Drifters, squatters, and anarcho-collectivists colonized Boston Common—suburban flight had already decimated the city’s economic base—triggering breathless Globe coverage and pearl-clutching moral panic. After witnessing antiwar protests and clouds of reefer smoke hanging over his city, Cambridge Mayor Daniel Hayes in 1967 actually declared a “War on Hippies.”
Boston Magazine, “The Life and Death and Rebirth of Boston’s Counterculture”
