Transcripts For CSPAN3 Counterculture And San Francisco In 1967 20170706

Cable Television Companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. Earlier this year the American Historical Association convened a panel of historians. They talked about the movements and groups that were part of the counterculture in the 1960s and 70s, focussing on San Francisco in 1967. They also debate the meaning of the terms counterculture and hippie and discuss the legacy of that time. It is is about an hour and a half. What i would like to do in this talk is to introduce you to some of the literature on the counterculture, and i should mention let me go back for just a moment that this presentation takes much longer to actually do thoroughly, so im going to hit some of the high points but i wanted to call attention to the fact that i have the url where the full presentation may be accessed on the screen. My final slide will have it again. If you have an internetenabled device, perhaps you can go there and dwell a little longer on the slides which i will be going over lightly. My point of departure is a book that came out within the last two years by Brian Burrough called days of rage, americas radical underground, the fbi and the forgotten age of revolutionary violence. In the dust jacket blurb it reads, Brian Burrough gives us the story of what is long desperately needed. He has sifted the embers of an essential con flag ration of the Counter Culture. Thats what i want to begin with because this term counterculture has in recent years come to subsume everything that happened in the 1960s, particularly associated with activities on the left, whether they be of political or culture in origin or intent. You find this term counterculture being used in many different ways over the course of the historiography, sometimes as two words or sometimes as a single. It has become an umbrella for the 60s, perhaps synonymous with that. Theres an attempt to establish clarity. Yeager is the goto source for anyone that wants to look at the origins of the term counterculture which originated as contra culture. It was a way to differentiate from this other social i dont logical category that was neither, and it was pop yu larized in the book the making of a Counter Culture, two words, which originated in a series of articles he did in liberation magazine during the summer of love. The publisher asked if he would expand it to a book, which he did. That helped to popularize the term. I should mention his book has never gone out of print. Yeagers attempt to make sense of this social i dont logically is to break off the 60s counterculture. Anyone says it was a definite, it was the 60s. It was a term applied historically to other fe nonnonlike this, so it is important to differentiate between the version that comes along in the 60s and other variations on counterculture. He makes the point that a counterculture is a breaks out of a mainstream culture, creates an objective space in which it can critique the mainstream culture. It then engages in a kind of low intensity warfare with the aspiration to utterly transform root and branch the dominant culture. If it succeeds it becomes the culture, and maybe spins off its own countercultures. You could make the arguments that christianity in its roman catacomb phase was an example of a counterculture with great aspirations and was ridiculed at the time and then ended up sweeping its world and transforming norms and values of its own era. My colleague Peter Bronstein and i attempted to use this set of theories and invite authors including David Harvard to contribute to the first book historians did on the 60s counterculture called imagination, published by rutledge, still in print. Here we made the print, first time as i said, first time by historians to analyze the phenomenon as it pertained to 1960s and 70s, not always with agreement of what it is, and i think you will hear echos of that discussion in our response to your comments and to one another day. Some of the things historians need to contend with is what is the relationship between the hippies of the era and this thing were calling the counterculture . What difference does it make to have a cradle or an incubator of the counterculture . Typically people associate it with haightashbury, hence the name of our session. But there were multiple centers for innovation that sort of fed into the stream that becomes identified by this term, a cultural heart in other locations, and historians from the 1980s through the most recent book objectionford unit press, 2005, called american hippies are attempting to establish what the connection between hippies and Counter Culture is. Theres an argument to be mailed they were in some respects more of a subculture without a vision of utter transformation of dominant culture, and the hippies came along with an expansive utopian scheme. That would be one of the ways to mark off the difference between them. The countercultures periodization, it is easier to say when this thing exists because you begin seeing references in the contemporary primary sources, but some people myself among them make an argument that the 60s counterculture persists into the present. It is not always as easy to recognize because of the ways that it has been accommodated by the mainstream culture and itself has been transformed in the process. Theorizing the counterculture, there are many ways to do it. These are six books that have come out in the last 15 years or so to attempt to come up with a variance on yingers scheme about the counterculture and assessing whether it was something that had Lasting Impact or not. I have attempted to group in the succeeding slides the categories of literature. As i say, theres over 100 monographs, no article or literature cited in this presentation, and ive tried to cluster them according to categories. One notable category is to look at the literature of conservative or neo conservative critiques of the counterculture. I did an article on this very topic for a book that david and beth bailey put together for colombia, the colombia guide to the 60s, which actually investigated what the ultimate impact of the counterculture was from the period where it is first noticed in the mid 1960s, differentiated from the beats, and bringing it up to the present. One of the things that struck me about this is invariably writers on the left regarded the counterculture as a gigantic failure in many respect, but it was the people on the right that regarded the countercultures impact as catastrophically effective. So you wouldnt think you would go there, but it raises some interesting questions about who is paying attention to whether culture trumps poll sicks . Something that we might want to take up in the questions and comments. The rest of the presentation is on a seven second slide loop. You will see a slide up for seven seconds under the various categories which i have placed this literature. Basically what i wanted you to know is that the literature on the counterculture in my estimation is burgeoning. It treats a whole set of issues including some that im sure my colleagues will be addressing, having to do with race, class, ethnicity, matters of how the american diet has been transform utterly by what has been called countercuisine, launched by the counterculture, especially