07/30/2026
MEDICARE IS 61 TODAY!!
I’m angry. I’ll say that plainly, because I think you’re angry too.
We marched for civil rights. We marched for women’s right to control our own bodies.
We fought to integrate schools that didn’t want students of color there.
We stood against a war our government lied to us about.
We built Medicare — with our own two hands, in 1965 — so that growing old in this country didn’t mean going broke or going without.
And today, we’re watching extremists try to tear it back down. Piece by piece.
So yes — I’m angry. But anger isn’t why I’m talking to you today.
I’m talking to you today because anger, by itself, doesn’t build anything. What we built, we built together — and what we’re going to protect, we’re going to protect the same way.
Here’s what I know for certain: we have something no one else in this fight has. Not the newest candidate. Not the sharpest strategist. Not the loudest voice online.
We have a moral authority that no one else can claim!
We were there. We know what it actually takes to change a law, flip a district, integrate a school board, win a seat that everyone said couldn’t be won. We didn’t read about it — we lived it.
That’s why I’m asking you — if you’re over 50, if you still believe in the fight, if you’re a progressive who’s tired of yelling at the news and ready to do something with your hands again — join your local Senior Democrats chapter here in North Carolina.
Not to relive the past. To hand it forward.
And if you’re of this new generation, maybe even voting for the first time—come to a Senior Dems chapter meeting to listen to the stories you need to hear!
Let’s build this intergenerational coalition because experience and energy equals power!
Here’s the truth: the young candidates knocking on doors right now, running for school board, for county commission, for the state legislature — they are winning in places we haven’t won in years. They have energy. They have social media instincts we’ll never fully catch up to. They have urgency.
What they don’t have — yet — is forty, fifty, sixty years of institutional memory. They don’t know which county commissioner owes us a favor from 1998. They don’t know how we out-organized a machine that had every advantage. They don’t know that we’ve beaten what was the worst in our young lives because we have.
That knowledge doesn’t help anybody sitting in our heads. It only matters if we hand it over.
So here’s what I’m asking.
Not for a donation.
Not for a Facebook share.
I’m asking you to show up.
Come to a chapter meeting. Bring a friend who’s been sitting this one out. Tell a younger candidate your story — not as a lecture, but as ammunition they can use. Knock on five doors with someone half your age and watch what happens when your experience meets their energy.
We are not the past of this party. We are its backbone.
Democrats from across the state are united by shared values that define who we are and what we stand for. That means fighting to ensure all North Carolinians have a fair shot at a good life, regardless of their background, where they came from, their economic status, or who they love.
