If anyone in St. Louis should know anything about how to throw a proper protest it would be Percy Green. A veteran of civil rights fights in St. Louis since the 1960s, Green has been arrested, has had successes and failures and knows that many activist groups, irregardless of the cause, are often fighting the same foe. He proposes, why not fight together?

Green was offering this and other sage advice to the Peace Economy Project Friday when he was a guest speaker at their event Friday at the World Community Center on North Skinker.

Green drew on his 47 years of activism, including recounting his famous climbing of the Gateway Arch during its construction to protest the lack of black laborers on the project.

Some of Green’s advice to current and aspiring activists:

• “Young people are going to be young people.” - Green advised those who are older and were involved in protest movements of the past to not get frustrated with their younger counterparts who’s participation my ebb and flow based on outside influences like marriage or starting a family. Rather than get out of sorts he advises organizations “do what little bit we can do and stay focused.”

• “The movement is just like other parts of nature. Some of us know that you need rain. Rain is very necessary if you want vegetation to grow.” - Green’s metaphor continued, adding that to get rain necessitates clouds, but not every cloud means rain, but that it’s not going to rain on a blue sky day. Translation: Despite some stagnation in progress, organizations need to keep up their work as diligently as possible. The right chemistry could come along at anytime to make their work dynamic, but they’re are guaranteed to not get that dynamic if they don’t keep their apparatus, their “clouds” up, out and visible.

• Emotion. Green said the main thing that will bring new people suddenly into a protest movement is emotion, mainly anger or hostility towards a recent injustice. While some might blanche at working with the raw emotions of others, Green said he’d rather have this fire directed properly through guidance and organization. “You know how to organize a picket line. What to say in a megaphone,” Green said on helping young people channel their anger into progress.

• “We can still learn from the young folks. The Young folks can learn from us.” - Green said the protest movement is at a junction point with the youth having knowledge and expertise in technology and the older generation knowing how to organize and protest.