Hal Carlstad holds a handmade sign that reads "Save Palestinian Kids" in red marker. In 1998, while trying to inspect a nuclear weapons plant in Israel, he and a group of fellow activists were arrested. The bust counts as one of the more than 150 he has racked up in his long history of civil disobedience. Police have slapped cuffs on him for protesting Vietnam, the death penalty, tree logging, and "everything else you can think of," he quips.
The 81-year-old Berkeley resident cuts a bowed figure, his Wrangler jeans and long-sleeved shirt hanging loose off his bony frame. A wide-brimmed hat shields his scalp from the setting sun while thick-soled shoes protect his feet from the heat seeping up through the asphalt.
Nora Barrows-Friedman
There's an impulse to assume that every march, no matter how small, aids the cause.
Courtesy of Indybay.org
A dearth of protestors under 40 has created a graying grassroots base.
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An octogenarian with a stiff back could be excused if he chose to leave the marching to younger legs. Carlstad still prefers to hoof for the cause. "I wouldn't come out here if I didn't feel it was important," he says. "You have to believe you can improve the world."
A couple of blocks later, about a quarter-mile from the end of the march, he bids farewell with a tug of his hat. He shuffles across the parking lot of a gas station, heading toward home. In a purely figurative sense, his quiet exit exposes a nascent crisis facing grassroots groups in the Bay Area. With longtime activists stepping away from the protest scene, fewer young recruits are replenishing the ranks.
"You go to these events and you don't see a lot of people under 40," says Shaw, founder of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. "Where's the next generation going to come from?"
The pro-Palestine march offers a glimpse of the typical rally demographic. The vast majority of the protesters are over 40, while most of those under 40 helped organize the event. Across the Bay Area, longtime activists say, the number of "casual" or spontaneous protesters in their 20s and 30s has dropped, a deficit that coincides with the region's soaring cost of living.
"Young people are having to move away," Stanford's Bunzel says. "Unless your job is working for a nonprofit, it can be difficult to get involved. You're too busy working."
The 82-year-old Bunzel, former president of San Jose State University, has walked a mile and then some for progressive causes. He marched for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, and in 1968, he served as a California delegate to the riotous Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Watching the country's slow embrace of those social and political changes imbued him with pragmatic patience.
"I don't think of myself as a pessimist or an optimist," he says. "I'm a possibilist."
Yet without the benefit of historical perspective, young people remain skeptical that their activism will spawn reform. The vote-counting tempests that touched down during the last two presidential elections only darkened their outlook, sowing a kind of cynicism creep.
"There can be a tendency to look at a protest and say, 'What difference does it make?'" says John Garfield, director of the Center for Education and Social Action at New College of California. "But people have to remember that activism is ultimately a leap of faith, because there's no guarantee that the world will get better. That's part of the excitement — you don't know how it's going to end."
Ishmael Ayesh chooses to believe. The 23-year-old Berkeley resident leads the protest down University, walking backward and belting out chants that the crowd repeats. His cement-mixer voice rattles off storefronts and apartment windows, drawing people out of homes and restaurants. Around his bulging neck he wears a black-and-white kaffiyeh — the colors represent "the struggle," he says — that he uses to dab sweat off his face.
The son of Palestinian parents who moved to California before he was born, Ayesh understands the apathy of young people. He confronts the same doubts. "There are plenty of days when it's hard to be motivated," he says. "But I just know I have to help any way I can. You never know when things are going to change, so you keep working."
As the protesters return to the Downtown Berkeley BART station where their march started, a handful of counter-protesters await them. They hold large Israeli flags and a banner that reads "Barak Offered Land and Peace — Arafat Offered Suicide Bombers." A man and woman, each in their 40s and wielding a bullhorn, yell in unison, "Stop the jihad, start the peace!"
Even with their voices amplified, however, they lose the slogan duel to Ayesh's young lungs. He bellows "Free, free Palestine!" and as the crowd echoes him again and again, the man and woman set down their bullhorns. A moment later, with the group still chanting, a young man riding his bike on the sidewalk pulls over to watch the spectacle. He sports a headband and goatee, and looks about 21. A pair of women his age, walking the opposite direction after exiting the BART station, stop beside him.
"What's this for?" one asks him.
"I dunno," he says with a shrug. "Something about Israel." Then he hops back on his bike and pedals away, and the two women amble off.
