Boomers - God I hate that word - have been blamed for everything for 50 years. That is because they posed a very real threat to those in power back in the 60's. There were protests against US militarism and imperialism, against racial discrimination - redlining, voter suppression, police brutality, job discrimination - protests against corporate greed, against union busting and complicit Union leadership, There was increasing awareness about and opposition to the destruction of the environment. The collapse of public transportation was an issue, as were harmful agricultural practices, suburban sprawl, deforestation, wasteful packaging, planned obsolescence in products, and on and on. Opposition to the historical and ongoing brutality against the peoples of pre-Colombian North America was forming.
Those protests were not just street theater, there was serious organizing happening, something which is often lacking today. Moreover, significant headway was being made in gaining widespread popular support for those "radical" ideas. That was a threat to those in power.
Ever since then the Republicans have been leading a reactionary counter movement, quite successfully. We have had 50 years of an orchestrated propaganda campaign to destroy the credibility of those protest movements, which were led mostly by people born 1940-1950.
Organizers in the 60's respected and learned from the anti-fascist, anti-racism and organized Labor leaders from the 30's, and the veterans of those movements. Those leaders in turn had picked up the torch from the leaders of the progressive movement in the 1890s as organized Labor leaders, who had respected and learned from the people in the early movement for Women's Suffrage and the Abolition movement.
There was a thin but important cross-generational line of solidarity. The conservatives have worked tirelessly to break that connection, that enduring and potent line of solidarity. All of the chatter about this generation or that generation from corporate media is an important component of that reactionary effort to isolate us from one another and to alienate us from our own history of resistance.
We have gone backward over the last 50 years. Civil Rights? Over 40% of the population of Mississippi is African American, yet somehow the state can only elect the most reactionary right wingers. Workers' rights? The billionaire class controls more wealth and power than the Robber Barons ever dreamed of having. While productivity has soared, real wages have been stagnant. Millions of people in the US are now struggling to afford housing and groceries. Politics and the environment? Fascists have risen to power and the environment is collapsing.
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