Politics Information |
Revitalizing The Power of the Baby Boomers
As baby boomers, we have been spoiled all of our lives. When we were teenagers, the world took note because there were so many of us. Our music, our beliefs, our fashions, our styles dominated the culture of the age. When we took to the streets to protest the war in Vietnam and to support the Civil Rights Movement, we found a ready audience. Television came into its own and we splattered ourselves and our causes across the living rooms of America. For some of us, that was the best of times. We were young, idealistic, and naïve. We truly believed that we were making a difference. We were creating a future of hope, justice, fairness, and peace. As we move towards retirement age, we look around us with diminished hope, broken promises, reddened eyes, and cynicism. Where is the new world order we so desperately sought? In the violence-filled streets of Baghdad? In the ruins of the World Trade Center? In the hills of Afghanistan? In the political condemnation of gay rights, resistance to a woman's right to control her own body, the death of Affirmative Action? We look back in longing to the days before political assassinations turned the world upside down. Life was, indeed, so much simpler then. Involvement in revolution is for the young and naïve who, no matter the century, no matter the nation, no matter the cause, see only the possibilities and none of the difficulties that maintenance of profound social change demands. Can we keep our ideals alive in the muck and mire of reality? If our ideals are still there, perhaps hidden beneath the layers that decades of responsibility, work, fatigue, and the need to take care of personal matters have deposited, we can resurrect them. We can revitalize their tenets with the bolder judgment and broader understanding wrought by experience and maturity. We can still return to the fight we abdicated with the demise of the Great Society. 1. Political action. We now know that marching in the streets has less of a lasting effect than the power of the voting booth and the closed door deals of professional politicians. Although many have fallen along the way, including some of the best and brightest, the boomers still have tremendous numbers and therefore significant potential political power. As our involvement in work and careers starts to taper off, we can use our newly found time to participate in the political process: listening, organizing, contributing, and supporting those who represent that new society we still so desperately seek. For us, the infringement of civil liberties generated by the Patriot Act and the horrors of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay demand that questions be asked, motives revealed, and expected outcomes honestly assessed. We can still throw off the conservative shackles of age we have unwittingly donned and re-enter the fray: as candidates, as volunteers, as individuals who demand accountability and justice from those in power. 2. Community action. Supporting and fighting for civil rights no longer requires travel to the Deep South nor marching through the streets. The struggle now permeates all levels of our society: the workplace, the schools, the churches, the home. Community involvement may range from active support, to speaking out, to neighborhood organizing, all in the knowledge that our better world starts right outside our front door. Racial profiling, bias against those of Middle Eastern descent, and widely administered wiretaps confront us in our own corner of the world. An African-American child in a schoolroom without enough books, without internet access, without afterschool programs, without personal safety and a quiet academic atmosphere, is as cheated of his natural human heritage as his forefather in the back of the bus. A gay couple denied the social and financial benefits of married straights are as much the victims of prejudice as their forbears in their proverbial closets. A poor urban neighborhood without basic resources: libraries, museums, music, culture, is as disadvantaged in the modern age as in the shameful shanty towns of old. We may feel a lack of power to sufficiently effect a national change of direction but in our local communities the power is there for the taking if we choose to assert our energies and our concerns. 3. Personal witness. We need to practice constant vigilance to bear witness to our beliefs. We must repeatedly re-assess ourselves to ensure that we have not inadvertently bought into the bias and prejudice that colors so much human thought. We cannot stand silent while others talk or joke about ethnicity, or religion, or sexual preferences. The need to get ahead does not require the sacrifice of all that we hold dear -- the winner of the rat race is, after all, a rat. We must consider our families and ensure that our children are fully exposed to the potential and worth of every individual, no matter how different from us they may appear. Our expectations and demands of coworkers and subordinates needs to be fair and consistent, regardless or race, gender, or cultural differences. We can stand up and speak out, letting all know that nothing less than equal opportunity and fair evaluation will be tolerated in our personal sphere. We will continue to look for quality of character, knowing that little else matters. As each generation ages, the qualities it represented in youth tend to dissipate. With the addition of multiple personal and occupational responsibilities and the acquisition of assets and at least a degree of wealth, the earthquake of social revolution is no longer a promise but a threat. We jealously guard what we have worked so hard to obtain. We become a force for conservancy rather than a force for change. The baby boom generation has the potential to shatter that familiar pattern. Born on the cusp of the most horrifying war the world has ever seen, we continue to represent an opportunity for the world to evolve, for mankind to rise above the baseness of his bestial nature and to internalize the human capacity for true civilization. As we enter the autumn of our lives, we are presented with the opportunity to finally, and lastingly, make a difference. It is up to us to stand together now, as many years ago we stood in the streets of Chicago, Washington, and Birmingham, for the rights and liberties of all. Virginia Bola is a licensed clinical psychologist with deep interests in Social Psychology and politics. She has performed therapeutic services for more than 20 years and has studied the effects of cultural forces and employment on the individual. The author of an interactive workbook, The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual, and a monthly ezine, The Worker's Edge, she can be reached at http://www.virginiabola.com
