Shawyer dissertation May 2008 final version - The University of ...

jailed activists (Morrison 287).Yippie Robin Morgan remembers walking into the YouthInternational Party offices for the first time: “it seemed like affirming, myth-making, justbeautiful!” she says. “It was . . . a real feeling of communitas” (Babcox 87). And thehippies had previously sought communitas at be-ins, peaceful gatherings of hippiecommunities in places like public parks. In The Human Be-In (1970), sociologist HelenSwick Perry recalls the “Human Be-In” of 14 January, 1967, at Golden Gate Park in SanFrancisco, as a religious experience of human connection. She writes that “it was difficultto sort out what happened. It was a religious rite in which nothing particular happened.And yet it was a day that marked for me at least the end of something and the beginningof something else. There was clearly a renewal of the spirit of man, unplanned, nonpolitical”(88). 58 Even though she was a “weekend hippie,” and spent much of her timeobserving, rather than participating in, hippie culture, nevertheless Perry was moved bythe hippie community experience.The Yip-In performance event built on these separate experiences and createdcommunitas among its disparate participants. Those who partook in the celebration felt acomparable “renewal of spirit” that Perry experienced at the “Human Be-In.” AbbieHoffman remembers the sense of community the carnival atmosphere produced with a“Wow!” of excitement (“Freedom” 48). Even as observers to the action, reporters Jezerand Lennox felt similarly intense emotions: Jezer reported a feeling of peace (“YIP” 8),while Lennox recalls the sensation as “beautiful, fantastic” (2). These moments of58 The Human Be-In was a do-your-own-thing event at which hippies gathered to picnic, hear poetry byAllen Ginsberg, drink wine, consume drugs, listen to Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, and buyrefreshments from the Hells Angels mobile food stand (Perry 85-87; McWilliams 72). The Hells Angelsmotorcycle gang was involved in the West coast hippie and psychedelic drug cultures.144