Little Brother

by Cory Doctorow

  Ms. Galvez came in and patted her hair and set down her SchoolBook on her desk and powered it up. She picked up her chalk and turned around to face the board. We all laughed. Good-naturedly, but we laughed.

  She turned around and was laughing, too. “Inflation has hit the nation’s slogan-writers, it seems. How many of you know where this phrase comes from?”

  We looked at each other. “Hippies?” someone said, and we laughed. Hippies are all over San Francisco, both the old stoner kinds with giant skanky beards and tie-dyes, and the new kind, who are more into dress-up and maybe playing Hacky Sack than protesting anything.

  “Well, yes, hippies. But when we think of hippies these days, we just think of the clothes and the music. Clothes and music were incidental to the main part of what made that era, the sixties, important.

  “You’ve heard about the civil rights movement to end segregation, white and black kids like you riding buses into the South to sign up black voters and protest against official state racism. California was one of the main places where the civil rights leaders came from. We’ve always been a little more political than the rest of the country, and this is also a part of the country where black people have been able to get the same union factory jobs as white people, so they were a little better off than their cousins in the Southland.

  “The students at Berkeley sent a steady stream of freedom riders south, and they recruited them from information tables on campus, at Bancroft and Telegraph Avenue. You’ve probably seen that there are still tables there to this day.

  “Well, the campus tried to shut them down. The president of the university banned political organizing on campus, but the civil rights kids wouldn’t stop. The police tried to arrest a guy who was handing out literature from one of these tables, and they put him in a van, but three thousand students surrounded the van and refused to let it budge. They wouldn’t let them take this kid to jail. They stood on top of the van and gave speeches about the First Amendment and Free Speech.

  “That galvanized the Free Speech Movement. That was the start of the hippies, but it was also where more radical student movements came from. Black power groups like the Black Panthers—and later gay rights groups like the Pink Panthers, too. Radical women’s groups, even ‘lesbian separatists’ who wanted to abolish men altogether! And the Yippies. Anyone ever hear of the Yippies?”

  “Didn’t they levitate the Pentagon?” I said. I’d once seen a documentary about this.

  She laughed. “I forgot about that, but yes, that was them! Yippies were like very political hippies, but they weren’t serious the way we think of politics these days. They were very playful. Pranksters. They threw money into the New York Stock Exchange. They circled the Pentagon with hundreds of protestors and said a magic spell that was supposed to levitate it. They invented a fictional kind of LSD that you could spray onto people with squirt guns and shot each other with it and pretended to be stoned. They were funny and they made great TV—one Yippie, a clown called Wavy Gravy, used to get hundreds of protestors to dress up like Santa Claus so that the cameras would show police officers arresting and dragging away Santa on the news that night—and they mobilized a lot of people.

  “Their big moment was the Democratic National Convention in 1968, where they called for demonstrations to protest the Vietnam War. Thousands of demonstrators poured into Chicago, slept in the parks, and picketed every day. They had lots of bizarre stunts that year, like running a pig called Pigasus for the presidential nomination. The police and the demonstrators fought in the streets—they’d done that many times before, but the Chicago cops didn’t have the smarts to leave the reporters alone. They beat up the reporters, and the reporters retaliated by finally showing what really went on at these demonstrations, so the whole country watched their kids being really savagely beaten down by the Chicago police. They called it a ‘police riot.’

  “The Yippies loved to say, ‘Never trust anyone over thirty.’ They meant that people who were born before a certain time, when America had been fighting enemies like the Nazis, could never understand what it meant to love your country enough to refuse to fight the Vietnamese. They thought that by the time you hit thirty, your attitudes would be frozen and you couldn’t ever understand why the kids of the day were taking to the streets, dropping out, freaking out.

  “San Francisco was ground zero for this. Revolutionary armies were founded here. Some of them blew up buildings or robbed banks for their cause. A lot of those kids grew up to be more or less normal, while others ended up in jail. Some of the university dropouts did amazing things—for example, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who founded Apple Computers and invented the PC.”

  I was really getting into this. I knew a little of it, but I’d never heard it told like this. Or maybe it had never mattered as much as it did now. Suddenly, those lame, solemn, grown-up street demonstrations didn’t seem so lame after all. Maybe there was room for that kind of action in the Xnet movement.

  I put my hand up. “Did they win? Did the Yippies win?”

  She gave me a long look, like she was thinking it over. No one said a word. We all wanted to hear the answer.

  “They didn’t lose,” she said. “They kind of imploded a little. Some of them went to jail for drugs or other things. Some of them changed their tunes and became yuppies and went on the lecture circuit telling everyone how stupid they’d been, talking about how good greed was and how dumb they’d been.

  “But they did change the world. The war in Vietnam ended, and the kind of conformity and unquestioning obedience that people had called patriotism went out of style in a big way. Black rights, women’s rights and gay rights came a long way. Chicano rights, rights for disabled people, the whole tradition of civil liberties was created or strengthened by these people. Today’s protest movement is the direct descendant of those struggles.”

