Top Trump aide said senior activists should go home and take a nap. These progressive elders say they will continue to take you to the streets.
EL PASO, Texas — Bonnie Daniels and Dee Anne Croucher didn’t expect to spend their retirement in the fluorescent immigration court facing masked ice agents.
But that’s what they head every day, quietly challenging President Donald Trump’s crackdown. They warn immigrants what awaits them. They are handing out sharps so each can write an emergency contact phone number on their forearms. They hold the immigrants’ hands and walk from shoulder to shoulder to go into the crowd of agents blocking the exit.
Like other seniors at the forefront of resistance against the Trump administration, Daniels and Croucher are old enough to protest the Vietnam War and not trust anyone over 30.
Now, they and many of their peers are spending a golden year standing outside the White House with handmade signs, holding sit-ins, making pickets on rural street corners, protesting Trump’s intensified immigration enforcement.
Research shows that Americans tend to become more conservative as they get older, with 79-year-old Republican Trump boasting his own legion of Septuagen fans.
But seniors who were in control of young people’s politics say they have the time, energy and courage to surge protests and anti-Trump activities across the country.
When Trump’s aides made the headline in August by making a light parody of Washington, D.C. activists as “old white hippies,” the comments infuriated some and fired others.
“We are activists from the Vietnamese era,” said Daniels, a 68-year-old retired social worker and third-generation Mexican-American. “Women’s movements, Chicano movements and the Black movements. I’m proud to be an old hippie. I wear it as a badge of honor.”
Old progressives are political minorities
Twenty-five years ago, age was not a determinant of politics today.
Voters of the late 1990s and 70s and voters in their 20s had exactly the same partisan composition. They were 52% Democrats and 46% Republicans.
That has changed. Now and for the past decade, the majority of voters under the age of 30 have tended to vote for Democrats, while the majority of voters over the age of 60 are lean Republicans. There are many reasons for the shift, but it stands out, said Gary Allan Fein, a sociologist at Northwestern University who studied the dynamics of Golden Year activism.
“As you become financially safe, you have more to lose,” he said, and it drives more people into conservative politics. “It’s difficult to think about change.”
There is another factor: gender.
El Paso Immigration Court activists are mostly senior women, including Daniels and Croucher. Many of the elderly activists who organize protests, attended Zoom meetings and held signs on street corners are also women.
“When you look at all sorts of research, women tend to be more liberal-distorted than men,” Fein said. “That’s a huge political disparity.”
“We’re not dead yet.”
Being in a political party and political minority has not stopped them.
Karen Craig, 83, a retired teacher and child advocate, never referred to herself as a “hippie.” However, she was one of the organized teachers who staged strikes early in her career. Today, she lives in Rensselaer, Indiana (population 5,733), and three-quarters of the voters who sided with Trump in the last election live in the county.
“I was at my age and I was older and had a family and full-time job, so I didn’t have time to protest actively,” she said. “We didn’t have time to take off from the kids, but we do that now.
“And we’re very scared now about the way our country is moving,” she said.
Young activists may consume more energy online and show up in real life when work and school schedules are permitted. But older activists say they are likely to log out and go out on the streets.
Shelley Feist, 61, didn’t expect to retire as young as that, but the arrival of the second Trump administration convinced her to quit her job in the nonprofit sector and create space for full-time activism.
Residents of Washington, D.C. attended marching in the capital, standing outside the White House, spending hours carrying a GOP elephant and a homemade Styrofoam sign with the word “treason.”
“I judge that, yes, I believe I’m more persuasive in real life,” she said.
“We all know the image of the man standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square,” she said. “I know people who are happy to do something like that, and they inspire me.”
It was Deputy White House Director Stephen Miller, who appeared at Capital Union Station and trolled a group of elder activists screaming Vice President J.D. Vance in August. Vance was promoting Trump’s efforts to combat violent crime in the city.
Miller named the protesters “old white hippies” in a city that historically had many black residents.
“This is not a city that has been safe for generations of black citizens,” Miller argued. “President Trump is the one who’s fixing it. So we’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies. They all have to go home and take a nap because it’s over 90 years old.”
Some of Craig’s activist friends are in the 90s, she said. And this summer they appeared with her “king” and “passing hands” protests with her in her small Indiana town and others, opposed to what she regarded as an erosion of democratic norms. She did it for her daughter, grandchildren and two great grandchildren, she said.
“I don’t want to think about the next two generations having to deal with a dictatorship,” Craig said. “I don’t think that’s inevitable. I think things can change, so I’m willing to go out and demonstrate.”
“We’re not dead yet,” she added.
“We have to witness that.”
Daniels and Croucher waited on the seventh floor of the federal building as immigrants were submitted by the immigration court.
But Leticia Gutierrez, a gray-haired Catholic nun, asked them to sit down. Croucher distracted the four-year-old by handing a hot wheeled car to the four-year-old, just as his Venezuelan father and mother listened. Croucher kisses a Mexican woman with tears on her forehead as she walks past.
“Behind you there is an ice official,” Gutierrez said. “I’ll take photos that warn your documents, your alien numbers, and your family.”
Daniels and Croucher took car keys from each immigrant.
Gutierrez, a phone number written on his forearm with a black permanent marker, hangs shadow on his Venezuelan family walking down the hall. Daniels and Croucher followed behind.
As they rounded the corner, ice agents called out their Venezuelan mother’s name. She shed tears.
“My God, they took their families,” Croucher said as agents escorted them. “I can’t believe they took their family.”
Croucher and Daniels then returned to accompany the Mexican woman, and Daniels patted her in peace on the shoulder. A masked agent quickly intercepted her.
“Yorelamo a a familia,” Daniels called out to the agent as he led the woman to a cargo elevator that was inaccessible to the public. “I’ll call your family.”
Croucher stood in the hallway.
“We feel like we have to witness that,” she said. “You can’t disappear people with people who no one sees. I think one day you need to have this horror record.”
Lauren Villagran can be accessed at lvillagran@usatoday.com.
