Latest / DEEP INSIGHT / Older Americans bring energy, experience to anti-Trump activism

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Older Americans bring energy, experience to anti-Trump activism · DEEP INSIGHT

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This week, the veteran climate organizer Bill McKibben was asked
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: by the news outlet Notice if he was worried about
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: people from his grassroots organization showing up to these protests
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: and being labeled domestic terrorists. Bill McKibben told them, quote,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: our average age is in the mid seventies. I think
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: our gray haired presence alone will help make it clear
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  Speaker 1: what nonsense this is. Older Americans were proudly overrepresented at
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  Speaker 1: the first No King's Day, and we aim to make
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: that happen again. Joining us now is Bill McKibben. He's
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  Speaker 1: an environmental writer. He's also the founder of Third Act
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  Speaker 1: for Americans age sixty and older who are out there
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  Speaker 1: working for change. Mister McKibben, thanks very much for being here.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: I know it's a big night, Rachel, what a pleasure
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  Speaker 2: to be with you.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Tell me about this what I described as kind of
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: a sneer, this sort of criticism that has been levied
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: by Republicans, by defenders of President Trump, but even sometimes
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: by people on the other side of the aisle, people
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: who might consider themselves to be on the left or
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: in the center, saying that older people participating in these
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: protests and such large numbers, it's somehow a bad thing, somehow,
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  Speaker 1: some sort of strategic weakness. I've never seen it that
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: way myself, but I feel like you hear that critique
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  Speaker 1: a lot.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think just the opposite. I think one reason
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  Speaker 2: that older people have been turning out in such large numbers,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: and they have been heavily over represented in these demonstrations
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: is because everybody can tell with the heart, can tell
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: that the Trump regime is bad news. But if you
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: have fifteen presidents in your experience, you know that it's
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: not just bad news. You know that it's utterly different
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  Speaker 2: from every president that we've ever lived through before, good
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: or bad. That this is a complete rupture with the
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: America that we knew, and I think that may strike
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: old people harder. We've certainly known is to third act.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: That there's a huge willingness of people to be out
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: in the street over and over again, and not just
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: at these demonstrations. You'll remember a couple of weeks ago,
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  Speaker 2: Stephen Miller was boasting about how well things were going
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: with the federal occupation of DC. He said, the one
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  Speaker 2: problem we're having is that all these elderly hippies are
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: out there yelling at us time for them to go
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  Speaker 2: take a nap. Well, we're not taking a nap, we're
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: rising up.
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  Speaker 1: Tell me about the sort of intergenerational dynamics that you're
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  Speaker 1: seeing too, because, particularly on days like the huge No
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  Speaker 1: King's protests back in June, I think we're going to
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  Speaker 1: see numbers along those lines are even larger tomorrow, particularly
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: on days when there's tons of people protesting. Obviously numbers
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  Speaker 1: that big, you're going to have everybody protesting, You're going
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: to have everybody from zero to ninety nine out there.
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  Speaker 1: What are the kinds of intergenerational dynamics that you're seeing
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  Speaker 1: between older people and young people. What does it add
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  Speaker 1: to the environment of those protests to have older people
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: in such a big, rich part of the mix.
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  Speaker 2: We've noticed all along that there's an enormous pleasure for
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  Speaker 2: younger people in seeing that older people, boomers, silent generation,
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  Speaker 2: are not abandoning them, leaving the mess behind for them
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  Speaker 2: to clean up, but showing up and trying to do
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  Speaker 2: something about it. When we first launched Third Act, we
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: were doing a big climate protest in Boston and it
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  Speaker 2: was led by high school students, but they asked us
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: to come along, and so at the front of the march,
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: because their spire there were four or five hundred high
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  Speaker 2: school kids. They know the trouble we're facing. But at
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: the back there were a bunch of us from this
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  Speaker 2: nascent third act with a big banner that just said
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  Speaker 2: fossils against fossil fuels, and all the kids who saw
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  Speaker 2: it started laughing. But they started laughing in part out
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: of a sense of relief. A lot of that climate
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  Speaker 2: anxiety you hear about is just this sense that they've
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  Speaker 2: been abandoned. I'm going to be in Lexing in Massachusetts
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: tomorrow on the Battlegreen. When I was a high school
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  Speaker 2: kid myself, I grew up in Lexington, and I spent
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  Speaker 2: my summers giving tours of the Battlegreen telling the story
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  Speaker 2: of what was, in essence, the first No Kings protest.
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  Speaker 2: And so it feels really good for me to becoming
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  Speaker 2: full circle there tomorrow, and I know that there'll be
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  Speaker 2: lots and lots of high school kids there the circle turns,
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  Speaker 2: and I think that's the great hope. Remember, if you're
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: in your sixties or seventies or eighties now, your first
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: act was precisely in that period of social cultural, political
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: transformation when women became a full part of public life,
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: the apex of the civil rights movement, the anti war movement,
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  Speaker 2: the first Earth Day. It's very much in our generation's
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  Speaker 2: muscle memory. If you will assass