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In April of 1967 the largest antiwar march and rally on the East Coast took place in New York City. The staging area was the Sheep Meadow in Central Park where there was a related action to protest the draft. The draft card burning became as iconic an event as the march itself, perhaps more so over time. I got shots of that from within the hurricane, as the event spiraled out onto the lawn, with resisters, press and FBI swarming a Maxwell House coffee can that served as an urn for flaming cards. The 'Be-in' photos capture the birth of the counter culture at roughly the same time as the antiwar movement was gaining momentum. Many of the same young people attended both events; even the staging area was the same, the Sheep Meadow in Central Park. | Downtown on the Lower East Side, another expression of the same spring fever popped up as a 'sweep-in', which reflected the community based social action side, finding new and spontaneous ways to promote social change, such as this symbolic example of what people could do in one afternoon to transform a neighborhood for the benefit of the inhabitants neglected by city trash pick-up services. Note: As soon as city officials got wind of what was up, sanitation trucks rushed down to clean up East 7th Street the night before the event, so in the morning the organizers called for a quick switch to East 3rd Street. With WBAI's Bob Fass, unofficial communications director, the word did get out. SF 2015
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