through the Food Movement of the late 60s and early 1970s and persisting into the present. Counterculture is humor. Virtually everybody that writes a 60s piece talks about how mad magazine presented a frame of reference to people who could be irreverent towards authority, and something of that humor became transformative not only within the counterculture poking fun at everything including itself, but then humor and comedy was transformed also. The media, we talk about alternative media and the waist th waste that allow access to people that did not own their own presses. Theres literature that roots the current developments with alternative media to the underground newspapers of the era. Architecture and literature, many books on this. Ive talked to colleagues at the school of architecture at my university, ball state. They say they dont really teach the architectural developments of the 1960s much. Recent books are beginning to take these more seriously and see them in exhibits as well. Environmentallism, the counterculture origins of the earth day and of other events that were an attempt to bring people together with a vision of transformation, largely without by sidestepping i should say, politics initially has been getting its authors as well. Communalism persists. Theres fewer communal groups noted today than there were in the 1960s when we perhaps had thousands, but today the fellowship of egalitarian communities, launched counterculture communes and intentional communities in a way to show that theres persistence and also, you might say, sociological reproduction of the communal living effort. To conclude, the impact that this thing called the 60s counterculture has had on American Culture is vast. I have tried to make some sense of it categorically with the literature that is out. As i say, going to the Powerpoint Presentation online will give you more of the specifics on that. One of the things that i want to make as my final point before i yield to david farber is that by trying to erase the boundary between art and life, between the public and private, by challenging Traditional Authority structures we may have seen an unintended consequence of the 60s counterculture by essentially creating the kind of social space that is currently being filled by trumpism. So with that, this, again, is where the bit. Ly 60scounterculture revisited where you can find the full presentation. With that i would like to yield to my colleague. Thank you so much, michael. Showed up in the machine right now. Good to be here. A lot of what i want to say is, yes, michael, good points, but you will see that i also differ quite a bit in what i want to say. So one of the ways to think of what were doing today is taking advantage of the 50th anniversary. I hope some of you are making money off the 50th anniversary of something. The summer of love is a great opportunity. Im going to San Francisco, to santa fe, sort of like stations i hit the countercultural cross this year. So hoorah for anniversaries. The summer of love is one of the ways in which we think about the counterculture in the 60s thats probably against how we as scholars should think about the phenomena of the 60s and counterculture. The summer of love was a marvelous spectacle and event. It drew together some 100,000 young people across the country at a time and it was a monumental spectacle and it was produced to an end by a group of people. The people who produced the couldnterculture, the council of the summer of love, are more the kind of people i think we should be interested in as scholars. What i want to talk about here is not so much the counterculture aspect kl, not the counterculture as a series of iconic events or six or eight celebrity figures but as a project, as a way in which a group of people tried to do something in realtime. The period from 1965 to 1968, the kind of glory years of the counterculture in journalistic terms is not the way to think about the counterculture as it was crafted by people invested in doing something. Im more interested, and i hope you are, in thinking about the counterculture as a series of productions, not as a spectacle, not as a social i dont logic event stuck in time, but it was an historical event. Some of the books michael showed, but these are the ones i think are probably the best, give or take a couple that arent on there apologies therein to sherry and blake. I think what were trying to say here is that there are certain themes we as scholars are starting to generate. Were starting to create for the first time a history of the counterculture rather than a journalistic sponsor one more descriptive set of pictures of what it should be. These are some of the books im invested in. What i want you to think about that these books think about is what was it that people who thought they were crafting some sort of counterculture, who were interested in a project of cultural rebellion that would have institutional and personal reforms . What was it they thought they were about . They were not something to be described from without but was something that people did themselves. To find that archive, to find those sources that reveal the personal projects that lent themselves to that creation of alternative set of institutions and practices and spirituality and head spaces, thats a difficult task. The reason i think the history of the counterculture has been so no offense weak is that we have been dependent on representations. Yeah, we used underground newspapers or we used iconic photos or a series of memoirs from 10 or 12 wellknown people. The hard work of doing history graphy is to do it. The grateful dead archive is at the university of california, santa cruz and is an incredible source. Stanford has a whole series of papers about the tech visionaries that came out of the counterculture. Theyre places to go to really start doing the historical work some 50 years later thats yet to be done. While doing that kind of paper trail search, that archival work, we cant forget there were lens through which the counterculture is best perceived. Im not saying we historians have to imbibe the same substances, but it is useful to understand at the core i argue and some of the books i referenced ranging from fred turners cyber culture to the more appropriate named head, is reference the core of the cultural production process, was acid. That was often the key hole through which you had to enter to create that new project. How we think about that sensibility, that technical tool and thats what acid was, it was a technical tool that opened the door is something again while weve written about it we havent explored in depth outside of a few iconic figures. Again, the Tech Community has been an incredible window as it is shocking how many scientists of all kinds used acids to change the paradigms through which they were trained as graduate students. I think thats something we could probably reproduce in disciplinary act after disciplinary act. And if in those disciplinary eruptions that i think the legacy of the counterculture is best perceived, and it is better understood than thinking about a panhandling dope head sitting on the koshs corner of haightashb. Drugs matter, but who takes those drugs and why the drugs had the effect they did in the 60s and early 70s is again something we are still wrestling with