Snow, falling for hours, had forced cars off roads and turned sidewalks into mushy Slip ’N Slides pocked with puddles. Still, 74-year-old Linda Ayer of Burlington, rolling her walker ahead of her, made it to the city’s federal building to stand outside with 100 demonstrators singing and chantin g to support an Ecuadorian woman inside. Twenty-year-old Camila Patin Patin was the last of three people still detained after federal agents stormed a South Burlington home nine days earlier looking for someone else. A judge was considering her release. “¡Camila! ¡No estás sola!” the crowd chanted in Spanish. “Camila! You are not alone!” they repeated in English. Being there was like therapy for Ayer. “The only way I can personally deal with what’s going on is to be demonstrating,” she said. “I try to do three to five a week.” Ayer has lots of company. As opposition mounts in response to the actions of President Donald Trump and his administration, elder Vermonters are increasingly standing in the snow, hoisting protest signs at intersections, organizing rallies and joining sit-ins to advocate for democracy. They were out in force at “No Kings” rallies around the state on Saturday. The woman who started those rallies in Shelburne is 82 years old. Residents of two retirement communities ran the “No Kings” event in Hanover, N.H., just across the Vermont border. We know how to put on events. We have big Rolodexes.Jeanne Keller Although Saturday’s protesters remained lawful, older activists have demonstrated the willingness to defy authority in order to bring attention to their cause. Of the 13 people arrested or cited for criminal trespassing in February for occupying the atrium of a Williston office building that houses a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data center, eight were over the age of 70. While young people bring much-valued energy, ideas and digital expertise to political movements, their elders offer time, money and skills amassed over decades. They’re driven by a fiery sense of civic duty ignited by the changes they helped bring about in their lifetimes — the advancement of civil rights in the 1950s and ’60s and an end to apartheid in the early ’90s, among other causes — and the stories they heard from their elders, who witnessed the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. Some of today’s protesters, such as 79-year-old Hank Prensky of Burlington, have been activists their entire adult lives. His older brother took him to a Vietnam War protest in lower Manhattan in 1965, and throughout his careers in financial management for leftist organizations and selling real estate, he has been speaking out. “I’ve been doing this for 61 years,” he said, “fighting some of these identical fights that we fought 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago. And you can either get really depressed — which I do some of the time — or you can keep putting one foot in front of the other.” Betty Moore-Hafter (with sign), Linda Ayer and Catherine Bock Credit: Mary Ann Lickteig For others, marching and chanting is new. “This is out of my comfort zone,” said 75-year-old Betty Moore-Hafter, who stood next to Ayer outside the federal courthouse on March 20. The South Burlington woman began demonstrating a year ago because she was “totally demoralized” by Trump’s election, she said. After her first protest, “I felt better, and I said, ‘This is what I’ve gotta do,’” she recalled. “Now I know all the chants by heart.” Elder activists are not a new phenomenon. Third Act, cofounded by Ripton’s Bill McKibben, began mobilizing Americans over age 60 for environmental and political causes five years ago. Raging Grannies International dates back to 1987. Current antiauthoritarianism protesters are older, whiter and more educated than those active in Trump’s first term, American University sociologist Dana R. Fisher told Washingtonian last October — though activists opposing war in Gaza and federal troops in American cities have skewed younger and more diverse. Older demonstrators are “out there because they remember when this kind of mass mobilization worked,” Fisher told the magazine. “Peaceful resistance was a mainstay of their youth.” Protests may appear to be graying simply because the country is aging, Dartmouth College political scientist Brendan Nyhan pointed out. On average, 11,400 Americans turn 65 each day. “We had careers, we ran nonprofits, or we had white-collar jobs where we learned how to do all of these tasks,” said Jeanne Keller, a 74-year-old Burlington woman who hits the streets with the Resister Sisters, a Chittenden County clutch of women over 70. “We know how to put on events,” Keller continued. “We have big Rolodexes.” They also have the freedom that retirement and financial security bring, Prensky noted: “I’m not worried about what my community is going to think about me if I get arrested.” He has been — four times. Speaking out is mandatory, many say. “It’s an obligation of citizenship,” said 75-year-old Shelburne resident Roberta MacDonald. She volunteered as a safety monitor at Saturday’s “No Kings” event in Shelburne, where she arrived with a boom box and played Joan