I’ve just finished a book by Emmett Grogan called ‘Ringolevio’ and it struck such a cord with me that I thought I’d write a post about it.
Grogan founded the Digger movement in San Francisco in the mid 60’s along with other Haight-Ashbury cultural ‘dissidents’ such as Peter Coyote and Abbie Hoffman.
The 60’s ‘Diggers’ were carrying on the tradition of their earlier 17th century counterparts also known as the ‘Levellers’: Reclaiming public spaces, free distribution of food, the ending of private property and the collapsing of the social class/caste system among many other things.
Grogan’s book, originally written in ’72, is a part factual, part fictional account of his harsh working-class upbringing in Brooklyn, his escapades across Europe and his increasing political radicalisation via the West Coast counterculture.
But Grogan’s recollection’s of Haight-Ashbury and ‘The Summer of Love’, Spiritual Guru’s and the dropping out and tuning in generation is not misty eyed, but very cynical and reveals a ‘hippie’ or urban guerrilla rather, with a real social conscience. He catalogues the back-stabbing, avarice, daft thinking, racism, violence, shallowness and class snobbery of a movement that supposedly prided itself on egalitarianism, transparency and, of course, universal LOVE.
None of this criticism is particularly new of course (neither was it back then) everyone knows there was a very dark side to that period – Vietnam, race riots, terrorism, the Manson murders etc – but Grogan focuses more on a specific problem or group who are the perpetuators of what he calls “The workable lie”.
Here’s a direct quote from the book with Grogan raging about the ‘persecution’ of hippies by the poor immigrant population on New York’s Lower east side:
“They were really upset, he said, because of the hippies’ readied willingness to pay the higher rents and whatever-the–market-will-bear prices fixed by slum landlords. This overcharging, coupled with the fact that the poor residents of the area knew damn well that most hippies came from wealthy white suburbs of their American Dream and therefore didn’t really have to live in their low-class poverty neighbourhood, aggravated their already deep dislike for the outgoing, jubilant hippie style, and ticked off a series of violent outbreaks to ‘wipe the smiles of their faces.’ because what he fuck were they so happy about anyway!
This spawned an attitude that the hippies could afford to be happy, paying the increased rents and inflated prices with ‘money from home,’ while the people who were really poor and not just ‘tripping’ suffered the ironical burden of their presence.
Thus they became fair-game targets of people who needed some quick money fast, which was nearly everyone. The sight of a pair of well-fed hippies walking through the neighbourhood, panhandling change against a backdrop of desperate bleakness, may have appeared farcical to strangers, but to the people who lived their entire lives in the area, grew up there, it was a mockery, a derisive imitation of their existence and it got them angry. Plenty angry.
“What I’m getting at is that their dreams of someday makin’ it out of what they regard as a sewer are very important to them, ‘n when hippies come along riffin’ about how unhip it is to make it into middle-class society ‘n how easy it would’ve been for them to make it, but they didn’t because it was insignificant, those low-money people get confused and upset because here are these creepy long-haired punks who grew up with meat at every meal and backyards to play in and the kind of education which is prayed to God for, and they threw it all away for what? To become junkies like at least one member of every family on the Lower East Side? To live with garbage and violence and rats and violence and no heat or hot water and violence and disease and violence? Is that what hippies thought was the hip thing to do with their lives?
Well to these people and their sons and daughters who’ve had no alternative but to live their lives in the disaster of the Lower East Side, there ain’t nothing hip about junk or poverty or violence, and they have nothing but contempt for young, educated fools who think it’s exciting to live in a world they really know nothing about, the kind of world these kids’ middle-class parents built the suburbs to protect them from.
“However, these parents never figured their children would attempt suicide by scaling the fortress walls of suburbia and running to the ghettos which had become part of their generations fantasies – fantasy ghettos like the Haight-Ashbury and the Lower East Side where sidewalks were more real than the lawns of Westchester and where people were red-blooded human beings, instead of blanched, bloodless, cardboard automatons.
The poor have no sympathy for these young whites who’re searching out what was kept hidden from them. They have none at all because of the hippies’ arrogance, an arrogance they wear on their sleeves, an arrogance which mocks the poor for wanting what they’ve rejected, and insolently pities them for nor comprehending or understanding the reasons why they left the ‘American Dream’ behind.
“So, you better face the straight goods, brothers an’ sisters, you ain’t the new niggers or spics, ‘n you’re never gonna be. You have too much to fall back on whenever you want to or have to – good education, a home, family, the colour of your skin – ‘n the people in the neighbourhood know that, an’ also that your still the children of the ruling classes, whether you like it or not. As far as they’re concerned, you’re just having an adventure – an adventure in poverty which, if you aren’t careful, may prove more real than you’re ready to deal with.
“…they had to jettison the self-satisfying impression that they were the ‘new niggers’ – which was going to be difficult. It was very comfortable on the bottom of the social heap where you could lie back, stay doped up and not accept any individual or community responsibilities, feeling perfectly hip about having been classed the new losers and doing everything by doing nothing to justify the classification.
If they could get past that, Emmett continued, then they could apply their ‘fortunate’ backgrounds in serving the needs of the neighbourhood, not as ‘hip social workers,’ but as members of the community who wanted to develop it for themselves as a place where they could enjoy life and where their children could grow without being forced to attend the stifling institutions run by the city government.”
Grogan was found dead on at the age of 35 of a heart attack (thought to be related to a heroin addiction) on a New York Subway train in 1978, – his corpse had been travelling up and down the line for a number of days before anybody realised he was actually dead. Although there are many conspiracy theories surrounding the circumstances of his sad demise. Maybe the Hippies got him in the end?
Ringolevio is a great read though: sometimes sociological, sometimes pure thriller, and always entertaining. Oh and to know what ‘Ringolevio’ means you’ll have to just read the book…or Google it.
Should be read in conjunction with Penny Rimbaud’s autobiography ‘Shibboleth’ to compare and contrast Anglo-American perspectives on urban guerrilla warfare past and present.
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