as scholars to understand. The technology of drugs we have david cort in here and other people have thought long and hard about it is an imperative of an understanding of not just the 60s but production of history, what drugs we use in a given period and place have an incredible an ability to change a direction of a given society. One of the things that people in the 60s themselves talked about right before the summer of love were the ways in which people had to take their drug experiences, their sense of alienation, their sense of something in disruption and figure out what to do about it. Gary snyder i think was probably the wisest guy to speak to members of the counterkell tour, those trying to find rebellion with meaning, said this and i think it is a marvelous insight, one he gets to go back apart. Theres that kind of turn towards simplicity, that drive to go back to the earth in a fundamental sense, but he said, learn new techniques, look toward tomorrows that are different. I think thats the thing were still trying to figure out about the counterculture, not how they went back to archaic times and wore granny dresses and guys wore cowboy hats and decked themselves out in costume of what they thought was a sensibility of a better time, but how they tried to find new technology, new disciplinary forms, new ways of disseminating information in nonhierarchy forms. I think those ways of being in the world that lent themselves to institutional change, disciplinary eruptions and real practices that have a difference in every day lives, those are the things were still trying to write about all these decades later, and which the history profession has chosen mostly not to write about but are written often from the outside. Thats something i think were really in need of doing. Whether this will happen or not i dont know. I talk to publishers about some of these, mainstream publishers and the Academy Still arent caught by the counterculture. They dismiss it as a subject of great importance. We have to convince them differently. I think our friends and historians assigned to technology, environmental historians lerd t historians led the way to reframe Counter Culture. But history of consciousness and others are all fields i think are right for a counterculture revis tags. Thats enough. Thank you. Oh, last, but dont forget that. Just look at that. [ applause ] my name is gretchen lembke santangelo, daughters of the [ inaudible ]. Which i wrote in part hoping to generate further scholarship and research. That hasnt unfortunately been the case, but anyway what i would like to do today is talk a bit about the connection between cultural feminism and hippie womens post 60s leg as ooechlt when women of the counterculture became feminists i argue they disproportionately adopted an offshoot of radical feminism that essentialized feminism. Disparagingly labeled counter it made perfect sense in the broader context of Counter Culture. Alen begins berg wasnt alone in observing kindness, cooperation, independence, egalitarianism, intuitive ways of knowing, emotional and physical expressiveness, what he termed the affectionate feminine were at the heart of the eras utopian experiments. Given this convergence of countercultural values and gender constructs that women presumably possessed the very qualities that the counterculture lauded, it should come as no surprise that hippie women seized upon difference to claim power and authority within their own movement. Secondly, while radical feminists characterized hippie women as politically naive, sexually exploited domestic drudges, hippie women saw themselves as launching an assault on prevailing class and gender norms, including the suburban suburban domesticness of their mothers. For example, their labor while domestic in character was performed in communal, rural, domestic environments, rendering it more creative, varied, challenging and undeniably crucial to the wellbeing of their families and communities. In the end, it wasnt their rolls that they found oppressive, it was mens failure to value their labor and, indeed, their efforts in contrast to mens more often transitory contributions ended up sustaining many of hippiedoms grand social experiments. Third, their aftfirmation rose out of working with other women, especially back to the rural settings. Women developed and sustained mutually support networks that reinforced female bonding and identity. Out of this environment came a growing realization that their hippie sisters provided greater support and affirmation than the men folk, and that they, the women, were the truth keeper also of aquarian values. As one woman voted, quote, the values labeled feminine, love, compassion, cooperation, patience, are badly needed in giving birth to and nurturing a new era of Greater Peace and justice in human history. Cultural feminism growing organically out of womens lib experience became the feminism of choice. It wasnt, however, universally accepted or accepted without question. Competing feminisms also made their way into the counterculture. This was particularly the case as the new left and the counterculture began to blur with each assuming aspects of the other until they were virtually indistinguishable. Hippie womens narratives, for example, often conclude with a feminist awakening that not only involved female bonding experiences but also reading the first issue of ms. Or kate milletts sexual politics. This richness and complexity of this inner play of competing feminism within the counterculture really begs for further investigation. Now, while the limitations of cultural feminism have been amply documented, we cant simply dismiss it as an unfortunate diversion from true feminism or as having little or no historical impact. Nor were countercultural women alone in reviving it. Lesbian feminists who launched their own backtotheland movement and counter institutions also gravitated towards its precepts. What then was the legacy of hippie womens cultural feminism . Well, in the short term it led many to demand authority and respect in their own personal relationships and extended communal families. In the longer scheme of things and in keeping with the long 60s narrative and the theme of this panel, hippie women, claiming to be aligned with natural vital and cosmic forces and divine fem any enerinine en on to craft and promote new age experiences that ran the gamut from neopaganism, wikka, channelling, to tibettans and buddhism and native america traditions. Packaged and marketed in various combinations, they provided americans with a veritable smorgasbord of options and fosed a greater degree of tolerance for religious pearlism. By the early 1980s countercultural women dominated the Holistic Healing movement, out numbering male practitioners in every field from yoga, massage to aromatherapy to biofeedback and to nonwestern traditional and these two became lifestyle options for mainstream americans. Their influence with these were pronounced in home birth and now mothering movements, where countercultural women established practices as midwives and childbirth coaches and created networks, advocacy and support groups, mail order businesses, websites and retail establishments. As a consequence, childbirth and rearing practices, once limited to the counterculture, are as mainstream as yoegga and