Archive

Maggie Kuhn was an American activist who, upon being forced into mandatory retirement at 65 by the Presbyterian Church in 1970, founded the Gray Panthers — a national advocacy organization fighting age discrimination, poverty, and social injustice. She had been a social activist her entire career, but retirement gave her a new cause and, as it turned out, a new life. She appeared on the cover of Ms. magazine, testified before Congress, and remained a fierce public presence until her death at 89. She understood, from personal experience, that old age was not a decline to be managed but a vantage point from which to fight.

June 15 is World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, established by the United Nations to raise awareness about the abuse and neglect of older people. World Elder Abuse Awareness Day exists because older people are among the most vulnerable to exploitation, neglect, and cruelty — often at the hands of people they trust. Kuhn's reframing is not soft or sentimental. It is a correction. To live a long life is not to diminish. It is to have survived. Every elderly person carries within them decades of adaptation, loss, recovery, and persistence that younger people have not yet been tested by. That is not weakness to be exploited. It is strength to be honored. Today asks us to protect what we should already be revering.