San Francisco Diggers
In a capitalistic culture, the idea of giving away what you provide is the opposite of what you are all about. When Woodstock Ventures announced that the festival would be free, it was not as incomprehensible as some observers may have thought. Providing free services was a view that many had had and continued to have.
Billy Bragg‘s 1987 cover o f “The World Turned Upside Down” written in 1975 by Leon Rosselson.
San Francisco Diggers
Deep Roots
“In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, … but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another” Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1660)
Wherever a powerful elite exist, we will often find coexisting the idea of “leveling the field” so that all members of a society have an equal chance. The American Constitution contains that idea in its phrase, “to form a more perfect union.”
Capitalism is based on private ownership. Those who have, have. Those who have not can work for those who have. The relationship can be an equitable one as long as the haves provide safe working conditions and a fare wage.
San Francisco Diggers
British Civil Wars
In Britain, during the 1640s, forces composed of those who supported Parliament (the “people”) fought forces composed of those who supported King Charles (the monarchy). Charles was beheaded in January 1649 and England became a republic. His son, Charles II, became the king of a much weakened monarchy.
San Francisco Diggers
True Levellers
During the war, the Levellers were a faction supporting the a republican and democratic side, but more radical in their demands such as popular sovereignty, extended suffrage, equality before the law and religious tolerance.
The name “leveller” was used by their opponents in an attempt to associate the members with an earlier movement that actually leveled hedges that separated lands to open up the land to more people.
San Francisco Diggers
British Diggers
An even more radical branch of the Levellers emerged in April 1649 known as the True Levellers or Diggers. Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard led this faction. Their view was that the civil wars had been fought against the king and the great landowners and that with Charles’s execution, land should be made available for the very poor to cultivate.
San Francisco Diggers
San Francisco Diggers
The San Francisco Diggers began in August 1966 as a spinoff of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Billy Murcott had moved to San Francisco from New York and joined longtime friend Emmett Grogan and playwright Peter Berg to collaborate on various undertakings including the founding of the Diggers. [see Chronology for a much expanded Digger timeline]
The Diggers site describe themselves as “…one of the legendary groups in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, one of the world-wide epicenters of the Sixties Counterculture which fundamentally changed American and world culture. “
They evolved out of the counter-cultural fabric already woven into San Francisco’s culture. The group used street theater, art happenings, and in October 1966, began to distribute free food. Members went to the San Francisco Wholesale Produce Market and asked for whatever the sellers weren’t going to sell. Their first kitchens were their own apartments.
In 1967, new Digger Walt Reynolds started the first Free Bakery using equipment in the kitchen of the All Saints Church that its pastor, Fr. Leon Harris, had donated. Reynolds insisted on using whole grain wheat flour, which slowly helped spur the general spread of whole grain foods far beyond San Francisco.
Necessity being the mother of inventing, the lack of baking equipment led him to use tin coffee cans. And so, Digger Bread was born.
The Diggers created a free medical clinic.
San Francisco Diggers
Actors
R.G. Davis had created the San Francisco Mime Troupe. It’s mission was “…to create and produce theater that presents a working-class analysis of the events that shape our society, that exposes social and economic injustice, that demands revolutionary change on behalf of working people, and to present this analysis before the broadest possible audience with artistry and humor.”
The Diggers followed suit with street performances, eg, Trip Without A Ticket., the Death of Money Parade, Intersection Game, Invisible Circus, and Death of Hippie/Birth of Free.
San Francisco Diggers
Members
Actor Peter Coyote was a member of the Diggers. He said, “The Diggers didn’t stand for anything, but they were about personal authenticity and taking responsibility for your own visions.
Co-founder Peter Berg: The Diggers have several goals. One was the immediate one: to simply act out free. Put free in front of any word you could think of–a free phone box, free lunch, free district attorney, free judge, free policeman, free boy, free girl, whatever–especially free love. Love being the word that had been foisted on Haight-Ashbery. And the long term goal was to create a bomb, a situation in which the people who were refugees from American culture at the time…would be able to re-see exchanges between each other.”
Like much of the idealism of the 60s, the Diggers activities gradually lessened and their operations ceased. Their operations ceased, but the philosophy of leveling the field continues.
San Francisco Diggers
The World Turned Upside Down
In 1649
To St. George’s Hill
A ragged band they called the Diggers
Came to show the people’s will
They defied the landlords
They defied the laws
They were the dispossessed
Reclaiming what was theirs
“We come in peace,” they said
“To dig and sow
We come to work the lands in common
And to make the waste grounds grow
This earth divided
We will make whole
So it will be
A common treasury for all
The sin of property
We do disdain
No man has any right to buy and sell
The earth for private gain
By theft and murder
They took the land
Now everywhere the walls
Spring up at their command
They make the laws
To chain us well
The clergy dazzle us with heaven
Or they damn us into hell
We will not worship
The God they serve
The God of greed who feeds the rich
While poor men starve
We work we eat together
We need no swords
We will not bow to the masters
Or pay rent to the lords
We are free men
Though we are poor
You Diggers all stand up for glory
Stand up now
From the men of property
The orders came
They sent the hired men and troopers
To wipe out the Diggers’ claim
Tear down their cottages
Destroy their corn
They were dispersed
But still the vision lingers on
You poor take courage
You rich take care
This earth was made a common treasury
For everyone to share
All things in common
All people one
We come in peace
The orders came to cut them down
