Summer of Love

Throughout history many different things and events have disrupted life on earth. In PLP we are currently working on a unit about technology and how it has acted as a disruption throughout history. The main question for this unit is “How has technology acted as a disruption with its creation throughout history. We just finished reading a novel called Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. It was a book based in the future about a boy, Marcus, who gets accused of committing a terrorist attack and gets extremely mistreated by the government. He then must use the internet to try and stop the government from mistreating others. For this project we had to pick a technology or a concept that was mentioned in Little Brother and research about it. I chose to research the Summer of Love.

The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco’s neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury. These hippies came to express their opinions, protest the government, and have a fun summer. Hippies were an eclectic group, many of them were suspicious of the government and against the Vietnam War. Those who gathered for the summer of Love rejected the conformist and materialist values of modern life. They preferred to live a life that emphasized sharing and love. A council was put together to help organize the summer of Love. They made sure there was a free Clinic, organized housing, food, sanitation, music and arts, along with maintaining coordination with local churches and other social groups. They made sure that the community was aware of what was going on and handled any situations with the authorities. Here is a video with a little more information on the Summer of Love

College and high school students began streaming into the Haight during the spring break of 1967. The government was determined to stop the influx of young people after schools ended for the summer, so they released a series of articles in local papers which alerted the national media to the hippies growing numbers. They would report daily events of what was happening in San Francisco and also what was happening at other festivals around America. This only caused more hippies to hear about the events and come to San Francisco. Many teens and young adults dropped out of high school or college and abandoned their education to enjoy a summer of love, drugs, and rock n’ roll. Many extremely famous artists performed during the summer of Love including The Who, The Animals, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Jefferson Airplane.

The Summer of Love was generally a mixture of a music festival and a protest. People came to have a fun summer but also to protest against the government. It would be like if people went to Coachella, the popular music festival, and protested against something the government is in charge of, such as racial and gender equality. The Summer of Love disrupted life in San Francisco and all over the world. Many people were inspired to protest and many other events similar to this happened all over North America. The authorities were all over these events and the crime levels rose due to the use of drugs. The Summer of Love was an iconic event and was events have been held in its honour for its 40th and 50th anniversairy. It is an event that will never be forgotten.