New Zealand Lawmaker Drops ‘Ok Boomer’ When Heckled

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1. 

   Mary Kay Baker on November 11, 2019 at 12:10 am

   I am a progressive and a boomer. You may be tired of hearing this, but we were also told the same thing as we protested Vietnam and overpopulation and pollution. We were called lazy hippies, that wasn’t the same thing!!!!!! We were also told it repeatedly. We were also gaslight, also called a lot of things by the older generation. I don’t really see a lot of difference between what we went through and what you are regarding the issues of our youth. What I don’t really see is a lot of outreach from your group. Ageism is not OK and is only likely to make my age group more likely to work against you. By the way, ageism is the number one form of hiring discrimination in the US. We should be working together but this type of attitude is just going to make it worse. May I remind you it was the progressive attitudes of the older generation that gave birth to Bernie’s progressiveness. You aren’t the first generation to deal with this. Outreach rather than bigotry against older people is the answer. I would like to say our generation doesn’t deserve this as we did this to our own parents. I know you don’t want to hear this, but you are just like us. Ageism is the last acceptable prejudice and anyone who considers themselves progressive shouldn’t push it. Only a handful of our generation is responsible for where we are today. Your generation will have its own greedy people, its own assholes who will get into power. We didn’t have the internet to help us along, but we managed to get together to protest a terrible war. One thing we did wrong is exactly what you are doing, we wagged our fingers at the last generation and said we were going to do better. What we do have is experience, and those of us who choose to learn by it remember doing exactly what you are doing now. It wasn’t helpful then either.

   Yes, you have unique problems, as we did as well. There where people in my generation who sought to fight the war, pollution, overpopulation and a handful of others became oligarch’s. We did not have a tool as powerful as the internet to organize us. But by trying to reach people only on the internet you are preaching to your choir. I work locally in my “Bernie” group and talk to people my age and find many of them open to Bernie. But hey yeah calling them names and acting like they are all the Oligarchs we see in positions of power, that will bring them around. Probably the ones that already agree with you. Something thought that you also should think about is that there is also something true about the young and the old that was true in my day and has been true today. The old are more likely to vote than the young, so if there is some blame to be had for the young, there is that. You want change, then do something different than the past, turn out the numbers older voters do. If not try to do something other than wagging your fingers at people to get more of those old folks who where pretty damn liberal for their day and explain to them on their terms why Bernie is the best candidate. Work with those of us trying to change older people’s minds than just verify our stereotype of you. If you talk down to people like you are to boomers, you will not win anyone you didn’t already have. When the next generation comes along and asks you why you couldn’t elect Bernie, will you push it off on the older voters or will you look in the mirror and say “well we couldn’t get out our generation to vote and we pissed on the older generation to make us feel better”. It certainly is how we boomers lost our opportunity to change things. And I might add, our parents did not come from a liberal generation at all, so the job was even harder.

   I speak out whenever anyone I know makes ageist comments against millennials and generation Z. If you aren’t doing the same for older people you are just part of the problem.

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