Walkout Day

The Kids Are All Right!

Yesterday, all over the country students walked out of school to protest the murders and the assault on liberties of ice and the Trump administration. Some businesses were closed, and thousands walked out of work as well.

I work for myself. Stopping work, as far as I can see, has absolutely no impact on any economy except my own, which is hard enough to keep viable by working ceaselessly. Nonetheless, I went out to join the students who, here in San Francisco, had gathered at Dolores Park. And I was so glad I did!

The park was absolutely jam-packed with tens of thousands of people. I joined some of my own Affinity Group at the statue of Miguel Hidalgo, one of the leaders of the Mexican Revolution, that stands upon a rise at the park’s western edge. I looked out at an absolute sea of people. Pictures, at least not the ones I take with my little phone camera, can’t convey the scale on the gathering.

I’ve been to a lot of these protests now, and while they’ve been inspiring, and while it is always heartening to walk with others of my own age, some of whom I’ve been protesting with literally for 50 years or more, and to congratulate ourselves on our stamina and staying power, the truth is that, at least here in San Francisco, they’ve been rather geriatric, filled with many older people and not so many young ones. That my partly reflect the demographics of our city, now so expensive that young people, to live here, have to work in the tech industry and keep inhuman hours. But my fear was that it reflected a changing youth culture, that had become more cynical and more easily seduced by the manosphere and the tradwife memes and the transgressiveness of the MAGA movement.

But this time it was a sea of young people. Beautiful young people! I guess when you get to my age, everyone young looks beautiful with that unlined skin, (albeith sometimes pimpled), those smoothly moving limbs! And diverse, as diverse as the Bay Area itself, as this multiracial, multicultural democracy we’re fighting for! Black and white and brown, Asian and Latino and European and African and Pacific Islands and Middle Eastern and South Asian heritages: everyone was there! And young people clustering in groups of friends, as young people do, and those smaller clusters, too, were diverse.

I first became an activist when I was in High School. In that era, we were protesting against the Vietnam War. The first time I was ever arrested, I was fifteen. My friend Chrissie and I were in Beverly Hills with a group of Vietnam Veterans Against the War one of whom was dressed as Santa Claus, handing out balloons that said “Peace on Earth: Stop the War in Vietnam”. As we were driving away, police stopped our car, pulled guns on me and my friend in the back seat, and arrested us and Santa for ”soliciting donations without a permit”. The scariest part of the arrest was not actually the guns, but my mother, who, while she should have supported my activism, was still in reaction to the persecutions of the McCarthy era. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my father, who died when I was five, had been a Communist in the ‘Thirties, and they had lived through the early ‘Fifties in fear that someone would find out and he would be targeted.

“You’ll get your name on a list!” she warned. “It’ll follow you your whole life!”

Now, sixty years later in a time of increased surveillance, her fears once again make sense. But its far too late, after a lifetime of being a public activist, writer, Witch, and sometime trouble-maker, to be quiet now. If my name isn’t already on that list, then they simply aren’t paying attention. I’m proud to have spent a lifetime doing as much as I can to stand up for justice. Mostly, it doesn’t seem like nearly enough now.

But I do know one thing. When you begin your activism when you’re young, then activism will always carry with it some of the rush of excitement and energy of youth. It will forever carry that thrill of danger and adventure, of being transgressive for a righteous cause, of making good trouble. And even in your seventies, hobbling along on a march, you’ll feel young again! Immersed in the sea of young faces, I’m so energized I walk much further than I’d intended, buoyed up by the hopefulness I feel. If even a few of these vibrant young folks remain inspired and committed, then this terrible time will have unleashed a flood tide of change.

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