Re: SDS

Marc J. Gilbert (MGILBERT@NUGGET.NGC.PEACHNET.EDU)
Wed, 5 Mar 1997 08:14:52 EDT

What is scary about this post is that anyone would conceive that any
social movement can be made up of "either or" elements or reduced to
such simple dichotomies. Not a flame. Just an observation that we
have to be better teachers to those who follow lest they teach their
students such reductionism, and false reductionism at that (lefties,
hip?--Claire apprently never met any real lefties. They are often as
hip as Stalin was.

Marc Gilbert
NGC&SU

*********

Anybody have any comments on whether the SDS action against Vietnam
was just a reaction to a leftie, hippy movement by people who believed
it was the "hip" thing to do? Or was it a serious outcry by a
generation tired of being sent to a war they cared little about?

Claire
Uni Of Ulster
Davidson-CA@ulst.ac.uk

er too much how I ate. There were concessions
there, selling food. I know I subsisted quite a bit on Soy burgers
someone was cooking over a little fire (and charging a dollar apiece,
which was an outrageous price at the time, but a tribute to Capitalistic
supply and demand economy). Most of the people I hang out with had
brought their own food, a lot of food was shipped in by the National
Guard, and the Hog Farm was helping to dole it out...people got by, and
I don't think a lot of people went hungry....

As for numbers, the half-million number you hear would not be far off.
There was no way to adequately judge, as people were coming and going,
but if there weren't half-million at the festival at any one point,
there were more than that between the festival and New York City, stuck
in traffic trying to get there...(g).

Steve Haas

(2)

read barefoot in Babalon it tells the whole story. cheers, country joe

(3)
To: sixties-l@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
From: Leslie <Leslie.A.Davis.97@nd.edu>

I am taking the same literature class most of you have read about at
the University of Notre Dame where we have been studying Woodstock and would
appreciate some response to the following questions :

If the concert was free, who paid for Woodstock?
Where there any sponsers?

Thanks
Leslie Davis

Spring break, starting Friday,
Enough Said
-Leslie.A.Davis.97@nd.edu


(4)
From: "Rachel Barrett Martin" <mart0167@gold.tc.umn.edu>

Literature + Historical Context = Historicism. How do you find historical
context? Look at sources from the time period.

Abbie Hoffman, _Woodstock Nation: A Talk-Rock Album_
Michael Spitz, _Barefoot in Babylon_ (originally appeared in Penthouse)
newspapers, both mainstream and underground. I like the variety of coverage in
_Rolling Stone_, I think maybe September 1969. One of the columnists talks
about the size of the crowd.

also useful, stuff which came out around the anniversaries of Woodstock 1994

On vendors, check out the role of the Hog Farm in providing food. I think Lisa
Law's film (help me listmates, Flashing on the Sixties?) has interviews and
footage, but even if it doesn't, hearing women talk about there experiences in
the counterculture is well worth it. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but some film
about Woodstock talks about nuns giving folks sandwiches.

In addition to how many people were there, you might want to ask how many women
were there, how many "non-whites" were there, or why so many people claim and/or
disdain having been there. Do neo-cons reinvention of their "sixties selves"
extend to Woodstock? Or is that an event worth mythologizing? Back to the
Garden... that's what some folks called it. Put that in a religious pipe for a
moment and smoke on it. Garden, Land, Nation, Nature, Civic Religion. Like one
big scene from a David Noble seminar, or a Leo Marx one. Ooops, thought I was
on AmSt list there for a minute rather than Sixties-L.

Rachel Barrett Martin
Department of History/Program in Composition
University of Minnesota
mart0167@gold.tc.umn.edu

OM Shanti Shanti Shanti
OM Peace Peace Peace

(5)
From: "Patrick Julian" <Landlawyer@msn.com>

No one has actually been able to determine the exact number of people who
attended, but generally the best approximation is 500,000. An excellent book
that answers your questions and others that may be responding to during your
course is "Barefoot in Babylon - The Creation of the Woodstock Music Festival,
1969" - Robert Stephen Spitz - The Viking Press, New York (1979)

----------

(6)
From: Dorothy Ann Wells <wellsd@is2.dal.ca>
On Tue, 4 Mar 1997, Colleen Magdalen Gavin wrote:

> First of all, exactly how many people were
> there? We have heard many different numbers from different sources.

Nobody knew. We heard different numbers then being bantered around. The
one that seemed to have the most credence was 300,000, but that was
probably high!
How
> did people eat? Did they bring food with them, get in local areas, or were
> there actual vendors there selling food like there would be today?

The Hog Farm set up a big kitchen and made food. They gave it away and
sold it, I think. Many people also brought their own. There may also have
been some vendors, but not in a major way, and if you were sitting in the
middle of the hill, it was a little difficulty to move around the area (to
say the last). Also,
> what other types of services did the producers of Woodstock provide?

The sanitary facilities were terrible, totally inadequate. The
porta-potties were filled to overflowing, with dirty needles lying on the
floors. I know people who hung out around the lake and swam in it, but we,
sitting in the middle of the crowd,
didn't know about the lake. There was no running water for washing, but
then, there was a lot of rain!

Again, > I thank you for your time.
>
Dorothy Wells