Greenpeace Equals Hippies? Shocking!

Perusing the Internet I stumbled upon the blog of Brian Fitzgerald, a long-time activist and employee of Greenpeace International.  He had some interesting inside-info assertions equating the members of Greenpeace with hippies; a designation that he seems rather proud of.

From Dictionary.com
hip·py
1. adjective, hip·pi·er, hip·pi·est.
having big hips.











2. noun, pl -pies
a.(esp during the 1960s) a person whose behaviour, dress, use of drugs, etc, implied a rejection of conventional values
b. ( as modifier ): hippy language





From the Blog of Brian Fitzgerald

I’m Brian Fitzgerald, and I lead the campaign-winning and (multiple) webby-award-winning digital communications team at Greenpeace International. This blog is (mostly) a glimpse behind the scenes at Greenpeace and a repository for lessons learned and experiments in online activism and social media. It will also occasionally mention iPhones and bicycles. I am a digital hippy. I believe that Planet Earth is evolving a mammalian brain, and that the internet is knitting the neural cortex. We are the synaptic nerves that constitute its conscience.

Below is the opening of the speech that he would like to give (if allowed)...

Greetings, Hippies!

Aha, I see a few of you cringing — but you’re in Greenpeace now, and they’ve wheeled me out as the honorary dinosaur. I’ve been asked to tell you a little bit about your past — about the organization’s past. I know a lot of you who have never known a world without the internet, DVDs, or Super Mario (and some of you look like you’ve never known a world without Facebook, which is profoundly scary) — you may think that Greenpeace is a multinational corporation born in the marketing department of some slick PR firm, or the result of dot com boom startup.

I’m here to tell you, kids, a hard truth: your parents were hippies.

And I hope you’re sitting down, because it’s genetic. Which means you’re hippies too....And if you, dear hippies, are going to make a difference in this organization, you’re going have to embrace that madness. You’re just gonna have to honor your hippy roots, find your inner mystic, and believe in the magic of making impossible things happen.

Makes me want to start a round of Kum Ba Yah... anybody... anyone... on 3... 1, 2....