• Take advantage of the fact that age ≠ “woke.” Because ageism is still so unexamined, most people don’t think of age as a criterion for diversity. Unlike race, or gender, or sexual orientation, it doesn’t set off the “DEI alarm.” That gives it subversive potential. Foregrounding age can serve as a Trojan Horse. It’s a way to slip under the radar, as it were: to cross divides without compromising egalitarian values. We know that mixed-age groups are more mixed in other ways too. Not only is the global population growing younger, it’s also becoming also queerer and more racially mixed. Instead of turning people off by preaching diversity and inclusion—tempting though it is, don’t get me wrong —we can meet people where they are, and advance all kinds of agendas.

• Create and promote mixed-age initiatives. In recent years, intergenerational initiatives have cropped up all over. Because they center age, they’re politically neutral. No one’s against ’em, whether they’re business consultants seeking to monetize so-called “generational divides” or advocates like me who’d like to do away with generational labels entirely. This means intergenerational initiatives can serve all kinds of purposes. It makes sense to create and support them for a number of reasons. We know that connecting generations reduces ageism.  Mixed-aged teams and initiatives are more effective. They’re also inherently more diverse and inclusive—ssssssh!

• Challenge old vs. young framing. Politicians around the world are exploiting racial, gender, and class divides. We can’t afford to add age to the mix. This means challenging old vs. young framing wherever we encounter it, as when older people are scapegoated for sucking up all the wealth, or for hoarding political power, or for not caring about the planet we leave behind. Both the 1% and the 99% are made up of all ages. Plenty of white supremacists are young and climate change activists old, etc. etc. As ever, the issue is ideology, not age. Now more than ever, we need to avoid weaponizing age gaps and to join forces across them. 

• Bring people of all ages together to talk about age and power. Here’s my proposal, which I’ve dubbed it YODA, for Youngers and Olders Dismantling Ageism. I see YODA as a way to derail old vs, young framing, identify shared goals, and find ways to support each other across age gaps. I’m encouraging people to run with the idea in any context and at any scale that appeals, and it’s getting lots of traction.

• Examine the language we use. At a Stanford Longevity Center event last month my ears perked up when sociologist Sasha Johfre said:  “Age, gender, and race are pretty arbitrary categories, which we use to socially locate people. We’re always thinking about people across these categories.” That, I realized, was a great way to explain intersectionality, and a substitute for that clunky word. Intersectionality is an incredibly important concept; thank you Kimberlé Crenshaw. It’s also jargon that a lot of people don’t understand and that now signals “woke.” Revising my YODA article for the umpteenth time, I realized I could apply the same lens to other terms now censored by the thought police—swap “common cause” for “solidarity,” for example, and “building bridges” for “allyship”—without losing a thing.