Social Movements Are Much More Partisan Than They Used to Be

The rock star Graham Nash had a thought while he watched the “March for Our Lives” gun-control protests led by the survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, this spring. “We teach our children the best way we can,” he told me this week, “but we have to learn from our children, too, or else we are making a big mistake.”

When he’d had much the same thought nearly a half-century ago, as protests erupted all around him, it inspired him to write his classic anthem, “Teach Your Children.” This time, the resurgence in grassroots protest against President Donald Trump led for the song, linking the social movements of the 1960s with the proliferating protests of the present day. But while the video convincingly draws parallels, it also highlights a key difference between the two eras. The relentless polarization of the political landscape since the 1960s has rendered social movements more partisan—changing both their tactics and their goals in the process.