coyote and others who formed this group were active as early as 1962. They once cut their hair, dressed in suits, and went to Washington DC to protest nuclear arms, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK actually took notice, and invited them into the White House.
They explained that money is an invention that creates scarcity. Meaning, there are enough resources and wealth to give everyone a dignified life, but when ownership is tied to currency, you get hierarchy. You need money to buy food, or a TV. If you don’t have the cash, you don’t get these things, and your life is “less” than others who have access.
And wow were they critical of the media and its complicity in all of this.
What I’m saying is The Diggers fuckin’ lived it.
So when the Be-In happened, they were there, of course. Hell, the Hippies were both spiritually and physically on turf The Diggers had established. They were their societal children.
The Be-In was inspired by things like the Free Fairs, which The Diggers had held years prior.
Tune In, Turn On, Be In
On January 14, 1967, the pun-sational Human Be-In was held less than a five minute walk from where I’m typing this. In so many ways it was a glorious idea, but in so many others, it contradicted core principles.
“Howl” author and noted NAMBLA member Allen Ginsberg held court. Media hound Timothy Leary was there, promoting the idea that LSD was the key to ego death, while contradictorily loving being the center of attention. The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and many other bands soundtracked it in what was probably their final days of being “of the people.” Both bands would go on to enter the money machine world, riding the line between being truly countercultural in many ways, willing participants of raw capitalism in others.
The Diggers were there showing support, doing on-brand things like handing out free turkey sandwiches. Apparently you could order one with “dosed” bread, a year after LSD had been outlawed.
The media, even the Hippie press, declared it as “the beginning,” but it was actually the end of something The Diggers had started. The Diggers were less than perfect, and had some patriarchal elements typical of the era, but they were net good, by far.
Peter Coyote was clear that the women of the movement, while rarely considered leaders in the historical record, were the real heroes:
“We started feeding and sheltering people, and setting up medical clinics, just because it needed to be done. And the mainstays of that really were the women, who would go to the Farmer’s Market. The Italians would not give food to young, able-bodied guys, but they would give it to the women. They were the ones getting up at 5:30 to go out to the market and get the food and cook it.”
History regards the Be-In as a marvelous thing. It was in some ways, but around this time the media was taking notice and broadcasting it. The “seems like a good time” kids, still in their rebellious phase, started migrating to San Francisco. Many were into the gratification and “free” part, but not so much the hard work bit.
Music, free love, and drugs were just the fun elements of the movement.
Politics are hard.
Who wants to deal with that anyway?
OK Hippie
I’m assuming these latercomers, like most people in society who ride a trend, were the “OK Boomers” of tomorrow. They had their fun, avoided the draft, then shifted gears once they started making money.
Then-governor Ronald Reagan hated all of this, but that didn’t prevent the new “Me Generation” from voting him into the White House 12 years later, preferring him to Jimmy Carter, who was more aligned with socialist and world-citizen thinking.
Because “don’t tax me” feels pretty good to someone who only thinks about themselves. These first-wave libertarians, who were also into “being free,” missed the “society” part of the equation, probably willingly.
So by 1967’s Summer of Love, just half a year after the Be-In the media had covered extensively, the Haight was absolutely swollen with newcomers, to the point of unsustainability. It’s estimated that over 70,000 wannabes, aka “plastic hippies” descended on that neighborhood. This is what is memorialized, over what came before it, because the media sensationalized the whole thing, to the chagrin of The Diggers.
Again, I use the Grunge years as an allegory. People forget about the DIY movement part, and skip right to (appropriately) Woodstock ’99, the Gen-X Altamont.
Notably, that was organized by the original Woodstock’s promoter, Hippie opportunist Michael Lang.
Soon after, the “in” suffix was applied to everything meant to attract the youth, or more cynically the young dollar. Soft drink commercials got psychedelic. Madison Avenue started flirting with acid-inspired imagery. There was the Fly-In, The Love-In, John and Yoko’s Bed-In, The Sweep-In. Then Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In comedy show.
It was all getting a bit Live, Laugh, Love-In.
Grave Diggers
By October of ’67, almost two years before the original Woodstock, the Diggers declared “Hippie is dead” and held a mock funeral.
They walked down the street with a casket. On its read “Death of Hippie, Son of Media.”
People carried mirrors to point at the gathered crowd, implying the participants themselves killed it.
Cartoonist and controversial social critic R. Crumb said “the Haight-Ashbury scene was appealing, but the air was so thick with bullshit you could cut it with a knife. Guys were running around saying, ‘I am you and you are me and everything is beautiful, so get down and suck my dick.’ These [newly arrived] young, middle-class kids were just too dumb about it. It had to be killed.”
What’s baffling is so little has been written about The Diggers. I stopped by to see the friendly people at the Counterculture Museum, which is at the corner of Haight and Ashbury. They have an excellent bookstore, but nothing on The Diggers. Down the block, still on Haight, you’ll find the decades-old Bound Together, a bookstore that sometimes attracts confused fetishists. The kind and incredibly helpful anarchists who run it tried to locate an out-of-print book on The Diggers for me, but had no luck. They handed me a pamphlet from a recent talk, and directed me to limited resources online.
It’s the book that needs to be written. Perhaps someone will accept this challenge before the 60th anniversary of The Summer of Love, in 2027.
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