Gray-Haired (and Bald) Boomers Will Save America and Our Democracy

While watching a trio of thirty-something progressive podcast pundits discussing protests of the upcoming “No Kings Day”, they mentioned how they really appreciated the boomers, those gray-haired people with chapsticks and NPB tote bags who continue to dominate in numbers all the anti-Trump protests over these last 9 months.

Wow! I said to myself, that’s it. Our democracy will be saved by the boomers, all those gray and bald headed folks who have been attending all those demonstrations since Donald Trump came back into power. Our country will be prevented from being ravaged by the policies and whims of the Trump White House, not by Senate Democrats, not by the thirty-somethings, not by college kids — but by those of us who have survived these past decades since the 60s and 70s.

We survived and ousted Richard Nixon, we protested Jimmie Carter’s draft, we resisted and survived Ronald Reagan’s “Counter-Revolution” and nuclear war mongering, we helped to bring the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan to a close, we helped to end apartheid in South Africa, we tried to get the US from supporting dictators in Central America.

On the home front, we supported African-Americans in the civil rights and Black-power movements, the struggles of Native Americans in regaining their lands and ways, the fights for the rights of Chicanos and Mexican-Americans. We were ourselves on the front lines of the feminist and women’s rights movement. We made the environmental movement from scratch. We fought the Cultural Revolution.

We did all of this with millions of other peoples for decades — and we did it out of a sense of love — a love for our peoples, our lands, our dreams.

And now — at this moment, everything we fought for is being destroyed. All the rights we fought hard for are being trashed by a signature on a Supreme Court instant ruling, and by the men and women running the federal government.

Civil rights about to be thrown away like yesterday’s news corporation? That cannot happen. There’s generations of African-Americans and the rest of those boomers who won’t let it happen.

Freedom of the press curtailed — only report what the Pentagon wants reporters to report? Freedom of speech outlawed? You can only say what’s approved? These are too much of the cornerstones of what’s left of our democracy. If they go, we go.

Yet, I swear that at every little gathering of protesters since the beginning of Trump’s second term, boomers ruled. That is a very noticeable majority of those protesting were gray-haired. Of course, over the 9 months, those small gatherings have expanded — and now we’re expecting 10 million Americans to come out on No Kings Day, October 18.

But over these months leading up to now, whenever I’d see these boomer numbers so much in prominence, I would squirm a little uneasily. Slightly embarrassed that my generation was taking up all the seats, so to say. Where’s everybody else? I would ask myself.

Now – however – I’m no longer embarrassed by all the gray. I’m proud. My generation, the boomers are on the front lines once again in peaceful protest of Trump’s authoritarianism. It’s a change in attitude.

You know, while we matured, we were informed that our parents’ generation was the Greatest Generation because they survived the Depression and fought in World War II and won. This is all true.

Our generation, too, was immensely challenged. We just need to remember all that we did (see above) — not in spiteful exclusionist pride, but allow those memories to help guide us to the No Kings protest tomorrow and to the next one and the one after that …. We cannot stop. Too much is at stake — and there’s too many of us Boomers in the way.

For we, along with everybody else, have a democracy to save.