Baez; Peter, Paul and Mary’s “If I Had a Hammer”; and “every protest song I could think of,” she said. “Even the truckers were honking.” “I would love to spend my retirement sitting on the porch smelling the roses, but if there’s a wildfire burning next door, you can’t just really sit and enjoy where you’re at,” said Karen Bixler, who, with Prensky, was among those arrested in Williston in February. The 83-year-old Bethel resident has been demonstrating for a wide range of causes since she graduated from college. She understands that activism doesn’t fit into everyone’s schedule. “I’m not gonna preach to a 30-year-old who’s holding down a job and raising kids: ‘Why aren’t you out on the street?’” she said. “But retired people who have time and really nothing to lose? Yeah. They should be out there, all of them.” At least as much as their aging bodies will allow, Bixler conceded. “I don’t have the stamina that I once had,” she continued, “so when I show up, I need a couple of days afterwards to recuperate.” Still, incensed about everything from ICE to the Jeffrey Epstein files to the harvesting of trees on public lands, Bixler is ready to do “serious” time in jail “if that’s what it takes,” she said. She feels protected, to a degree, by the fact that she is old and white. When Vermont State Police arrested her in Williston, “they treated me with kid gloves,” she said. “They asked how my mobility was, and I said, ‘Lousy.’ And they said, ‘OK, we won’t cuff you.’” In a Shelburne art room on a recent Thursday, 82-year-old Heidi Brouillette used black and red Sharpies to fatten the letters on a cardboard picket sign she was making for Saturday’s “No Kings” rally, the second she has organized. It read: “NO KINGS, NO WARS, NO ICE.” The sign was destined for the demonstration at the intersection of Shelburne and Harbor roads, in the heart of the village. The biweekly protests she runs at the same intersection are on hiatus for the winter so participants don’t get sick. Most are older adults, explained Brouillette: “At our age, a good cold can kill you.” A handful of her neighbors worked on signs at the same table. Barbara McGrew wrote “RESIST” vertically down the left side of a sheet of poster board, then used each letter to list things she opposes: racism, environmental destruction, sexism, intolerance, “self-dealing $$$” and tyranny. Barbara McGrew Credit: Mary Ann Lickteig McGrew is an introvert, she said, but she protests anyway. “I want to name what’s happening,” the 78-year-old retired union organizer said. “And fascism is its name.” She views fighting it as an obligation. “I feel we have a duty to repair the world,” she continued, referring to the Hebrew concept of tikkun olam, which is often tied to social action and the pursuit of justice. “I’m Jewish,” McGrew said. “We’ve seen this movie before, and it doesn’t end up very well.” Linda Bush organized the sign-making session. The 84-year-old grew up hearing stories from her father, an Austria native who passed notes for the underground during World War II and came to Hitler’s attention. Quakers working in Vienna whisked him to safety in England. “My father fought in World War II,” Sue Krauter said as she began roughing out her sign. “Our generation … we’re more acutely aware of the rise of dictators and fascism and how it happens: Make the press evil; anyone with a different opinion is unpatriotic; all those things,” the 76-year-old said. “And I’m worried that the younger people and younger voters don’t see what’s happening.” She stenciled “SUPPORT” at the top of her sign above the words “science,” “free speech” and “voting,” then consulted Bush. “Do you recommend paint here or markers?” “Markers,” Bush advised. “They’re easier.” “I’m a retired physician,” Krauter continued. “And this administration’s attack on science — and especially RFK — is criminal,” she said, referring to the policies of U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He’s unqualified for his job, Krauter said. He’s not a doctor, and he has tried to upend vaccine recommendations. A federal judge blocked those attempts two weeks ago. If Kennedy’s advice is followed, Krauter said, “children are going to die.” She and her husband have donated to causes such as Migrant Justice, she said, but the “No Kings” rally was her first experience standing on a street corner with a protest sign. As she prepared for it, she said: “I feel like if I don’t stand up at least one day, what have I done?” Pensky helped organize a march in Burlington. “This is the worst threat to democracy I’ve experienced in 80 years,” he said. “Anything and everything that the Trump administration has done to destroy democracy and elevate autocracy is an affront to me. This is everything I’ve lived my life for being rejected by my government, and I can’t sit still. I can’t watch it all fall apart.” ➆ The original print version of this article was headlined “Gray Matters | Older Vermonters bring time, life experience and a burning sense of duty to political protests” The post Older Vermonters Bring Time, Life Experience and a Burning Sense of Duty to Political Protests appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less