Generations don't exist. They are media created misnomers to codify and commodify various resistance struggles that flow through our socio-economic histories and divide age groups against each other. Yesterday's hippies are also yesterday's anti-globalization protesters are also yesterday's suffragists are also yesterday's Catalonian anarchists...
I'm from the so-called 'Gen X' generation. Yes, I was a latch-key kid. Yes, my parents really didn't much care for us in the traditional way- largely from the need to work, but also also from the need to fulfill their own professional goals. Further, the parents of Gen Xer's weren't universally from the 'Boomer' generation. Mine were from the 'Silent' generation - yet I was born in 1972 and my siblings in the mid to late 60's. What we share in common culturally certainly informs our outlook on the world, in the exact same way that other generations are impacted by their immediate circumstances. However, any homogenization of hugely disparate groups of people with hugely different socio-economic circumstances is absolutely ludicrous.
Popular political and social movements within specific age groups do not actually define those age groups as a whole. Unfortunately, the commercial success, or failure, of those movements do provide the overarching power structure with the means to define and homogenize and co-opt any threat to the existing order.
As I grew up I took as many cultural cues from the hippies as I did from the punks, the beats, the flappers... If it was revolutionary, it was interesting. I listened to the gender bending Lou Reed as much as the communist folk traditions, bebop, blues, psychedelic, the punk and post-punk traditions - not to mention, prog rock [which was largely viewed as 'the man']. I read whatever I could get my hands on. I immersed myself in the history of the suffragist movement and the civil rights movement and the feminist movement and the gay rights movement and the peace movement and the anti-nuke movement...
And I found myself in the middle of the anti-globalization movement. It was the quintessential Gen X movement. Like the generations before us that felt their movements were 'theirs', that was ours. And they all failed, even when they all came so close - and they were all so right... And so we let the economy and the media and our ideological squabbles divide us against ourselves, when we've actually always been fighting for the same things.
None of those movements define our generations. They just happened within our generations - and we were in the minority. We were always the freaks, all of us. But we've got to continue, together, to fight for these things. We've all failed. We've all become cynical and bitter in some ways. We've all let our failures lead us to judge others in their own failures. We've let the doubt creep in.
But the freaks among us are right. Those that stand for equality are right. Those that stand for a just, sustainable economic system are right. Those that stand for humanity are right. We must band together and fight for what we all know is right. We can still start a revolution.