This is not April 1968.

Patriots Day 2025 a group of elders from Applewood Retirement Community and the surrounding neighborhood rallied on Bay Road in Amherst. Applewood is right across the street from Hampshire College, but no students joined the crowd with signs. Two Fridays ago I attended a rally in downtown Amherst. Again, the crowd was mostly older adults. I counted five students who came out with signs. Several weeks before that I attended another rally, this one in South Hadley. The crowd stretched along Route 116, so I couldn’t see whether students from Mount Holyoke joined farther down the road. There were none where I was.

I’m disturbed and saddened by the lack of young people out demonstrating, at least from what I’ve seen in this area. What’s coming out of Washington these days is a very big deal, especially for young people. Where are they? I remember April 1968. I was a student in Berkeley then. The 1964 Free Speech Movement, where students at UC Berkeley demanded the right of free speech and political activity on campus, was the inspiration for student activism across the country. When I arrived in the fall of 1967 to begin a master’s program, demonstrations and strikes were underway: non-violent demonstrations at the Oakland induction center; a little later the rally in Oakland to free Huey Newton, co-founder with Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party; and the strike beginning in November at San Francisco State that initially protested the Draft’s access to student academic records and then escalated to demands for courses in Black history and culture.

Student protests spread. In April, Columbia students demonstrated against the university’s involvement in the War in Vietnam and its racist policies in the Morningside Heights area of New York. It was an exciting time of purpose and involvement. As the war intensified with the Tet Offensive, the demonstrations increased, culminating in the tragedy at Kent State in 1970.

Student involvement played an important role in bringing the war to an end. The American War in Vietnam deeply shook our sense of ourselves in the world. We were no longer saviors: we were perpetrators. But that threat and the Watergate crisis leading to President Richard Nixon’s resignation is small potatoes compared to what we face now. The republic of the United States is falling into fascist dictatorship. We hear a lot about Trump’s threats to Social Security, to Medicare and Medicaid, to 401(k)’s, to small businesses, farmers, industrial workers whose manufacturing jobs are being strangled by tariffs.

People in all areas are affected. Students, you are too. You are threatened with loss of financial aid, restrictions on admissions, restriction of freedom of thought and expression. And jobs after college? In this area that boasts five colleges, where are you? Everything that’s at stake here affects you, and sooner rather than later. So get out and demonstrate! It’s 10:30 Saturday morning. Where are you?

Kathy Gregg lives in Amherst.