Yippies, free-speech, punk

The Yippies, also known as the Youth International Party, was a more radically youth-oriented and counter-cultural offshoot of the free speech movement and anti-war movements of the 1960s.  Ms. Galvez spoke of them as pranksters who put on bizarre stunts to make political statements.  They coined the phrase, "Never trust anyone over thirty".  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.  The Yuppies are embodied in the novel when young people in attendance at the concert chant "Don't trust anyone over 25!"  Their rebellious nature is represented in the efforts of Marcus and his fellow jammers who attempt to override the Department of Homeland Security.

The Free Speech Movement was a student protest that took place in 1964 and 1965 on the campus of UC-Berkeley.  Students insisted that the university administration remove the ban of on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students' right to free speech and academic freedom.  In Little Brother, as the Department of Homeland Security increasingly locks down the city of San Francisco after the terrorist attack on the Bay Bridge, Marcus is channeling the students at Berkeley and rallying the troops in attempt to change society for the better.

Punk rock is a rock  music genre that developed in the mid-1970s.  They created fast, hard-edged music, stripped down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics.  In the book, Marcus and Agne attend a sort of punk music concert in Dolores Park, where Trudy Doo pronounces that the youth is "the first generation to grow up in Gulag America".