America's oldest citizens are mobilizing against the Trump administration. A new Rolling Stone investigation documents seniors aged 83 and older organizing with visible anger over policy direction.
The numbers show significant movement: A New York Times/Siena poll found 46 percent of senior Americans strongly disapprove of President Trump's performance, compared to 36 percent who strongly approve. This cohort has long been considered reliably conservative.
Barbara Silverstone, 95, was born two years before FDR took office. She watched polio and measles ravage her generation. Her younger sister was stricken with polio. Vaccines ended those threats. Now she's watching the CDC face new vaccine skepticism as measles spreads again. "I fear for my great grandchildren," she says.
Murphy Sewall, born three months after Pearl Harbor and a retired naval officer, draws parallels to 1930s fascism. "I am outraged by the sight of armed masked men breaking into cars and homes in American cities," he writes. "Their behavior is remarkably similar to 1930s fascism."
Karen Slaney had childhood nightmares about Nazis. She sees parallels in current events and quotes Anne Frank's diary: "Terrible things are happening outside. Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes." She views the present through the lens of that historical warning.
Third Act, a five-year-old movement launched to mobilize older Americans around climate and democracy, is organizing this activity into political action. "It's not normal," one organizer noted. "But if it is designed to make us shut up, it's not working."
