I wish we had a few months to rest on our laurels from 2022, because laurel-resting is fun. And all of you earned it: here’s a note of thanks from Akaya and me, disguised as a New York Times oped. It shows just how fast our collective idea that we can change the political and cultural meaning of aging is spreading. Thank you. Just by itself, that change in the zeitgeist was worth everyone’s work last year.
But of course endless time is the one luxury we don’t have, not in our own lives and not on this planet. So Akaya and I ended that oped looking forward:
With the election past, Third Act is now digging into work on climate change — in particular targeting the big American banks (JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America) that are also the biggest lenders to the fossil fuel industry. On March 21 we’ll be cutting up bank credit cards and picketing bank branches across the country. We know that young people have been in the lead in this fight, because they’ll have to live with the world we’re creating. But as long as we’re still here, we’ll have to live with the knowledge of what we’re leaving behind, so we want to change it while we still can.
1) You don’t need to have cut up your credit card or closed your account to participate. Moving money is one tactic, but our goal is to move the banks, and here our job is to besmirch their reputation until they change. Right now the priority is to organize an action, big or small, at a branch of one of those four banks, or some place where cutting up a credit card will send a particularly poignant message. (We’ve already got someone committed to cutting up theirs underwater on a dying coral reef, so you have to think of something else! Check out the map to see if there’s already an event near you or submit one of your own.)
2) We have unbelievably great art resources to help you. David Solnit and his crewhave just finished a weekend-long ‘art build’ with lots of volunteers: their work is gorgeous, and you can use resources to make your own.
3) When I said ‘big or small’ I meant it. One of the greatest images that came out of the first day of action I helped organize, with 350.org all the way back in 2009, was a lone woman in Iraq who made it through one military checkpoint after another without flinching. I’ve shown that image a thousand times over the years. Here is a video about that brave young woman. Watch it and be inspired!
4) We have help! If you were on the national call last week, you heard Ben Jealous, former head of the NAACP and, as of today, Executive Director of the Sierra Club. He exemplifies all the other groups and leaders that have answered the call; so don’t feel too small to make a difference. By ourselves, each of us is too small. But in a movement we’ve got a chance, and
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