Requiem for the Hippies
What happened to all the hippies, y’all — for realz!
This one is directed mostly at the youthful folks in the movement for social justice. I feel like I’ve met you before. The first time was in the late sixties (yes bitches, I was alive in the sixties) during the hippie movement—the powerful movement led mostly by youth and co-signed by artists and theorist around the world. Those kids (yes, kids) we’re gonna change the world. Historic images of protesting Flower Children (the name that became synonymous with “hippie” during the 1967 Summer of Love) would lead one to believe that these young people waging love were singly responsible for ending the Vietnam war. Think of the iconic photograph snapped by Marc Riboud of that androgynous youth holding up a flower to the armed soldier.
Fact check: the anti-war movement was made up (mostly and as usual) by middle class women, academics (elders), and Civil Rights activist. Blacks protested that war due to disproportionate African Americans shipped to serve on the front lines and dying. Students (who had chosen to remain in the system while the hippies were “dropping out”) also played a huge part in that movement. They had an impact, however the main reason the US pulled out was ‘cause we were getting our asses handed to us. It’s complicated.
I’m not here to hate on hippies. I do understand that, after dabbling in those hippie ideals, the movement matured (settled) and went on to pursue “normal” vocations (sell out). Hippies came to realize their idealism as impractical. The fashion may have remained, but a capitalist in tie-dye is still a capitalist. The same happened with the #occupy movement, down to the unsanitary conditions that made the radical takeover of public (and sometimes private) spaces a health hazard.
The social justice movement is once again dominated by young Whites (and the White adjacent) from middle, upper-middle, and sometimes straight up wealthy families. These are the folks privileged enough to have the education, the resources and the time to protest while subsisting on generational wealth extracted from people for whom the struggle is waged. Experience predicts the “woke” will parlay their radical credentials to into well-paid positions (likely in non-profits). Would be radicals will enter new roles under the status quo, armed with inside information about movement strategies to serve the counter-revolution. The system is like the body snatchers waiting for woke folks to take a nap.
Of course, nothing is written in stone, and perhaps a generation (of those in struggle through no choice of their own) will learn the lessons, and choose their allies for more than rhetoric (or fashion choices).
—Notorious Pink
