Full text articles by and about the Diggers (2)
Anon., unpublished article, ca. April 18, 1967
Note from editor: Rev. Leon Harris sent me this
article in 1974. He had kept it in his files on the Diggers and
copied it for me. I don't know who the author was. It deals with
the group who set up the Digger office at the All Saints Church.
By April, 1967, there were several factions of Diggers operating
autonomously in the Haight-Ashbury. It was not unusual to find
Diggers who had only come onto the scene in the spring who were
outside the circle (and unknown to some) of the original Diggers.
A Communication Company sheet (written by one of the original
group) talks about the situation in this article. See: about time we started doin'
our own livin' and dyin'. This article is interesting
because it sheds light on the fundamental problem of organization
among the Diggers: the quandary of any anarcho group. Though the
"O'Donnell plan" sounds (and must have sounded to many)
a particularly "straight" solution, it does foretell
the movement into communes and collectives in the coming months
and years. —en
The San Francisco Diggers have split, both literally and
figuratively. As a result, they, like the thousands of migrant
guests whom they serve, are on the streets.
As of April 18, 1967, the office at All Saints Church
(Episcopal) is closed. The reason: disorganization. There was no
leader. Whoever happened to come in and sit behind the desk
assumed control until someone else happened in to sit. No one
knew what anyone else was doing and no one would assume the
responsibility to guide the vast undertaking. In the words of
Tommy O'Donnell, a possible future Organization Chairman,
"The Diggers is an unorganized organization..."
Why are they out? They were not asked to leave. The choice to
stay was given, but who would accept the responsibility for
maintaining a bit of order. The Church had requested that no
litter be allowed to accumulate or be scattered, that no one be
allowed to "crash" (sleep) in the office, and that the
kitchen and recreation areas be cleaned after use. Who would
guarantee these things? No one, that's who. And so they all just
packed up and went away.
On April 20, Reverend Leon P. Harris, the minister, leaves
San Francisco to return May 26. If the Diggers wish to return to
the offices offered by the All Saints Church, perhaps after May
26 they will be able to do so.
Mr. O'Donnell and his associate Mr. Mike Donnellsen say they
have a plan. It calls for six permanent volunteer members acting
as organizers, directing the efforts of the many other
volunteers. At all times a minimum of two persons will be in the
Diggers' office to receive funds, take calls, dispatch persons to
refuge, maintain cleanliness of the area, and keep things
rolling. One of those six people will be responsible to see that
the agreements with the Church are kept.
On the other hand, some of the members say they will not go
along with the O'Donnell plan. The Diggers, according to those
gentlemen, cannot operate as an organization. It's people helping
people, organization may undo the good by creating power-plays
and bosses. If they cannot operate from the church, they will
take to the streets with a sort of floating social first aid kit
in hand to minister to the needs of people as they meet them.
O'Donnell objects to this manner of operation if it is not
correlated with a stationary office for the benefit of those who
may not be able to locate the roving Samaritan.
The two factions are still considering various modes of
operation either separately or cooperatively.
The Reverend Harris was asked to comment on the departure of
the Diggers.
In spite of the resignation of his Senior Warden and his
Director of Acolytes (Altar Boys) the discord among the
congregation, and cancelled pledges (five percent of total church
income), and the "adverse" publicity, the Reverend
stated that he was glad to have been able to assist. Having his
office next to the diggers, he said, had given him the
opportunity to participate in many activities related to social
assistance, lost and needy persons, and an occasional runaway to
name a few. Friendships had been made and cemented in this
worthwhile endeavor. Mrs. Harris joined him to express how very
glad they were to have been able to have the opportunity of
working and being with the Diggers.
It was obvious that the determination and solidarity of the
congregation also had been reinforced. He presented this writer
with an epistle concerning love and peace which had been
circulated and explained somewhat the views of the Reverend and
the Church.
[end of article]
Excerpt by Stephen M. Pittell, Director, Haight-Ashbury
Research Project, September, 1968
Note from editor: Rev. Leon Harris sent me this
excerpt in 1974. Written from a sympathetic, albeit
"straight outsider", viewpoint, it contains
inaccuracies of fact and interpretation. Nevertheless, it should
have a place in any Digger history, if for no other reason than
to understand the prevailing academic view of the budding
counterculture.
Any discussion of the groups specifically set up to serve in
the Haight-Ashbury community must begin with the Diggers,
a loosely organized group of Utopian hippies whose activities
were as influential in creating the hippie culture as in serving
its needs. While the amorphous nature of this group, its
intentional eschewal of organization and structure, and its
rapidly changing membership make it difficult to adequately trace
its history or specify its functions, it seems reasonably clear
that the majority of services which characterized the
Haight-Ashbury community during the spring and summer of 1967
were either directly or indirectly initiated by members of the
Diggers. The identified leaders of the hippie community and the
spokesmen for the hippies prior to the summer of 1967, have all
been associated with the Diggers and it is quite likely that
anyone who provided some important service to the community
during this early period automatically joined its ranks.
In any event, the Diggers, who derive their name from a 17th
Century English group who took it upon themselves to dig and
plant in the public land and distribute their crops to all poor
people, began their work in the late fall and early winter of
1966. In the midst of the racial tension in San Francisco
following the Hunter's Point riots they began to distribute food
in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park as a symbolic gesture of
friendship to the largely Negro community of the Haight-Ashbury
district. Perhaps as a result of this experience, and of the
community work of some of the early members, the Diggers were
among those who planned the Human Be-In in the Park which first
attracted attention to the Haight-Ashbury as the gathering place
for the hippie movement. The Diggers predicted the influx of
hippies to the district in the summer of 1967, and called for the
creation of a variety of services to meet the needs of the new
community. They argued that they did not require money to
establish these services, and they proved that they were able to
meet the needs of the community on their own when the city proved
unwilling to provide help or encouragement.
