Free Minds/Free People
Bernardine and I met up with our old pal Jeff Jones, jumped in the car and headed off to the Oregon Country Fair outside Eugene where we’d been asked to speak about the political moment we were living through—Occupy your Imagination; Free Minds/Free People. It was a Blues Brothers road trip—we were on a mission from God.
The Fair was an insurgency from the 60’s transformed and institutionalized in a mere half century. New Age meets the New Millennium as capitalism consumes the counter-culture. Where tie-dye and incense, pipes and rolling papers, long hair and funny hats, as well as bubbling pots of free brown rice and red beans and tofu/vegetable stew had been a few of the markers of the rebellion, all of it was now de rigueur and for sale in every corner. Where the battle with the cops and the health authorities over the right to crash in a tangle of unruly humanity overnight on the land had been pitched in the early years, the original hippies were now the gray heads who owned the land and issued the permits. A rainbow of wristbands demarcated where folks could wander, and the most prized were the gold ones—which the three of us were miraculously granted—allowing fair-goers access everywhere as well as the extraordinary privilege of staying after-hours when things really got going. One of my favorite moments was sitting with the old-timers one night after the Fair had been officially closed and the grounds swept of the riff-raff, listening to the stories of how folks snuck into the Fair and evaded the sweeps in the sweet long ago of their glorious youth—when they were the Free Minds/Free People | Bill Ayers:
The Fair was an insurgency from the 60’s transformed and institutionalized in a mere half century. New Age meets the New Millennium as capitalism consumes the counter-culture. Where tie-dye and incense, pipes and rolling papers, long hair and funny hats, as well as bubbling pots of free brown rice and red beans and tofu/vegetable stew had been a few of the markers of the rebellion, all of it was now de rigueur and for sale in every corner. Where the battle with the cops and the health authorities over the right to crash in a tangle of unruly humanity overnight on the land had been pitched in the early years, the original hippies were now the gray heads who owned the land and issued the permits. A rainbow of wristbands demarcated where folks could wander, and the most prized were the gold ones—which the three of us were miraculously granted—allowing fair-goers access everywhere as well as the extraordinary privilege of staying after-hours when things really got going. One of my favorite moments was sitting with the old-timers one night after the Fair had been officially closed and the grounds swept of the riff-raff, listening to the stories of how folks snuck into the Fair and evaded the sweeps in the sweet long ago of their glorious youth—when they were the Free Minds/Free People | Bill Ayers: