Here’s some interesting evidence that America is still a young nation: As we celebrate our 250th birthday, anyone 83 or older has lived through a full third of official national history. These people, we believe, are important witnesses to this tumultuous moment in our community – they have the yardstick to measure the present against a past long enough to truly appreciate what is special about this moment. And when we asked some of them for their opinions this spring, they didn’t hold back.
One caveat: Third Act, which we founded five years ago to mobilize older Americans to protect climate and democracy, is more left-leaning. But this is true for older Americans in general. A new poll from The New York Times and Siena found that 46 percent of seniors strongly disapprove of President Trump’s administration, while just 36 percent strongly approve. If you want to understand why the group that has long been considered the most conservative in the country thinks this way, you should listen to a few voices.
There’s Barbara Silverstone, for example, who just turned 95 – she was born two years before FDR moved into the White House. At the time, she recalls, the country was plagued by “the spread of diseases that claimed the lives of children and adults. These included polio, measles, mumps and influenza, to name a few. Most children survived measles and mumps, some died. My younger sister contracted polio.” Silverstone’s children were the first generation to benefit from vaccines. It’s no surprise that she’s horrified to live at a time when the CDC is toying with this great public health triumph and measles is once again surging in many regions. “I fear for my great-grandchildren.”
Voices of a generation
Or take Murphy Sewall, born three months after Pearl Harbor, who began his service as a naval officer 60 years ago. “I am outraged by the sight of armed masked men breaking into cars and houses in American cities. Their behavior reminds me frighteningly of the fascism of the 1930s.”
Karen Slaney was also born during wartime and “had nightmares about the Nazis as a girl.” Now the nightmares return in a new form. She quoted from “The Diary of Anne Frank,” a book that virtually every literate person of this generation read in school (and which is now routinely banned in right-wing library purges): “Terrible things are happening outside. Poor, helpless people are being dragged from their homes. Families are being torn apart. Men, women and children are being separated from one another. Children come home from school to find their parents gone.” “I can’t believe this is happening in America,” Slaney says, “but then I turn on the news.”
We don’t believe that America used to be great and then Trump came along. One of us had to integrate her elementary school in the 1960s – and that wasn’t a walk in the park. We experienced Watergate and are therefore not naive when it comes to corruption. But once the courts helped end official segregation, and Richard Nixon was driven from office for his crimes. (And the dimensions were quite different – in 1952, Nixon’s vice presidential campaign was overshadowed by an $18,000 slush fund from wealthy supporters, not the $1.8 billion from the new fund that taxpayers were supposed to have paid to the January 6 insurrectionists and other “lawfare victims” before the administration withdrew the plan.)
A country in transition
The point is: We believed we lived in an exceptional country that was at least working on its problems and moving, albeit reluctantly, toward greater freedom, broader voting rights, and a whole host of other advances like cleaner air. And we knew that we lived in a country where presidents and other leaders represented, at least outwardly, decency, dignity, and the idea of serving all Americans. Now environmental regulations are being overturned, civil rights laws are being rolled back, and poor people across the country and planet are being left in the lurch. Now cage fights are being planned on the White House lawn, and the president who acts like he could be Jesus has made it abundantly clear that he despises at least half the country.
This should – and does – infuriate Americans of all ages. But while young people view it with the horror that comes with realizing how limited one’s life options might be on a hot, divided earth, older people view it with a different kind of sadness. We are forced to confront the fact that the long arc of history may not bend toward justice and liberation—but toward greed and domination.
We still didn’t give up. Anyone who has been to a No Kings demonstration in recent months may have noticed how many gray hairs there were. It’s worth remembering that people in their third years of life in the 1960s and 1970s saw first-hand, often first-hand, that Americans can truly come together to shape policy. This muscle memory gives us a deep-rooted belief in our collective power that younger people may find harder to muster.
The “One Third Project”
We will distribute the videos from our so-called “One-Third Project” in our networks in the coming months – and in many cases also in our retirement communities. And we will encourage others to speak up (this is a good project that children and grandchildren can help with). We want to show older people who are dismayed by the world Trump is building that they are in the majority — and that they can and should vote against MAGAism in the midterms.
And we will choose. As the Times poll shows, 54 percent of seniors are “almost certain” to vote in the fall – twice as many as younger voters. That should really make the right wing, which has always relied on older, white voters for its majorities, nervous. As Barbara Green, 92, put it: “I wake up every morning feeling anxious, wondering what the president did or said while I was sleeping. That’s not normal. But if it’s designed to silence us, it doesn’t work.”
Akaya Windwood and Bill McKibben are the lead volunteers at Third Act, a nationwide organization of Americans over 60 working to protect our democracy and our climate.
If you would like to participate in this project – or if you have an elderly parent, grandparent, uncle, aunt, neighbor or whomever you would like to include – here are some tips:
1) Keep the video short – we’ve found that around 300 words is the upper limit for a good script.
Here’s how to get involved
2) Make it as specific as possible: What exactly about the current political moment stands in sharp contrast to the world you once knew? General tirades against the Trump administration are not helping; It’s extremely powerful to say, “I remember the Los Angeles of my youth choking in smog, and I remember how the Clean Air Act turned the sky blue again. That’s why I’m so angry that environmental regulations are now being overturned.” Or: “My first political memory is JFK saying: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ How did we get from there to the Pentagon awarding military contracts to his son’s company?” Here you will find some ideas and suggestions.
3) You don’t need to worry too much about the technical quality of the video, but it should be easy to see and hear. Here you will find some tips.
4) And when you’re done: Here’s the website where you can submit it!
5) Just as important: We need your help to distribute these videos to as many networks as possible. Join Third Act to advance this project.