but revolution is tricky business. it tends to spin out of control, forget its roots, crash and burn its followers and betray the very essence that it had risen out of. every revolution follows the same path-- for revolution as the poet believes is the explosion of desires and feelings--and explosions do not last forever. the minute revolution becomes regulation, it loses its beat.
whether or not the revolution of the sixties worked out is another discussion for another post, but tonight I’m gonna talk about a little piece of that revolution—the part to me which resembles the most "revolution" as a concept. sure loving mother nature and denying anyone over 30 is a way to go, but when you come down to really wanting a change, these guys were the real deal. they are one of my favorite things of the sixties, and they are not talked about that much. so I thought I’d kick of the week of sixties with them—the diggers.
the diggers were what the radical left stood for in those days. they hated and rejected all sorts of private property and loathed the use of money (I know, my heroes). they cooked free meals, feeding the flock of kids sunbathing in the streets of san fransisco; opened up shops that you can give and take as you like for free, they gave people housing and shelter, medical care, they organized free concerts and theater performances. they were also against the ‘hippie’ sensation, warning the nation against a spreading, seemingly revolutionary but just as dangerous conformity.
they were to me the true children of the revolution that was needed. don’t get me wrong, they were radicals—their free meals came usually from stolen products or bullied butchers, they did what they could to get what they needed. they weren’t all peace love and music. there was a real flame in the pit. still, what they wanted, what they worked for—to me, that is—was the real deal. they wanted to stop any and all sort of societal consciousness, and that soon included the hippie movement that spread like wildfire over the kids. they were anarchic and after absolute freedom. hippies to them were a product of the media. dylan was still working for ‘maggie’s farm’. none of them so called counterculture icons were relevant.
I had a chance to read some of their sheets that had been published throughout the sixties. at first, I took them to be some sort of providers for the community, but they were in fact a very intellectual, idealistic group of activists. their papers include spiteful remarks not only about people like dylan and ginsberg who were hailed to be the upcomers and messiahs of the hippie ‘please force’ (my fave term from taking woodstock), but also about the flower mindset of the sixties.
“Forget the war in vietnam” begins one of their declarations, “flowers are lovely.”
so to me, the music of the sixties, the colors, the love, the drugs, the beauty are all parts of a bigger picture, but not the picture of a revolution. it’s certainly a great deal when 500 000 people gather around on empty fields to love their neighbors but they never really chose to change the storylines.Instead, they existed in some far away fantasy land that was bound to be destroyed. the diggers on the other hand were what stands at the heart of what you call a revolution—intensity, desire to change, and the balls to do so.
I’ll be posting some of their sheets here—hoping that I’m not crossing any copyrights lines on this one. I found these on a lovely diggers website with a wonderful archive and believe they should be shared. they are not that far off from where we stand now.
read them if you can, and then let me know if you wanna “start a religion...or plan a murder.”
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