Strip  From The Great Speckled Bird Vol. 2 Issue 36 Nov. 17, 1969 page 2.

14th Street

Straights often see the 14th Street – 10th Street area as Atlanta’s “hippie ghetto“. For the people who live there, crash there, deal there, sell Birds there, it’s the Community.

The Community first came into existence because the area offered the Park, cheap rent or open crash – pads, and a relatively open climate that created by a art students, survivors of the “beat “movement, and the gay crowd. After the first “Summer of Love, “ 1967, Atlanta waited for the fad to blow over. In 1968, with the community growing instead of fading away, the city tried harassment and repression. But the Community lived.

Memories hang onto remnants, flashes. Those circus openings at the Mandala. And the Catacombs, that was a trip by itself. And 14th Street, the colorful kaleidoscope of costumes, the traffic jams, walking out to cars and sharing a joint until the light changed.

Those other memories, too. Like {“Mother David”} Braden, and the conspiracy that trapped him. And paranoia, distrust, days so uptight that nothing could get to you.

But even when the 14 Street area was the greatest magnet, we knew that the best of what was happening, is happening, has little would do with geography. It’s being young. It’s refusing to be programmed toward success, money, and war. It’s daring to seek a new identity.

In March 1966 The Bird was born. Its creators were an entirely unlikely crew of varied motivations, determined to speak to and through this search for identity, and at the same time possibly provide a radical alternative news source.

From the beginning, The Bird’s relationship to the community was strange complex. Without the community people, The Bird could never have survived. Heat, cold, rain, harassment, through it all Street people appeared weekly to sell, to survive.

But despite the mutual need between sellers and staffers, we have often had separate purposes. Involvement in the street scene is rare among Bird staffers. We’re older, we’re into politics, or music, or art. And we sense resentment, contempt from hip people who see us as “too political, “. There is particular resentment of our call for militant struggle, or other organizing rhetoric. The Bird got specific criticism from street people for its “politics“ in one article, which exposed the backers of the Atlanta Pop Festival, and even the article on Our Park (September 22nd), which called for unity in the community, was attacked by street people for its militancy. Ironically, the week after the park article, the community did indeed band together to struggle against repression in the park.

Now the dollar barons of Atlanta have seen more profitable uses for the community area. For a while it was profitable to rent to hippies since they demanded no upkeep on property. But the hassles with dope were getting a little heavy. So the word is now “smash the hippies“. For the Atlanta establishment, “hippie “is a catchall phrase to be applied to The Bird, street people, anyone with beads, or hair below their ear lobes.

With street people, it’s been drug busts, hundreds in a month’s time. For Bird staffers it’s busts for “inciting to riot, “or “obscenity, “ or “contributing to the delinquency of minors.” There was the Piedmont Park police riot, and harassment continues.

We know this sweep was encouraged by the kingpins of Cushman Corporation, who now get their rocks off by at my admiring the towering concrete prick at the corner of 14th and Peachtree. And to make room for their carefully planned metropolis. The crash pads are being cleared, as well as “to the old Birdhouse. “

The Birdhouse is gone, at our deadline, nothing left but the shell of that grand old House, with a gaping wound in it’s side. The Warehouse, the new Bird office, sits on the border of Buttermilk Bottoms, a black community. Like any new clothes, we know our new location will change us, change how Atlanta sees us.

The Community, still hanging on to the 14th Street area, may be forced out in six months, one year or two. Perhaps for us to, it’s good riddance. Perhaps with it will go those trying to exploit youth culture for private gain. We’ve all been screwed by the hippie capitalists. The destructive bent of competition threatens Atlantis Rising, which tried to bring to the Community a promise from more than profit. And perhaps as the Community is crowded out by Colony Square, it can leave behind those manipulators trying to hook kids on hard drugs for profit.

We know the lifestyle revolution is happening. No ghetto can contain the community of spirit.

– maude