Reply #75: I find boomer activists the most divisive and difficult to work with. [View All]

[Radical Activist]

I've been involved in a lot of left wing groups and organizing campaigns. There are people who make things difficult in every generation. But I find it nearly impossible to accomplish anything productive with a group dominated by boomers.

Instead of making practical plans to get things done people argue every little theoretical point to death even when it has nothing to do with the task at hand, hours are spent on minutia, the ideological angle of everything is debated at length even when it has no bearing to anything on the table. Countless time is wasted on ego, power struggles, bickering, personality conflicts and ideological bullshit that keeps people from doing anything effective. It's very difficult and very frustrating.

I'm convinced that if you lock 12 random boomer activists into a room for a day and ask them to plan something they'll come out with no plans and bitterly divided into at least three factions.

Most often, the activists I work with who are the most useful, the easiest to work with, get the most done and who are "no drama" types are under 45 or over 70.

I'm not sure why that is. I think one effect of the red scare and 50's conservative backlash was to destroy the idea of collective action. It seems like a lot of the boomer generation never learned to work as a group. Everybody did their own thing. I suspect a lot of the more effective boomers burned out on grass-roots activism long ago, partly due to dealing with the problems I wrote about.

There are always exceptions. There are some wonderful boomers I work with who understand that the movement is stronger when they hand off leadership in the movement to new activists and a younger generation. And I even appreciate the activists who can be difficult to deal with sometimes.