The Pentagon Papers still matter because the social change work that I am engaged in now didn’t start with me and won’t end when I die. It is part of a lifelong continuum in which we all must stand on the shoulders of previous activists and the work they did and help support and mentor and listen to those younger than us. We need to get better at working intergenerationally and teaching and learning between generations so that we are not reinventing the wheel. I have seen so many people burn out or get incredibly depressed while doing activist work, myself included. I think in part burn-out and depression are related to our failure to take a long view of activism and understand that our work will never be done and that we just need to keep building. Reading about past struggles, like Daniel Ellsberg’s can help us understand where we come from and where we are going.
