Tag Archives: climate-change

Youth and Elders Together: Strategically Key?

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In my first couple of years of progressive activism in the late 60’s, many of those I worked with who were also young took a pretty dismissive view of elder activists. And it wasn’t just elders. “Don’t trust anyone over 30”– that was a widespread point of view.

As I experienced it, I think a large part of the reason for this belief was the reality of an “old left” that was not just small but top-down and bureaucratic in its ways of functioning. In addition, McCarthyism and attacks on members of the Communist Party, the major national group on the Left, begun in earnest under Democratic President Harry Truman soon after World War II ended, had a huge impact. Also impactful was the revelation by the Soviet government after Stalin died in 1953 of what had been obscured up to that point in time about what life was like under his 25 years as Soviet strong man.

As a result, many of my generation believed we could be most effective more-or-less on our own, with our own youth culture and our own ways of taking action against injustice and war.

Today it is different. Within more than a few sectors of the overall progressive activist movement, the young and the old and those in between are increasingly joining forces. One big example is the climate justice movement where, last September, an age-diverse and racially-diverse coalition of groups successfully organized upwards of 70,000 people for a massive, spirited and impactful March to End Fossil Fuels in New York City.

Another example is the movement to stop the Mountain Valley Pipeline, planned to carry fracked methane gas through West Virginia, Virginia and into North Carolina. As reported in a recent article in Inside Climate News:

“The opposition to the Mountain Valley Pipeline has attracted an age-diverse base, including older Americans who have been strong proponents of the nation’s climate movement. Some groups, like Third Act and Elders Climate Action, are explicitly focused on mobilizing older activists while others, like Extinction Rebellion, have strong contingencies of movement elders, who sometimes have greater time and resources to engage in civil disobedience.”

Another group, Radical Elders, has emerged in the last couple of years. It played a leadership role pulling together progressive elders’ organizations into a contingent of hundreds marching during the March to End Fossil Fuels. As its name suggests, Radical Elders explicitly views the crises we are experiencing as systemic in their source and, therefore, systemic change is needed to solve them.

But is it really “strategic” to have a movement in which a significant number of youth and elders interact and work together? It’s a good thing, without question, but is it essential?

My view is that what is most strategic when it comes to building a movement which can bring about systemic change is the overcoming of the racism, sexism and other ideologies and practices that keeps potential allies separated. As I put it in my 21st Century Revolution book, “We must build a broadly-based, multi-racial, multi-issue, multi-gender popular alliance, uniting people of color, women, youth, LGBTQ people, trade unionists, farmers, small business people, people with disabilities, professionals and others.”  (p. 91)

But young people, especially in large numbers, bring an energy and a determination that is sometimes lacking among elders and others who have been beaten down, if not beaten up, by the oppressive, corporate-dominated system. And energy is critical, strategic.

Activist elders, conversely, even if feeling their age, can provide hope and inspiration to those much newer to progressive activism. They can show in practice that it is possible to avoid burnout and to stay in the struggle against injustice, inequality and war for decades.

It is so easy to feel despair in the world today given what is happening to it. Youth and elders joining together in action is a definite antidote, a practical application of Joe Hill’s famous words, “don’t mourn, organize.”

Elders who are retired and youth who are just getting started sometimes share being less weighed down by family or job obligations. They have more flexibility in terms of demands on their time. As stated by 81 year old Karen Bixler, arrested at an MVP action in Virginia in early March, “You get to a point where you really have nothing left to lose. We don’t have to worry about, ‘if I go to jail who is going to take care of my kids [or] if I’m looking for a job, how’s an arrest going to look on my record?’”

Or as the Radical Elders say, “we ain’t done yet!”

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist, organizer and writer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution. More info can be found at https://tedglick.com. 

Practical Radical: Seven Strategies to Change the World, a book review

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Future Hope column, February 29, 2024

Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World, a book review

By Ted Glick

“Legendary organizer Bayard Rustin, a consummate practical radical, criticized two other dominant ways of approaching social change: ‘My quarrel with the ‘no-win’ tendency in the civil rights movement (and the reason I have so designated it) parallels my quarrel with the moderates outside the movement. As the latter lack the vision or will for fundamental change, the former lack a realistic strategy for achieving it. For such a strategy they substitute militancy. But militancy is a matter of posture and volume and not of effect.”    page ix

“A defining challenge for Left organizations today is building healthy cultures that encourage real strategic debate and building caring communities that people want to join. In our experience, many organizations lean toward one pole or another—either having honest but harsh debates that lead to splits and drive people away or developing a culture of ‘nice’ that prevents engaging differences in ways that are necessary for breakthrough strategy. Reducing harmful and unnecessary conflict can create the conditions for generative conflict, which can be healthy for organizations and movements.”  p. 263

Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce have written an important and timely book, Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World. For those of us who are committed to live our lives, day after day, in as effective a way as possible to bring about fundamental, transformative, social and economic change, there is a great deal of food for thought in this substantive book

What are the seven strategies which they identify as essential?