meditation. Peace and Environmental Activism were two other arenas where cultural feminism and counterculture values converged to heighten womens authority and power. By the mid 1970s hippie women were asserting they naturally possessed the temperament and values necessary to counter the destructive Masculine Energy of the piscian age. A few years later when activists initiated protests against Nuclear Power and weapons, this philosophy permeated their organizations and shaped their strategy and tactics. Kathleen duffy, an organizer of the 1983 International Day of Nuclear Disarmament asserted, it is not the women of this planet who are responsible for this mess. We have been brought to the precipice by a way of thinking that is only scientific and sterile. Women would never, could never conceive of an idea like the pentagon. Some of the culturefeminism crept into the radical environmentallism of the 70s and 80s where women claimed leadership roles by virtue of their supposedly deeper connection to nature. As one activist noted, women have always sought like mountains to elude the paradigm for thinking. Theres nothing like the experience of ones belly growing into a mountain to teach you this. In both movements however cultural feminism came up against antiessentialist critiques of militarianism and degradation. The resulting battle over what should be the feminist paradigm or analysis is waiting to be fully explored and documented by historians. The sustainable Food Movement is the final arena but by no means the last in which counter cultural womens influence extended well beyond the 60s. Within their communities, women assumed major responsibility for food production, procurement and preparation, imbuing their foodrelated labor with political significance and viewing it as a critical element of cultural transformation. As such, they provide Sustainable Agricultural practices, launched natural food cooperatives, authored food booked and columns that emphasized the health and benefits of organic, locallysourced nonmeat based diets in restaurants and even packaged natural food companies. By 1977, just to provide one example of their growing influence, a cookbook became one of the top selling cookbooks in history. Its phenomenal popularity indicated the countercultural food preferences had on mainstream. One final thought. Despite its gender, a category other feminists of the time were intent on deconstructing, cultural feminism gave many counter cultural women the impetus to push their values and practices into the mainstream. Whatever our estimation of their legacy and the feminism that informed it, it undeniably reshaped how americans worship, claim personal fulfillment, heal and nourish their bodies, relate to the environment, give birth, raise children and conceptualize self, family and community, and these two are other areas ripe for further investigation. Thank you. [ applause ] im sherry smith, a historian from the Southern Methodist university, and my field is actually native American History and american west. So im kind of an outlier here, but my interest in policy in the late 20th century led me to the counterculture. In june of 1967, the summer of love was in full spring in full swing and the berkley barb interviewed buffy st. Marie. How many of you in the audience know who she is . Some of you do. She is a korean canadian folk singer, probably the most prominent native person, at least in Counter Culture and cultural circles of the day, of 1967. A reporter asked her what she thought about hippies and their fascination with indians. Her response was mixed. She was slightly bemused, but most list dismissive and actually quite critical. Theyll never been indians, she said. The white people never seem to realize they cannot suck the soul of a race. The ones with the sweetest intentions are the worst soul suckers. Comparing their there we go. Comparing their sympathetic interest and inclination to mimic what they thought of as indianness, and this included long hair, feathers, buckskin clothing, eating, living communally in tribes thats what their idea of what indians were about. Comparing that interest to a weird vampirelike impulse, st. Marie placed those hippies within a tradition of people trying to identify with and coopt those they had conquered. Reading books about indians, eaty mushrooms or peyote would help nobody, she said. Instead they should accept their whiteness, be the best kind of white people they can be and understand there are things that white people will never have or become. They should face their own history. They should accept what they or their nation or their ancestors had done, and then they should do something honorable as white people to redress the consequence of conquest. Now, this critique of counterculture interest in indianness was pointed and powerful and, in fact, ever since it has been the dominant interpretation of how this phenomenon has been understood by the general public as well as by scholars. Hippies attentiveness to native americans is seen as little more than mindless, superficial, cultural appropriation, a continuation of the colonial process, doing more harm than good to indians, representing only a passing fancy or fashion among the white appropriators. Now, i want to go on record as saying there is without doubt a good deal of truth to this interpretation, and also i completely understand the perniciousness of cultural appropriation. However, it is my contention that to leave it at that is insufficient, that there was more going on and more that we need to think about as historians about the consequences of this. And what it does is it ignores the political consequences of the phenomenon and it ignores the smart, savvy way that native american political activists of the time understood this cultural turn toward indians and consciously used it for their own purposes. To ignore the political implications of hippies interest in indians is to erase the political shrewdness with which indian people played upon those sympathies to rally widespread foert a widespread support and effective support for real political gains. It is not actually just a story about white people playing indians. It is about indian people understanding the value to be tapped in those very inclinations for their own purposes. In fact, what eventually happened i argue in my book, hippies, indians and the fight for red power forgot to mention that is exactly why buffy st. Marie was encouraging. For many white people drawn to indianness initially for their own selfserving purposes did go deeper. They faced their nations history of conquest and tried to do something honorable to address the consequences. So in my short time here i can only throw out a couple of ideas and evidence to support this contention that i just made. But i want to do two things. First, talk very briefly about why the interest in indians among the counterculture and how unaware did the superficial interest turn into something more consequential. San francisco in 1967, starting with the bn in february and through the summer of love was ground zero for the hippie cultural turn to indianness. Images of indians pervaded much of the californiabased iconography. If alternative seekers did not come with indians on their minds, they could not avoid them. Once they picked up the haightashbury base