Grow Radical with Me, The Best is Yet to Be

Women grow radical with age. 

One day an army of gray-haired women may quietly take over the earth.

—Gloria Steinem

I wouldn’t call us “quiet,” but we Crones sure are busy. That gathering of millions for No Kings Day was mostly olders, and the olders were mostly women. While those demographics aren’t getting much play, the fact is, five million old women is just too damn many to ignore.

In the corner of America where I’ve just landed (Salem, Oregon), people turned out by the thousands just outside the State Capitol. The local paper called our No Kings the biggest protest ever in this town. I heard comments among old women protesters along the lines of: “We need more young people! Where are our replacements?”

A reasonable question; but first let’s celebrate who we are and what we are doing right now. Aging hippy chicks, the children of the sixties, came out in droves to remind us that our highly imperfect nation has long celebrated democracy. Those of us with deep memories are bearing witness, and to judge by the enthusiasm among my peers, we will keep on doing just that.

Grow Radical

There are self-interested reasons why Crones should advocate for reasonable public policies on older health care, social security, and more—and the urge to protect our safeguards transcends our political views. But there are plenty of reasons to fight for key causes that are not about olders specifically: foundational stuff like the First Amendment and the three co-equal branches of government. We who are Crones remember successful campaigns for freedom from the Civil Rights era to Second Wave Feminism to the peace marches during the Vietnam war. We were there with our boots on, and we are here now.

This might sound optimistic given the current paralysis in the legislative branch. Yet there is power in numbers, which means there is power in the actions we each take, and power in coming together regardless of age. There is massive power in the community of Crones.

One of the partner organizations for No Kings Day was Third Act, an organization founded to leverage our numbers, our votes and our resources for the benefit of our descendants. As they say on their About page:

Older Americans are the fastest growing part of the population: 10,000 people a day pass the 60-year mark. That means that there’s no way to make the changes that must be made to protect our planet and society unless we bring our power into play.

Grow Radical with me

I love this framing. And, as Third Act emphasizes, “we vote and we have a large—maybe overlarge—share of the country’s assets.” Set aside the ageist stereotypes and look at who we really are, what we did last weekend, what we can do next. One old woman carried a sign at Salem No Kings that said, “We could do this every weekend.” Damn right we could.

The excitement, the hope, the promise of change that comes when we are together is electric. More opportunities to band together are coming. Check out Third Act, or check other organizations that you support. Give yourself the gift of joining with other Crones to make change happen. And be sure to journal about it because we are living in history, in a time that is a crucible of change. We will look back in awe.

Sure, we could be taken in by tales of the so-called “gerontocracy.” We could keep thinking we are older and more frail than we really are. But let’s not. Instead let’s see this moment for what it is. The revolution of gray-haired women, their daughters and granddaughters has already begun.