Catherine Yronwode

I lived in Berkeley during the 1960s. My mother worked at the University and was a socialist, so i was a red-diaper baby. I went on my first peace march in 1961, at Easter. I took part in civil rights demonstrations and anti-war demonstrations on a regular basis. I was tear-gassed often. I left Berkeley in 1965 to live at Tolstoy Peace Farm, an anti-war anarchist commune in Washington State. In 1967 we were arrested for growing marijuana. After i got out of jail in 1968, i returned to Berkeley and took part in more demonstrations, but i left again for good in 1969 because i could not see dying, as one man had, to secure a square block of city park. I became a back-to-the-land commune-dwelling dirt hippie and continued to oppose the war until it ended.