Back-to-the-land movement

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A back-to-the-land movement is any of various agrarian movements across different historical periods. The common thread is a call for people to take up smallholding and to grow food from the land with an emphasis on a greater degree of self-sufficiency, autonomy, and local community than found in a prevailing industrial or postindustrial way of life. There have been a variety of motives behind such movements, such as social reform, land reform, and civilian war efforts. Groups involved have included political reformers, counterculture hippies, and religious separatists.

The concept was popularized in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century by activist Bolton Hall, who set up vacant lot farming in New York City and wrote many books on the subject. The practice, however, was strong in Europe even before that time.

 

During World War II, when Great Britain faced a blockade by Nazi U-boats, a "Dig for Victory" campaign urged civilians to fight food shortages by growing vegetables on any available patch of land. In the USA between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s there was a revived back-to-the-land movement, with substantial numbers migrating from cities to rural areas.

The back-to-the-land movement has ideological links to distributism, a 1920s and 1930s attempt to find a "Third Way" between capitalism and socialism.

The movement throughout history

The American social commentator and poet Gary Snyder has related that there have been back-to-the-land population movements throughout the centuries, and throughout the world, largely due to the occurrence of severe urban problems and people's felt need to live a better life, often simply to survive.

The historian and philosopher of urbanism Jane Jacobs remarked in an interview with Stewart Brand that with the Fall of Rome city dwellers re-inhabited the rural areas of the region.

From another point of departure, Yi-Fu Tuan takes a view that such trends have often been privileged and motivated by sentiment. "Awareness of the past is an important element in the love of place," he writes, in his 1974 book Topophilia. Tuan writes that an appreciation of nature springs from wealth, privilege, and the antithetical values of cities. He argues that literature about land (and, subsequently, about going back to the land) is largely sentimental; "little," he writes, "is known about the farmer's attitudes to nature..." Tuan finds historical instances of the desire of the civilized to escape civilization in the Hellenistic, Roman, Augustan, and Romantic eras, and, from one of the earliest recorded myths, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The movement in North America

Regarding North America, many individuals and households have moved from urban or suburban circumstances to rural ones at different times; for instance, the economic theorist and land-based American experimenter Ralph Borsodi (author of Flight from the City) is said to have influenced thousands of urban-living people to try a modern homesteading life during the Great Depression. The New Deal town of Arthurdale, West Virginia was built in 1933 using the back-to-the-land ideas current at the time.

There was again a fair degree of interest in moving to rural land after World War II. In 1947, Betty MacDonald published what became a popular book, The Egg and I, telling her story of marrying and then moving to a small farm on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. This story was the basis of a successful comedy film starring Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray. 

The Canadian writer Farley Mowat says that many returned veterans after World War II sought a meaningful life far from the ignobility of modern warfare, regarding his own experience as typical of the pattern. In Canada, those who sought a life completely outside of the cities, suburbs, and towns frequently moved into semi-wilderness environs. 

But what made the later phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s especially significant was that the rural-relocation trend was sizable enough that it was identified in the American demographic statistics. 

Roots of this movement can perhaps be traced to some of Bradford Angier's books, such as At Home in the Woods (1951) and We Like it Wild (1963), Louise Dickinson Rich's We Took to the Woods (1942) and subsequent books, or perhaps even more compellingly to the 1954 publication of Helen and Scott Nearing's book, Living the Good Life. This book chronicles the Nearings' move to an older house in a rural area of Vermont and their self-sufficient and simple lifestyle. In their initial move, the Nearings were driven by the circumstances of the Great Depression and influenced by earlier writers, particularly Henry David Thoreau. Their book was published six years after A Sand County Almanac, by the ecologist and environmental activist Aldo Leopold, was published, in 1948. Influences aside, the Nearings had planned and worked hard, developing their homestead and life according to a twelve-point plan they had drafted.

The narrative of Phil Cousineau's documentary film Ecological Design: Inventing the Future asserts that in the decades after World War II, "The world was forced to confront the dark shadow of science and industry... There was a clarion call for a return to a life of human scale." By the late 1960s, many people had recognized that, leaving their city or suburban lives, they completely lacked any familiarity with such basics of life as food sources (for instance, what a potato plant looks like, or the act of milking a cow) — and they felt out of touch with nature, in general. While the back-to-the-land movement was not strictly part of the counterculture of the 1960s, the two movements had some overlap in participation.

Many people were attracted to getting more in touch with the basics just mentioned, but the movement could also have been fueled by the negatives of modern life: rampant consumerism, the failings of government and society, including the Vietnam War, and a perceived general urban deterioration, including a growing public concern about air and water pollution. Events such as the Watergate scandal and the 1973 energy crisis contributed to these views. Some people rejected the struggle and boredom of "moving up the company ladder." Paralleling the desire for reconnection with nature was a desire to reconnect with physical work. Farmer and author Gene Logsdon expressed the aim aptly as: "the kind of independence that defines success in terms of how much food, clothing, shelter, and contentment I could produce for myself rather than how much I could buy."

