"We Didn't Start the Fire"
Baby Boomer Appreciation Day - 2025
I posted this letter the first time last year, on Baby Boomer Appreciation Day - 2024.
Given all that’s happened since, I think its message — “No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it” has never been more important. Baby Boomers, as a generation, didn’t have the power. But, from the time they could walk and talk, they set about taking it.
Today, as we remember everything from the Civil Rights era to Stonewall, from anti-war protestors to equality for women, from the environmental movement to the first Rainbow Coalition, from farm worker rights to the Lovings, Woodstock, Harlem Cultural Festival, Selma, Birmingham, Freedom Summer, the Summer of Love, and so much more, remember the generation that put it all on the line to make us a better America.
And that’s before remembering the people who died for the cause — everyone from Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair, the four little girls who died trapped under debris in Birmingham’s bombed 16th Street Baptist Church, to James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, Civil Rights activists who were murdered in Mississippi in 1964. And so many others.
“But when we are gone, it will still burn on, and on, and on, and on…”
We often say, “Thank you for your service” to military veterans. But they’re not the only ones who fought for this country. So, today, thank a Baby Boomer for what they did for the rest of us. But, just as importantly, learn from them. The Black Panther Party’s slogan was “Power to the People”. But it was an entire generation, the Baby Boomers, people of all colors, heritages, sexualities and religions, and from every region of this country, who did what it took to make that slogan real.