Woodstock Festival
The Woodstock Music & Art Fair, was a music festival held on Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, New York from August 15 to 18, 1969. The 40,000 attendees, mostly young people, governed themselves for 3 days as a free city. Encyclopedia Britanica reports that security forces were "virtually nonexistent".[1]
According to Wikipedia, "There was a sense of social harmony, which, with the quality of music, and the overwhelming mass of people, many sporting bohemian dress, behavior, and attitudes helped to make it one of the enduring events of the century. After the concert, Max Yasgur, who owned the site of the event, saw it as a victory of peace and love. He spoke of how nearly half a million people filled with potential for disaster, riot, looting, and catastrophe spent the three days with music and peace on their minds."
There were 2 recorded fatalities, one from an apparent heroin overdose and one when a tractor driver accidentally ran over someone sleeping in a hayfield. [2]
Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action[3]:
[Spontaneous order] could be seen in spite of commercial exploitation in the pop festivals of the late 1960s, in a way which is not apparent to the reader of newspaper headlines. From 'A cross-section of informed opinion' in an appendix to a report to the government, a local authority representative mentions 'an atmosphere of peace and contentment which seems to be dominant amongst the participants' and a church representative mentions 'a general atmosphere of considerable relaxation, friendliness and a great willingness to share'.[4] The same kind of comments were made about the instant city of the Woodstock Festival in the United States: 'Woodstock, if permanent, would have become one of America's major cities in size alone, and certainly a unique one in the principles by which its citizens conducted themselves.'[20]
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- ↑ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647675/The-Woodstock-Music-and-Art-Fair
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock_festival
- ↑ Anarchy_in_Action
- ↑ Fifty Million Volunteers, Report on the Role of Voluntary Organisations and Youth in the Environment (London, 1972).
