Exhibit: ''Hippies, Freaks and Radicals: 1970's Counterculture in Vermont''
April 1, 2017
Excerpt:
[font size="3"]BARRE - After two years of research, collecting, meetings, oral history interviews, a symposium and a museum exhibit, the Vermont Historical Society’s Vermont 1970s Project came to fruition in the fall of 2016. The overall goal of the project was to document counterculture and its influence on Vermont, and VHS received funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to carry out its program.[/font]
[font color="gray"]Burlington Mayor Bernie Sanders prepares to speak to a crowd assembled at City Hall Park in Burlington on July 28, 1984, for a march and rally in celebration of the the fifth anniversary of the Nicaraguan Revolution. Sanders’ base of supporters in the state and particularly in Chittenden County started in the 1970s. (Photo: Free Press file)[/font]
Example of Bernie Sanders
The most obvious example of persistence in working for a cause is the long career of Bernie Sanders that covers more than 40 years of sustained, focused, and committed advocacy. Sanders’ base of supporters in the state and particularly in Chittenden County started in the 1970s. By tenaciously working with local progressive coalitions in Burlington he was able win the Burlington mayoral election in 1980. He then gained recognition for his successes in Vermont’s largest city and went on to win election to Congress in 1990. Though Sanders probably never considered himself a hippie, his radical ideology parallels that of the other young counterculture people who came to Vermont at the same time as he did.
One only has to view a slide show titled “Vermont Speaks for Itself” to see that Sanders’ ideology was shared by many others. Produced by the Vermont Media Project Collective during the early 1970s using interviews and original country music, it presented a progressive view on economic conditions for Vermont’s poor and working class. Collective members showed the program around the state at public venues, colleges and social service agencies.
The project was based in Charlotte at the Mount Philo Collective, a community whose members also played a strong role in developing the Burlington Free Clinic (now the Community Health Center) and the Onion River Food Coop (now Burlington’s City Market). Original members of the collective have converted the slide show to a DVD and hope to show it to the public in the near future. Its message still resonates today.
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To learn more visit the exhibit “Hippies, Freaks and Radicals: 1970s Counterculture in Vermont” at the Vermont History Center in Barre. The exhibit will be open through September. For more information about the project and to listen to the oral histories go to http://vermonthistory.org/research/vermont-1970s
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2017/04/01/history-space-hippies-freaks-radicals/99910072/
= new reply since forum marked as read
is being recorded so that more people learn, "The Hippies were right".
