My fellow boomers!
Remember back in the late '60s, how intently we listened to our elders when they told us what to do and how to do it as we tried to make accountable a government gone berserk?
Remember how eagerly we wanted to hear what mom and dad and Uncle Harry and all our teachers had to say whenever we wanted to Do Something about the war?
And who among us will ever forget that tingling sense of anticipation we all felt waiting for The New York Times editorial board to weigh in with its august and well-reasoned assesments of our plans and actions?
No one, of course. We were young and rambunctious and in love with ourselves. We thought our passion and commitment and enthusiasm, in sufficient numbers, would somehow transform a war-torn world. We weren't into listening. Anything but. We went our own way. We sneered at the rubes who didn't get it. We alienated the unionized "hard hats" of the day. We hurt more than a few returning vets with out ignorant invective. We made our own mistakes, though we hardly knew it at the time. In the parlance of the time, we did our own thing, and we let the devil take the hindmost, which is exactly what he did.
So why do so many boomers feel compelled these days to offer advice to the young men and women who have made -- on their own -- the Occupy Wall Street movement such an exciting phenomenon?
Boomers, this is not our movement (though we've been welcomed to it). Our moment is long gone. We did what we did, strategically, tactically, philosophically and politically. But for some reason we now feel we have the right to weigh in and offer our august and well-reasoned assessments of what's going down.
But what's happening today is vastly different than what happened 40 years ago.
This is the new generation's chance to do something we boomers -- against considerable evidence -- believe we've already done: change the world for the better, for people without choices or voices. Personally, I don't believe we accomplished that through mass protests back when, but that doesn't mean the Occupy movement can't make their own attempt to achieve that lofty goal. Idealism is a beautiful thing.
Remember?
I'm not saying we shouldn't join the occasional march or attend an Occupy event when the call goes out.
But don't linger within camera range. Don't hog the spotlight or the bullhorn. The best thing boomers can do on behalf of the Occupiers? Get out of their way. They're the ones shivering in the cold night air. Sitting through endless, echoing debates that few of us could tolerate then or now. They're following their own lights. Doing things their own way. We're the ones talking, blogging our way through our memories while sipping coffee at our computers.
That's a big difference.
To any of the young people I saw at Foley Square two weeks ago, I say this: beware of boomers bearing gifts.
Beware of falling for someone else's ideological prejudices or their candied memories of how it used to be and therefore how it should be with you. If you're going to take a page from our protest handbook, let it be the one that reads "Don't trust anybody over 30." We enjoyed taunting our elders with that one. Now it's our turn to see how it feels.
Anyone offers you advice? Ignore it, especially if you haven't asked for it. Watch out for the cynics who will tell you how it all must end, in bloodshed, jail and despair. How that result may even advance the cause.
Don't believe it.
Don't believe anyone who says you're doing it wrong. Laugh at anyone who tells you how to do it correctly.
What you're doing matters, in ways you (and we) can't imagine. You've shown yourselves to be inclusive, fresh and non-violent. If your grizzled sympathizers complain that you don't have a simple, recognizable agenda that they can get behind, remind them that your critics, grizzled or not, are equally baffled by your strategies.
Good for you.
Keep making it up as you go along. Do it for yourself. Do it for your country. Give it all you've got.
What exactly is "it"? I don't know. That's up to you to define.
Ignore eveything I've said -- I recognize the apparent disconnect between my words and stated objective here -- but remember this at least, from the poet and prophet Satchel Paige: "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."
And this, from the man who stole Paige's words but demonstrated their truth in his songs: "Don't follow geezers, watch your parking meters."
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Erica K
Patty Kane Horrigan
Alan Milner
Christine Bollerud
Christina Simon
Ann Bancroft
Salon.com
Comments
This is a movement of, by and for the 99%. That includes all races, genders, occupations, orientations and ages. Nothing could be better for the movement than to be seen as supported by and answering the needs of all of us, geezers very much included.
The difference is they have a bit more of the "culture" on their side, not the political establishment (witness Bloomberg telling them to clean up). We aren't going to tell them they're going to hell in a dirty brown bag. The precident has been set, and yes, we did that.
Mother fucker.