There was also a segment within the movement who already had a familiarity with rural life and farming, who already had skills, and who wanted land of their own on which they could demonstrate that organic farming could be made practical and economically successful.

Besides the Nearings and other authors writing later along similar lines, another influence from the world of American publishing was the unprecedented, vigorous, and intelligent Whole Earth Catalogs. Stewart Brand and a circle of friends and family began the effort in 1968, because Brand believed that there was a groundswell of biologists, designers, engineers, sociologists, organic farmers, and social experimenters who wished to transform civilization along lines that might be called "sustainable". Brand and cohorts created a catalog of "tools" - defined broadly to include useful books, design aids, maps, gardening implements, carpentry and masonry tools, metalworking equipment, and a great deal more.

Another important publication was The Mother Earth News, a periodical (originally on newsprint) that was founded a couple years after the Catalog. Ultimately gaining a large circulation, the magazine was focused on how-to articles, personal stories of successful and budding homesteaders, interviews with key thinkers, and the like. The magazine stated its philosophy was based on returning to people a greater measure of control of their own lives.

Many of the North American back-to-the-landers of the 1960s and 1970s made use of the Mother Earth News, the Whole Earth Catalogs and derivative publications. But as time went on, the movement itself drew more people into it, more or less independently of impetus from the publishing world.

Flower child

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Two hippies at Woodstock

 

Flower child originated as a synonym for hippie, especially among the idealistic young people who gathered in San Francisco and the surrounding area during the Summer of Love in 1967. It was the custom of "flower children" to wear and distribute flowers or floral-themed decorations to symbolize ideals of universal belonging, peace, and love. The mass media picked up on the term and used it to refer in a broad sense to any hippie. Flower children were also associated with the flower power political movement, which originated in ideas written by Allen Ginsberg in 1965.

Origins

A protester dressed as a flower child at the Occupy Wall Street event, September 24, 2011

 

The term originated in the mid-1960s in the wake of a film version of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine that depicted flower-bestowing, communal people of the future in a story characterized by antiwar themes. American political activists like Allen Ginsberg and Abbie Hoffman advocated the giving of flowers as a means of peaceful protest. Images of flower-wielding protesters at the 1967 Pentagon March, such as Marc Riboud's image of Jan Rose Kasmir titled The Ultimate Confrontation: The Flower and the Bayonet and Bernie Boston's Pulitzer prize-nominated photograph Flower Power, popularized the association of flowers with the counterculture movement of the 1970s. Hippies embraced the symbolism by dressing in clothing with embroidered flowers and vibrant colors, wearing flowers in their hair, and distributing flowers to the public, becoming known as flower children.

San Francisco

John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas wrote the song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" for his friend Scott McKenzie to promote the Monterey Pop Festival that Phillips was helping to organize. Released on May 13, 1967, the song's lyrics urged visitors to San Francisco to "wear some flowers in your hair", in keeping with the festival's billing as "three days of music, love, and flowers". The song was a popular hit, reaching number 4 on the music chart in the United States and number 1 in the United Kingdom and most of Europe, and became an unofficial anthem for hippies, flower power and the flower child concept.

Summer of Love

After the January 14, 1967 Human Be-In organized by artist Michael Bowen (among other things, announcements told participants to bring flowers), as many as 100,000 young people from all over the world (that is, United States and a few countries in Western Europe) flocked to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, Berkeley, and other Bay Area cities during the Summer of Love in search of different value systems and experiences. The Summer of Love became a watershed event in the development of a worldwide 1960s counterculture when newly recruited flower children returned home at the end of the summer, taking with them new styles, ideas, and behaviors and introducing them in all major cities of the U.S. and western Europe.

Social analysis

In his book, Prometheus Rising, the philosopher Robert Anton Wilson suggested that the flower children could be viewed in Jungian terms as a collective social symbol representing the mood of friendly weakness. In 1995, The Sekhmet Hypothesis extended Wilson's idea into other pop cultural trends with other youth movements being compared to the moods of hostile weakness, friendly strength and hostile strength.

Summer of Love

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Summer of Love

Part of the hippie movement
Spencer Dryden, Marty Balin, and Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane performing at the Fantasy Fair, early June 1967
Date	1967
Location	Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco
Participants	Possibly 100,000 people
Outcome	Calm resolution Inspiration for the Second Summer of Love

The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during mid-1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury. More broadly, the Summer of Love encompassed the hippie music, drug, anti-war, and free-love scene throughout the American west coast, and as far away as New York City.

Hippies, sometimes called flower children, were an eclectic group. Many were suspicious of the government, rejected consumerist values, and generally opposed the Vietnam War. A few were interested in politics; others were concerned more with art (music, painting, poetry in particular) or spiritual and meditative practices.

