Proud to be Old, Male, White and Woke

Bernie Sanders speaking at The New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire on Feb. 7, 2020. Tony Luong for Time

I am a Liberal. Always have been, always will be. I’m not talking neo-liberal, or any of the other distortions of liberal ideals that have gained currency in recent times. I’m talking radical, progressive and, yes, woke.

In recent weeks various video clips have popped up in my Twitter feed. They showed speakers at meetings of right wing groups new to the UK. In the comments each time people noted that the audience were all grey haired, as if it could be taken for granted that all people of a certain age are racist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynist. I’m sorry, but that is as wrong headed as any of the isms I’ve just listed. I refuse to be defined by my age, my skin pigmentation, my gender or my sexuality.

What I am is someone who has spent most of his adult life embracing change. Social change and technological change. I still do. That does not mean that I don’t recognise the damage that some aspects of technological progress inflicts on the planet. As an aspiring politician in the 1980s I advocated for measures to protect the environment and against practices that were ecologically unsustainable.

It is no surprise to me that, in the face of repeated denials of the obvious truth of the environmental message, campaigners have grown more angry, advocated more radical solutions and devised more high profile forms of protest.