-Base Building: “To win anything, you need to organize people, often one by one, door by door, co-worker by co-worker, and to develop strong bonds and leadership capacity.”

-Disruptive Movement: “Disruption is the ability to stop those in power from doing what they want to do and to break up the status quo.”

-Narrative Shift: “A Big Story, rooted in shared values and common themes, that influences how audiences process information and make decisions.”

-Electoral Change: “Organizations endorse candidates or run their own, develop platforms, pursue get-out-the-vote efforts, and attempt to win the power to govern.”

-Inside-Outside: “Win major policy reform by working ‘inside’ in alliance with sympathetic legislators, but also building ‘outside’ pressure through grassroots organizing.”

-Momentum Model: “Momentum-driven campaigns seek to change the political weather—to expand what’s possible to win by changing the ‘common sense’ on a particular issue.”

-Collective Care: “While care—meeting people’s basic needs for food, health, emotional support, or community—is part of everyone’s daily lives, caring for one another can be about more than survival; it can be strategic.”

To help people understand more fully about these seven approaches to world changing, the authors write about the work of nine organizations or movements: Make the Road New York, St. Paul Federation of Educators, the welfare rights movement, Occupy Wall Street, New Georgia Project, Fight for Fifteen, 350.org and Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

One of several key points that the authors make based upon their research and thinking is this one: “Transformational change will likely require multiple forms of power and all seven strategy models. Base-building is fundamental, but the other models work best under particular conditions. To this end, organizers should consider the ways different strategy models might fit together in a larger long-term struggle.”   p. 241

One aspect of the book that I appreciated was the integration of action on the climate emergency throughout it. One of the chapters was devoted exclusively to the work of the international climate group, 350.org, but at various other points the authors make clear that they believe this must be a key focus of the overall people’s movement for positive, systemic change.

One weakness, however, was the lack of a consistent identification of who it is that we must overcome if we really do want to prevent increased attacks on the rights and livelihoods of people of color, low-income and low-wealth people and workers; 21st century fascism; and worldwide ecosystem and societal breakdown. One of the few places where they do so is in reference to what Bernie Sanders consistently and repeatedly spoke about during his 2016 and 2020 Presidential campaigns. Here’s what they said at one point:

“Some parts of the progressive movement focus exclusively on single issues or policies, which makes it challenging to build support for transformational change. If they aspire to assemble a majority coalition, Left political insurgencies must work across issues and speak to different constituencies. One vivid example is the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, which achieved improbable momentum in 2016 in part because of great grassroots organizing, but also because Sanders offered more than a laundry list of policies. He offered a critique that named the villains: corporations and the billionaires and millionaires who were responsible for and profited from the struggles of working people,” the 1%, as first named by Occupy Wall Street.  p. 20

This is not a small issue. If we are not clear that this is the primary reason why humankind and all other life forms are in such great danger right now, we will never bring together the political and social force, the tens of millions of people, the multiracial working class and allies, that is absolutely, strategically necessary.

There is one other issue of note. Toward the end of the book, on page 300, the authors report on a “planning exercise” they were part of in 2022 which emphasized the importance of a “long view.” “We looked at a potential scenario of climate collapse and authoritarian takeover a decade in the future, and then at a world with a multiracial, feminist, global social democracy three decades from now.”

I support having a long view. Having a long view, both looking backwards and looking forward, is an important component of personal and movement staying power. But the way this particular exercise was reported was striking to me.

Why such a disparity as far as timetable between these two possible paths? Did people really think that we need 30 years to get our act together? Did they realize that there are climate tipping points after which it will be extremely difficult, at best, for the world to recover from this century: the drying out of the Amazon rainforest, Arctic and Antarctic meltdown, the release of massive amounts of methane currently locked-in-ice on ocean floors as the oceans warm, the slowing of the Gulf Stream potentially leading to weather instability and crop failures around the world?

Back to the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign: the Bernie movement garnered over 13 million votes that year, and polls for literally months showed that if Sanders had won the Democratic Party nomination he would have started his general election campaign ahead of Trump by about 10 percentage points. This is one big example—there are others, like the majority support right now in opposition to US support of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and Palestinians–that there really are tens of millions of people who support a strong progressive agenda. And that can’t be translated into winning power until 30 years from now?

Bhargava’s and Luce’s book can help us unite on a basis which can last, and sooner rather than later. That’s what we need. That, indeed, is what is absolutely needed strategically.

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist, organizer and writer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution. More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.