Background

Culture of San Francisco

Junction of Haight and Ashbury Streets, San Francisco, celebrated as the central location of the Summer of Love

Inspired by the Beat Generation of authors of the 1950s, who had flourished in the North Beach area of San Francisco, those who gathered in Haight-Ashbury during 1967 allegedly rejected the conformist and materialist values of modern life; there was an emphasis on sharing and community. The Diggers established a Free Store, and a Free Clinic where medical treatment was provided.

Human Be-In and inspiration

The prelude to the Summer of Love was a celebration known as the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park on January 14, 1967, which was produced and organized by artist Michael Bowen.

It was at this event that Timothy Leary voiced his phrase, "turn on, tune in, drop out". This phrase helped shape the entire hippie counterculture, as it voiced the key ideas of 1960s rebellion. These ideas included communal living, political decentralization, and dropping out. The term "dropping out" became popular among many high school and college students, many of whom would abandon their conventional education for a summer of hippie culture.

The event was announced by the Haight-Ashbury's hippie newspaper, the San Francisco Oracle:

A new concept of celebrations beneath the human underground must emerge, become conscious, and be shared, so a revolution can be formed with a renaissance of compassion, awareness, and love, and the revelation of unity for all mankind.

The gathering of approximately 30,000 at the Human Be-In helped publicize hippie fashions.

Planning

The term "Summer of Love" originated with the formation of the Council for the Summer of Love during the spring of 1967 as a response to the convergence of young people on the Haight-Ashbury district. The Council was composed of The Family Dog, The Straight Theatre, The Diggers, The San Francisco Oracle, and approximately twenty-five other people, who sought to alleviate some of the problems anticipated from the influx of people expected during the summer. The Council also assisted the Free Clinic and organized housing, food, sanitation, music and arts, along with maintaining coordination with local churches and other social groups.

Beginning

An anti-Vietnam War march in San Francisco on April 15, 1967

Youth arrivals

The increasing numbers of youth traveling to the Haight-Ashbury district alarmed the San Francisco authorities, whose public warning was that they would keep hippies away. Adam Kneeman, a long-time resident of the Haight-Ashbury, recalls that the police did little to help the hordes of newcomers, much of which was done by residents of the area.

College and high-school students began streaming into the Haight during the spring break of 1967 and the local government officials, determined to stop the influx of young people once schools ended for the summer, unwittingly brought additional attention to the scene, and a series of articles in local papers alerted the national media to the hippies' growing numbers. By spring, some Haight-Ashbury residents responded by forming the Council of the Summer of Love, giving the event a name.

Popularization

The media's coverage of hippie life in the Haight-Ashbury drew the attention of youth from all over America. Hunter S. Thompson termed the district "Hashbury" in The New York Times Magazine, and the activities in the area were reported almost daily.

The event was also reported by the counterculture's own media, particularly the San Francisco Oracle, the pass-around readership of which is thought to have exceeded a half-million people that summer, and the Berkeley Barb. 

The media's reportage of the "counterculture" included other events in California, such as the Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival in Marin County and the Monterey Pop Festival, both during June 1967. At Monterey, approximately 30,000 people gathered for the first day of the music festival, with the number increasing to 60,000 on the final day. Additionally, media coverage of the Monterey Pop Festival facilitated the Summer of Love as large numbers of hippies traveled to California to hear favorite bands such as The Who, Grateful Dead, the Animals, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Otis Redding, The Byrds, and Big Brother and the Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin.

"San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)"

Musician John Phillips of the band The Mamas & the Papas wrote the song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" for his friend Scott McKenzie. It served to promote both the Monterey Pop Festival that Phillips was helping to organize, and to popularize the flower children of San Francisco. Released on May 13, 1967, the song was an instant success. By the week ending July 1, 1967, it reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States, where it remained for four consecutive weeks. Meanwhile, the song charted at number one in the United Kingdom and much of Europe. The single is purported to have sold more than 7 million copies worldwide.

Events

New York City

In Manhattan, near the Greenwich Village neighborhood, during a concert in Tompkins Square Park on Memorial Day of 1967, some police officers asked for the music's volume to be reduced. In response, some people in the crowd threw various objects, and 38 arrests ensued. A debate about the "threat of the hippie" ensued between Mayor John Lindsay and Police Commissioner Howard Leary. After this event, Allan Katzman, the editor of the East Village Other, predicted that 50,000 hippies would enter the area for the summer.

California

Double that amount, as many as 100,000 young people from around the world, flocked to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, as well as to nearby Berkeley and to other San Francisco Bay Area cities, to join in a popularized version of the hippieism. A Free Clinic was established for free medical treatment, and a Free Store gave away basic necessities without charge to anyone who needed them.

The Summer of Love attracted a wide range of people of various ages: teenagers and college students drawn by their peers and the allure of joining an alleged cultural utopia; middle-class vacationers; and even partying military personnel from bases within driving distance. The Haight-Ashbury could not accommodate this influx of people, and the neighborhood scene quickly deteriorated, with overcrowding, homelessness, hunger, drug problems, and crime afflicting the neighborhood.

