Kamala Harris – I marched with her when she was three, in the 60s. 8/12 Year of Plague
In the 60s, I marched on the streets of Berkeley during the free speech movement. When Kamala’s parents were an item. In those days college people coupled-up. Her mom a science grad student, dad, economics. A story close to home. They married, had Kamala and divorced later. Kamala was close to her mother’s Indian family.
Then, Kamala was two or three and used to march with mom. I think I remember seeing her sitting on mom’s shoulders as we gathered around the Berkeley Ceders. As I sit here remembering being 20ish and California and thinking about where I crashed in Berkerley in a student house open to all. I flew in from the east with my girlfriend. We stayed down the hill below the campus – free spirits. As I sit here this morning, I remembered marching to the “ceders” on campus for rallies. I remembered the “ceders”. In the deep recesses of my memory they were trees. I assumed a grove of trees on campus – a meeting place. I looked it up for this paragraph – Googled it. Turned out the ceders weren’t trees. They are/were buildings, an institute.
Around the Ceders there were lots of speeches and cursing. Kamala’s mom would keep her near the front. We all sat on the grass. There was no danger, no tear gas. We just chanted dirty words for free-speech.
She was half-way between these two pics when I saw her. I was a stoned East Coast student with kinda long hair. Going out to the Coast was a right of passage. The free-speech movement may be, from one perspective, simply us walking around Berkeley stoned, if we were lucky enuf to find grass. We were chanting curses to free up speech. I think we would be arrested for cursing as we marched, but I may be wrong.
Good Luck, Kamala Harris