Advocating Non-Violence: The History of Flower Power
Beat poet and counterculture leader Allen Ginsberg propagated the flower power concept while helping get up a November 1965 protestation against the Vietnam War in Berkeley , Calif. He wrote about the flower power scheme in his pre - protest essay " Demonstration or Spectacle as Example , As communicating or How to Make a March / Spectacle , " urging protestors to " commute warfare psychology and surpass , go over , the wont - image - reaction of veneration / ferocity . " student from Berkeley had asked Ginsberg to offer suggestions for how to peacefully confront the Hells Angels motorcycle gang , which abide the warfare and had threatened violence against the Berkeley dissent . Ginsberg ’s solution , outlined in the essay , was to defuse the potential altercation with flower power . Although Ginsberg ’s essay does n’t use the exact set phrase " heyday might , " he was the first to expound on the potency of flowers as " a visual spectacle " to simultaneously disarm opponents and influence thought .
" Masses of flowers – a visual spectacle – especially concentrated in the front lines , " he write in the essay , advise that protestors hand the blooms out toHells Angels , policemen , press people and onlookers as a symbolisation of their non - violent protagonism . And in addition to bouquet , Ginsberg also further protestors to take along a miscellanea of benignant objects , admit toy dog soldier , safe sword , candy measure , official document and particularly crown of thorns to be held up in front of combative Hells Angels " like in the movies deal with Dracula " [ root : Ginsberg and Morgan ] . The point of the dime store objection armory was to convey a mother wit of house rather than confrontation and attract medium attention to their antiwar message in the process .
With the Carry Amelia Moore Nation bog down in an unwinnable war abroad and race intercourse still tense after the handing over of the 1964 Civil Rights Act , flower power encapsulate the counterculture response to social ferment . Ginsberg ’s flower big businessman approach was an offshoot of the non - red polite rights demonstration led by Martin Luther King Jr. , blended with the blossoming 1960s counterculture that sought to follow up on a more peaceful , gratifying creation outside of mainstream social norms . In the month go up to that Berkeley Vietnam dissent , the University of California , and the Berkeley campus in picky , had become a hotbed of student activism . The anterior capitulation of 1964 , revolt against the campus ban on political speech and demonstration , Berkley student groups rally together in the Free Speech Movement , which involved a series of sit - ins and picketing outside the administrative federal agency [ source : Freeman ] . The governing finally give in to the student dissent and permitted political speeches on campus . Flower great power seek to harness exchangeable get-up-and-go among young tolerant students and Rommany to make an impact on the Vietnam War .
As the hippie counterculture developed out of that youthful agitation ( and a burgeoning drug acculturation ) and gained national media attention , peak force transition from a protest tool to a tuned in , turned off , full - blown lifestyle .