Use of drugs

Psychedelic drug use became common. Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir commented:

Haight Ashbury was a ghetto of bohemians who wanted to do anything—and we did but I don't think it has happened since. Yes there was LSD. But Haight Ashbury was not about drugs. It was about exploration, finding new ways of expression, being aware of one's existence.

After losing his untenured position as an instructor on the Psychology Faculty at Harvard University, Timothy Leary became a major advocate for the recreational use of psychedelic drugs. After taking psilocybin, a drug extracted from certain mushrooms that causes effects similar to those of LSD, Leary endorsed the use of all psychedelics for personal development. He often invited friends as well as an occasional graduate student to consume such drugs along with him and colleague Richard Alpert. 

On the West Coast, author Ken Kesey, a prior volunteer for a CIA-sponsored LSD experiment, also advocated the use of the drug. Soon after participating, he was inspired to write the bestselling novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Subsequently, after buying an old school bus, painting it with psychedelic graffiti and attracting a group of similarly-minded individuals he dubbed the Merry Pranksters, Kesey and his group traveled across the country, often hosting "acid tests" where they would fill a large container with a diluted low dose form of the drug and give out diplomas to those who passed their test. 

Along with LSD, cannabis was also much used during this period. However, as a result, crime increased among users because new laws were subsequently enacted to control the use of both drugs. The users thereof often had sessions to oppose the laws, including The Human Be-In referenced above as well as various "smoke-ins" during July and August, however, their efforts at repeal were unsuccessful.

Funeral and aftermath

Mock funeral notice

By the end of summer, many participants had left the scene to join the back-to-the-land movement of the late '60s, to resume school studies, or simply to "get a job". Those remaining in the Haight wanted to commemorate the conclusion of the event. A mock funeral entitled "The Death of the Hippie" ceremony was staged on October 6, 1967, and organizer Mary Kasper explained the intended message:

We wanted to signal that this was the end of it, to stay where you are, bring the revolution to where you live and don't come here because it's over and done with.

In New York, the rock musical drama Hair, which told the story of the hippie counterculture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, began Off-Broadway on October 17, 1967.

Legacy

Second Summer of Love

The "Second Summer of Love" (a term which generally refers to the summers of both 1988 and 1989) was a renaissance of acid house music and rave parties in Britain. The culture supported MDMA use and some LSD use. The art had a generally psychedelic emotion reminiscent of the 1960s.

40th anniversary

During the summer of 2007, San Francisco celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love by holding numerous events around the region, culminating on September 2, 2007, when over 150,000 people attended the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love concert, held in Golden Gate Park in Speedway Meadows. It was produced by 2b1 Multimedia and the Council of Light.

50th anniversary

Illumination of the Conservatory of Flowers on June 21, 2017

In 2016, 2b1 Multimedia and The Council of Light, once again, began the planning for the 50th Anniversary of the Summer of Love in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. By the beginning of 2017, the council had gathered about 25 poster artists, about 10 of whom submitted their finished art, but it was never printed. The council was also contacted by many bands and musicians who wanted to be part of this historic event, all were waiting for the date to be determined before a final commitment. New rules enforced by the San Francisco Parks and Recreational Department (PRD) prohibited the council from holding a free event of the proposed size. There were many events planned for San Francisco in 2017, many of which were 50th Anniversary-themed. However, there was no free concert. The PRD later hosted an event originally called “Summer Solstice Party,” but it was later renamed “50th Anniversary of the Summer of Love” two weeks before commencement. The event had fewer than 20,000 attendees from the local Bay Area.

In frustration, producer Boots Hughston put the proposal of what was by then to be a 52nd anniversary free concert into the form of an initiative intended for the November 6, 2018, ballot. The issue did not make the ballot; however, a more generic Proposition E provides for directing hotel tax fees to a $32 million budget for "arts and cultural organizations and projects in the city."

During the summer of 2017, San Francisco celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love by holding numerous events and art exhibitions. In Liverpool, the city has staged a 50 Summers of Love festival based on the 50th anniversary of the June 1, 1967, release of the album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, by The Beatles.

Teach-in

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach-in 

 

A teach-in is similar to a general educational forum on any complicated issue, usually an issue involving current political affairs. The main difference between a teach-in and a seminar is the refusal to limit the discussion to a specific time frame or a strict academic scope. Teach-ins are meant to be practical, participatory, and oriented toward action. While they include experts lecturing on their area of expertise, discussion and questions from the audience are welcome, even mid-lecture. "Teach-ins" were popularized during the U.S. government's involvement in Vietnam. The first teach-in, which was held overnight at the University of Michigan in March 1965, began with a discussion of the Vietnam War draft and ended in the early morning with a speech by philosopher Arnold Kaufman.

