Articles By...
and About the Diggers
From the beginning, the Diggers attracted media attention, despite (or perhaps due to)
their early success at remaining virtually anonymous. The early articles and notices that
appeared announced some of the first Digger events in the fall and winter of 1966: the
Death of Money parade; the Intersection game; the New Year's Wail. Some of these notices
appeared in the Berkeley Barb, the premier underground paper in the Bay Area. Others
appeared in the San Francisco Oracle which was the Haight-Ashbury community's answer to
the Barb and other more political papers. Even more tidbits can be gleaned from the pages
of the "aboveground" press. The San Francisco Chronicle's jazz and pop music
critic, Ralph Gleason, whose weekly articles are a good documentary of the "new
community's" development, was especially sympathetic to the Artists Liberation Front
and later the Diggers.
I will try to present these articles in chronological order, but the order in which I
transcribe them will be somewhat peripatetic. I would suggest that regular readers use the
What's New page to find additions to this collection as
they become available.
The early articles that appeared in the Berkeley Barb reported the first public acts
the Diggers carried out in the Haight-Ashbury in the fall of 1966. What is most
interesting is that members of the Diggers wrote several of these articles. "The
Ideology of Failure" was the first time the phrase "do your thing" appeared
in print. This article represents the Diggers' ideas in full bloom. Here we see the reason
the Diggers came to loggerheads with the Artists Liberation Front that summer. We also
watch as they throw down the gauntlet of Free to the new community in the article,
"In Search of A Frame." And we read the formulation of the Diggers philosophy:
"To Show Love is to fail. To love to fail is the Ideology of Failure. Show Love. Do
your thing. Do it for FREE. Do it for Love. We can't fail."
- "Burocops Proboscis Probes Digger Bag,"
Berkeley Barb, Oct. 21, 1966.
- "Delving the Diggers," by George
Metevsky,
Berkeley Barb, Oct. 21, 1966.
- "Diggers New Game; The Frame," Berkeley Barb,
Nov. 4, 1966.
- "The Ideology of Failure," Berkeley Barb, Nov.
18, 1966.
- "In Search of a Frame," Berkeley Barb, Nov.
25, 1966.
- "In The Clear," San Francisco Chronicle, Nov.
30, 1966.
1967
1968
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