have had paper called the oracle or gazed at concerts with photos of actual indian people or saw the poster advertising the february bein in Golden Gate Park which features indians. The event bill edit self as a powwow, a gathering of the tribes. Believe me, they did not have in mind federally recognized tribes. Why indians . They were attractive because they presumably offered an actual living base for an alternative american identity, a new way of living, both symbols of but potential models for ways and practices that were counter to what many of these young people were rejecting about white middle class american life. Just quickly run through this, they were presumably more spiritual compared to the more materialism of their background. They were more ecological, living in harmony with nature. They were tribal and kmunl. They were hold outs, the original american long hairs, people who embraced drugs, as we have already heard that was a critical part of this. They were supposedly people that embraced drugs because of the peyote cult, as a way to transcend middle class america was attractive to some of the people. For those politically engaged at a time when the world was witnesses global movements and the involvement in vietnam elicited foreign and domestic consideration of imperialism abroad, they were reminded of imperialism at home and opportunity to speak to that. Of course, this collection of attributes as i indicated representing their often superficial perspective of what being indian and american meant, and thats why buffery st. Marie was so disdainful. Yet in their efforts to learn more and to know more, some of these 60s seekers were among the first nonindians of the postwar generation to seek out contact with native americans and to do so because they wanted to emulate them. Actually, think this is virtually unheard of in the entire scope of American History and certainly on this scale. I mean there are always people going indian, you know, individuals here and there back to the colonial days, but i would call it a mask in the movement that you havent seen before in American History. You have to remember the political context of this. The termination policy of the 50s and 60s was designed to actually extinguish reservations, to liquidate reservations, to destroy tribal councils, to eliminate treaty rights. I mean it was to just simply extinguish indianness from the United States all together. So what the Counter Culture wasnted to do was not extinguish but to replicate them. In the process of seeking out actual indian people, whether through the Native American Church in peyote context which is often the first place they would go or a visit to the hopi pueblo in hopes of establishing a hippie be in in 1967 on the summer sol stis. In the process they began to interact with indian people, the complexities of reservation life and their political problems. So they began to learn and write about them, and eventually some joined them in their fight, providing substantive material support. Now, on the other side of this, many indian people did not welcome hippies to their communities. They were deeply skeptical of their intent. They were cleareyed about the limitations of these starry eyed youth, and they worried about the impact of drugs and Sexual Practices that would they worried about the impacts of drug use and Sexual Practices would have on their own impressionable children, not to mention the antiwar, antimilitary sentiment of many hippies which violated native americans common respect for military service. Yet there were others who understood these young people could be useful. Their very whiteness, their very privilege, their money and their bodies could be mobilized on behalf of indian interests. In fact, without significant nonindian support tribal calls for recognition of treaty rights, selfdetermination and sovereignty would go nowhere. The political context, the demographic realities wherein indians represent a tiny minority of americans with little political power, demanded nonindian allies. Hippies were not necessarily the most attractive choose, would not have been their first choice, but they were the most available and often the first who were willing to help, and it happened in a lot of different places. But let me just give you one example. In the Pacific Northwest hank adams, who was raised on a reservation in Washington State recruited not only Marlon Brandon and dick gregory to come to the northwest and engage in acts of protests to bring attention to problems they were having, but also with others attracted a cluster of hippies and left his collegeaid colleagues to have fishins. They were challenging state laws violating treaty based fishing rights. They were northwest coral areas to the sitins of the south. In this case only indian people would actually engage in fishing and the white kids would provide a lot of material support, transportation, they would guard the nets, participate in other kinds of public protests success story. Now, to be sure, the lions share of the credit for success rests clearly on indian shoulders. But the support from nonindians was really also i think an absolutely essential element to the outcome of what happened there. I could give you many other examples, alcatraz, wounded knee, but im running out of time. Let me return briefly to the summer of love here in San Francisco and the convergence there, to repeat my central point, which is the Counter Culture attraction to indianness began in innocence and ignorance, it was superficial and even fleeting in many cases. But because of the widespread interest in native american because of their widespread interest in native americans, because of enormous media attention, the summer of love an after that the counter cull occur continued the receive and because of the shrewd political calculations and strategies of native activists, that interest turned out to be of great importance to the broader cultural and political shift that occurred in the 60s and 70s regarding indian affairs. What maybe began as fashion or posturing in enough cases turned into serious interest and concern, and that in turn had cultural and political positive tensy as it spread beyond hippies and became accepted among mainstream america. I have to add a postscript because two nights ago i attended a forum in jackson hole, wyoming where im plifg about standing they put together a caravan and people understand cold and know how theyre dressed for it and brought tons of firewood and lots of food. They staid for a couple of days or weeks and then wanted to talk about it and expressed amazement at the sense of community and harmony that they were experiencing while they were there and as i listened to their testimony it was clear that they really have i would say no understanding of the issues and certainly no information about the deeper history of what is happening there. You and they came because they asked people to come. Asked people to join them. That was part of their political strategy. The media then followed. Why is nobody following the story. Other indians and certainly other nonindians begin to show up when they began to get media attention. And at least into the inauguration of our new president. And the problematic element and not part of the situation in 2017 as far as i can tell. They were