“Summer of Love” Address

Acting Mayor Malia Cohen
City of San Francisco
Golden Gate Park

Good morning, flower children.

Fifty years is a long time, but in the sweeping arc of progress it’s a drop in the bucket. The Summer of Love is burned into our collective consciousness as an experiment in peaceful expression, a window of transformation for the country and, in particular, San Francisco. As with all history, reality was a little more complicated.

The counterculture of the 1960s didn’t just reject tradition for tradition’s sake. The young people organizing sit-ins, playing music, asking provocative questions, and demanding original answers were the children of the Greatest Generation. It’s got to be hard to follow the “Greatest Generation”—they won the war, saved the world, and ushered in an era of unprecedented prosperity.

But the name, “Greatest Generation,” suggests a one-size-fits-all brand of citizenship, with one way and one way only to be a part of the community. That outward appearance of universal stability hid the individuality behind a new age of poets, artists, feminists, philosophers, and adventurers. In the Summer of 1967, San Francisco was a place that all of them could call home.

These months advanced the abstract energy of political and social idealism into experimentation, producing a wide array of results.

The Diggers were well-meaning community anarchists who dismissed any notion of private property or consumerism. Instead they gave food, shelter, and medicine to the youthful wanderers who landed in Haight-Ashbury, free of charge.

Further popularization of the birth control pill permitted greater freedom in love, and LSD was said to have the power to transform our perspectives and change the world.

The materialistic ideal of the 1950s was roundly rejected by multitudes who didn’t derive the same meaning from the picket fence, the family sedan, or the nine-to-five routine.

The young Baby Boomers were vast in number and capitalized on their collective power to challenge mainstream values. And those who congregated in the sunshine of San Francisco dreamed of breathing life into new values through song, not force.

The Summer of Love did not, however, capture a harmony shared by all. Set against the devastating backdrop of the Vietnam War, it was also a time of lost innocence, distrust of institutions, intolerance, and anger. Calling it the Summer of Love was at least partly aspirational.

The “long, hot summer” was brutally scarred by over 150 riots in cities across the country. While San Francisco was overrun with young, curious idealists, Detroit, Newark, and other municipalities erupted in response to unrelenting institutional racism.

The Kerner Report—commissioned in late 1967 by the Johnson Administration to investigate the root causes of this widespread destruction—summarized its findings in the plainest terms: “This is our basic conclusion,” it read. “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one Black, one White—separate and unequal.”

President Johnson paid little mind to the Kerner Report. Fighting communist oppression abroad was a higher priority than acknowledging democratic oppression at home.

In 1967, Dr. King taught us that “a riot is the language of the unheard.” Three years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, he asked his country, “What is it that America has failed to hear?”

San Francisco radicals embraced new lifestyles and seemed to operate within a post-employment utopia; Black folks in America needed jobs like their lives depended on it. While our city of peace and love tried to construct a transcendent future, America’s present was on fire.

And yet—not feeling heard, yearning to reform conditions that were set in motion long before we were born, poses a unifying theme.

Now, as the Summer of 2017 comes to a close, what is the legacy of the last half century for today’s San Franciscans?

The personal was political then and now feels so political that we can’t help but take it personally.

We were ecologically progressive then and we are still fighting to save the planet.

We questioned middle class morality then for not supporting everyone in the middle. As wealth distribution squeezes the middle class more tightly than ever, what will our new morality be?

Paying respect to Jefferson Airplane—a San Francisco institution—our “Embryonic Journey” toward a more loving, understanding city continues unabated.

Love isn’t easy. Poet Allen Ginsberg, a powerful voice of the countercultural movement, asserted, “The weight of the world is love.” San Francisco is not an island, and forces that obstruct our path to a more compassionate future won’t simply leave us alone because we wish it so. Showing love to our families, our neighbors, and our community is a choice we make every day.

Some days will be easier than others, but if I might share a small piece of wisdom from Yogi Bhajan, “By our stumbling the world is perfected.”

How do we restore peace to that which is no longer peaceful? How do we calm our minds amid torrents of strife, when problems of fifty years ago appear no less daunting today, and goals adopted during the Summer of Love feel so far from realization?

I take heart from the advice of the late B.K.S. Iyengar, one of the twentieth century’s preeminent teachers of yoga and a keen philosopher, who wrote: “Penetration of our mind is our goal, but in the beginning to set things in motion, there is no substitute for sweat.”

So as we take this moment to reflect on the Summer of Love, let’s remember that progress, aspiration, self-determination, community, and kindness never go out of style, and that music can still bring us together to dance.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to all of you today. The beat goes on.