This six-page Haight/Ashbury Newsletter of August 19, 1967, written by Chester Anderson, reads as both street report and factional document from the breakup of the Haight underground. Issued under the Communication Company imprint, it moves through the split between Com/Co and the Diggers, the forced appropriation of Com/Co’s mimeograph equipment, the murder of Shobol, the atmosphere of retaliation and suspicion that followed, police pressure, speed, paranoia, and the steady unraveling of the Haight scene. The tone is immediate, aggrieved, and insiderly, mixing reportage, accusation, and political interpretation. What emerges is not the utopian Haight of popular memory but a movement world breaking apart over control of resources, authority, and the meaning of “free,” with Anderson writing from the wounded edge of that fracture. |