Re: Heads, Freaks, Timothy Leary and politics.
Allen Cohen (SFORACLE@HOOKED.NET)
Sun, 1 Feb 1998 12:37:20 -0800
I was editor of the San Francisco Oracle, the psychedelic underground
newspaper in the Haight Ashbury. One of the goals of the Oracle was to
intertwine the hippie movevment with the anti-war movement. We initiated a
meeting with Jerry Rubin, Stew Alpert, and Max Sheer and others to get
their participation in the Human Be In and gave them the idea to exorcise
the Pentagon. Jerry Rubin was turned on to LSD by members of the Oracle
group beginning his change to a more engaging theatrical politics. From at
least the Human Be In on there was a merger of antiwar politics and
expanded consciousmness idealogy in most of the counterculture from the
leaderlless leaders to the thousands of demonstators. There were of course
extremes: on the left there was bomb making revolutionaries and on the
right take it to the cave hippies. But neither movement should be
characterixzed by its extremes.
It should be noted that the drop out, communal aspect of the hippie
movement had political implications
Allen Cohen
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