Tag: Kennedy

Seniors Take to the Streets

At the recent “No Kings” protest, I couldn’t help but notice that one-third to one-half the people who filled the city park had gray hair. Nearly 50 years after the rallies against the Vietnam war, those of us who had gathered on campuses to yell “hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today” were now holding signs that said “Royal Flush, Dump Trump” and “I want a president not a king.”  Some of the younger people had obscene signs like the ones we used to hold in our young hands: “One two three four, we don’t want your fucking war” and “Make love not war.” But in our advanced age, our signs are less angry. We’ve calmed down and don’t feel the anger as much as the sorrow that the world has gotten to where it is.

Our generation was honed on some idealism: inspired by John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King; Jr., and then devastated by their assassinations. We fought for women’s and minorities’ rights. I think some of us still carry that idealism in our hearts, only to see it threatened in front of our eyes.

Can we model that decency and idealism for younger generations? For the “No Kings” protest, residents of the largest senior facility in town, some in wheelchairs and using walkers, stood by the highway with signs denouncing the actions of a president who has arrogantly cut government agencies and workers, and now threatens to cut aid to seniors, the poor and disabled.  No wonder there are so many older people out there—we want to protect Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

But it’s more than just looking out for our own interests. At one protest last week deploring the administration’s cruel and random seizing of immigrants, it was mostly older women that lined the street with signs. Do women have more empathy, feel more the pain of immigrants being torn from their families? This is not to say that men aren’t part of these protests, but their numbers are fewer.

We seniors know that the world wasn’t always like this, where a president gets away with disobeying the laws we’ve lived with since our country was born. Even in the darkest days of the Nixon administration, we trusted that eventually truth and honor would rule. And it did. But I don’t feel that way anymore, and I’m guessing that a lot of people would agree.

I think many older people feel a responsibility to younger generations, even if we don’t have children. After all, looking at the world now, we can see how lucky we were to grow up and live in a time of plenty, where houses, cars and food were cheap, and jobs were plentiful. Our water and air were mostly clean, wildlife thrived in still open lands, and we hadn’t yet heard of climate change. We grew up in a world where community existed, whether through church, neighbors or workplace, and in a time before social media took over people’s lives.  

I like to think that if democracy can be saved, it will be by old women (and some men) bravely holding signs and shouting, “This is what democracy looks like,” even if our voices are hoarse, our legs wobbly and our backs stooped. Our hearts are still strong.

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Going Backwards

Does it feel like our history is unspooling before our eyes? Like most in my generation, I grew up before a woman’s right to an abortion was ensured. Friends told me about getting back-street abortions, about the shame and fear they felt. I heard third-hand stories about women using clothes hangers to get rid of unwanted pregnancies. So when Roe V. Wade was decided in 1973, it seemed like the horror stories would end, that the world had finally come to its senses. Instead, the recent Supreme Court decision and the ensuing laws by some states to restrict women’s freedom to make their own decisions set women’s rights back to where we started.

The environmental news is equally depressing. In 1969, I remember the Cuyahoga River in Ohio catching on fire because it was so polluted. In those early days of the environmental movement, we were starting to hear stories about whales becoming extinct because of over-fishing. Eagles were dying because of the overuse of the pesticide DDT.  Those of us who identified ourselves with a new word, “environmentalist,” were overjoyed when President Richard Nixon, not a progressive in anyone’s book, started the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. We thought we were on an upward course to save the Earth, especially when the astronauts took a photo from the moon that showed a dazzling blue planet. After seeing this, how could anyone not want to protect what looked like paradise?

Yet, since then, we’ve suffered worsening environmental damage, especially from climate change, in many cases reversing any gains we made 40 or 50 years ago. Although there have been victories—the outlawing of DDT, certain species of whales returning and rivers less polluted—you only have to look at the dried-up lakes of the West during this unprecedented drought to get that sinking feeling that we are losing the race to save the planet.  

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History Repeats Itself

It feels like 1968 all over again: a divisive president calling for law and order, mayhem in the streets, a divided society and distrust of the police, who we referred to as “pigs” back in the ’60s and ’70s—and for good reason.

In 1968, I remember watching with my father the Democratic convention. on TV. It was held in Chicago, where the police force viciously attacked mostly peaceful demonstrators in the streets outside the downtown convention hall, about 25 miles south of where we lived. While I watched with increasing horror as the police clubbed protesters, my dad was on the opposite political side, shouting “Get ‘em,” and “knock ’em down.”

There was a generational divide then that I don’t think exists now: between parents baffled and disgusted by their teen and young adult children who were letting their hair grow long, smoking pot, engaging in sex before marriage, burning the flag and rebelling against a country that our fathers fought for in World War II.

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