MORE RESOURCES: Unable to open template $TEMPLATEfilename, exiting |
RELATED ARTICLES
Do Not Tell The Truth Do you really want to get ahead in your life? Do you want to grow a business really large? Do you want to be powerful? Well then do what works. For instance the United States Government is big and powerful. May Day, May Day Down The Bush and BlairBy now everyone, except us, is pissed and the party continues even though it's well past closing time. For as happens a few times a year in Britain it's a bank holiday tomorrow, an antiquated and wonderful excuse to turn Sunday into Saturday and Monday into Sunday, even though it's actually May Day (the first) today. The Worlds Eldest Democracy Was A Truly Romantic Affair Visible remnants of the world's eldest democracy can be seen in a town in the Carantania region in what is now Austria, where during the early Middle Ages, the tribal society of a Slav people managed to live for over 100 years without being invaded and out of sheer happiness invented a democratic system. They did not call it a democracy but the word invented later was taken directly from their example. Abu Ghraib: Our Surprise is the only Surprise As pictures and videos surface showing young American soldiers humiliating and dehumanizing Iraqi prisoners, we, as a society, recoil in disgust and disbelief. Friends and family of those charged with such crimes, shake their heads in bewilderment and assure the world that the perpetrators are normal, caring, loving individuals without any prior sadistic or bullying traits. Wartime Prisoners and the Will to Fight; War is Hell, Let's Win Alright? We learned some lessons in these last few wars. For instance: some of Saddam's Iraqi army personal may have given up or volunteered to give up to slow us down. Toll Ways Hurt The Flow of Transportation The United States has never done a full study on the economic losses caused by the toll ways, which impede our daily lives and the flow of our transportation. Transportation is vital to the health of a nation, its GDP and the flow of commerce and trade. Homeless, Trash, Drugs and Transient Issues In Police Magazine I read a great article about transient problems and how they were solved for the betterment of all in Ft Collins, Colorado. This program was called (COP) Community Oriented Policing. Thune Republicans: Sudden Friends of the Working Person? The Right's defense of John Thune in the Dan Nelson/MetaBank MetaGate intrigue has taken an odd twist: the Daschlistas lost people their jobs at DNA.Sen. Let me throw out a random thought on Homeland Security Leadership Structure Streamlining Homeland Security with a Free market flair? An idea of adding four more components to the joint chiefs of staff; hire a Jack Welch type as an ombudsman to the group, who does not play rank games. Two; Have an additional force called Biological Warfare for both defensive military and civilian populations; Homeland security force to unite the police forces, law enforcement agencies and private sector database team. Silicon Valley Brain Drain; Bad Trade Policies, Why? We have brain drain issues in Silicon Valley, we have taught so many students from India, Pakistan, China all kinds of heavy duty industrial high tech studies and research and now that they cannot find jobs, many will be going back to those countries to work and with them all our technology. Brain fart? You teach them nuclear physics and you assume if they go back they will make paper dolls or something? Try nuclear weapons dummy. Wartime Britain & Things Look Bleak This is the second of a series of four articles about life in Britain in the 1940's. My uncle the late Mr Gordon Bessant is talking to Mr Joe Hieatt-Smith. Doorstops and Paperweights Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, has come up with what he believes is a brilliant idea. He thinks the FCC should have to the power to hold cable and satellite channels to the same decency standards as over-the-air broadcasters. 911 Conspiracy Theory Revealed During Coffee Shop Conversation A coffee shop conversation about a Great Country in Historic Times. It seems there are many out there who believe in conspiracy theories and are all too quick to label and judge our leadership as evil. DC Lawyers; Have I Got a Case for You? This is no time for the Black community to sue the CSX Railroad which is a conglomeration of merged companies and the Southern Pacific Railroad Co, which did receive profits from the use for Black slave labor, but had nothing to do with CSX today which is a well diversified company in color of skin and forms of transportation. Stop hurting America with this kind of headline grabbing. What Did You Do In The War Daddy? This is the first of a series of four articles where my uncle, the late Mr Gordon Bessant is talking to Mr Joe Hieatt-Smith about life during the war years. They taped these recollections in 1996. Birth of a Nation When you see hooded Klansmen walking up Pennsylvania Avenue to meet their Grand Wizard Woodrow Wilson you are witnessing the true nature of the American people's participation in a ghastly power play against people even in their own country. How could any woman trust a man who would be so callous towards blacks? The Klansmen were also freely using black women for their pleasure and taking any number of laws into their own hands. Nurturing Global Disequilibrium This brings to our consciousness, issues concerning the ever rising level of inequality prevalent in our times with its attendant fallout and imbalance within our global system.This has had its roots within the basic units of human co-existence experienced at our different localities and as such has naturally extended beyond, to a multi-level of inter-relationships across national boundaries. John Roberts - Supreme Court Nominee President Bush's selection of the Hon. John Roberts is an interesting choice. The Cost of the COLD WAR Many people who are expert in the issue of the Oswald's rifle are able to clearly demonstrate that the best marksman in the world could not have done what that one rifle was supposed to have done. I suppose once the story was manufactured they had to stick with it before they knew about the ricochet and other evidence. Socialist Public Schools In America Many parents might think it a bit farfetched to compare our public schools to schools in socialist or communist countries. However, if we look closer, we will see striking similarities between the two systems. |
home | site map | contact us |