Someone on Facebook posted a Mother’s Day cartoon. It shows one woman saying to another, “For Mother’s Day, my mom would like the activism of her youth to not be for nothing.”
My thoughts:
(This is addressed to my fellow white, “Woodstock / eco Boomer” women):
[TL;DR for my comment on the post below: For us to ask for this for Mother’s Day, even in a cartoon joke, we need to be still doing our activism. We sort of got derailed in the me-first prosperity-flood of the 80s but let’s get back on track now. And, we need to be walking our talk, in terms of aligning our daily choices with the change we want to see in the world.]
*Special note for fellow Boomer white women of the “Earth Day/Woodstock tribe”: We do not get to say this even in jest. acting all entitled, when we should be begging the forgiveness of the younger generations. Also can someone please invent a time machine where we go back and we don’t abandon our activism when the going gets cushy? Yes that’s right, instead of abandoning our activism when the going got rough, we abandoned it when the going got cushy, probably sometime in the 80s with all the fancy fancy shiny shiny.
just kidding, Time machines are really hard to invent (plus, I hear they get really bad gas mileage), so no use crying over spilt milk. But what we can do is straighten up and get back to the commitment of our activism, with a bunch of corrections. For one thing, if our activism isn’t intersectional it’s bullshit.
For another, if we’re really serious, we need to fully divest our money from the war machine, and do some serious decolonization of our minds.
It’s not cool if we sit here on our cushy cushions and talk about what great ideals we had when we were younger, and how we worked so hard and now we’re tired and we’re going to rest, but thank God/dess for the younger generations who are going to fix everything. Oh hell no.
And by the way, we need to stop having snide/dismissive attitudes about Tik Tok, it’s where the actual revolution is happening as far as intersectionality, sharing the truth, mutual aid, and connecting with fellow activists.
I share some practical tips on my blog about how we can get back in the groove. I love you, fellow white eco Boomer women, but we have some deep reflection and self-correction to do!
Because we (as a group) have become too entrenched in the establishment. We’ve turned into the very sort of people who we ourselves were talking about back in the 60s and 70s when we said “Don’t trust anyone over 30.”
So let’s fix that. And then we can get on with things. Note, if you are one of my abovementioned “tribe” who are still doing activism, GREAT! Me too. We still need to start doubling-down on our courage, shoring up our integrity, and fixing our blind spots.
PS. Happy Mother’s Day! And let’s give our full heart and hands to practice respect for our mother, mother Earth. And all of her creatures including all humans.
PPS. You can see the above-mentioned cartoon here, where I shared it on my deep green Facebook page.