History
The organization was initially known as the Consultation of Older and Younger Adults for Social Change. The group’s main goals included changing the mandatory retirement age and seeking an end to the Vietnam War. In 1972, they were nicknamed the Gray Panthers by a New York talk show producer. The name was later officially adopted by the group. As of 2010 the group operated under a system of participatory democracy, designed to allow all of their members a say in the group’s direction.
The national office of the Gray Panthers has been located in Washington, D.C. since 1990. Previous office locations included Philadelphia, PA.
In 1992 former national Head Start administrator Jule Sugarman accepted the position of Interim executive director of the Gray Panthers, who were by then on the brink of insolvency, to help the group reorganize its by-laws, its board of directors, and its fund-raising activities.
Although their slogan was “Age and Youth in Action,” the group was seen by many as meeting the needs of only senior citizens.
The national Gray Panthers organization was a collection of local networks. The group gained official NGO (Non-governmental Organization) status at the United Nations in 1981. Seven Gray Panthers representatives participate in various UN committees and conferences.
The Gray Panthers celebrated their 40th Anniversary "Year of Activism" in 2010.
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“History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.
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Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.”
—Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)