Confronting our Fears: Intergenerational Organizing

Last night, I listened to some of our lawmakers lie about Planned Parenthood’s services being 90% abortion, and some of them stand up for the truth with their own stories. I cried. I raged. I sent everyone I know emotionally manipulative emails to get them to call their senators.

Despite the temporary victory, I woke up in dire need of some inspiration today. So I listened to the Reproductive Justice and feminist blogging panel Miriam linked to earlier this week. Each of these amazing women talked in different ways about how intergenerational work is vital to moving forward in our fight for Reproductive Justice and intersectionality with other issues/movements.

Aimee Thorne-Thompson talked about – get this – actually asking young people what they care about, and what they do about the issues they care about. A radical notion that more organizations and service providers and media outlets need to practice.  Jasmine Burnett talked about how the Trust Black Women coalition is formed on the idea of intergenerational organizing. But as Shelby Knox pointed out (and Steph wrote about so personally and eloquently on Feministe recently) our mainstream pro-choice movement continues to disappoint the legions of smart, talented young people who are the people behind the rallies, the phones, the clinic defense, and the social media engagement.

It seems self-evident that reproductive justice is a cross-generational issue, and that we will never move forward if we cannot respect and value the varied experiences and identities of our partners in this work.

So why does this continue to be so hard? As a young feminist who was lucky and privileged enough to attend a liberal university and get an internship and then a job in a reproductive justice organization, I was consistently questioned, disregarded, and even insulted because of my youth.  As I personally reach the cusp of 30 – that magic age that seems to move me from being a young woman/feminist to not a young woman/feminist, I realize I’m afraid. The fear I feel now, I think, is what has often motivated the treatment I received from older feminists. I think it’s what motivates the continued and ridiculous assertion by older feminists that young women just don’t care.

Part of our work as a movement needs to be fighting the fear of aging, the fear of losing power, that is ingrained in our society and has become ingrained in the feminist community. We need to recognize the experience and expertise of young people and empower them to be leaders, unequivocally. We need to value the work of young people with  living wages and good treatment and a seat at the decision-making table. We need to understand and respect that the world is changing, and that often young people understand the current realities and the current tools better than anyone.

But it’s not all up to older people. It’s also up to young people to honor and respect wisdom, age and experience. It’s up to all of us to reject the cultural baggage the tells us at what age, and under what circumstances, our voices have value.

I’m on the cusp now, between young and established, and I’m pledging to do my best to confront those fears and put them away. I’m pledging to do my best to be open and honest and listen as much as I talk. At this point, I wonder if that’s the best I can do.

What do you think? How do we let go of our age-related fears and move forward together?