They continued to obtain food from local merchants and
distributed a daily meal to more than 150 people in the Panhandle
throughout the spring and most of the summer of 1967. They
apparently were able to establish their own farms on land donated
or lent to them, and began to grow food for subsequent
distribution. They maintained a number of communes in the
Haight-Ashbury which served as crash pads for newcomers to the
district and they were often influential in helping runaways who
desired it to be returned to their parents. In keeping with their
belief that all services and products should be freely available
to those who require them, they opened a Free Store, stocked with
used furniture, clothing, kitchenware, and miscellaneous items,
all of which could be taken without charge by anyone who wanted
it. They initiated the baking of Diggers bread which was also
distributed without charge both in the Park and through the
Digger headquarters, and they printed recipes for this nutritious
bread so that others could make their own. They provided
counseling and referral services for a variety of needs, and were
ubiquitously useful in meeting all of the needs of the hippie
community.
They encouraged a number of the hippie merchants on Haight
Street to share their profits with the community and they worked
with members of the professional community in San Francisco to
establish services to supplement their own work in the
neighborhood. The Diggers did not have any apparent source of
financial support for their enterprises and they appear to have
existed on their ability to get donations of supplies and
services from those who were sympathetic to the hippie cause.
Even by the beginning of the summer of 1967, a number of the
original Diggers left the Haight-Ashbury, some of them feeling
that they could not continue to function without better
leadership or organization. Father Leon Harris of All Saints
Church in the Haight-Ashbury had cooperated with the Diggers in
their earliest efforts, providing them with the use of the
Church's kitchen for preparation of their free meals, and with
office space adjoining his Rectory to serve as their
headquarters. As the Diggers began to abandon their projects and
leave the Haight-Ashbury, Father Hariis appointed a committee of
Church members to aid the Diggers in their many services. This
committee functioned throughout the summer and was then relieved
of its responsibility in the fall of 1967, when one of the
original Diggers returned to the Haight-Ashbury. During the
summer the Digger headquarters (which was now called The
Community Affairs Office) added to its list of services to the
community a recreation center in the basement of the church, a
pancake breakfast served free on three days during the week, and
a Hip Job Co-op, an employment center for hippies which
had been independently organized and then transferred to the CAO.
Even after the distribution of free food in the Park had stopped,
the CAO continued to provide up to 1,000 pounds of bread per week
to the community, in addition to maintaining a number of the
original Digger projects.
The CAO has now replaced the Diggers in many of their
functions [1], and a
number of the original Diggers have returned to the
Haight-Ashbury to organize a commune called the Free City.
This group retains many of the original Digger functions such as
distribution of food, literature, and information on free things
available in San Francisco, but they no longer attempt to serve
the entire Haight-Ashbury hippie community. Rather, they restrict
their attention to the hippie families or communes in the
Haight-Ashbury and the surrounding neighborhoods who they feel
have kept up the hippie ideology. The original Diggers work is
now available to the hippie community at large only through the CAO. With the help and encouragement of Father Harris, who had
been called the Patron Saint of the Haight-Ashbury, many aspects
of the Diggers ambtious plans to meet the needs of the
Haight-Ashbury community have been preserved, even while the
initiators of the plan lost interest in it or failed to maintain
their efforts in the face of continually mounting obstacles.
Other services in the Haight-Ashbury have had intimate
connections with All Saints Church in their formative stages, and
all of them have been able to use the facilities of the Church
and the services of the CAO to aid them in their own work in the
community. At the present time the CAO remains one of the few
Haight-Ashbury services which has had a continuous operation
since the spring of 1967, and it is likely to be one of the few
service agencies in the neighborhood which will continue to
function long after the summer of 1968.
In contrast to the Diggers, whose projects might have died
without outside organizational support, the Switchboard,
another service initiated from within the Haight-Ashbury
community, has continued to function autonomously from the summer
of 1967 to the present. Perhaps the greater success of the
Switchboard in providing services to the hippie community lies in
its less than total involvement with the hippie ideology and in
its explicit commitment to provide a link between the hippie and
straight worlds. The Switchboard is a volunteer service designed
to facilitate communication among people throughout San
Francisco, and specifically to serve as an informational and
referral source for the Haight-Ashbury community. Al Rinker,
Founder and Director of the Switchboard, was an early resident of
the Haight-Ashbury hippie community who felt that his
organization might best serve the community if it were not
identified too closely with the hippie movement. The Switchboard
provides a 24-hour-a-day service through which individuals can
obtain information about community activities, services, housing,
jobs, etc., and leave or receive messages. They maintain a list
of runaways whose parents have attempted to contact them, and
through posted and newspaper notices circulate the names of
individuals for whom messages have been received. Through the
summer and fall of 1967 they also acted as the answering service
for the Free Medical Clinic.
[end of excerpt]
Notes:
1. With the letter of September 5,
1974, in which Rev. Harris enclosed this excerpt, he included the
following note about this paragraph:
Dr. Pittell's statement ("The CAO has now replaced
the Diggers in many of their functions") is misleading
in that it seems to suggest that it was no longer a Digger
project even though it continued work which Diggers had
initiated.
The fact is that it was a Digger operation at all times,
and was always known as such. Many of the original Diggers
were active in it in all periods, despite the fact that
others of the early group had lost interest. From time to
time there were changes in the personnel, and many who becam
active were relative newcomers, but all were proud to be
known as Diggers. [signed L. P. H.]
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