Just Watching the Hippies...
November 2, 2003
Independent on Sunday (London)
By Malaika Costello-Dougherty
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Harriet the Spy called to me. The fictional child-heroine, a nerdy
girl like me, liked to eavesdrop on her neighbours and write
everything suspicious in her notebook. I spent my days
snooping for secrets by looking through the bay windows and
into the basements of Victorian houses on my block. I hid under
my uncle's bed with a tape recorder, only to be forced to reveal
myself when the situation became uncomfortable.
I had found my vocation. I asked my dad how I could pursue it.
"Well baby face," he advised. "You could be an FBI agent."
Nothing unusual about any of this, except that I grew up in the
Haight Ashbury area of San Francisco. Love spent a summer
here in 1969 and the neighbourhood has never got over it. I
grew up there in the Eighties and the hangover was still ringing.
My hippie parents joked they needed a sign that read "US out of
- " so that they could fill in the blank with the names of a series
of different countries.
I was a member of Children against the Killing of Children in
Nicaragua. Some days after school we'd sit cross-legged and
write letters to the then president, Ronald Reagan. I was certain
Ronnie read mine. I told him about terrible things that happened
to children, younger than me, in places where they spoke
Spanish. In the shaky hand of an eight-year- old, I described
babies crying after being ripped from their mothers by the bad,
bad people. My indignation grew. How would you feel, Mr
Reagan, if that were your child? I couldn't understand.
One afternoon the adults announced that the youth group
would join a protest to stop traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge.
My union rep father had pushed my buggy on strike picket lines.
I'd been a radical baby. I'd marched in protests through the
neighbourhood singing and holding candles (fun!)
But this was different. "You understand, we might get arrested,"
an old hippie told us with a gleam in his eyes. I looked around
the room with its cracking paint and raised my hand.
"Would that affect my chances of being an FBI agent?" I
inquired.
Suspicious eyes surrounded me. "Why do you want to be an
FBI agent, little girl?"
"Is your daddy an FBI agent?"
"No, um ... " I sat frozen.
I was escorted from the meeting and invited never to return.
Months later, a letter arrived from Washington DC. I ripped it
open. A form letter explained that the President could not
respond to everyone, but the enclosed pamphlet answered
frequently asked questions - such as how to visit the White
House. I flipped through all the pictures, disappointed there was
nothing about the child victims of a government-backed civil
war. I never wrote to the White House again.
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