not going to be indian. They were just going to help them and they have living example of the culture that i track in my book. I wrote a book called american hippy and all four panel lists and their work at their publications. I think that every time i approach the topic of the Counter Culture and i would work over on the other side i would find Something Else popping up on the other side and it runs in so many different directions. And i think that sherry smith in her comments used the phrase secrets and i think that is the one thing that one could say one seekers i would say. Some people were out to have a good time and some people out for political change. It wasnt always clear that they were in conflict with each other. Want to have a good time while look for political change and even in north dakota today thats true. Something else and one of those radical students was Richard White and Richard White took away from this the question of why are things the way they are and he went up to the eun versusty of washington and had a long conversation and then suggested that maybe he should be arrested. So thats how he was actually watched. Back in the late 60s after he graduated i might add. The university of california. I dont know, its where does one begin with all of this. The summer of love i think as steven points out, its involved in the summer of love and i think that its the part that i miss. The summer of love did focus attention on a particular time and place and it did, the media noticed it but then in another sense the media also hyped it and then that carey yatd even more young people that went there behind all of that i think was the tremendous coast for population boom when so many veterans of world war ii and discharged there from the pacific war and others because their wives moved to the west coast to work with war industry so they decided that the family should stay there and then they had children and more children and and more than 50 between 1940 and 1950 and continued to expand rapidly. One way to get away was to move to california. 3,000 miles away from the relatives and he describes how california simply seemed to be a much freer place. Partly because of the numbers of children, and not having the grandparents. Not having aunts and uncles, ethnic neighborhoods. All of that matters. It was a middle class society. People were doing well in the 1950s and by 1967 the kids grow up but the economy is beginning to slow down and the best in a joirty of people in california that came out of high school. There wasnt much. I always thought that part of it was surplus labor in the most paintable way and making the most of poverty by boasting about it. It was one way to get through the period. There was always the alternative that was known as the vietnam war. Whether there was an alternative that he wants to be apart of and had made a decision. Its certainly the case. And almost exactly. At least in this most overt fashion. Bolted in the past. The Counter Culture is also sort of in the past. And could see jobs and hightech and again the idea of the rise of Natural Foods and natural child birth and other kinds of culture changes that take place so it wasnt here when we had an he enormous amount of culture changes. Were still living with the consequences of it today. Should i end with that . I think so. I think time for people to ask questions. Because were recording so come up to the mic. We talked about the 50s in terms of the Counter Culture but in my experience it seems like the early 70s was when a lot of these ideas expanded into mass culture. Just interested in your thoughts on that. Counter culture is within some long 60s narrative for that reason. Their legacy continues beyond the 70s even into the 80s. And that as well. It depends on it most of this story moved in a different direction. A direction i have moved in myself. The culture is more about disrupting disciplinary norm about trying to find new forms of expression and ways of being in the world. And then you start to see probably in the early 70s. You get a bunch of people moving from innocence to experience. They have this period of disruption and then they think what do i do . Im more interested in now what do i do part of the culture which goes from 1966 or 7. At least until the 1970s when i think things change again. A new book coming out and i think it is a great way of thinking about that process that it isnt so much divided between the Counter Culture and the mainstream. It causes us a lot thats unnecessary. Instead if we think about disruption and then what happens when a society disrupts itself and how did it formulate itself in the new disruption. Thats how i think about it. Drop that word. People that were involved in the project didnt like that word. It was the hype word of the late 60s. I think generational aspects certainly true in the 60s. You have to call it something. I dont mind people using Counter Culture but i do agree with you the Counter Culture is a broad term. And get used to the terms in this way or ironically. And just as a way to empower it. Book publishers like to use it in their title. In terms of really trying to change the way one thinks about things and even one of those other people. Im a big believer that this thing is totally salacious in the way of thinking about a generational change. The people that are teeply invested in political or cultural rebellion are fun most people continue to hold dear to those truths. So i completely believe with you but i still think as a phenomenon of a collective experience generating toward a specific project is the continuation in part because of the tremendous success of those people. If you start thinking about how did we get from General Motors to Apple Computer with its flat aenned hierarchy and way of disseminating knowledge, if you take those, apple is among one of the most successful corporations in the world. And everything changed. And there needs to be a personal computer so that ibm doesnt have corporate control. May i just add in terms of Stewart Brand he is very critical of the 60s Counter Culture and yet if you look at the work that he continues to do and his values and its so difficult to figure out who is in or was in and whos not. Critical of much of the project associated with the hippy phase. They were in for the long march through the institutions but these were alternative institutions. They did not think that you could topple the edifice. There had to be a way between the new set of structures and the disruption is absolutely on the mark. Why is it that all of the evidence, the contrary, the Counter Culture was invested in significant culture change. Why then does this historical continue to ignore its significan significance . Or trivialize it. Im not speaking about what i consider to be a relatively small number of historians that have embraced it. Why would you want to do that. So i have a pretty easy answer to that. So we have been very invested in generations with a history of struggle. A noteworthy project. A monumental project. It was mainly white people. It was overwhelmingly well educated people. It was male dominated. And was not invested in overthrowing the structures of inequality. Were now in a new phase where as i put on that slide were starting to think about how do we tell the story . Do we care