The Diggers were a radical community-action group of activists and street theatre actors operating from 1966 to 1968, based in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco.
[6] One of the first Digger activities was the publishing of various broadsides, which were printed by sneaking into the local Students for a Democratic Society office and using their Gestetner printer.
[citation needed] The leaflets were eventually called The Digger Papers, and soon morphed into small pamphlets with poetry, psychedelic art, and essays.
"[8] They often included statements that mocked the prevailing attitude of the counterculture promoted by less-radical figures like the Haight-Independent Proprietors (HIP), Timothy Leary, and Richard Alpert.
[citation needed] Writers Chester Anderson and Claude and Helene Hayward[10] helped found the publishing arm of the Diggers, known as the Communications Company (ComCo).
Using "two 'beautiful' Gestetner mimeograph machines that had been nefariously obtained through the offices of Ramparts magazine,"[10] the Communications Company distributed daily (and sometimes hourly) broadsides on the streets of the Haight-Ashbury district during the early part of 1967 and the Summer of Love.
"[11] Richard Brautigan's poem "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" was first published, in March 1967, by the Communication Company on an 8.5-by-11-inch (216 by 279 mm) mimeographed broadside with both the title and imprint handwritten.
[12] Also in March 1967, ComCo distributed Willard S. Bain's Informed Sources: Day East Received, a satirical allegory of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the form of fictional news wire bulletins, in an edition of about 500 mimeographed copies.
[16] Joan Didion described the role Chester Anderson and ComCo played in Haight-Ashbury in her 1967 essay for The Saturday Evening Post, "Slouching Towards Bethlehem", which was later included in the book of the same name.
They also staged street theater events, such as driving a truck of semi-naked belly dancers through the Financial District, inviting brokers to climb on board and forget their work.
[5] In cooperation with All Saints Church and later via the Haight Ashbury Switchboard at 1830 Fell Street, they arranged free "crashpad" housing for homeless youth drawn to the Haight-Ashbury area.
After passing those institutions on to a local church and David E. Smith to continue, the Diggers moved out of the city, creating various land bases in California,[8] including Forest Knolls, Olema, Covelo, Salmon River, Trinidad, and Black Bear Ranch.
[citation needed] Various alternative communities like those of the Diggers were covered in a feature-length documentary film by Will Vinton, later known for his ClayMation studio in Portland, Oregon.