The March and a Change of Opinion

As I lay here on my bed, endlessly contemplating my broken foot and these four walls, I am watching the March For Our Lives in Washington today, looking for my husband and my daughter and sisters-in-law in the crowd. My TV is offline so I am watching on my computer. I am wishing I am there with them and hoping to get a tee shirt out of it.

I see an ocean of people, more people than I ever could have imagined would show up. They have come from all over. I know because just my people alone are from Florida, North Carolina and Virginia.

The stage, the mega-TV screens everywhere, the concert-worthy amps…it all smells too much like a party.  This is not a march, this is a gathering of young people who have no idea how to march without being entertained. This is a damn concert. My blood is boiling….they are sending no messages here, they are gathering for yet more Millennial self-indulgence.

But then a red headed young man angrily takes the stand and tells us we are about to get real. He is very angry and he doesn’t look down at notes, yet he is so eloquent he must have them, or maybe memorized key phrases? He tells us we must arm our teachers, arm them to the teeth. The camera pans across confused, annoyed faces in the crowd. This is not what we came for! We don’t want our teachers armed! But the man/boy finishes. He wants teachers armed with pen and paper so they can teach, not fight off killers, and the crowd roars in approval. OK! Now this is a march! He goes on to say how this is not what our founders meant for the 2^nd amendment, tells us how it feels to be taking a test and wondering if there is a shooter lurking the grounds, about how his sister will never have a decent birthday again since she spent her last huddled under a desk in moral fear.

He says that this is not a concert, not a parade, there are no huge floating Macy’s Donald Ducks out there, these monitors and this stage are not part of this march. He explains, the only thing with a screen we need is this, and he holds up his cell phone, telling us to spread the word. He went on and then a few other spoke. But at that point, that man, with that speech, made me proud. His words whipped up that crowd far higher than the music and the stars did. He showed everyone that this generation is not here for a day of entertainment, they are here to fight for their lives. Having said that, I now realize even the entertainers came on stage in street clothes, sang their songs and left. No self-aggrandizing speeches, they did their jobs and left. I also tend to forget that for my generation this may be a concert setting but for these people it is what they know, how they communicate and these things have many uses. Sometimes getting older smacks you in the face.

I know many Millennials. I know the reputation they have. Some of it is true, most of it is not. What I am seeing today surpasses anything I have seen.

Martin Luther King is what I saw today. These kids are real and what they are doing takes more effort and more guts and more organization that any generation I have seen in my over half a century here. No, more than I think have ever existed in America. My husband and his sisters are there, along with my Millennial daughter. I see passion in her, I see that fire, that urge to fix this, to do what is right. I do not see that, to that extent, in the rest of my generation who is there. Yes, this is important to my family, the older crowd, and they mean everything they are shouting but the passion of youth, the hope of the young, that is fading a bit in us. My daughter and her peers have that and more, she has what we

never did: a colorblind way of organizing things. They are all one. Black, brown, gay, trans, they identify themselves not by these things, they identify themselves as individuals. Individuals that happen to belong to a certain age group that realize the weight of the world IS on their shoulders, that previous generations have shit on them and now they are expected to fix it and fix themselves at the same time. These Millennials have almost overcome the obstacles of race and gender and sex issues, they are not as burdened with this. They are many of the negative things older people say about them, there is no denying it, but a lot of that is because older generations do not understand or do not like what these kids stand for. I see people trying to make everyone equal, no matter what differences they have from one another, an obstacle my generation rarely gets past completely. We have resigned ourselves to the idea that nothing will change and whether we are right about this or not, these kids have the selfishness, the heart, the stubbornness to get what they want and lucky for us what they want is good.

People who have problems with them either do not understand what they are about or cannot accept it. Yes they have problems…they need better manners, they need more patience, less entitlement, they need more fun and they need to accept people who do not agree with them on a personal level. But I cannot help but think many of these negatives, and the others, will, in the end, be their strengths. Their unwavering moral compass  will save the environment and hopefully give us a better democracy and a better society.

I have a dream.

My dream is that this is just the beginning. That these young adults become habitual voters and protesters and elected officials. My dream is a string of presidents as good as or better than Obama. I won’t be around to see much of it but just knowing the world actually could be a better place because of this generation gives me peace.

Welcome, New Hippies, don’t let us Old Hippies get in your way.