about institutional structures. Its the focal point. Its still up to struggle because were not writing about the overthrow. By the late 60s people that i talk to ended up in places like charleston so they welcome them and there were people willing to go. People were overstating it. So you have a larger very important point that there are other kinds of questions that matter to us now where we can turn to these, to this phenomenon and whatever you want to call it and find some new things to ask about it. Id like you to say a little bit more about that. Why do they say this is catastrophically effective or did they have evidence or is it because they were so fearful that they made it into a bigger thing than it was. Engage on the Counter Culture dealing with inequality. I think because one of your counter values, what is that . Besides taking on. Sometimes the methodology is one thing to organize a demonstration and its another thing to organize a coop collectively owned by the people that consume the food or produce the food thats been distributed through it. Anyone is welcome to come into the structure. You dont need much money to do that. In terms of the question you po posed and its very very effective in many respects. If you look at who is in the state house and nationally right now it doesnt look like it was the lefts legacy. It was the right and hawamine i that it got there by going against the culture revolution and they used that as the way to gain political power which many People Associated with the Counter Culture walked away from. They werent interested in getting elected office. How do you imagine that. And offering the credentials of having experience. I went to santa cruz and i was from the east coast and i was in San Francisco in 1967 and so without having the Actual Research field i actually think that hippies is a term if i were a historian i would shy away from but it was in my experience embraced by many people. There was that song to counter meryl haggard. Just one of many examples. And the other thing is while i think the narrative is wrong in many respects. I dont think that much of the people who were. Have some friend that may affectionally be the last hippy. The person in their circle that either took drugs, didnt have a real job the longest. And maintained some kind of alternate but you 60s alternate life style. I offered up random comments. From. Im blake from Heritage University and this is very close to my research area. I want to go back to mikes definition. Talking about the Counter Culture as attempting to separate in order to create something new that might replace the aspect. And the most meaningful ones. We have talked about the fact that the Counter Culture are in a period of tremendous economic prosperity. And that tends to echo with how the Counter Culture are critiqued. And escape it as a group of people engage in a process of consumption. Consumption within a capitalist economic system. More or less. You can see this by just looking. They were politically radical. They had radical ideas but i think you can fairly critique them and say that their idea of being contention upon overconsumption. They have to be produced somewhere so im wondering whether you think the decree teak is a fair one. Whether that undermines any of the projects that youre looking at that they were engaged in. Just in general how dependent was the Counter Culture. I dont remember who it was. Quote unquote decline of the Counter Culture. How contingent was the Counter Culture. Does that matter. The Counter Culture. Quick response. The intersection of drug use and the kind of cultural projects that emerges. The drugs themselves are disruptors but they disrupt at a specific time in place. Thats what a lot of younger people saw. Who needs this medal and plastic. This is ridiculous. Or if you drop it in 1983 or 93. The world is different. Youre right. That overconsumption. That material splendor. 1960s was the second longest period of Economic Growth in the United States. And i like to think about in 1973 and 4 what does that do to peoples concept. You can look at the paper. More money. What came to mind. And taking it here. And crocidolimiddle ground. And were consciously rejecting it. The mentality. What comes to mind is the voluntary simplicity. Which grew out of the Counter Culture. Specifically, theres no question in my mind that 1966 to 68 theyre largely accessing surplus. Why dont we conceive of a project called free and see where we can go to it. Lets invision what that could lead to. And theres a direct brand. Information wants to be free. To the dilemma we are today where information wants to be free but then we get it behind a firewall and then it gets hacked and free is out of there. Its not going back in. It is in new mexico and in that community these white people coming in, some with money, some without immediately become the target of a great deal of anger about whether they are able to do this to go, in fact, collect foot stamps when local people, typically hispanic people werent having anything. My point is that they understood it. They understood it and they began to think very deeply and be critical of it. None of this criticism is new. Im going to try to throw Something Else out there. Their search for meaningful work and hand crafting. Hand crafting tradition. So theyre creating things as opposed to the massed produced consumer gimmicks gadgets that saturates the mainstream. So that too i think. A nation of outsiders, a new book that came out thats explicitly critical in the Counter Culture in particular is the locations for social change in the bay area as an example of a failed experiment. What i see especially being revised today is this motion that by doing good you can also do well. If youre outside of money grubbing you just want to make a living. How do you do that . This was a clearinghouse for information of how it should move into those sorts of occupations. How do you live in a Capital Society without being part of capitalism. At some level theres an answer. But of course they were, the people that were doing this were not thinking of themselves as capital. Thats important. They were consumers perhaps. But they were interested. And they were interested ultimately in change the system. And they were not yet prepared to say i want to jump in again. I think thats another one of those half truths. Thats a great many people involved in the koubter person. They were antimaterial and antimoney gruk and antigreed. Thats quite different than being anticatholic. Thats reimagining market relations. On the ability to have social and cultural capital. He has turned his interest to Getting Better tools into his now multimillion dollar well never mind that. Anyway. Its not necessarily who gets the state house. I heard a lot of criticism about neglected areas. And what strikes me is there is a tremendous volume of not always writing but always documenting about the 1960s and that didnt get touched on. Who owns the 60s . Who owns the Counter Culture. What does. What does the Counter Culture look like and who gets to write it . Oh, you can. Imagination its a collection, there isnt a synthetic history of the Counter Culture. Isnt that amazing . Good or maybe not completely synthetic but i thought in particular berkeley in the 60s was a pretty good sell. What