Revisiting the Summer of Love, Rethinking the Counter-Culture

I will begin with the big news for the ones who don’t know it yet: Northwestern University has an extension building in the most convenient place in downtown San Francisco: Montgomery 44!

http://www.engage.northwestern.edu/sfconference/

My interest in learning about the counter-cultures of the Bay Area began many years ago (I often jokingly explain it as being a former hippie in a previous life since there is not much of a logical explanation). I was given once-in-a-lifetime chance to explore each and every corner of San Francisco in the summer of 2014 thanks to Donna Culpepper and Tish Kronen’s generous house offerings for this curious mind with light pockets (no money!). I don’t think I have ever felt so at home anywhere else as I did in San Francisco.

My return to the Bay Area during the academic year 2016-17 as a visiting scholar in Berkeley coincided with the 50^th Anniversary of Summer of Love. I was lucky to attend the Wednesday noon lectures at BAMPFA (my mid-life crash course on countercultures)delivered by several renowned local activists, artists, and academics

http://arts.berkeley.edu/thinking-through-the-arts-and-design-at-berkeley-california-countercultures/

who were all struggling to create new worlds, explaining the old ones within the shell of their personal, localized cosmos. I don’t think I can handle hearing another LSD appraisal once 2017 is over! 😆Apparently, whoever tested it got connected to the cosmos in innumerable ways and got enlightened one way or another. 
As a first impression, some hippies looked healthier and more balanced than the other ones around but it is hard to tell who benefited from what and for how long. The founder of Haight Asbury Free Medical Clinic Dr. David Smith shared with us very personal details and connected them to his decades-long commitment to helping people and their addiction recoveries in San Francisco. He shared the panel entitled "From Punishment to Protection" with Dougles Styles (Huckleberry Youth Programs) and Joe Wilson, the executive director of  from Hospitality House, who was once a shelter resident in the same building. http://hospitalityhouse.org/new-executive-director-joe-wilson/
Very inspiring stories! 

The Conference Lectures have been very satisfactory for me. However, some participants were very sensitive emotionally about their time as hippies (including the members of some communes /hippie farms) so they were/are not necessarily ready to be criticized by a bunch of academics who are trained to be skeptical about every aspect of the topic that they analyze. The panel I attended (“rural communes and back to the land”) proved disappointing exactly because of this attitude. As outsiders to and analysts of the era, we had many questions for the panelists that were left unanswered, or simply avoided! “I was there so I know it” attitude will not take the former hippies further in today’s agenda, it is good to be open to criticism. Denying forms of discrimination will not work, I am sorry, especially if you have people who experienced discrimination first-hand (e.g., one gay person who wanted to spend some time in a commune was insulted while working in the kitchen by two older members of the commune).  Turning the blind eye and romanticizing or defending everything they did at the time will disappoint the audience who were majorly academics or had graduate degrees. Intersectionality is the catch phrase (I love it!)  of our times today and won't let you get away so easily. Remember it’s been 50 years since the summer of love? Perfect time to look back in a cool manner and introduce the person then to the person you have become today.

Organizers did an excellent job so thank you. Superb location, outstanding plenary talks. I will be happy to attend if I am around the next time. Nobody gave a paper on Janis, which I see as a sign😊 for future.