Lots of gray haired folks at protests and MAGA town halls

[Ms. Toad]

7. It's the gray haired folks who lived through the Civil Rights movement, Stonewall,

the fight for abortion rights, Vietnam war, Nixon, etc.

The young'uns don't have that experience. And - it took years for particularly the Civil Rights movement and anti-war sentiment to materialize into protests significant enough to influence change.

My grandfather and I marched together in DC sometime in the mid-70s. Seeing the two of us, two generations apart, marching for peace became part of a story a man name Chester told about knowing that change had come. That was around 4 years after the Kent State shootings, around 6 years after I first wore a black armband to middle school, in protest of the war (the day after the Tinker v. Board of Education decision), around 20 years after that same grandfather disowned my father for becoming a conscientious objector. "A man named Chester, over 80 was his age"** spoke of seeing us march together as the moment he realized the tide had turned.

**a phrase from a song by Holly Near - referring to the man who pointed to my grandfather and I as his turning point moment.

I hope it doesn't take as long as it did for us to gain enough momentum to change, but movements with that kind of momentum don't happen instantaneously, and it is those of us who have been through them who are likely to be among the earliest to wake up.