Nathan Newman wrote:
>baby boomer Left
-Maybe I'm just getting old, but what's this supposed to mean? As Liza -just pointed out from over my shoulder, if you go to protests you see -young people and old people but no boomers. But I'm guessing you're -referring to people in leadership positions in left(ish) -organizations. Ossification is a hazard of organizations in general -and executive positions in particular. So why this silly generational -labeling? Remember, Nathan, you're an old fart to a college freshman.
Rallies are not a measure of who runs organizations-- of course most folks at rallies are going to be young or older because of time issues. In fact, people running groups are often the least likely to show up at such things.
Any hey, the Guild is more absolute on the generational issue than most groups. Literally, the baby boomers kicked out the old Left leaders in 1971 in a dramatic convention confrontation and almost the exact same people have been running the organization for the last thirty years.
Yes, I'm an old fart to college freshmen and it's ridiculous that I'm considered a "young person" in many "Left" organizations. The rise of anarchist and other anti-organization groups is largely due to the inability and unwillingness of the "New Left" to incorporate them into leadership.
But the generational issue is very real in organizational power dynamics-- I've seen it for years and years and think it's contributed to a large disillusionment among activists of my general age group. Lots of younger people put up with it for a few years and then give up. This is the experience of the Guild and a lot of other groups as well. The membership demographics of the Guild looks like a vase, lots of people in their 20s and lots in their 50s, but very few in their 30s or early 40s.
There can be a lot of political and psychological analysis of why the baby boomer New Left failed to invest resources in bringing new generations of activists into their organizations, but the reality is that they didn't. The New Right did, assiduously investing in conservative college media, in leadership training institutes, in youth organizers and so on.
Compare the Federalist Society to the Lawyers Guild. The two organization's national budgets are actually not that different, although the Guild's is spent in a more decentralized way among chapters and projects. But the Federalist Society devotes most of their staffing to law student or recently graduated young associates. The Guild doesn't have a single organizer devoted anywhere in the country just to youth organizing.
The result is unsurprising. The Federalist Society exploded in membership over the last twenty years, while the Guild declined in membership.
People will talk about political trends and yada yada, but when the Left is not spending its resources on organizing, especially among the young, it's hardly surprising that the results are dismal.
-- Nathan Newman