  “I can’t believe you’re talking about them like this,” Charles said. He was leaning so far out of his seat he was half standing, and his sharp, skinny face had gone red. He had wet, large eyes and big lips, and when he got excited he looked a little like a fish.

  Ms. Galvez stiffened a little, then said, “Go on, Charles.”

  “You’ve just described terrorists. Actual terrorists. They blew up buildings, you said. They tried to destroy the stock exchange. They beat up cops, and stopped cops from arresting people who were breaking the law. They attacked us!”

  Ms. Galvez nodded slowly. I could tell she was trying to figure out how to handle Charles, who really seemed like he was ready to pop. “Charles raises a good point. The Yippies weren’t foreign agents, they were American citizens. When you say ‘They attacked us,’ you need to figure out who ‘they’ and ‘us’ are. When it’s your fellow countrymen—”

  “Crap!” he shouted. He was on his feet now. “We were at war then. These guys were giving aid and comfort to the enemy. It’s easy to tell who’s us and who’s them: if you support America, you’re us. If you support the people who are shooting at Americans, you’re them.”

  “Does anyone else want to comment on this?”

  Several hands shot up. Ms. Galvez called on them. Some people pointed out that the reason that the Vietnamese were shooting at Americans is that the Americans had flown to Vietnam and started running around the jungle with guns. Others thought that Charles had a point, that people shouldn’t be allowed to do illegal things.

  Everyone had a good debate except Charles, who just shouted at people, interrupting them when they tried to get their points out. Ms. Galvez tried to get him to wait for his turn a couple times, but he wasn’t having any of it.

  I was looking something up on my SchoolBook, something I knew I’d read.

  I found it. I stood up. Ms. Galvez looked expectantly at me. The other people followed her gaze and went quiet. Even Charles looked at me after a while, his big wet eyes burning with hatred for me.

  “I wanted to read something,” I said. “It’s short. ‘Governments are instituted am
ong men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.’”

  Chapter 12

  Ms. Galvez’s smile was wide.

  “Does anyone know what that comes from?”

  A bunch of people chorused, “The Declaration of Independence.”

  I nodded.

  “Why did you read that to us, Marcus?”

  “Because it seems to me that the founders of this country said that governments should only last for so long as we believe that they’re working for us, and if we stop believing in them, we should overthrow them. That’s what it says, right?”

  Charles shook his head. “That was hundreds of years ago!” he said. “Things are different now!”

  “What’s different?”

  “Well, for one thing, we don’t have a king anymore. They were talking about a government that existed because some old jerk’s great-great-great-grandfather believed that God put him in charge and killed everyone who disagreed with him. We have a democratically elected government—”

  “I didn’t vote for them,” I said.

  “So that gives you the right to blow up a building?”

  “What? Who said anything about blowing up a building? The Yippies and hippies and all those people believed that the government no longer listened to them—look at the way people who tried to sign up voters in the South were treated! They were beaten up, arrested—”

  “Some of them were killed,” Ms. Galvez said. She held up her hands and waited for Charles and me to sit down. “We’re almost out of time for today, but I want to commend you all on one of the most interesting classes I’ve ever taught. This has been an excellent discussion and I’ve learned much from you all. I hope you’ve learned from each other, too. Thank you all for your contributions.

  “I have an extra-credit assignment for those of you who want a little challenge. I’d like you to write up a paper comparing the political response to the antiwar and civil rights movements in the Bay Area to the present day civil rights responses to the War on Terror. Three pages minimum, but take as long as you’d like. I’m interested to see what you come up with.”

  The bell rang a moment later and everyone filed out of the class. I hung back and waited for Ms. Galvez to notice me.

  “Yes, Marcus?”

  “That was amazing,” I said. “I never knew all that stuff about the sixties.”

  “The seventies, too. This place has always been an exciting place to live in politically charged times. I really liked your reference to the Declaration—that was very clever.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It just came to me. I never really appreciated what those words all meant before today.”

  “Well, those are the words every teacher loves to hear, Marcus,” she said, and shook my hand. “I can’t wait to read your paper.”

  I bought the Emma Goldman poster on the way home and stuck it up over my desk, tacked over a vintage black-light poster. I also bought a NEVER TRUST T-shirt that had a photoshop of Grover and Elmo kicking the grown-ups Gordon and Susan off Sesame Street. It made me laugh. I later found out that there had already been about six photoshop contests for the slogan online in places like Fark and Worth1000 and B3ta and there were hundreds of readymade pics floating around to go on whatever merch someone churned out.

  Mom raised an eyebrow at the shirt, and Dad shook his head and lectured me about not looking for trouble. I felt a little vindicated by his reaction.

  Ange found me online again and we IM-flirted until late at night again. The white van with the antennas came back and I switched off my Xbox until it had passed. We’d all gotten used to doing that.

  Van was really excited by this party. It looked like it was going to be monster. There were so many bands signed up they were talking about setting up a B-stage for the secondary acts.

  > How’d they get a permit to blast sound all night in that park? There’s houses all around there

  > Per-mit? What is “per-mit”? Tell me more of your hu-man per-mit.

