This Generation
A letter from a Millennial to Gen Z
Photo by Robert Bye on Unsplash
I am watching history repeat itself and I’m hearing (and very much feeling) the same sentiments of rage directed at older generations, as I felt as a 25-year-old. I’m hearing how angry Gen Z, 10 to 26-year-olds, is about the problems that face their generation. From school shootings, to climate change, to rising inflation, to student debt—I feel their pain so much. When I find myself in the comment sections speaking to how similarly I felt at their age, I’ve gotten the same response over and over again: This is our entire generation, no other generation had a movement like ours.
Every generation had a movement when they were in their 20’s, but as we grew, priorities changed, especially when we finally started to find stability. However, I wish I’d kept fighting instead of growing complacent. This is a love letter, and is meant only to add perspective and shine light on the work that past generations have contributed.
Baby Boomers (1946-1964)
All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendricks
The generation of the Vietnam War draftees, the Civil Rights Movement organizers, and some damn good musicians and artists who songs and stories have stood the test of time. The movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s were largely generational. And remember, they did not have cell phones or the internet to help. It’s obvious, but it’s worth mentioning having to use a map to get to literally any location, and not having access to a phone (or phone numbers!) at all times. Many of the protests that were happening, were happening on college campuses, where there were concentrations of people being directly affected by the draft.
While going to college now is quite literally a debt-sentence, during that time, it was one of the only places young people could get educated and share their ideas freely—a place they could connect. I think we take for granted the connection that we have to the entire globe and all of the information it holds today, and we don’t remember how hard it was to make massive waves in the pre-Internet days.
While I see what is clearly going on with the representation, or lack there of, in congress, I think we need to remember and lead with compassion when it comes to Vietnam veterans, and acknowledge just how big of a hit the Baby Boomer generation took. If people weren’t dying in the jungle, many came home and died inside from crippling PTSD which has only in the past couple decades been taken seriously. Even if you weren’t drafted, you watched your loved ones go off to a pseudo-war, that at the end of the day took some 58,000 American lives (and countless Vietnamese lives).
The conflict eventually ended, and people did what people do. They came home, began having families, and did the best they could with the resources they had, to give their children a better life than they’d had. Unfortunately, many became intoxicated with greed and money, and that’s what we’re seeing in the leadership of our government.
Gen X (1965-1980)
Renegades of Funk - Rage Against the Machine
Ah, Gen X, the forgotten generation. Gen X is largely the children of the Boomers, who we’ve established were traumatized by war, just like their parents. They have been coined the Latchkey Generation, because as divorce numbers rose, as well as both parents working slowly became the norm, they had to let themselves into the house after school. Gen X is characterized as a generation that was not supervised as much as previous and future ones. There were even PSA ads that aired every night at 10pm asking parents if they knew where their children were.
Many of the freedoms that we enjoy now when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights, we have Gen X to thank for. They have been working for decades to give us a better more accepting space for Queerness. According to Press Telegram, “Rights for gay and lesbian Americans—to marry, to serve in the military, to live and raise families in the open—came faster than any of the civil rights successes of the prior generation, in large part because Gen Xers and the Millennials behind them had no zeal for laws against the LGBT community.” They were also disproportionately affected by the AIDS epidemic that ravaged the queer community in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Gen X was politically active too. They were causing havoc at the 2000 Democratic National Convention (DNC) in LA, where Rage Against the Machine drew in some 8,000 fed up Gen Xers for their renegade show across the street from the venue where Bill Clinton was preparing to speak. They were the entire “antiglobalization” movement that ignited the Battle in Seattle, the protest during the World Trade Organization (WTO), a global conference to determine trade negotiations for the new millennium. The riots during the WTO ended in the Seattle Police Chief, Norm Stamper, resigning (respect!), and in 2007, a federal jury found that the city had violated protesters' Fourth Amendment constitutional rights, by arresting them without probable cause or evidence.
They faded into the background, just like they always had, as the forgotten generation. This is a level of professional that I cannot imagine for myself. Badass.
Millennials (1981-1996)
This is America - Childish Gambino
The children of the Internet. We grew up in a relatively prosperous time, but that was completely extinguished with the events of 9/11 that changed the world forever. And while 9/11 overshadows everything, I was 13 when the watched the Columbine Massacre on TV, I’ve witnessed police brutality on a regular basis since Rodney King was beaten by the LAPD in 1991, and I’ve lost a staggering number of friends from the opioid crisis and suicide. You can see the disillusionment and desensitization of the entirety of the Millennial generation. We are unphazed by everything.
However, watching the “too big to fail” banks get bailed out by taxpayer money during a global financial crisis in 2008, was the last straw for me; something about watching banks gamble with borrowed money—our money. I joined Occupy Philadelphia in October of 2011, after I’d watched 700 people get arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge a week prior. Occupy was a movement initiated by Ad Busters and organized on social media in an effort to express distain for the ever-growing wealth gap. It had offshoots in every major city across the globe.
While critics claim that nothing came of it, we’re all living in a world that has benefitted from the efforts of Occupy. We are the 99%, is a battle cry that we all know the meaning of now. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren gained their platforms riding the coattails of the movement. We are now having conversations about intersectionality, because everything truly is intertwined. When the encampments were evicted, it was too late. We’d already found our community, and all of us began focusing on specific causes, from Food not Bombs, to cannabis decriminalization, to getting progressive candidates elected to congress.
When Occupy fizzled out, and I finally got a real job that launched my decade-long career in tech. Admittedly, I grew complacent, just like every other generation before me. But I’ve been through one too many “once in a lifetime” events, so here I am again, speaking out against injustice, but this time I’m using my words on this much more advanced Internet.
I’d also like to humbly offer some advice, so you don’t make the same mistakes we did:
Keep the scope of your mission narrow. Keep your focus on only a few pain points: climate change, gun violence are two that you’re gaining traction with. Don’t get caught up in the fact that everything is intertwined. Most people cannot grasp the concept that the military industrial complex is related to poverty is related to Big Oil, etc. We need to snip the web wherever we can, and it’ll begin to fall apart.
Recognize the freedom fighters that have come before you—they have valuable lessons to teach you. Every generation that came before you, lost intelligent fighters to unthinkable things; World War II, Vietnam, the AIDS epidemic, the Gulf War, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the opioid epidemic. They have lessons to teach.
Keep going. While it was easier for generations who came before you to fizzle out from justice movements, the gun violence that you all have faced, coupled with climate disasters that are now commonplace, unfortunately, I don’t think you have that option (and neither do I). Keep your momentum and hold the line. Millennials will have your back.
I will leave you with this quote from Hunter S. Thompson about the counterculture of the 1960’s:
“We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.… So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” - Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)