adjacent possibilites

A few weeks ago, I returned to Oberlin for Commencement/Reunion weekend. Though I was neither commencing (I did that a year ago) nor officially reuniting (I think that comes in about three years), I participated on a panel that I and another Charleston, WV Obie organized. The panel, Then and Now: Changing Nature of Activism, included four graduates from the '67-'69 cluster for the "then" side; the "now" side included two of us who graduated last year, one who graduated this year, and one who will graduate next year. The panel was a great success, and included a substantial audience participation component at the end during which both young and old[er] Obies asked questions and raised issues surrounding activism in an Oberlin context as well as a more general one.
One of the "then" participants was Paula Gordon, who, among other things, blogs for the Huffington Post. A few days ago, she blogged about the "then and now" nature of activism, the differences between issues of each generation, the dynamic nature of social change, and about "adjacent possibilities", the idea that change is always happening, thus forcing us to take the moral high road every chance we have. Her take was that while the "then" generation was focused on civil rights, women's rights, and Vietnam, the "now" generation is focused on one general principle: saving life on earth. This is a pretty general concept, but she goes on to voice it as the possibility and necessity of a sustainable future on earth. While this is an environmental concept that encompasses many elements of human, economic, and social rights, her post still missed some fundamentals of the panel's discussion.
Gordon states that the best news from our generation was that their accomplishments seemed easy to us. I am not sure that this was the view expressed by our side of the panel; in fact, I think the general sentiment was one of respect for their accomplishments, but also understanding that the issues and manifestations of protest have changed. If there is one thing that I learned from not only my education at Oberlin, but from the panel discussions, it is that activism is self-defined, dynamic, and completely intersectional (props to CAST!). You cannot address climate change without also addressing housing issues and socioeconomic factors. You cannot address housing issues without also addressing the economy and racial factors. You cannot discuss any of this without addressing poverty. Thus, my generation's activism is rooted in the idea that all social ills are connected, and while we may choose to individually focus on one or two specific issues of personal importance, participation in each movement does not allow one to fore go discussion of all other issues and movements. If anything, what we learned from the activism in the "then" generation was that exclusion has no place in any social movement: problems specific to women of color and lower-class women cannot by ignored by the feminist movement, LGBTQ members of the black community cannot be left out of race politics, racial and economic factors cannot be forgotten by the LGBTQ movement, and class and socioeconomic realities should go addressed in every movement for social change. If we are to extol and promote "adjacent possibilities", we must apply the principle to every chance for social change, and, man, are there enough to go around.