The 1960s and Today: What’s Different Now and What’s Needed Next

It’s frustrating and disappointing — to put it in absurdly mild terms — that we’re still having to protest the same problems we did in the 1960s. That decade brought so much power to the table, with the Civil Rights movement, the Stonewall riots, the Women’s Liberation movement, the anti-war protests, the environmental movement, the Red Power and Chicano movements, and the Summer of Love. But more than fifty years later, it’s apparently still up for debate whether black lives actually matter, whether gay and trans citizens deserve equal protection under the law, whether women’s bodies are their own domain, and whether shareholder profit and military might are more important than the continuation of life itself.

The frustration is clearly warranted. And at the same time, my sense is that today’s protests are covering new ground. Those earlier movements went as far as prevailing conditions and mainstream consciousness could stretch at that time. Important changes did take place, recognizing individual rights, extending legal protections and more. But the dominant worldview was unable to go further than this, leaving in place entrenched structural inequities and extinction-bound assumptions and institutions.

And this is where today’s protests and movements take up the mantle. More than ever before, we are…