i wanted to ask and it relates to berkeley in the 60s is this, its kind of standard narrative now. Its Counter Culture in the new Word Division initially and then at some point they blurred with each taking on, characteristics of the other and this is something that comes out quite forcibly for a play in the 60s and i have always been a little bit suspicious of that narrative. Im just not sure that it happened that way. Theres a word of distinction between the two. But i also think, for example i mentioned how women of the Counter Culture overwhelmingly adopted cultural feminism. But not necessarily to the exclusion of other feminisms. Theyre radical and i think if we as counter cultural historians begin to probe more deeply well find fewer distinctions and more like grey areas. Yeah. And what about berkeley in the 60s does a pretty good job. Where would you place the writer in your individual narrative of that moment. I wish he were here. I think that conformed to one, just one of the many counter cultural ones. A British Film Company will have things around may of this year and documentary called the Counter Culture in hollywood. She would be pretty cool. Thats great. It is an excellent film and i think the reason the film maker has the way it does is the 1930s. Certainly the late 50s and early 60s. The Counter Culture in the 60s. And certain level in berkeley in the mid to late 60s. There was a lot of antagonism on the part of berkeley radicals toward the Counter Culture. This will decree teak the society but they have dropped out. We would live our own lives in our own way and do things in a totally different way. And demonstrate to the public at large. And there were ways and alternative ways of thinking about things but theyre increasing contact between the tro two groups and certainly the music. And counter cultural berkeley. At the same time we need to be focused. If you went to a place like, i dont know, boston or Port Lawrence that you might much more of an initial wedding. At the end of the summer of love somebody wrote on the front door, kansas needs you more. I teach at kent state aside from pocket of counter cultural manifestation throughout the United States primarily your stories are about california and about california in the 20th century so is the Counter Culture or can the Counter Culture be described as the californiacation of the United States. Given the movie industry in california. How these images and sounds are transmitted throughout the United States. Strong organizations could go with publicity. I see strong connections between the generation in the late 1950s or late 60s which prevailed not only in San Francisco but also in new york city. Talk about the Counter Culture in new york city. What was going on and experience in terms of their interest in the topic. I felt compelled to talk about the summer of love. I emphasize california and i look at how this goes and back to north dakota. It was actually a national phenomenon. The thing i was looking at. Im sure the others would say the same of your work. Theres this moment when people are getting old 19 40s school buses and going in caravans. And they do this and they decide to try this calif ornication going across the country. And ran across evidence of having been there and the point of view what they thought they were doing there and what the local landers thought the diggers were doing there and it was in conflict. They were much more meaningful to the people that were trying to get a living in that barren soil in maine and they were much more interested in forming alliances with local people scraping by forever. And he turned out you helped one another. So those values were part of what the counter cultural was trying to revive in other place. They didnt feel like they needed free. They didnt have surplus in that way. So it really runs aground. Theres an explosion. Theyre also playing an important role. And these are all from scholars who are taking the perspective of the state and i was wondering from your perspective, what can within the Counter Culture movement what can we understand about policing and the change of crime in the 60s and 70s. That maybe outciders that are not seeing or what can you reinforce . Real Quick Response has to do with racialization and laws. And you can make a case that one of the reasons that laws start to get hard in the late 70s toward drug offenders and hasnt happened yet. You see in the 1970s a concerted effort by the dea take down networks bringing in hash and marijuana and lsd which is mostly manufactured and its a Massive Movement and you start to see white kids getting 10, 20, 30 year jail sentences. If you look at the war on drugs we dont always get it right. Drug institutional power of the state starts to increase at the white dealers and distributors before it becomes racialized. I think we have run out of time. That will be the last word. Thank you very much. From 7 00 to 9 00 p. M. Eastern we learn about their artifacts and exhibits and to answer viewer questions about the american revolution. Heres a preview. So in this gallery we kind of unpack the story of the declaration of independence. And passing the declaration of independen independence. And other members of congress. Very few people ever saw the document. Most people encountered text in the declaration either from newspaper or broad side sprinting or communities. We rotate on display. Different printing of the declaration. Right now we have one of the rarest actually in german language sprinting. And printing of the declaration in german that has survived and this has been shared with us by Gettysburg College in pennsylvania and then its side by side and massachusetts printing of the declaration. And we also score the promise of equality. All men are created equal and certain unailable rights. That language each person has to decide does that apply so the people wrote those words maybe didnt actually recognize the revolutionary potential in them. Actually some people like john adams you think probably did realize it when you declare that all men are created equal people might say what about women. What about enslaved people, laboring men. We look at the status of laboring men, of enslaved people, of women including abigail adams. Just a brief look inside the new museum in philadelphia. And thursday at 7 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv here on cspan 3. Sunday on q and a im not asking anyone to compromise their value for their believes. Im asking them to open their eyes. So that you can figure out your place in this infinite world. And discusses her book and moral panic in our time. And she looks at what constitutes reality today and how the criteria changed over the years. I wanted to show how we had involved a culture that was designed to validate us and not to challenge us. Certainly not to contradict us. It gave us the illusion that our reality were water tight when really they were riddled with weak spots and places that would crunch in. Cspan where history unfold daysly. In 1979 cspan was created by americas Cable Television company and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. Coordinate civilian and military programs. Talk about the conflict in Southeast Asia evolves overtime. And compare president johnsons policies with those of his successor richard