The first teach-in

The concept of the teach-in was developed by anthropologist Marshall Sahlins of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor during a meeting on March 17, 1965. Previously, around 50 faculty members had signed onto a one-day teaching strike to oppose the Vietnam War.  About a dozen of these faculty members, including William A. Gamson, Jack Rothman, Eric Wolf, Arnold S. Kaufman, and Roger Lind, reconsidered the strike and gathered to discuss alternative ways to protest the war in the face of strong opposition to the strike from the Michigan legislature and governor as well as the university president. The New York Times Magazine summed up how Sahlins arrived at the idea: "They say we're neglecting our responsibilities as teachers. Let's show them how responsible we feel. Instead of teaching out, we'll teach in—all night."

The term teach-in was a variant of another form of protest, the sit-in. Later variants included the die-in, bed-in, lie-in, and draft card turn-in.

This first teach-in was organized by faculty and Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor on March 24–25, 1965. Michigan governor George Romney and other politicians still opposed the event. The teach-in was attended by about 3,500 people and consisted of debates, lectures, movies, and musical events aimed at protesting the war. Michigan faculty members such as Anatol Rapoport and Charles Tilly were also involved. Women students who attended received special permission to stay out during the night. Bomb threats emptied the hall three times over the course of the teach-in, sending participants into the freezing cold, where they continued their activities. Other Michigan students in the Young Republicans organization picketed the event, protesting "anti-American policy." The teach-in ended the next morning, concluding with a 600-person rally on the steps of the library.

Subsequent antiwar teach-ins

UCLA Vietnam Day Committee leaflet promoting its 25 March 1966 antiwar teach-in

 

The Michigan teach-in received national press, including an article published in the March 25, 1965 issue of the New York Times. It went on to inspire 35 more teach-ins on college campuses within the next week. By the end of the year, there had been teach-ins at 120 campuses. Antiwar teach-ins were held until the end of the Vietnam War. These included:

• Columbia University, March 26, 1965
• University of Wisconsin, April 1, 1965
• University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College, and Temple University (coordinated), April 7, 1965
• Rutgers University, April 23, 1965
• National Teach-In (televised), Sheraton Park Hotel, Washington DC, May 15, 1965
• U.C. Berkeley, May 21–22, 1965
• Kent State University, spring 1965
• Harvard University, spring 1965
• Goucher College, spring 1965
• Marist College, spring 1965
• Principia College, spring 1965
• Flint Junior College, spring 1965
• Case Western University, spring 1965
• Berkeley, October 15, 1965
• UCLA, March 25, 1966
• New York University, March 30, 1971
• First Congregation Church, Washington, October 25–26, 1971
• Brandeis University, April 1975

Not all college students at the time were antiwar protesters, however. At many teach-ins, pro-war students showed up to protest or signed letters of support for college administration, including at Kent State University, the University of Wisconsin, and Yale University.

Teach-in at U.C. Berkeley

The largest Vietnam teach-in was held on May 21–22, 1965 at U.C. Berkeley. The event was organized by the newly formed Vietnam Day Committee (VDC), an organizing group founded by ex-grad student Jerry Rubin, Professor Stephen Smale, and others. The event was held on a playing field where Zellerbach Auditorium is now located. Over the course of 36 hours, an estimated 30,000 people attended the event. The State Department was invited by the VDC to send a representative, but declined. UC Berkeley professors Eugene Burdick and Robert A. Scalapino, who had agreed to speak in defense of President Johnson's handling of the war, withdrew at the last minute. An empty chair was set aside on the stage with a sign reading "Reserved for the State Department" taped to the back.

Participants in the event included Dr. Benjamin Spock; veteran socialist leader Norman Thomas; novelist Norman Mailer; independent journalist I. F. Stone and historian Isaac Deutscher. Other speakers included: California Assemblymen Willie Brown, William Stanton and John Burton; Dave Dellinger (political activist); James Aronson (National Guardian magazine); philosopher Alan Watts; comedian Dick Gregory; Paul Krassner (editor, The Realist); M.S. Arnoni (philosopher, writer, political activist); Edward Keating (publisher, Ramparts Magazine); Felix Greene (author and film producer); Isadore Zifferstein (psychologist); Stanley Scheinbaum (Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions); Paul Jacobs (journalist and anti-nuclear activist); Hal Draper (Marxist writer and a socialist activist); Levi Laud (Progressive Labor Movement); Si Casady (California Democratic Council); George Clark (British Committee of 100/Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament); Robert Pickus (Turn Toward Peace); Bob Parris and Bob Moses (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee); Jack Barnes (National Chair of the Young Socialist Alliance); Mario Savio (Free Speech Movement); Paul Potter (Students for a Democratic Society); and Mike Meyerson (national head of the Du Bois Clubs of America). British philosopher and pacifist Bertrand Russell sent a taped message to the teach-in.

Faculty participants included Professor Staughton Lynd (Yale); Professor Gerald Berreman; and Professor Aaron Wildavsky. Performers included folk singer Phil Ochs; the improv group The Committee; and others. The proceedings were recorded and broadcast, many of them live, by Berkeley FM station KPFA. Excerpts from the speeches by Lynd, Wildavsky, Scheer, Potter, Krassner, Parris, Spock, Stone and Arnoni were released the following year as an LP by Folkways Records, FD5765. An online archive, including recordings and transcripts of many of the participants, is maintained by the Library of the University of California, Berkeley.

