On Vortex 50 Years Later

In 1970, some freak wrote in a San Francisco underground newspaper:“So that what you have in effect is a Charlie Manson-Jerry Rubin-Angela Davis-Johnathan Jackson-Bernadette Dohrn-Huey Newton-Timothy Leary-Rolling Stone-monster heading directly for downtown Portland where the American Legion is planning this year’s Victory in Vietnam Parade.”

President Nixon was scheduled to speak at the Legion Convention. Anti-war protesters were going to swarm Portland and battle the Legionnaires. The melee would top the 1968 Democratic convention (riot) in Chicago.

To keep the peace, Governor Tom McCall and hippies collaborated to stage the only state-sponsored rock festival in American history. One hundred thousand people attended this free event at McIver State Park near Estacada.

There was no violence in Portland. There was a helluva party at McIver Park.

It was called Vortex I: A Biodegradable Festival of Life. It is THE most far out story in American history. There will never be another like it. And it only could have happened in Oregon.

Just some of the evidence:

  • McCall, a Republican, faced a tough a re-election vote later that fall. When he approved the festival, he said, “I’ve just committed political suicide.”
  • The Portland Red Cross and law enforcement agencies gave away illegal drugs inside McIver Park.
  • The state’s most powerful corporate executive of that era, the Cascade Corporation’s Robert Warren, drove a pickup truck full of licorice out to the park.
  • Someone brought a cougar on a leash. Someone brought and anaconda that escaped its leash.
  • The Red Cross and local law enforcement officials dumped drugs in the park.
  • A very tall and naked African American hot dog vendor in the park advertised by wearing a red balloon over his penis.
  • Vortex I’s cast of characters, in the flesh and the edges of the story, include: Spiro Agnew, the Rainbow Family, Matt Groening, John Kerry, Lothar and the Hand People, Donald Rumsfeld, and perhaps even Al Franken and Hunter S. Thompson.
  • At the festival’s end, McCall, visited the park and held hands with some long hairs. They chanted “oms” for a few minutes and then recited the Lord’s Prayer.

Oh there is more evidence, a lot evidence.

Just think what we could do in Oregon back then. What can we do today during the crisis of our lifetimes? There is still much to be learned from Vortex. I celebrate it not out of nostalgia. I celebrate it for its unique risk-taking strategy to solve a serious civic problem, a strategy that bucked all conventional wisdom.

We could use an idea like that now.