By late 1966, the Flower Power method of
guerilla theater had spread from California to other parts of the United States. The
Bread and Puppet Theater in New York City staged numerous protests which included handing out balloons and flowers with their anti-war literature.
Workshop in Nonviolence (WIN), a magazine published by New York activists, encouraged the use of Flower Power. In May 1967,
Abbie Hoffman organized the Flower Brigade as an official contingent of a New York City parade honoring the soldiers in Vietnam. News coverage captured Flower Brigade participants, who carried flowers, flags and pink posters imprinted with LOVE, being attacked and beaten by bystanders. In October 1967, Hoffman and
Jerry Rubin helped organize the
March on the Pentagon using Flower Power concepts to create a theatrical spectacle. The plan included a call for marchers to attempt to "
levitate"
the Pentagon. When the marchers faced off against more than 2500 Army national guard troops forming a human barricade in front of the Pentagon, some demonstrators held out flowers and a few placed their flowers in the soldiers'
rifle barrels. Photographs of flower-wielding protesters at the Pentagon march became iconic images of 1960s anti-war protests. One photo called "
The Ultimate Confrontation" (by French photojournalist
Marc Riboud), showed 17-year-old high school student
Jan Rose Kasmir clasping a chrysanthemum and gazing at
bayonet-wielding soldiers.
Smithsonian Magazine later described the photo, which was published throughout the world, as "a gauzy juxtaposition of armed force and flower child innocence". Another photo from the march, titled
Flower Power (by
Washington Star photographer
Bernie Boston), was nominated for the 1967
Pulitzer Prize. The photo shows a young man in a
turtleneck sweater placing
carnations in the
rifle barrels of
military policemen. The young man in the photo is most commonly identified as George Edgerly Harris III, an 18-year-old actor from New York who later performed in San Francisco under the stage name of
Hibiscus. According to writer and activist
Paul Krassner, however, the young man was
Yippie organizer "Super-Joel" Tornabene. Harris died in New York in the early 1980s during the early stages of the
HIV/AIDS epidemic, On 10 December 1971,
John Lennon, an outspoken critic of the war, appeared at a
rally for John Sinclair, a political activist and founding member of the
White Panther Party, who had been sentenced to 10 years for marijuana possession. He said, "OK so Flower Power didn't work. So what. We start again." By the early 1970s, the Flower Power anti-war movement had faded primarily due to the end of the
military draft in 1972 and the start of American withdrawal from combat activities in Vietnam in January 1973. ==Cultural heritage==