Scrutiny and surveillance

As part of the antiwar movement at the time, teach-ins were regarded by the FBI (then directed by J. Edgar Hoover) and the Lyndon B. Johnson administration as potentially dangerous to national interests. At a teach-in organized by the Universities Committee on Problems of War and Peace, 13 undercover agents attended and identified students, faculty, speakers, and activists by name and affiliation, passing the information to the FBI.

A Senate study, "The Anti-Vietnam Agitation and the Teach-In Movement," was prepared in October 1965 by the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws. This report stated, "In reality, the great majority of teach-ins (there were a few notable exceptions to this rule) have had absolutely nothing in common with the procedures of fair debate or the process of education. In practice, they were a combination of an indoctrination session, a political protest demonstration, an endurance contest, and a variety show." The study claimed that teach-ins were a form of Communist activity, noting that "people of known Communist background were frequently involved."

Legacy of antiwar teach-ins

"[The] stroke of genius out there in Michigan ... put the debate on the map for the whole academic community. And you could not be an intellectual after those teach-ins and not think a lot and express yourself and defend your ideas about Vietnam." —Carl Oglesby, organizer at the 1965 University of Michigan teach-in and then-president of SDS, quoted in The War Within, Tom Wells

"The 1965 teach-ins were significant, in fact, more because of their very organization than for their novelty or the extent of student protest. They legitimized dissent at the outset of the war. The vacuum of understanding which they exposed created a market for information. … Moreover, the 1965 teach-ins served to identify a coterie of academic experts who challenged national policy, helped to make connections among them, and established them as an alternative source of information and understanding." —An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era, Charles DeBenedetti

"In raising anti-war consciousness in the nation as a whole, far beyond the academic community, the teach-ins were an historic turning point in the politics of the Vietnam War. ... This liberal bias of the teach-in movement, however, was one of the too-many-reasons-to-recount-here why the academic community lost its leadership role as fast as it had gained it. Part of the problem was that as soon as the teach-in movement politicized the counterculture, the latter began to counterculturalize the politics. Hence the tension between the political and the carnival in the student left as it moved from liberal protest to radical resistance and campus violence... Alienated by the left students’ tactics, the largely liberal anti-war public reverted to traditional modes of protest, although the marches and demonstrations were now massive in scale, varied in social composition and increasingly joined by establishment politicians." —Marshall Sahlins in Anthropology Today, 2009

Teach-ins were one activity of the New Left. Students, faculty, and other activists involved in the teach-ins would go on to organize other antiwar protests, including the 20,000-person rally at the Washington Monument in April 1965. Teach-ins have continued through the decades since 1965 in response to other national crises, including climate change.

Modern events

In the 1990s activists began a new series of teach-ins focused on the corporatization of education and on corporate power generally. These began under the name of the 'National Teach-Ins on Corporations, Education, and Democracy' in 1996 and continued on as the 'Democracy Teach-Ins' (DTIs) of 1998, 1999, 2001, and 2002. Leading activist and intellectual figures of the 1990s, including Cornel West, Medea Benjamin, Richard Grossman, Naomi Klein, and Vandana Shiva spoke at the Democracy Teach-Ins, which were coordinated in their first years by Ben Manski. The Democracy Teach-ins were coordinated on hundreds of campuses at once, and were intended to build campus-based networks of pro-democracy activists. The 1999 Democracy Teach-Ins, in particular, played a role in mobilizing students for the 1999 Seattle WTO protests; the 2002 teach-ins played a similar role in preparing for the 2003 national Books Not Bombs student strike. After 1998, the DTIs became a project of the campus syndicalist movement 180/Movement for Democracy and Education.

Teach-ins have more recently been used by environmental educators. The ‘2010 Imperative: A Global Emergency Teach-in’ was held on February 20, 2007 at the New York Academy of Science and organized by Architecture 2030, led by architect Edward Mazria and viewable online through a webcast.

The teach-in model was also used by a ‘Focus the Nation’ event January 31, 2008, to raise awareness about climate change. A 'National Teach-in' was held in February 2009, also addressing global climate change.

In 2011, Occupy Wall Street movement began using teach-ins to educate people about the inherent problems of capitalism.

In 2015 and 2016, Black Lives Matter teach-ins were held across the United States, including in Ithaca, New York; the Pratt Institute; Framingham State University; and Greenville, South Carolina.

In 2017 and 2018, the University of Michigan ran a number of free online “Teach-Outs” on topics such as free speech, fake news, hurricanes, and science communications. Some of the Teach-Outs were hosted on Coursera.

In 2018, the University of Michigan and the University of Notre Dame partnered to offer a series of teach-ins and an online "Teach-Out" on Puerto Rico's hurricane recovery efforts.

