The “Hippie” Label & Activism

From the time that hippie became a common term applied to a recognizable but mysterious phenomenon, the question of the political behavior of hippies became significant. The general snap conclusion was quite upsetting to most student activists. Hippie, to them, meant drop-out, from political behavior as well as everything else. Many, especially in the East, saw the frustrations of anti-war activity driving young activists into the nirvana of acid hippyism, whence no man returneth to the picket line.

It is true that many stone hippies exhibit no recognizable political behavior – other than their lifestyle itself. The migration from activism into the hippie thing is steady and well-defined. But the conclusion that hippies are a-political in general is not true. We have lost touch, testing political activeness with the litmus of old vocabularies. Future histories of this change will say, for example, that the first (and so far the only) significant community organizing done in our white middle class has been the handiwork of the hippies. And even by the most standard indices of attitude and behavior, hippies tend to be more political than the run of their peers-so much so that Carl Davidson, a central figure in Students for a Democratic Society, has suggested that perhaps three-fourths of SDS’s national membership can be roughly classed as hippies.

From Break Through at Berkeley: The Anatomy of a New Political style by Michael Rossman, Center Magazine May 1968

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