What you say is true, ideally speaking. The movement, as I noted, has been unusually welcoming and inclusive. But I also believe it's at a delicate stage just now and it needs all the breathing space it can get. It shouldn't be confused with or lumped together in the public's mind with protests of the past. Care needs to be taken. The movement needs nurturing.
I would suggest that boomers be as imaginative in the way they address the movement as the movement has been imaginative in its daily evolution. And much as I admire their inclusiveness, I see supportive visits by such predictable lefty supporter / celebrities as Susan Sarandon and Jesse Jackson as stealing energy rather than providing it.
And the less said about Charles Rangel, the better.
I just started reading a book about "Fighting Bob La Follette", the great Wisconsin politician. Read it if you want to get a sense of perspective about the the push and pull between the people and corportations. Its a very old phenomenon.
Ben: Good to hear from you. Amen.
Marlene: I'm surely not suggesting anyone stop trying to change things, just that those of us who took a shot at it long ago give the newcomers some space to try their hand at it, in their own way and in their own time.
As for Fightin' Bob, check out Chicago Guy's site -- I believe he wrote a piece about the guy a couple of months ago.
Hmmm. .. .you're right.
--sinclair louis
"One withstands the invasion of armies; one does not withstand the invasion of ideas."
--victor hugo
occupy wall street, my speech to the masses
V: Short & sweet. Right on.
My overwhelming feeling from this is Love. Love for you you old radical coot, and for the intensity of your feeling for Young and Urgent and Learning.
But...
I think you are mostly right. That so many things are different nowadays justifies your advice; unions are not hardhat hippie-beatin' Wallace votin' hardasses, for one, and that is HUGE. One could make the case that the whole modern RW magillah is: undo unions, because the middle-class experiment interferes with profits. Give 'em a plasma screen and minimum wage and they will sit down and shutup.
Occupy as a movement proves they are soooo wrong. Quakin' in their boots and confused, they are, because the most tech-savvy generation ever, the one with the most layabout toys, is out there in vast numbers.
You are also de facto right, because they won't listen as much as some us might want them to.
And forgive me, but I want them to.
We got a lot of it right -- love, civil rights, the moral imperatives of peace and co-operation, the organic strength of Small, personal liberty trumping nationalist liberty -- but we got some things wrong and we made some things ugly.
Mao was a murdering pig. Cops are NOT pigs, except as individuals and when piggishness is institutionalized by corrupt captains. Revolution cannot be all-encompassing by design or fiat, but only when humans respond and integrate and evolve its best aspects. We should always be selective and careful about progress, and test our ides. Skepticism is better than fervor. Clean and well-organized is usually better than unwashed and "natural"-ly inefficient. America, warts and all, DOES work, with effort. Science is the best method, even if its application must be guided by human values and needs, and closely regulated. Intuition is vastly over-rated; don't ask me why, I just sense that's true.
The again: Pat Boone sucked. Long live Little Richard!
And you can trust anyone who meets certain criteria.
My fear, and what is inevitable, is the Backlash. I don't just mean Disco, though that was pretty damn bad, mymymy oogie-oogie-oogie. I mean how the most startling, long-range benefits of the 60s came after, when smart radicals became even smarter toilers in the system, but -- BUT -- the rest of the culture was still reeling and didn't credit then, kinda sorta correctly saw the drug-addled street-violent stupidly-proto-quasi-ignorant-version-of-Marxist clowns as something to never, ever go back to. Even though such extreme examples splintered off from the majority of progressive Democrat mainstream Americans that most of us became starting around 1974, many ordinary Americans still saw the left as radical and dangerous, way before Fox turned it into propaganda for profit.
And we are still enduring the powerful, pervasive backlash. It doesn't matter that They are wrong, per se, that they are Corporate financed oligarchs. Not in the public mind, it doesn't matter. A single event, like some anarchist asshole stabbing a patrolman, and this is over and done, AGAIN, for another two decades.
Capitalism works. Greed is bad. Peaceful protest is good, anarchist street riots like in Seattle and Toronto: very, very, very bad. Anarchist BS undid us before and they could do it again. It goes way back. Communards who manned the barricades were poor and hungry; their leaders fought for personal power and erected guillotines.
We stopped the war only when housewives and unions and nuns and rabbis joined us in 1971.
