The New Nation Concept
The Yippie "New Nation" concept called for the creation of alternative, counterculture institutions (food co-ops, underground newspapers, free clinics, etc.). Yippies believed these cooperative institutions and a radicalized hippie culture would spread until they supplanted the existing system.
"We are a people. We are a new nation," YIP's New Nation Statement said of the burgeoning hippie movement. "We want everyone to control their own life and to care for one another... We cannot tolerate attitudes, institutions, and machines whose purpose is the destruction of life, the accumulation of profit."
The goal was a decentralized, collective, anarchistic nation rooted in the borderless hippie counterculture and its communal ethos. Abbie Hoffman wrote:
We shall not defeat Amerika by organizing a political party. We shall do it by building a new nation – a nation as rugged as the marijuana leaf.
The flag for the "new nation" consisted of a black background with a red five pointed star in the center and a green marijuana leaf superimposed over it (same as the YIP flag).
Read more about this topic: Youth International Party
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