If the progressive types you speak of were so progressive, they wouldn’t be prejudiced against “hippies”. I speak there; I’m no hippie. Madeline’s no hippie. Dancesafe stage’s rave electronica certainly isn’t hippie music.

This thread is full so feel free to reply in a new comment: what would the Holden-approved Hempfest look like? Would all dreadlocked people be banned from entry? No hair past shoulder length on anyone speaking from stage? No banners containing any more than two colors, which must be muted pastels? No glass sales, period? Has it occurred to you that the reason it is the most successful rally in the world is because it is a “hippie” rally? Is there any rally you feel better speaks to this allegedly-progressive mainstream cross-section?

I just don’t get this undercurrent of disgust you have for “hippies”, the ’60s, and “counter-culture”, Dom. So white-and-uptight mainstreamers are turned off and won’t attend. So what? They don’t go to the marches either. They don’t volunteer their time at NORML chapters. And this effort to send the hippies to the back of the bus isn’t going to bring them out and it will offend the one group of people who have been most dedicated and most diligent about ending prohibition.

What I’m saying is there can be both a Hippie Hempfest and a Mainstream Let’s Legalize Potfest. There are 51 other weekends on the calendar, but I haven’t seen these mainstreamers put the effort into producing this Potfest nor will I; they seem too intent on just ragging on the hippies’ success.

The organizers perpetuate the hippie stereotype by failing to create an event that speaks to a broader cross-section of progressive society. And in doing so, it fails the movement and it fails its own mission. Hempfest has an image problem, and if the organizers want to support the movement, they will work to fix it.

I think we need to keep alive that colorful era where people were happy and unmolested (yet) by Nixon’s bullshit war on hippies. That’s all it was, and I can’t believe Obama would allow any of this prohibitive policy to live on.

It’d be nice if some people bathed more frequently, but maybe they have their reasons…cops are more likely to want to deal with clean-cut, friendly, sweet-smelling youngsters from middle class families…as illustrated by your recent interview
@ NYC arrests.

Also, anything that ends in “fest”, come on…

I just don’t think the hippie vibe is that stigmatizing anymore. We see it popping up in all sorts of mainstream advertising and entertainment. Hippies are so retro they’re chic.

Besides, even if there were no hippie flags, tie dyes, and all the music was jazz, the crowd itself would be hippies, dreadlocks, pierced and tattooed. I think mainstreamers turned off by Hempfest are more turned off by the enormity of the event, the crowds, the heat, and the dust.

I just don’t think it has to be an either-or thing; either we lose the counterculture or we lose the mainstream. I think both can exist. I think society can simultaneously say “ew, tie dye stinky hippies” and “hey, let’s stop wasting police resources on busting them and tax them instead.” Trying to get Hempfest to change the vibe is tilting at windmills; it is as huge as it is because it is what it is.

Your analogy doesn’t hold up; hippies at Hempfest are different than drag queens at gay pride. The whole point of gay pride is for gay people to shamelessly put their sexuality and culture on display. Cross dressing drag queens are doing that.

The point of Hempfest, however, is to articulate the message for drug policy reform and for pot smokers to come out of the closet. But not just hippie pot smokers–all pot smokers. And hippie flags, tie dyes and cliched music drive away all the other pot smokers who would want to come to the event.

Mind you, I think hippies are great and the counterculture movement of the late ’60s is largely to thank for the progressive politics in America today. Furthermore, hippies worked hard to get Hempfest where it is. I’d know–I was one of those hippies.

But none of those things change a simple fact: Hippies stigmatize the drug policy reform movement. That’s because hippies are infamous drug users, and, thus, a festival that wraps itself in hippie artifacts and imagery appears to be motivated by the desire to legalize its vice.

But if this country reforms drug policy, it will be because society sees it as an overall benefit–freeing police resources, generating tax revenue, saving money on incarceration–not because the general population thinks hippies have a right to use drugs.