Diggers (theatre)

The Diggers were a radical community-action group of activists and Street Theatre actors operating from 1966 to 1968, based in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Their politics have been categorized as "left-wing"; more accurately, they were "community anarchists" who blended a desire for freedom with a consciousness of the community in which they lived. They were closely associated and shared a number of members with the guerrilla theater group San Francisco Mime Troupe.

The Diggers were formed out of after-hours Mime Troupe discussions between Emmett Grogan, Peter Coyote, Peter Berg, and Billy Landout.

The Diggers took their name from the original English Diggers (1649–50) who had promulgated a vision of society free from buying, selling, and private property. During the mid- and late 1960s, the San Francisco Diggers organized free music concerts and works of political art, provided free food, medical care, transport, and temporary housing and opened stores that gave away stock. Some of their happenings included the Death of Money Parade, Intersection Game, Invisible Circus, and Death of Hippie/Birth of Free.

The group sought to create a mini-society free of money and capitalism. One of the first Digger activities was the publishing of various broadsides, which were published by sneaking into the local Students for a Democratic Society office and using their Gestetner printer. The leaflets were eventually called the "Digger Papers," and soon morphed into small pamphlets with poetry, psychedelic art, and essays. The "Digger Papers" often included statements that mocked the prevailing attitude of the counterculture promoted by less radical figures like the Haight-Independent Proprietors (HIP), Timothy Leary, and Richard Alpert. The first paper mocked the acid community, saying "Time to forget because flowers are beautiful and the sun's not yellow, it's chicken!" The Digger Papers rarely included authors, although pseudonyms were sometimes used like "George Metevsky," a reference to the "Mad Bomber" George Metesky. After some HIP members tried to find out who the Diggers were, Grogan and Landout responded with a telegram that read, "REGARDING INQUIRIES CONCERNED WITH THE IDENTITY AND WHEREABOUTS OF THE DIGGERS; HAPPY TO REPORT THE DIGGERS ARE NOT THAT."

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