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the Four Seasons, or his fat wife imported smoked salmon from Nova Scotia at Grossinger's.

"No, when the people get that inch they're going to want more than the proverbial mile. They're going to want all of it 'n the ones who own it are going to have to give it up or have it taken from 'em! 'N it's up to guys like me, up to us 'n others like us to get that inch for the people, so they can taste what it'll be like when those few who own everything are knocked out of the box, and the many can finally live like human beings, instead of like serfs in a kingdom run by a handful of aristocratic, robber-baron families. Up to ones like us, because we know about what low-money people can only dream about. We've experienced what they still hope for 'n we know what has to be done 'n how to do it.

"Most important, we don't have to do it. We don't have to do anything. We can survive comfortably without hardly hassling at all because we know how the monster works 'n thinks 'n we can manipulate it for our own ends. That's easy. But suppose we took it a step further 'n didn't fuck with it specifically for ourselves. Suppose we did what we know how to do for nothin', for no other reason than we know how to do it. Suppose we did it for free! Did what was necessary, so the people would have the inch they needed to get that first mile on the road to a social democracy, 'n did it all for free! We couldn't lose, 'cause when you start by doing it for free, for nothin', you got nothin' to lose and you're beyond the possibility of defeat! That's what's called the ideology of failure, and if you brothers and sisters would apply that to your lives and roles in the community instead of just playin' out your adventure of poverty, dead hands of fantasy, we'd be able to get it on in the Lower East Side, and rip-off that inch before anyone knew we weren't kidding! And the hippies would soon become an integral part of the community, rather than just depending on the passage of time to earn them acceptance."

Then Emmett spent an hour laying out what the San Francisco Diggers did in the Haight-Ashbury, explaining the overall difficulty of their work, and how they actually went about getting it all done. He was careful, however, not to give away any secrets or discuss how they obtained free goods by theft, because he didn't feel it was appropriate for a room full of people he didn't know, and in the end, would probably prove dangerous to him and his West Coast comrades. He did make a point though of showing the absurdity of the news media's description of the Diggers as "philanthropic do-good [end page 327]