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TitleHaight/Ashbury citizens retaliate

Author

Publisher

Place

Year

Date 11/10/1967

Date 2

Publication

Volume

Issue

Page(s)

MediumBroadside

DimensionLegal

Extent

Imprint

Collation

CatalogDR-001a/b

CollectionSOLA-x

Cit. No.

Keywords

Trans. Title

Section

Group

Sub-Group

Series

Folder

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Notes

This item is two legal-size sheets, each a broadside. Since Anderson included the second sheet with his archive (at Bancroft Library) it's likely both sheets are ComCo even though there is no ComCo imprint. See CC-268.

Abstract

This two-part sheet reports on the police arrest of four Diggers after they broke up the W.C. Fields movie night at the Digger free store on Frederick Street, “terrorizing” a gathering of longhairs and children. The accompanying poster turns the incident into street theater, proposing a comic but pointed “Non-Violent Counteroffensive” in which children armed with water pistols would squirt police whenever they got out of their cars. The sheet captures the early Digger gift for converting repression into play, and play into public resistance: a child’s toy becomes a weapon of ridicule against armed authority. It is also a sharp example of how quickly the Haight could answer police intimidation with anonymous, collective, neighborhood-wide wit.

Full Text

## Left sheet

HAIGHT/ASHBURY CITIZENS RETALIATE

San Francisco’s fairest illegally arrested four Diggers
Sunday night, January 8th, after breaking up a peaceful home
movie party and terrorizing 75 assorted longhairs and a dozen
little kids. The next morning, copies of the enclosed poster
appeared in windows and on boards all through the Haight/Ash-
bury district. That afternoon local merchants began distributing
free water pistols.

The anonymous organizers call the water gun campaign,
"Non-Violent Counteroffensive Number One/67." Results will be
duly reported in Establishment media.

## Right sheet / poster

WHAT WOULD BE
THE RESULT IF
ALL THE LITTLE little
KIDS USED THIER
WATER PISTOLS
TO SQUIRT THE
COPS IN THE LOWER
ABDOMEN,
WHENEVER THEY
GET OUT OF THEIR
CARS?

(A WATER PISTOL COSTS
AS LITTLE AS 19¢.
DO YOU KNOW ANY LITTLE KIDS?
CAN A LITTLE KID SHOOT A FLY
AT TEN PACES? KIDS DIG WATER
PISTOLS. COPS DISLIKE WET PANTS. IF YOU
WERE A COP, WOULD YOU GET OUT OF YOUR CAR TO GET SQUIRTED?)

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The Digger Archives is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Cite As: (Courtesy of) The Digger Archives (www.diggers.org) / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 / All other uses must receive permission.
Contact: curator at diggers dot org.