  > Woah, it’s illegal?

  > Um, hello? _You’re_ worried about breaking the law?

  > Fair point

  > LOL

  I felt a little premonition of nervousness though. I mean, I was taking this perfectly awesome girl out on a date that weekend—well, she was taking me, technically—to an illegal rave being held in the middle of a busy neighborhood.

  It was bound to be interesting at least.

  Interesting.

  People started to drift into Dolores Park through the long Saturday afternoon, showing up among the ultimate frisbee players and the dog-walkers. Some of them played frisbee or walked dogs. It wasn’t really clear how the concert was going to work, but there were a lot of cops and undercovers hanging around. You could tell the undercovers because, like Zit and Booger, they had Castro haircuts and Nebraska physiques: tubby guys with short hair and untidy mustaches. They drifted around, looking awkward and uncomfortable in their giant shorts and loose-fitting shirts that no doubt hung down to cover the chandelier of gear hung around their midriffs.

  Dolores Park is pretty and sunny, with palm trees, tennis courts and lots of hills and regular trees to run around on, or hang out on. Homeless people sleep there at night, but that’s true everywhere in San Francisco.

  I met Ange down the street at the anarchist bookstore. That had been my suggestion. In hindsight, it was a totally transparent move to seem cool and edgy to this girl, but at the time I would have sworn that I picked it because it was a convenient place to meet up. She was reading a book called Up Against the Wall Motherf___er when I got there.

  “Nice,” I said. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

  “Your mama don’t complain,” she said. “Actually, it’s a history of a group of people like the Yippies, but from New York. They all used that word as their last names, like ‘Ben M-F.’ The idea was to have a group out there, making news, but with a totally unprintable name. Just to screw around with the news media. Pretty funny, really.” She put the book back on the shelf and now I wondered if I should hug her. People in California hug to say hello and good-bye all the time. Except when they don’t. And sometimes they kiss on the cheek. It’s all very confusing.

  She settled it for me by grabbing me in a hug and tugging my head down to her, kissing me hard on the cheek, then blowing a fart on my neck. I laughed and pushed her away.

  “You want a burrito?” I asked.

  “Is that a question or a statement of the obvious?”

  “Neither. It’s an order.”

  I bought some funny stickers that said THIS PHONE IS TAPPED which were the right size to put on the receivers on the pay phones that still lined the streets of the Mission, it being the kind of neighborhood where you got people who couldn’t necessarily afford a cell phone.

  We walked out into the night air. I told Ange about the scene at the park when I left.

  “I bet they have a hundred of those trucks parked around the block,” she said. “The better to bust you with.”

  “Um.” I looked around. “I sort of hoped that you would say something like, ‘Aw, there’s no chance they’ll do anything about it.’”

  “I don’t think that’s really the idea. The idea is to put a lot of civilians in a position where the cops have to decide, are we going to treat these ordinary people like terrorists? It’s a little like the jamming, but with music instead of gadgets. You jam, right?”

  Sometimes I forget that all my friends don’t know that Marcus and M1k3y are the same person. “Yeah, a little,” I said.

  “This is like jamming with a bunch of awesome bands.”

  “I see.”

  Mission burritos are an institution. They are cheap, gia
nt and delicious. Imagine a tube the size of a bazooka shell, filled with spicy grilled meat, guacamole, salsa, tomatoes, refried beans, rice, onions and cilantro. It has the same relationship to Taco Bell that a Lamborghini has to a Hot Wheels car.

  There are about two hundred Mission burrito joints. They’re all heroically ugly, with uncomfortable seats, minimal decor—faded Mexican tourist office posters and electrified framed Jesus and Mary holograms—and loud mariachi music. The thing that distinguishes them, mostly, is what kind of exotic meat they fill their wares with. The really authentic places have brains and tongue, which I never order, but it’s nice to know it’s there.

  The place we went to had both brains and tongue, which we didn’t order. I got carne asada and she got shredded chicken and we each got a big cup of horchata.

  As soon as we sat down, she unrolled her burrito and took a little bottle out of her purse. It was a little stainless steel aerosol canister that looked for all the world like a pepper spray self-defense unit. She aimed it at her burrito’s exposed guts and misted them with a fine red oily spray. I caught a whiff of it and my throat closed and my eyes watered.

  “What the hell are you doing to that poor, defenseless burrito?”

  She gave me a wicked smile. “I’m a spicy food addict,” she said. “This is capsaicin oil in a mister.”

  “Capsaicin—”

  “Yeah, the stuff in pepper spray. This is like pepper spray but slightly more dilute. And way more delicious. Think of it as Spicy Cajun Visine if it helps.”

  My eyes burned just thinking of it.

  “You’re kidding,” I said. “You are so not going to eat that.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “That sounds like a challenge, sonny. You just watch me.”

  She rolled the burrito up as carefully as a stoner rolling up a joint, tucking the ends in, then rewrapping it in the tinfoil. She peeled off one end and brought it up to her mouth, poised with it just before her lips.