In 2018, Stanford University held a teach-in for gun-violence in schools.

Great Law of Peace

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Law_of_Peace 

 

Flag of the Iroquois

 

Among the Haudenosaunee (the "Six Nations," comprising the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora peoples) the Great Law of Peace is the oral constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy. The law was written on wampum belts, conceived by Dekanawidah, known as the Great Peacemaker, and his spokesman Hiawatha. The original five member nations ratified this constitution near modern-day Victor, New York, with the sixth nation (the Tuscarora) being added in 1722. 

The laws were first recorded and transmitted not in written language, but by means of wampum symbols that conveyed meaning. In a later era it was translated into English and various other accounts exist. The Great Law of Peace is presented as part of a narrative noting laws and ceremonies to be performed at prescribed times. The laws called a constitution are divided into 117 articles. The united Iroquois nations are symbolized by an eastern white pine tree, called the Tree of Peace. Each nation or tribe plays a delineated role in the conduct of government.

Attempts to date the founding of the Iroquois Confederacy have focused on a reported solar eclipse, which many scholars identify as the one that occurred in 1451 AD, though some debate exists with support for 1190.

Narrative, Constitution, and Ceremony

The narratives of the Great Law exist in the languages of the member nations, so spelling and usages vary. William N. Fenton observed that it came to serve a purpose as a social organization inside and among the nations, a constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy or League, ceremonies to be observed, and a binding history of peoples. Fenton also observed some nine common points focusing more simply on the narrative story line, though Christopher Vecsey identified 22 points shared across some two dozen versions of the narrative or parts of the narrative both direct and indirect:

Narrative

1. The Migration and Separation of the People (pre-history of the area)
2. The Birth and Growth of Deganawida
3. The Journey to the Mohawks, the Situation, and the Mission Explained
4. The Mother of Nations Accepts Deganawida's Message
5. The Cannibal Converts
6. The Prophets Prove Their Power
7. Tadadaho the Wizard Prevents Peace
8. Hiawatha's Relatives Are Killed
9. Hiawatha Mourns and Quits Onondaga
10. Hiawatha Invents Wampum
11. Hiawatha Gives the Mohawks Lessons in Protocol
12. Deganawida Consoles Hiawatha
13. Scouts Travel to Tadadaho
14. Deganawida and Hiawatha Join Oneidas, Cayugas, and Senecas to Mohawks
15. The Nations March to Tadadaho, Singing the Peace Hymn
16. Deganawida and Hiawatha Transform Tadadaho

Constitution of the Confederacy and social order of the member peoples

1. Deganawida and Hiawatha Establish Iroquois Unity and Law
2. Deganawida and Hiawatha Establish League Chiefs and Council Polity
3. The Confederacy Takes Symbolic Images
4. The League Declares Its Sovereignty (the Constitutional laws of the Confederacy)

Ceremony

1. The Condolence Maintains the Confederacy (a sequence of ceremonies for grieving over a deceased chief and appointing a new one)
2. Deganawida Departs

Barbara Mann has gathered versions featuring conflicting but harmonized elements (who does what varies, but what happens is more consistent than not), or stories that tell distinct elements not shared in other versions, into a narrative she includes in the Encyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee published in 2000.

Published accounts

Cayuga

An untranslated version has been posted by the Smithsonian Institution. Another is mentioned being presented to Michael Foster.

Mohawk

There are several Mohawk versions that made it into print and several of those were printed more than once. Horatio Hale published one in 1883 he traced somewhat earlier which was reprinted by William N. Fenton, following Arthur Caswell Parker, in 1968. J. N. B. Hewitt published one in 1928 based on a much earlier fragment. Joseph Brant and John Norton commented on details of the narrative as early as 1801 and published since. Dayodekane, better known as Seth Newhouse, arranged for some versions that were published differently near 1900 - first from 1885 included in a book by Paul A. W. Wallace in 1948, and a second version published in 1910 by Arthur C. Parker. Fenton discusses Newhouse' contributions in a paper in 1949. Wallace also published a separate book without stating his source in 1946 called The Iroquois book of Life - White Roots of Peace, which was later revised and extended with endorsements by Iroqouis chiefs and Iroquoian historian John Mohawk in 1986 and 1994.

Oneida

Oneida versions have been noted in various places. One from New York, has been echoed/summarized by the Milwaukee Public Museum. Another has been published by the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin in two sections. Another account is also reported. Paula Underwood, an oral historian who traces her history to an Oneida ancestor, was also related to Benjamin Franklin. Her familial oral history describing Shenandoah's close relationship and collaboration with Benjamin Franklin on the writing of the US Constitution was published in 1997.

