Digger Do: Excavating a Social Movement Through Its Print Ephemera

Sponsored by the Book Club of California.

How do we uncover the arc of a social movement through its broadsides, street sheets, mimeographed leaflets, and print ephemera? In this illustrated talk, Eric Noble will explore the Digger movement of 1960s San Francisco — a radical network of free stores, free food, and free theater — through the lens of its printed traces.

Drawing from the Digger Archives and firsthand accounts, the presentation will examine how the Diggers used print not just to document, but to provoke, invite, and enact. From the surrealist tones of the early Digger Papers to the communal publishing of Kaliflower, we’ll consider how typography, anonymity, and distribution shaped the movement’s ethos.

This talk will also reflect on the lineage of radical print culture, connecting the Diggers to earlier traditions of pamphleteering, underground publishing, and the poetic politics of the commons — offering a bibliographic journey through a movement that challenged the very notion of authorship, ownership, and permanence.

An in-person and virtual presentation by Eric Noble, writer, historian, and keeper of the Digger Archive