Also watching a series of lectures on the Black Death and how TPTB fought against the changes it brought...and lost...but anyway...
The progress that was made by the Civil Rights movement (and I'll include the LGBTQ+ movement in that) was not as great as we could have hoped, but it built a platform that this group is building on. Yes, we still have far too many old white men with old, white ideas in power. But look at great increase in women and POC holding office today (and driving tRump absolutely bonkers!)
You and I are old enough to remember when a black/white kiss on tv was a big deal, or the whole "Ellen gets a puppy" coyness of someone coming out of the closet was a nine-days wonder. When "colored" was considered polite speech and only activists were "African-American". When the very idea of gay marriage was absurd, never going to happen. Or even when it was a big deal that "Peanuts" added Franklin.
My kids (Millennials) grew up in a different world, with a quite different mindset. They know that they have gotten a raw deal with low pay, no job security and idiot greed-heads in power way too often. And they are trying to change it from the bottom up. They need allies and that is where we come in. We can make the arguments and stand up for them. We are even helping show them the way in some cases (we get to claim Obama as a late-Boomer, after all!)
I also want to note that it's never just one generation in the fight. You know, we tend to think of the '60's as a time of Boomers coming of age, but an awful lot of the leaders back then were from the so-called Silent Generation (born 1928-1945). Look up any of the major stars from back then--Martin Luther King, John Lewis, Jesse Jackson; music heroes like Bob Dylan, Elvis, the Beatles or the Who--and you'll see how many were "Silent Generation". They didn't "keep their heads down" after all...And most Boomers didn't rebel; too many accepted the "get mine, screw you" attitude that was espoused by supposedly "Greatest Generation" Reagan (man should have stayed in Hollywood like he did during the war)
I kind of wandered around with this, but I want to come back to where we agree--the Millennials are a beacon of hope and the new protests look like they aren't just like the old protests. I'll say it again--the kids are alright.
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