When I was in my 20s and just getting started in activist anti-racist feminist politics, I remember very clearly attending community meeting with people in their 30s and 40s and what I remember of their experiences and what they shared was not positive. I want to be honest here and share my thoughts, as I had an experience recently that has made a number of questions rise up for me.
My thoughts and responses were, wow, these folks are cranky and bitter and negative. Always shooting down our ideas and not being supportive. What’s their problem? I’m clearly right and they’re clearly wrong.
Some may have said some of the following things, that I know now are Bad Things To Say to a Young Activist
“I used to think that too when I was your age”
“You’ll learn soon enough what reality is out there”
“No we tried that, it didn’t work”
…. you get the idea.
Me and my comrades were left feeling isolated, unsupported and chided.
Flash forward twenty years.
OMG
I attended a meeting in which not only was I the only person over 40, I was probably the only person over 35, and possibly the only person over 30. Shiny-eyed and shiny-haired 20-somethings talked about wonderful, amazing and impractical ideas. I stayed as silent as I can under such circumstances. When it was my turn to talk, I didn’t say the classic words of death: “Those are great ideas BUT….” and instead said “Those are great ideas. I’M coming from a practical place, and these are my thoughts….. ”
My words, for a number of reasons, were still not greatly appreciated, and that’s fine. But it made me realize something.
I was seen as the crabby, burnt-out cynical older activist! The squasher of sweet idealistic dreams of the 20-somethings. Damn it!!
So, these random questions floated inside my head.
~ What are ways that we can reach across the generations for activist or organizing memory, so the same mistakes aren’t made again, over and over?
~ Is there any way we can draw on the strength of the energy and idealism of young folks and the (if any) experience of the older activists?
~ Respect? How does it happen?
I don’t mean to stereotype, since I know many activists, including me of course, who have not given up, who have not stopped fighting despite many losses and few scant victories. But the distrust persists. Maybe it’s after a person has held a management position, or any position with greater power than a front line worker, and it’s true, many people do change when they get a bit of power.
I don’t have any answers.
Thoughts, my readership?