Onondaga

Parts of Horatio Hale's work The Iroquois Book of Rites is said to have Onondaga sources. J. N. B. Hewitt recorded Chief John Buck and included his presentation in 1892. John Arthur Gibson shared several versions that have gathered notable awareness among scholars like Fenton and others. His first version was in 1899. Gibson then participated in a collective version with many Chiefs from the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve in 1900 which was reprinted a number of times: first in 1910/1, and then included in another work. A final version was offered to Alexander Goldenweiser but wasn't finished translated and published until 1992 by Hanni Woodbury.

Seneca

Newspaper editor William Walker Canfield published a book The Legends of the Iroquois in 1902 based on found notes he was given purporting to be written from comments of Cornplanter reportedly to an employee of the surveyor company Holland Land Company, perhaps John Adlum, known friend of Cornplanter. It is the primary source of the mention of a solar eclipse. Another Seneca version was given by Deloe B. Kittle to Parker and was published in 1923.

Tuscarora

The Tuscarora joined the Iroquois Confederacy in 1722. There is a version of the Great Law of Peace attributed by Wallace "Mad Bear" Anderson of the Tuscarora published in 1987. However, there is a claim this was borrowed.

Influence on the United States Constitution

The Great Law of Peace and the Haudenosaunee are honored on the reverse of the 2010 Sacagawea dollar

 

Some historians, including Donald Grinde of the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, have claimed that the democratic ideals of the Gayanashagowa provided a significant inspiration to Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and other framers of the U.S. Constitution. They contend that the federal structure of the U.S. constitution was influenced by the living example of the Iroquois confederation, as were notions of individual liberty and the separation of powers. Grinde, Bruce Johansen and others also identify Native American symbols and imagery that were adopted by the nascent United States, including the American bald eagle and a bundle of arrows. Their thesis argues the U.S. constitution was the synthesis of various forms of political organization familiar to the founders, including the Iroquois confederation.

Franklin circulated copies of the proceedings of the 1744 Treaty of Lancaster among his fellow colonists; at the close of this document, the Six Nations leaders offer to impart instruction in their democratic methods of government to the English. Franklin's Albany Plan is also believed to have been influenced by his understanding of Iroquois government. John Rutledge of South Carolina, delegate to the Constitutional Convention, is said to have read lengthy tracts of Six Nations law to the other framers, beginning with the words "We, the people, to form a union, to establish peace, equity, and order..." In October 1988, the U.S. Congress passed Concurrent Resolution 331 to recognize the influence of the Iroquois Constitution upon the American Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The extent of the influence of Six Nations law on the U.S. Constitution is disputed by other scholars. Haudenosaunee historian Elisabeth J. Tooker has pointed to several differences between the two forms of government, notably that all decisions were made by a consensus of male chiefs who gained their position through a combination of blood descent and selection by female relatives, that representation was on the basis of the number of clans in the group rather than the size or population of the clans, that the topics discussed were decided by a single tribe. Tooker concluded there is little resemblance between the two documents, or reason to believe the Six Nations had a meaningful influence on the American Constitution, and that it is unclear how much impact Canasatego's statement at Lancaster actually had on the representatives of the colonies. Stanford University historian Jack N. Rakove argued against any Six Nations influence, pointing to lack of evidence in U.S. constitutional debate records, and examples of European antecedents for democratic institutions.

Journalist Charles C. Mann has noted other differences between The Great Law of Peace and the original U.S. Constitution, including the original Constitution's allowing denial of suffrage to women, and majority rule rather than consensus. Mann argues that the early colonists' interaction with Native Americans and their understanding of Iroquois government did influence the development of colonial society and culture and the Suffragette movement, but stated that "the Constitution as originally enacted was not at all like the Great Law."

Example articles

§37: There shall be one war chief from each nation, and their duties shall be to carry messages for their chiefs, and to take up arms in case of emergency. They shall not participate in the proceedings of the Council of the League, but shall watch its progress and in case of an erroneous action by a chief, they shall receive the complaints of the people and convey the warnings of the women to him. The people who wish to convey messages to the chiefs of the League shall do so through the war chief of their nation. It shall always be his duty to lay the cases, questions, and propositions of the people before the council of the League.

§58: Any Chief or other person who submit to Laws of a foreign people are alienated and forfeit all claim in the Five Nations.

§101: It shall be the duty of the appointed managers of the Thanksgiving festivals to do all that is needful for carrying out the duties of the occasions. The recognized festivals of Thanksgiving shall be the Midwinter Thanksgiving, the Maple or Sugar-Making Thanksgiving, the Raspberry Thanksgiving, the Strawberry Thanksgiving, the Corn Planting Thanksgiving, the Corn Hoeing Thanksgiving, The Little Festival of Green Corn, the Great Festival of Ripe Corn, and the Complete Thanksgiving for the Harvest. Each nation's festivals shall be held in their Longhouses.

§107: A certain sign shall be known to all the people of the Five Nations which shall denote that the owner or occupant of a house is absent. A stick or pole in a slanting or leaning position shall indicate this and be the sign. Every person not entitled to enter the house by right of living within upon seeing such a sign shall not enter the house by day or by night, but shall keep as far away as his business will permit.