Shout-out to Boomers today!
The people who fought for no-fault divorce, plus women's right to credit, access to contraception, & legal abortion.
The people out picketing against nuclear winter before it was cool (pun intended), & who tried so hard to stop unjust wars in other eras.
Who endured other recessions & rallied for workers' rights.
Who were present at Stonewall, & did SO much to fight for inclusivity.
Ageist thinking distracts us from the real destroyer of lives. #NotHere #NotCoSo
@MLClark The moment people are othered we are all damaged, because the very act of that is a separation, and a judgement.
Every generation has had its triumph and its sins because every generation has been made of individuals, and zeitgeists that blew through their times, shaping and molding the world to what we know now.
Hate is baggage, no matter how it manifests, it weighs us down and holds us back.
The truth is, if we want to thrive and survive, it’s all of us or none.
My activism started with smuggling guys into Canada 🇨🇦 during Viet Nam with my baby in his car seat.
These social media “warriors” are total rookies when it comes to activism.
Rookies.
HELL YES. Thank you, Lindsay!
yes‼️ how many today are as involved in demanding change as we were then?
people were murdered in the south by bigots, jailed in the north for demonstrating, reviled everywhere by the masters of war.
but we held firm and changes occurred.
now it's time for another generation to face the same powers seeking to enslave us all.
@MLClark
All that's true, but we also failed to bring about the social reforms we protested for. Like all generations, we had our successes and our failures. I wish we'd had more successes, though.
I do, too, but "not resting on past laurels" is also a terrific attribute of many Boomers, so thank you for your integrity - on top of all your efforts at the time.
@Jeber @MLClark Jeber, I think those of us with social consciences were outweighed by our peers who didn't have any.
I'm a late Boomer/Jones. When I reached college, the protest years were over. I saw opportunities fade for my cohort as I progressed through college--literally, saw programs go away.
Many of my cohort were already in the "greed is good" cutthroat mentality. It wasn't the same world it had been for earlier Boomers.
@MLClark
First to mind is that English teacher I wrote to recently. She went outside the lines of the official curriculum, teaching us much more than composition and literature.
She was the first time I saw someone expressing unconditional love towards strangers (us Rotten Kids that is). :)
@MLClark My mentors and friends. They are a married couple. He left an executive role at GE in the 90’s, started a youth development agency with community members in Hartford, serving thousands of at risk kids and families. He then created programs to provide reentry job/life skill services for incarcerated men. She is a Professor of gender studies and sexual health, and was a pioneer in LGBTQIA advocacy, providing supportive counseling for people transitioning starting in the early 90’s.
@MLClark I generally don't like to guess at ages. Grandpa Ishy (Ishihara) was a positive force of change here but he left to tend to his mental and physical well being. He lived through the Vietnam war, the Japanese consintration camps in the US and through so much change of the 60's and 70's as a war vet. I don't know where he is today but I wish him the best of health and good times in his twilight years.
🏳️🌈
@MLClark I think people use the term because they heard it in the media and aren't really aware who are and are not in that date range, they seem to confuse boomers with silent gen more often than not (The Obama's are both boomers). Humans are not a homogeneous mass, our very existence is in large part from our diversity and using our different strengths to overcome challenges of life. To steal / expand an idea- judge people for the content of their character not the color or age or ....
Date ranges are very silly, always. I'm an elder millennial, but our generation alone runs such a weird spectrum.
PEW and other survey organizations are moving away from prioritizing generational language in their polling, which I think is going to be *such* a boon to us all. It'll filter down into how journalists report on studies, and from there into public consciousness - allowing us to focus on more important factors that unite or divide us, and not these truly flimsy timelines.
@MLClark I'll go with my friend and space muse, Lori Garver.
She fought the space-industrial complex status quo to give "NewSpace" commercial companies the chance to compete for government contracts and have access to government facilities.
Many powerful forces aligned against her in the 2009-2012 time frame. She was condemned as evil incarnate.
But you wouldn't see SpaceX launching and landing reusable rockets today without Lori opening the door.
@MLClark Lori pushed hard to open NASA job opportunities to women. She got a lot of blowback on that too, but today many NASA centers (including KSC) are run by women.
A Lori clip (4 1/2 minutes):
Gloria Steinem, Angela Davis, Jane Fonda, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Maxine Waters, the list goes on and on. Posthumously: Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Maya Angelou et al.
All are boomer warriors.
@MLClark
I don't cotton to the pejorative term "Boomer" because doggin' down an entire generation (& I'm clear that *you're* not) is a potent mix of arrogance & ignorance.
That combination has NEVER achieved ANYTHING great in human history.
Follow-up question! 👀
Who's a Boomer you think doesn't get talked about enough for the work they did, the contributions they made, or just the way they lived their one precious life?
They can be someone in a major public-facing role, someone who left us too soon, or someone in your community / family who makes you proud to know them.
With over 8 billion people now on this fragile pale blue dot, we always have *so* much more to learn from each other.
So who's your pick?
#BoostABoomer