Diggers (theater)

The Diggers were a radical community-action group of activists and Improvisational actors operating from 1967 to 1968, based in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Their politics have been categorized as "left-wing"; more accurately, they were "community anarchists" who blended a desire for freedom with a consciousness of the community in which they lived.^[1] They were closely associated and shared a number of members with the guerrilla theater group San Francisco Mime Troupe.

Actor Peter Coyote was a founding member of the Diggers.

Origins

The Diggers took their name from the original English Diggers (1649–50) who had promulgated a vision of society free from buying, selling, and private property.^[2] During the mid- and late 1960s, the San Francisco Diggers organized free music concerts and works of political art, provided free food, medical care, transport, and temporary housing and opened stores that gave away stock. Some of their happenings included the Death of Money Parade, Intersection Game, Invisible Circus, and Death of Hippie/Birth of Free.^[3]

The group was founded by Emmett Grogan, Peter Coyote, Peter Berg (later director of Planet Drum),^[4] and other members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe including Billy Murcott, Roberto La Morticella, and Brooks Bucher.^[3]

Activities

The group sought to create a mini-society free of money and capitalism.^[5] One of the first Digger activities was the publishing of various broadsides, which were published by sneaking into the local Students for a Democratic Society office and using their Gestetner printer. The leaflets were eventually called the "Digger Papers," and soon morphed into small pamphlets with poetry, psychedelic art, and essays. The "Digger Papers" often included statements that mocked the prevailing attitude of the counterculture promoted by less radical figures like the Haight-Independent Proprietors (HIP), Timothy Leary, and Richard Alpert. The first paper mocked the acid community, saying "Time to forget because flowers are beautiful and the sun's not yellow, it's chicken!" The Digger Papers rarely included authors, although pseudonyms were sometimes used like "George Metevsky," a reference to the "Mad Bomber" George Metesky. After some HIP members tried to find out who the Diggers were, Grogan and Landout responded with a telegram that read, "REGARDING INQUIRIES CONCERNED WITH THE IDENTITY AND WHEREABOUTS OF THE DIGGERS; HAPPY TO REPORT THE DIGGERS ARE NOT THAT."^[6]

The Diggers provided a free food service in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park in Haight-Ashbury every day at four o'clock, feeding about 100 people with a stew from donated or stolen meat and vegetables that was served from behind a giant yellow picture frame, called the Free Frame of Reference, which people were required to step through before being served. The Diggers also popularized whole wheat bread with their Digger Bread, baked in coffee cans at the Free Bakery in the basement of Episcopal All Saints Church on 1350 Waller Street.^[2] In cooperation with All Saints Church and later via the Haight Ashbury Switchboard at 1830 Fell Street, they arranged free “crashpads” for homeless youth drawn to the Haight-Ashbury area.

They opened numerous Free Stores in Haight-Ashbury, in which all items were free for the taking or giving. The stores offered discarded items that were still in usable condition. The first Free Store, in a six-car garage on Page Street that they found filled with empty picture frames that they tacked up on the side of the building, was called the Free Frame of Reference and was later superseded by the Trip Without a Ticket on Frederick Street. It was unclear how the stores were funded. The 1% Free poster, showing two Chinese Tong assassins under the Chinese character for revolution, was thought to be demanding a 1% tithe from merchants, but that was not the case. The poster was a challenge, implicitly suggesting that 'free' people were the minority, and inciting others to step up. They also opened a Free Medical Clinic, initially by inviting volunteers from the University of California, San Francisco medical school up the hill from the neighborhood.

They threw free parties with music provided by the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane and other bands. They also staged street theater events such as driving a truck of semi-naked belly dancers through the Financial District, inviting brokers to climb on board and forget their work. On December 17, 1966, the Diggers held a happening called “The Death of Money” in which they dressed in animal masks and carried a large coffin full of fake money down Haight Street, singing “Get out my life, why don’t you babe?” to the tune of Chopin’s “Death March.”^[7] This was a precursor to the happening “The Death of Hippie,” staged in October 1967. In “The Death of Hippie,” also staged in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, masked participants carried a coffin with the words "Hippie--Son of Media" on the side. This event was meant to mark the end of the era of Haight-Ashbury. The event was staged in such a way that any media outlet that simply described the happening would unknowingly transmit the Diggers' message that Hippies were a media invention. This was called "creating the condition you describe".^[8] The Diggers skillfully used this technique for media relations. Their own publications, notably the Digger Papers, are the origin of such phrases as "Do your own thing" and "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." The Diggers fostered and inspired later groups like the Yippies.

Contrary to popular opinion, the Diggers did not fall apart but evolved into the larger and more complex Free Family. While the Free Food and Medical Clinics were responses to necessary conditions caused by the enormous influx of young people during the heyday of the hippie scene, conditions that the San Francisco government was ignoring, the Diggers' central tenet was to be "authentic". Running soup kitchens and medical clinics was not the authentic, long-term concern of the Diggers' founders. After passing those institutions on to a local Church and Dr. David Smith to continue, the Diggers moved out of the City, creating various land bases in Forest Knolls, Olema, Covelo, Salmon River, Trinidad, and Black Bear California. In those places they integrated with other groups: The Free Bakery, the Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers, and the Gypsy Truckers, creating The Free Family. That larger group still exists informally, and many of the Diggers' children and grandchildren remain close and in contact with one another, and many (children included) are still involved with progressive causes.

Various alternative communities like those the Diggers founded were covered in a documentary film made by Will Vinton, who later went on to fame for his ClayMation clay-animation studio in Portland, Oregon, His 1970-ish documentary feature-length film was titled "Gone for A Better Deal," which, so far, has never been released to any video format.

Haight-Ashbury Golden-Gate park poet Ashleigh Brilliant, later known for his series of epigrams on cards and in books called "pot-Shots," has recently released a CD of his songs, parodies of old movie and show tunes about "life in the Haight." The album includes two songs about the Diggers.

Division of Labor

The Diggers' division of labor between men and women has been criticized as sexist, with male members primarily forming ideas while female members of the organization were tasked with most of the practical and instrumental work these ideas required. For instance, in providing free food, male members of the group socialized and promoted the events, while female group members did most of the work of collecting food, cooking and serving it.^[9] Decision-making in the organization was controlled by male Diggers, who either came up with or took credit for new ideas, while female Diggers, who provided much of the organization's income via welfare checks and social assistance, were sidelined.^[10] This stratification of labor "typifies prefeminist-era radicalism in the sixties."^[10]

See also

• Yippies
• Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers
• Anarchism
• Counterculture
• Counterculture of the 1960s
• Gift economy
• Zippies

References

Books

• Coyote, Peter. Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle 1998 ISBN 1-58243-011-X
• Grogan, Emmett. Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps 1990
• Martin, Bradford D. The Theater is in the Street 2004 ISBN 1-55849-458-8
• Perry, Charles. The Haight-Ashbury: A History, Random House/Rolling Stone Press, New York, 1984
• Sinclair, Mick. San Francisco: A Cultural and Literary History Signal Books Limited, Oxford, UK 2004
• Torgoff, Martin. Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age 1945-2000 2004 ISBN 0-7432-3010-8

External links

• The Digger Archives Home Page
• The Free-Fall Chronicles excerpts from Sleeping Where I Fall.
• The Diggers Mystique - San Francisco Chronicle article, 23 January 1967; reproduced in UK Underground paper International Times