The Grateful Dead were political just not in a typical way

From Jim NewtonCalmness

This comment was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.

Detached from “here to the rising tide: Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead and American Awakening” By Jim Newton. Copyright © 2025. Available by Penguin Random HouseS

It is often the case that cultural and political movements appear, flourish for a while, and then produce a reverse reaction.

Jim Crowe can be considered as a response to the end of slavery and the civil rights of Jim Crowe; The moral majority to Rowe against Wade; Donald Trump and “made America again the Great” by Barack Obama and “Yes, we can.” Sometimes the reverse reaction is long over, while it arrives quickly another time. In the case of the American 60s, the reverse reaction came before the movement was understood, even before he knew what he was.

For a year, 1966, a new concept began to form and an old idea rises to press the new back down – or at least to try.

Acid tests And their offspring were new. They were a set of ideas – experimentation and improvisation; The culture surrounded by politics; Communism and joy; drugs, sex, music, love; Restless values in the rebellion – against what they still didn’t know. The reverse reaction comes from discouraged adults and it gravitates to the application of one person more special: Ronald ReaganS As acid tests launched California in 1966, Reagan was running as a governor. The two campaigns, one impromptu, the other diligently deliberately, toured each other, competing for supporters.

As the year opened, the Grateful Dead returned to San Francisco. Reagan, after months of traveling the state, has officially entered into his policy. “Ronald Reagan and the need for action!” The opening banner announced in the movie, first released in the California press on January 3, and then on the public on January 4th. It included exclamation, but the presentation that followed was deliberately muted, strict appeal by a calming person. Reagan was concerned about California’s condition, which was reliably Republican, just to make the riots and hippies put this story to the test. Now Reagan was also here to make the case of old values to fix things again.

Old California was pioneers and visionaries, gold panars, movie creators. New California was unrest in Watts, spoiled children in Berkli and drugs involving the dead.

Reagan was picture of conservative values. He was walking around his polished living room, complete with leather chairs and brass lamps, grandfather clock to a fireplace where fire was burning. Speaking directly in the camera, Reagan was ready and strong, but hardly alarmist. Yes, he was announcing his intention to deposit California’s acting governor, Gadova and personal Pat Brown, but Reagan never mentions Brown by name. His criticism of the “executive branch” was heavy, but they never meant.

When it comes to discussing the children of the state, Reagan’s behavior noticeably hardened. They took effort and money, Reagan noted for California to build a “great university”, but that wasn’t enough.

“It takes more than dollars and magnificent buildings,” he said, one hand in one of those leather chairs, the other in his pocket. “Or do we no longer consider it necessary to teach self -esteem, self -discipline and respect for the law and order? Will we allow the Great University to be brought to knees from a noisy, dissident minority? Will we meet their neurotic vulgar with a weakness or to say that they will be used by the university. assigned to the university to impose that they will expect what they will expect to apply code on the basis that they are assigned to administer the university with the high and the uncontrovers of imposing what they are assigned to the university, they expect to impose that they are assigned to that they are assigned to We, as long as they do this, but we will not put up with anything less?

For Reagan, it was an attractive political situation. Berkli’s reports were at least for those of Reagan’s generation and sensitivity, anxious. The radicals had somehow extinguished, exceeding their elders in a dispute over what learns, even such concepts as freedom and citizenship. Reagan’s central argument was that California was run by soft leaders. The parents wondered about the taxes they paid to send their students to the biggest public university system in the nation, only to make this system a cradle of space and rebellion. Reagan understood. He struck the university, knowing that this was the pride of his opponent.

Reagan participates in the competition with other political winds in his back, in particular in the destroyed racial relations in California and increasing white dissatisfaction with the black demands for justice. The riots of Watts in 1965, still smoldering in California’s policy, were the other pillar of this case.

These riots had begun shortly after 7pm on August 11, 1965, when two officers from the California Highway Patrol withdrew over Market Fry, a 21-year-old black man suspected of driving in a drunk state in the Watts, a district south of Los Angeles. The employees pulled Fry’s car until stopping not far from his house. As they placed Fry through sobriety tests, his mother and brother saw what was happening and defended him, arguing with officers. The crowd began to gather, and when CHP took Ronald and Rena Fry in custody, the situation was transferred. Within hours, a thousand people were on the streets, blurring by police at night.

It was just the beginning, “President to act I in a terrible tragedy,” as the Los Angeles Times says. Over the next two days, 34 people were killed as the violence spread out from Watts and throughout South La Racism, redirection, police brutality, grinding effects of poverty, all suffocated below the surface of the disorder, but subsequently the polls show that the white Americans were prevalent. Those moods – resentment that blacks do not appreciate California’s efforts for desegregation, anger that blacks would resort to violence – suggested a nucleus of white discontent.

Black activists would find a common position with the emerging counterculture. White, confused and self -righteous, they would find a way to Reagan.

As Reagan knew well, Brown was vulnerable in both the events in Berkli and the riots. The university was Brown’s most beloved contribution to California, and he was obviously absent for Watts, resting in Greece when riots broke out, so any reminder of the riot was a new repetition of the accusation that it was missing when it was important. And this was, after all, the bigger, only a vaguely imposting point: that adults had escaped from the stage, that teens – or black people – develop.

Acid tests were proof of this. The view of young people, high in God, knows what, dressed in strange clothes, their hair long and unwashed, the resumption of old images of “”Reefer Madness“And we disadvantage Beatniks; it was enough to upset the most self -contained parent. They looked in a piece of protest and riots – part of the growing sense that something was slipping, some shared commitment to order American values. Subbiters – voters – were afraid.

Reagan reminded them that they did not always feel this fear that they were entitled to security. These were their children in these schools. How could they sit still as their own children rejected their values? It was so wrong and certainly couldn’t be their guilt. They worked hard, paid for the construction of colleges, which now threw their intellectual superiority into their faces, paid for social programs to show that they were taking care of the blacks who were now in response. How dare you?

Reagan assured them that it was not their guilt, that the other drugs of drugs, well-intentioned, but delusional leaders, yes, even the communists, are behind this excitement and that he will tend to do so.

“In 1966, the world, and especially California, changed rapidly. The change was actually visible on the streets of San Francisco, in places like Fillmore and the Avalon Ball Hall.”

Robert Stone, a novelist and a member of The Merry Panksters

While Reagan was lurking Pat Brown, Jerry Garcia Answered with what looked like indifference. Reagan denied drugs and young discrepancies; Garcia and the dead missed acid and performed, each of them did not think that Reagan did them. In the winter and spring of 1966, they move up and down the shore, crossing Reagan’s campaign and ignoring the candidate’s challenge to everything they overlap.

The dead, as they are often noted, were not political, at least not in the sense in which we are accustomed to considering politics. They did not approve of Pat Brown or did not appear in benefits for him. They have not raised money for candidates or do not try to be young voters.

But this determines the politics too close. These were inherently political days. Culture and politics turned together. The high was political. The dances were political. An acid test was an evening of fun and experimenting, but, the important, also an act of challenge. If one considers politics as a whole – as a protest, as a clash of values and lifestyles – the dead were at the center of California politics in 1966.

“In 1966, the world and especially California changed quickly,” Robert Stonefriend of JokeHe wrote. “The change was actually visible on the streets of San Francisco, in places like Filmore and the Avalon Ball Hall. Political and social institutions were so missing in humor and self -confidence that they were breaking into wisdom. “

What was Traveling festival But wisdom?

This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.