The Human Be-In 1967
On January 14, 1967, the “Human Be-In” was held in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California. This so-called “Gathering of the Tribes” drew more than 20,000 people and came to symbolize the counterculture movement of the 1960s. The Be-In was also a symbol of the growing youth movement. The organizers of the event wanted to bring together people to get involved in what they believed to be disparate movements in the community. They wanted groups from all distinct parts of the community to get more familiar with each other and to see they all had similar mindsets when it came to activism in the community. The counterculture that surfaced at the "Human Be-In" encouraged people to "question authority".
The Human Be-In was later recalled by poet Allen Cohen (who assisted the artist Bowen in the organizational work) as a necessary meld that brought together philosophically opposed factions of the current San Francisco-based counterculture: on one side, the Berkeley radicals, who were tending toward increased militancy in response to the U.S Government, Vietnam War policies, and, on the other side, the rather non-political Haight-Ashbury hippies, who urged peaceful protest. Their means were drastically different, but they held many of the same goals
