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A Gathering of Tribes for a Human Be –In ♦ This Day In The USA ♦ January 14
by Davis Fleetwood NoCureForThat {at) gmail {dot} com
Good morning scholars. Question for discussion today:
How did U.S. citizens reach a point in our history where communal living, free love, and LSD inspired higher consciousness – a Dionysian festival of life – had a legit chance to supplant the Leave it to Beaver lifestyle?
Bridging the beat and the hippie movements was the Human Be- In, taking place in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on this day in the USA January 14 1967.
So listen up: black skinny ties and pomade, 8 cylinder beasts with tailfins and stay at home moms with warm dinner on the table just in time for the Dad’s 5:45 train even though he is going to take a bite and disappear behind the evening paper before moving to his arm chair – don’t sit in daddy’ chair- and numb himself to sleep with Jack Parr and cheap scotch and god dammit kids do your homework just to wake up and drag himself to the commuter rail for the 7:52 and replicate that over and over again like that overhead shot at the start of the film American beauty or even slumdog millionaire- different country but it is just as apropos – try and grasp the vast migration of the middle class to the suburbs, this was the middle class expansion and morality at the mid point of the 20th century. Can we agree on that? At the very least?
OK. Good.
In direct opposition to these middle class values & morality sprung the beat poets, the yippies and the hippies, who collective staged, as a prelude to the opus that was to be the summer of love “ A Gathering of Tribes for a Human Be –In” on January 14, 1967.
The “Be- In” included appearances by Dick Gregory, Timothy Leary, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, your great aunt Sarah, Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Rubin, scores of beautiful women with hairy armpits, the hells angels, anti-war activists, scholars, poets, your cousin Vinnie, musicians, artists, Ram Das, and free LSD for everyone…. The Be-In was an attempt to create a decentralized, non-hierarchical society in direct opposition to the destructive force of the US brand of military dominance and predatory capitalism embedded in middle class morality.
Ask yourself scholars: What would the world look like today if the hippies and yippies and poets and thinkers actually won?
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