Will Democracy Be Rescued by Gray-Haired Women??
From where I sit, it’s already happening.
Donna Maurillo
Feb 23, 2026
Recently, The Contrarian substack ran an article https://www.contrariannews.org/p/older-women-not-young-men-might-save about how older women, not younger men, will save Democracy. That arrow hit right in the center of the target. While some may not take the claim seriously, I certainly do. Why? Because I know a lot of older women, including myself, who are in the thick of it. We learned to roar a long time ago.
Nine years ago, right after The Donald was first inaugurated, women gathered for protest marches in cities, towns, and villages all across the country. We knew a bad thing when we saw it, and we weren’t going to stand still and let it happen. But… what exactly could we do?
Well, we could grouse and complain and whine. But we’re the women who protested the Vietnam War, the ones who demonstrated for civil rights with MLK, and the ones who fought for female equality under the law. We ran for office, and we won. We became judges and governors and senators.
When I was in grade school, we learned that Margaret Chase Smith was the only woman in the U.S. Senate. And we were supposed to be proud of that! One woman among 99 men. Isn’t she sweet? Never mind that she was the first one to speak out against the notorious Joe McCarthy. All we were told was that she was the only woman. (Now, go out and elect more women like this!)
Margaret Chase Smith was the only woman in the Senate, the first woman to serve in the House and the Senate. And she was first to speak out against Joe McCarthy.
So, we aren’t a generation of women to sit in rocking chairs watching the rest of the world go by. At first, the women I knew didn’t know what to do. So, we started meeting weekly to write postcards to the U.S. Cabinet, to Donald Trump, and to various members of Congress. We knew that those protests were going to end up in the trash, but it was all we could think of doing.
Then something happened. Groups of (primarily) women began springing up across the country wanting to reach out to legislators and voters. Now volunteers are found in every state, including retirement communities. And at the same time, political organizations were forming to offer up voter addresses and scripts so we could encourage people to vote for Democratic candidates. These groups also provided addresses so we could encourage voters to check their registrations to ensure they were up to date. Or to register if they weren’t already on the voter rolls.
I’m not sure how many local groups have formed across the country, but here are some metrics. Progressive Turnout PAC has over 330,000 volunteers sending over 43 million postcards since its inception. Activate America sent over 3.4 million postcards in 2025. Postcards to Voters has over 162,000 volunteers nationwide as of late 2025. Our neighborhood group alone has written 65,000 postcards in the last nine years. All handwritten, and all at our own expense. (We do have an anonymous benefactor who supplies the postcards.)
Are our postcard groups effective? You betcha! When Susan Crawford was running for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, she was pitted against an opponent funded by Elon Musk to the tune of $25 million. Did she even stand a chance? Yes!! In fact, she won by ten percentage points!
When asked how she did it, she credited “all those postcard writers” who got people to the polls. “All those postcard writers” is composed primarily of women, although our group eventually attracted a few men. Our oldest member is 96, arriving with her walker. We call ourselves The PerSisters and the PerMisters. Each week, about 25-30 of us gather at a local cafe for three hours writing cards. We average 350-400 each week.
In addition, we subscribe to Rogan’s List to learn which corporate offices or legislators we should write to regarding important issues. Most recently, we wrote to Enterprise and told them to stop renting vehicles to ICE agents. And we wrote to our legislators urging them not to fund ICE as long as it’s a lawbreaking organization.
Never too old to join a protest… or lead one.
But it isn’t just postcards. We also attend rallies, display banners on freeway overpasses, join protest marches, and participate in local political groups. We’ve noticed time and again that it’s mostly women in these rallies. And mostly older women. We live in a university town, and I rarely see college-age people in our crowds. And we rarely see young men. It’s always us gray-haired folks showing up with walkers, wheelchairs, canes, and a lot of anger.
Where are the men? Where are the young people? Can it be true that the Old Ladies are more dedicated to democracy than any other group?
Older people remember the threats during WWII and the McCarthy Era. It’s why we are so dedicated to preserving democracy today.
I don’t want to assume that it’s true. But from where I sit, the older demographic outnumbers the younger people. Maybe we’re the only ones who remember that, back in the 1930s and 1940s, democracy was threatened and almost killed. Vietnam? That was a pointless war that never threatened our way of life. Neither did all the Mideastern conflicts.
But we know a threat when we see it. And like mothers, we want to throw a blanket of protection over the ideals we grew up with. Pride in our country. Pride in our leadership. Pride in how other nations tried to copy us. Pride in our nation’s integrity.
We don’t want to lose those. And we don’t want to tell our grandchildren that we sat on the sidelines while our great nation was turned into political rubble.
Walkers, canes, wheelchairs… They don’t prevent older people from showing up.