Thirdact.org aims to reignite the activist power of a generation
One f ine June day, I did a dangerous thing. But I was not alone. Not even close. There were thousands of us, that sunny BY ANN HEDREEN Sunday, who left our homes and headed to Othello Park in South Seattle. We carried signs. We carried anger. We carried grief. We wore masks. For three months, we had kept our distance from other people. But this was a moral and ethical emergency. It had been 12 days since George Floyd’s death. Our neighborhood march, officially titled the “We Want to Live March for Black Lives and to End Violence,” was one of countless peaceful protests that took place all over the world that Sunday. We were many months away from vaccines (though we didn’t even know that; we thought it might be years), and we knew far less than we know now about how COVID-19 spread. Every single person present on that day had to seriously weigh the risks of being in the streets with
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so many people. And every single person who showed up had done that reckoning and decided it was worth it. And many of us were not youngsters. We knew we were at higher risk of illness and death from COVID, but we also knew the power of taking to the streets. 3rd Act Magazine now has a powerful namesake friend in the nonprofit world whose mission is to tap into that power. Founded by Akaya Windwood and Bill McKibben, ThirdAct.org plans to put our generation’s energy and experience to use, as we face the enormous challenges of climate change, racial justice, economic inequality, and immigration. As Windwood and McKibben wrote in a guest essay in the New York Times, “we need older people returning to the movement politics they helped invent.” It is time, they say, for “experienced Americans” to “grow into a wave if we’re going to defuse the challenges facing us.” ThirdAct.org is already organizing people over the age of 60—via affinity groups, issue campaigns, and location groups (there is a Pacific Northwest group in the works)— www.3rdActMag.com
