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

“Thing” was a hippie word with shades of meaning. Thing could mean actionslike panhandling or playing the flute or organizing rallies to protest police brutalityagainst hippie street kids. Thing also meant ideas, referring to hippie notions of free loveor free living, or philosophical movements like existentialism. In The Electric Kool-AidAcid Test (1968), his exploration of the hippie culture in San Francisco, novelist TomWolfe explains that “Thing was the major abstract word in Haight-Ashbury. It couldmean anything, isms, life styles, habits, leanings, causes, sexual organs . . .” (13). Inhippie culture, to do one’s own thing meant to live freely without regard for the dominantcapitalist system, and explore one’s individual desires. It might mean disregarding localpanhandling ordinances to beg for food from passing tourists, or it might mean ignoringdrug laws by growing marijuana, or selling LSD to the local street kids. Living freedidn’t just refer to breaking out of capitalism, it also meant living free of mainstreamlaws and expectations.The Yippies took up the hippie idea of do-your-own-thing, using it to great effectin their public demonstrations. In Do It! Rubin explains that Yippie demonstrations donot require every participant to do the same thing. Rather, participants are able to choosewhat action best suits their own personal philosophy, and what action best responds totheir own particular political or social issue, also known as one’s “creeping meatball.”Rubin writes: “Everybody has his own creeping meatball—grades, debts, pimples.Yippies are a participatory movement. There are no ideological requirements to be ayippie” (84). By marrying the hippie concept of do-your-own-thing with the notion ofparticipatory democracy, the Yippies were able to create mass demonstrations that relied82