An intense consciousness of space, of territory, fuelled radical activism in the late 1960s. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the Bay Area. Campus spatial politics were still important at Berkeley but, increasingly, the territorial imperative was focussed upon Telegraph Avenue. Street-fighting ushered in the last phase of Movement politics, bringing the revolution to home turf. A strategic and analytic fillip was provided by the Black Panthers. Their notion of armed self-defence, along with the theory of internal colonialism and a local community focus, helped to influence the direction of radicalism generally. In Berkeley, for instance, a profoundly localist orientation was developing. The site of the revolution was shifting, from Vietnam to Telegraph Avenue. While significant concerns regarding the culture and politics of space were being highlighted with ever more dramatic power, Berkeley radicals were also tending to look inward. This was partly reflected in new popular terminology like ‘liberated territory’ or ‘ghetto self-rule’.

Language and Revolution

By 1968 much radical discourse in the Bay Area was filled with spatial images. This was one sign of growing militancy, of the turn towards revolutionary ideology. The Diggers’ Free City document casually commented: ‘By now we all have guns, know how to use them, know our enemy, and are ready to defend.’ This militant preparedness to defend space also encouraged the flourishing of demands for more space, as with the Free City programme.