This event marked an important moment of mutual recognition between the Beat generation and the Diggers. The Digger street sheet “term paper” (DP-012) stated that “gregory corso’s poem POWER was the sole reason behind the concept of the Diggers: autonomy.” Here the Beats recognized the Diggers as carrying forward something they themselves had helped open up. In the period that followed, a number of Beat poets, writers, and artists became involved in Digger activities, including Gregory Corso, Lenore Kandel, Lew Welch, Kirby Doyle, Diane di Prima, and Richard Brautigan.

This flyer announces a San Francisco Poets Benefit for the Diggers, held in North Beach on January 12, 1967, in the charged days around the Human Be-In. Emmett Grogan later recalled that the reading began as a gesture of recognition from the poets—among them Richard Brautigan, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and others—toward the Diggers’ free work in the Haight. Although the event was advertised as a “benefit,” the Diggers refused the usual logic of fundraising: when a hat was passed, Emmett and Peter Coyote turned the money back over to the bartender to buy drinks for everyone until it ran out. In Grogan’s telling, that was the point: “The only type of benefit that could be thrown for the Diggers is one where everything is free.” (See Ringolevio, p. 277)