Across the great divide

I'm a baby boomer, but I'm not burned out. And I wanted to find out how the next generation is keeping the flame alive. My first stop: The University of Virginia.

By Cary Tennis

Dec 19, 2002 | The reason I was driving a rented Chevy Blazer in a cold and gray November rain up Route 29 from my sister's house in Lynchburg, Va., to Charlottesville to find a 19-year-old antiwar activist named Samuel Hayim Brody in the cafe of the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia was that, if you recall, readers of the "Since You Asked" column had responded by the hundreds to the question, posed some months back, "What is it like to be young today?" and they said that yes, being young today is as confusing and difficult as it always has been, but also, they said, By the way, if we may say so, we think your generation totally sucks.

They said that the boomer generation, the vaunted '60s generation that Time magazine in January 1967 had voted Man of the Year, had sold out, had fallen down on the job, had promised and not delivered: We had promised to change the world and turned to the selfish pursuit of money, had preached love and then sown the land with bitter divorce, had pursued sexual pleasure at the expense of emotional commitment, had failed to protect the environment or to prevent war, had not saved for our old age and its inevitable medical expenses, and were fast becoming not only embarrassing but also irrelevant and, finally, invisible, like, as one letter writer put it, the homeless people they step over every day on the way to work.

Well. It would have been silly to think that the withering contempt we, the generation that didn't trust anyone over 30, had visited upon our parents would not be visited upon us in turn. But the vehemence of the feelings was startling, and the parallels of our time and this, with war approaching, were clear. So journalistic impulses and human curiosity were both irresistibly piqued. Who are these young people who write so passionately, so articulately and in some cases with such poignant intimacy about their lives? I wanted to set off immediately to find them and see what sorts of people they were, to look in their refrigerators and sleep on their couches, to meet their pets and ride in their cars, to grope blindly, intuitively, toward some understanding, to bridge a gulf I had not even known was there.

But first I had to choose whom to visit, whose stories resonated deepest, whose voices hinted at lives that would bloom into emblems of their age. I read the letters over and over, picturing the lives behind them. I relied on instinct and on analysis; I wanted a cross section but I did not want to be doctrinaire. And I wanted to hear not just about love but about politics, religion, philosophy and family.

In the end, the way I picked Brody and the rest of the subjects whose stories will follow in the months to come involved logic, instinct and happenstance in about equal measure. Brody, intriguingly, mentioned in his letter that he had been protesting police brutality in New York at the age of 16. This struck a nerve for me; I was also out on the streets at that age. It sparked memories of an early passion for direct political action and recalled how others throughout history have had their imagination fired by news of far-off struggles they deem just and heroic.

I thought it might be inspiring to see how that ageless spirit was embodied today in a young man of 19. When I was running through the streets of Washington in the May Day action of 1971, trying to halt the workings of our own government because nothing else seemed to get our leaders' attention, I was also about 19. What is it like for a young man today of progressive inclinations to contemplate his possible role in our nation's likely war with Iraq? And what is it like to contemplate the possibility of a draft? Though America has an all-volunteer military, it still has a Selective Service System that requires almost all male U.S. citizens, 18 to 25, to register.

And, it must be said, while I wanted to listen and learn about this generation's politics and passions, I also had some things to say to them, on behalf of me and my graying friends. I wanted to say that we did not simply pack up and leave our struggle for peace and justice like a buzzed-out crowd dragging their blankets across Max Yasgur's farm. I wanted to say that specific things -- complicated, difficult, demanding, painful things -- had happened to each of us to turn us this way and that, that our heroes were shot, that our organizations were infiltrated and exploited and prosecuted, that we were beaten and gassed, that we had to find jobs and houses, that we had art to make and families to raise and you couldn't do that from jail or from Canada or the streets, that each of us suffered confusion and doubt and OK, if some of us did give up on transforming the world, it was never with a cynical shrug as if to say Whatever, nevermind; it was always with a sad and chastened bewilderment that we turned away from the struggle to tend to our own wounded dreams, and we still lie awake trying to figure out what the hell happened. We are still trying to live lives worthy of our promise.

So I drove into Charlottesville that Sunday afternoon and walked across the University of Virginia campus through the rain to the Alderman Library and settled in at a long high counter below high windows through which poured a rich gray light. Students sat at small round cafe tables drinking coffee and studying, with laptops plugged in to the power and network connections along the wall. The cafe, nestled inside the high and formal house of books with its Doric pilasters and arched windows, felt a little incongruous, like a falafel stand inside a cathedral, but it was a welcome spot and one could only wish the coffee had been half as good in 1969.

Next Page: That'll happen, the grizzled veteran of peace marches thought to himself

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