I love what is happening now. May it be their 1967 and early 1968, but NOT 1969-70 again. Some of us learned, and we are a brain trust.
I trust their energy, but not their naivete. Drums don't fix banks, they just get the beat going. Banks are fixed by experienced accountants and tough prosecutors and fearless legislators. These throngs wake us up. They show the will of ordinary people, so long as ordinary people constitute the majority out there. If turns into the radical left calling all the shots, old or young, we will bury ourselves under an avalanche of reactionary laws and condemnations.
Geezers and Youngers unite! We have nothing to lose but our jobs, our future, our opportunities, and our rights, and we need EVERYONE this time.
I'm working the late shift tonight (adult ed vocational graduation ceremony, usually more interesting, touching and real than the undergrad springtime variety) so Greg I accept my thanks and excuse my delayed reply, about which I am two-minded as well. Are four minds better than two? I hope to find out as I sift through your ever-wise & thoughtful comment.
Such a long and thoughtful response deserves an equally long and thoughtful response of my own -- but I'll try to keep it just thoughtful.
Since writing the piece, and reading the responses, I've come to see
that a goodly measure of my "warning" is born not of powerful & certainly not persuasive historical knowledge & understanding, as is your awe-inspiring response, but of something homelier, best summarized in a phrase I once despised: "in loco parentis" (you can take the Catholic boy out of the girl's dorm, but you can't take. . .etc). I'm saying, in further youthful parlance, the kids are all right. Even if they're still in their 30s. In such an adventurous endeavor as OWS, 30 may not be the defining edge of senility it once seemed.
So I look at these fledglings and perhaps I see not only myself but also my own kids, who are both past 30 and whose lives I've endeavored for years now not to intrude upon, wise as I may so obviously be. And without claiming anything for myself, I've seen my children go their own way, in directions that have astonished, though mostly pleased, me. Showing their own wisdom, they have followed their own lights.
That, in essence, is my wish for these other kids we're writing about.
I think the power of OWS owes a lot to the fact that it's not been steered by graybeards, committees, figureheads or power freaks. No group in public life has accomplished such a thing as this; it's part of what drives us journos crazy: we've got no spokespeople to call for the easy quote, the advance warning, the official version.
There is no official version. How did they accomplish such a thing?
So there's a certain purity factor going on for me. The possible pollution of that purity comes, as I see it, from above, not below.
My characterization of the Movement was drawn in personal terms, of roughly 1968 to McGovern to Watergate. It was a time during which I discovered politics and experienced a fast ride from mass protest to something more personal. seeing no point in occupying the college president's office or blocking traffic in DC, I put some stuff on the line, never expecting to have to pay a price, and then some very heavy people surprised me by demanding collection. My years in what we liked to call, clumsily, the direct-action non-violent community, still shape my thought about current politics.
So I project, and I find myself hoping and wishing, as a stand-by parent often has to do, that the kids not get stuck in the ways I did. That they discover the importance of personal commitment, realize its dangers, stay non-violent and that they watch those parking meters. I'm certainly not wishing they go the way I went, but that they have the good luck to find an equivalent place where they can confront -- discover -- themselves as well as social injustice.
I could go on & on. But I am a merciful man. Because I don't believe we have any real disagreement, I'll stop explaining myself and see what YouTube has to offer on the Little Richard front.
A-wop-bobba-lula, a wop-bam-boo, my friend.
IOW, I tried out my hoo-hah theory up there and fell flat on my face. Because while she and I agreed that what's on the line this time is actually more serious than what we faced –– a war, a cloacic society, a corrupt Presidency –– theres is no Desolation Row. They have discovered a natural, youthful immunity to coach-potatoism. Go figure. The last thing any of us, but especially the pessimistic corporate Right, expected: that the 60s fever for Spring and Air and Light would recur, writ large.
It sounds to me that you're describing a similar process with Roxanne, but without her having to take extreme steps to get through to you. You're listening to her. She's right there in front of you and you're paying attention. That's all I think any of us ever really want, because attention is not just a sign or love, it's love itself. So, on that guess, I'd say you're one lucky man.
Paul Haider, Chicago
Wanted to be Che
Became Fidel
So, I couldn't agree more.
Whatever this thing is, don't let it become a proxy war for boomers trying to make sense of their own failures.