For the New Year

A conversation with my grand daughter

"What was it like, Grandpa, back in the olden times when you were young?"

Well Lilly, there was strangeness in the land. My friends and I did not want to grow up like our parents. We lived under a repressive government engaged in an immoral war in Vietnam that forced many to kill yellow people because we lived in fear of communism. Black Power cries led to civil rights struggles throwing off some of the shackles of slavery, segregation and second class citizenship. Women were rising up to demand equality with men through passage of an Equal Rights Amendment. The sexual revolution took off with easy access to contraception and loosening standards of morality and propriety on everyone's TV. We experimented with pot, LSD, psychedelic mushrooms seeking deeper access to realms of consciousness. Higher education was cheap and excellent to help channel our passions.

"So, what did you do, Grandpa?"

I stretched myself into new ways of existing. I moved about the country fighting for civil rights and organizing in communities of color in the South. Later, I marched against the unjust war and contemplated strategies to avoid having to kill people who never harmed me in the name of corporate greed. I learned about dangers to our environment and what Native peoples believed about our interconnected mutual dependence with Mother Earth. I studied the law, figuring that I needed to know how the system worked and what the rules were if I was ever going to be able to change it. I decided that my life's work was to defend the defenseless, to protect individual liberty from governmental over reach and to protect our Mother Earth. I committed to trying to make the world a better place every chance I got. I met your grandma and she was involved in many of those same fights, plus some of her own. Through and with her, I joined the battle for equal rights for lesbians, bi-sexuals, gays, transgendered, queer and intersexed people. More recently, we've taken up the challenge of preserving and improving public education.

"How did it go, Grandpa?"

It still goes, Lilly. We are back to a repressive government bent upon turning back all the changes me and my friends were able to make. Our lives move in swings, like the pendulum of an old grandfather clock. Sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. It is up to each of us to push against the backward arc and make it go forward again. We are getting too old for the fight and keep looking for a new generation of warriors to continue the struggle.

"So what can I do, Grandpa?"

Learn what is right and wrong and keep it in your heart and head. Stand up when others are being treated badly and keep pushing back against injustice. Learn history well and listen to your elders who fought for justice, fairness, equality and freedom. Learn what they did when they took to the streets to stop an unjust war, to promote civil and human rights, to protect our Mother Earth, to stand up for those who are LBGTQI and fight for equal rights and reproductive freedom for women. Don't let them take your school, you have much to learn.

"But I am only a young girl and can't do those things yet."

Your time will come, Lilly. You just have to remember your Grandpa and Grandma, what they did and the stories they told. Your time will come.