Zoomer Boomer

I recently read a Robert Reich post — yeah, I’m subscribed — entitled “What To Do with Us Boomers?”

Apparently I’m being yelled at.

It seems that the Zoomers are blaming the Boomers for lots of stuff. A little surprised, I looked into it. Indeed, it looks like I caused unaffordable housing, the depletion of Social Security, the national debt, global warming, and so on.

Worried that I might actually have Alzheimer’s, I went back through the history of my youth and that of my fellow Boomer generation.

What I found was a lot of blood on the streets, broken windows, arrests and prison sentences for disturbing the peace and fighting the system. I saw people marching against war, against racism, against nuclear weapons, against corruption, against monopolies and against governments that had stopped listening.

I saw artists coming together in mass gatherings for famine relief, peace, decency, and support for fellow human beings who had fallen on hard times.

I saw relentless pushback against Big Oil, Big Tobacco, big corporations — Big Anything that wanted too much control over our lives.

I saw women fighting for the right to have their own bank accounts and control over their own bodies. I saw people fighting to make sure everyone had the right to vote. Everyone. And winning.

I remember Pell Grants, public education that people could actually afford, the GI Bill, and the ideal that the poorest people in our society should not simply be left behind.

I was part of that generation. Maybe we didn’t invent all of it, and we certainly weren’t all of one voice.

We didn’t have to be.

Millions of people worked together, often without seeing one another, sometimes without even knowing the others existed, and nevertheless coalesced around common goals and some notion of the common good.

We didn’t succeed everywhere. We surely didn’t do a perfect job. Some of us fought. Some taught. Some wrote. Some made music. Some organized. Some gave money. Some went to jail.

And plenty of Boomers were assholes. Every generation has its assholes. But every generation has its saints, too. I’m neither.

So: what have you done?

I’m not blaming or shaming. But I’m not taking the blame for what millions of my co-Boomers did or didn’t do simply because we happened to be born within the same twenty-year period.

Because I agree.

We’re fucked.

But you’re yelling at the wrong people. You’re even yelling at the wrong generation. Here you go if you need a few names to get started.

Off the top of my head, list non-exhaustive:

1. Bill Gates — 1955: Boomer. But darn it, he devotes an enormous part of his activity and fortune to philanthropy.

2. Jeff Bezos — 1964: Boomer. This one just scraped under the line.

3. Elon Musk — 1971: Gen X.

4. Larry Page — 1973: Gen X.

5. Mark Zuckerberg — 1984: Millennial.

6. Brian Armstrong — 1983: Millennial.

7. Sam Altman — 1985: Millennial.

8. Evan Spiegel — 1990: Millennial.

9. Alexandr Wang — 1997: Gen Z.

10. Surya Midha — 2003: Gen Z.

Looks like greed, monopolies, profiteering, political influence and obscene concentrations of wealth are not hereditary Boomer traits.

You’re mad about the price of housing?

Me too. Pretty much everyone I know is — young, old, and everything in between.

But stop yelling at me about it. You should be yelling at them.

And if you ask me who “them” is, perhaps we’ve identified part of the problem.

Maybe it’s the people speculating on housing, the ones blocking construction when more housing is desperately needed, the corporations price-gouging necessities, the people writing the laws that allow it, the people funding the people writing those laws, or anybody turning basic necessities into opportunities for extortion.

Yell at them.

And if the best you can manage is “OK Boomer,” I might just start calling you the Lay-Z generation.

The thing is, there are way more of you than there are of us now. And you can communicate like no generation in human history.

Dockworkers once had to coordinate international action through union meetings, telephones, letters, telexes and God knows what else. Semaphore?

And yet they managed it.

Dockworkers are still managing it. Earlier this year, workers at ports across several countries coordinated action together — against war.

You guys can communicate around the planet in a literal click of a button.

Look. We literally dreamed about international solidarity.

You have the literal gadget for it in your pocket.

Need some help figuring out what you want to yell about?

Have a chat with your generation in Pakistan. India. Sri Lanka. Serbia. France. Morocco. Kenya. Nepal. Bangladesh. The United States. You will find like-minded youngsters all over the place.

They have the same phones. The same apps. And, more often than not, the same grievances.

Revindicate together.

Yes, I know that’s barely English. The French revendiquer is the word I want (makes sense): make demands, claim your rights, insist on them.

Together.

Housing isn’t just your problem. It’s our problem. And it isn’t a national problem. It is an international catastrophe.

Bring that energy together. Do whatever it is you do on those apps. Find some common goals that ordinary people across borders can actually get behind.

Don’t worry about generations.

Let’s not give “them” what they want: for us to waste our time finger-pointing at each other when we should be tearing down walls and demanding what we have always needed.

Here’s a little list to get started. Ten names up there. Ten demands down here.

Off the top of my head, list non-exhaustive:

1. Affordable housing.

2. A livable environment.

3. Healthcare and education.

4. Women’s rights.

5. Equal rights.

6. An economy that isn’t designed for profiteering.

7. Privacy.

8. Decent infrastructure and public services.

9. Peace.

10. Clean government — and the right to organize, protest, vote, and throw the bastards out when it isn’t.

Or just group a bunch of them together under this:

STOP RIPPING US OFF. AND STOP TAKING US FOR SUCKERS.

(I was looking for something in English that would match the French Arrêtez de nous prendre pour des pigeons ! The French carries a double, maybe even triple meaning that English doesn’t quite catch. Though being treated like an animal waiting to be plucked may not be such a bad image after all.)

I don’t blame you for being young, full of spit and vigor... and revolt.

What I don’t understand is why the most connected generation humanity has ever produced hasn’t connected those grievances into something enormous.

Something international. Something impossible to ignore. Decentralization isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.

A Pakistani student doesn’t need permission from an American student. A French nurse doesn’t need orders from an Indian programmer. A Serbian student doesn’t need to belong to the same party as a young woman fighting for her rights in Afghanistan.

A network connects. A coalition commits.

It sounds like you’re committed. And you have what you need to connect.

Now use the fucking thing.

Find the slogan.

Make the link.

Call the meeting.

Bring everyone.

Young, old and everything in between.

There are billions of us.

And we agree on far more than we disagree.

If you’re ready, I’m ready.

I’ll get my Zimmer frame out of the garage and meet you in the street.

Yell louder. Yell together. Just stop yelling at me.