Aaron Millar talks to some of the summer of love’s big characters about the 60s utopian dream and why it matters in current political times
The summer of love was all about revolution. It was 1967. Protests against the Vietnam war were escalating, the civil rights movement was on the rise and the flower power generation, fuelled by free love, cheap LSD and psychedelic rock’n’roll, was in full bloom.
It was a good time to be young.It was 50 years ago, in Haight-Ashbury, the epicentre of alternative living in 60s America, that it all came spectacularly together in what would become one of the largest countercultural movements in history.
Our world is beautiful.
“Haight-Ashbury was the first living theatre,” says actor Peter Coyote, a founding member of the anarchist theatre group The Diggers that was active at the time. “People could dance out their new identities liberated from personal history and the stories of who they were. Just like early Californians coming to the gold rush, they could announce themselves as something and become it.”
It was a magical time: a joining of progressive artists, activists and musicians who were experimenting with new forms of community, personal freedom and artistic expression. Then the media picked up on it. When word got out that…
The post Resparking a revolution: 1960s radical thinkers on why their ideals are more relevant than ever appeared first on FeedBox.