For In These Times’ December 2013 cover feature, “Generation Hopeless?”, the magazine asked a number of politically savvy people, younger and older, to respond to an essay by 22-year-old Occupy activist Matthew Richards in which he grapples with what the movement meant and whether Occupy’s unfulfilled promises are a lost cause or the seeds of the different world whose promise he glimpsed two years ago. Here is Sarah Jaffe’s response:
The occupations are gone and with them the media’s attention, but Occupy was never the only way young people were moving and people from within and without it continue to move. I say this after a week of phone calls with former Occupiers who saved lives and rebuilt homes and provided healthcare after Hurricane Sandy and have now moved into helping organize in storm-ravaged communities far from the heart of finance capital. I say this because I get text messages and emails from friends and contacts at Occupy Homes in Minnesota and Georgia, because I run into organizers I met sleeping in a park who are now organizing boycotts, sit-ins, strikes of their own. I say this because I have talked to Dream Defenders and students desperate to save (and fix) their schools and people taking the streets to stop stop and frisk.
Meanwhile, the mainstream press loves to write trend pieces about the Millennials and how self-absorbed they are, how defined by the Internet and “selfies” and gadgets and toys they are. Sydette Harry at Salon pointed out that this neglects the realities of race and class — and the millennials who are organizing around those issues.
No one can ever seem to tell me if I’m a Millennial or not, if I am one of these people allegedly too busy snapping flattering photos of ourselves with a camera phone to bother trying to change the world. I’m 33; I grew up on the touchstones of Generation X — slackers and Ethan Hawke and riot grrl. The first presidential election I could vote in was the year 2000. I voted for Nader (please spare me your lectures). I read Emma Goldman and Marx and waited for something to happen.
During Occupy, I met people of all ages. I met Vietnam veterans and Iraq veterans, Raging Grannies and parents bringing their children and yes, so many young people. After Occupy, I met even more of them. Some of those brilliant, inspiring young people are in this issue, and they can tell their own stories so much better than I ever could. They made things happen that people my age never thought possible, and they are still making those things happen, as I sit back and smile, waiting for the phone calls, the emails to roll in. “Here’s what we’re doing, Sarah, will you come cover it?”
Yes. Yes, I will.
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Sarah Jaffe is a writer and reporter living in New Orleans and on the road. She is the author of Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion To Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone; Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt, and her latest book is From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire, all from Bold Type Books. Her journalism covers the politics of power, from the workplace to the streets, and her writing has been published in The Nation, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New Republic, the New York Review of Books, and many other outlets. She is a columnist at The Progressive and In These Times. She also co-hosts the Belabored podcast, with Michelle Chen, covering today’s labor movement, and Heart Reacts, with Craig Gent, an advice podcast for the collapse of late capitalism. Sarah has been a waitress, a bicycle mechanic, and a social media consultant, cleaned up trash and scooped ice cream and explained Soviet communism to middle schoolers. Journalism pays better than some of these. You can follow her on Twitter @sarahljaffe.
