While intermittently glancing up at the Academy Awards show last night, noticed an immediately annoying commercial. The scene panned around a very messy bedroom, while the song “16 Going on 17” from the Sound of Music was playing. Alright, so right off the bat, we’re being told 16-year-olds are irresponsible messy idiots, and already indignant,…
Looks like Spain may be the next country to recognize the validity of the youth voice by lowering their voting age to 16! The secretary of the Joventut de la Generalitat, Eugeni Villalbí, believes that if at age 16 can decide to abort children, work, and can change their treatment before the judicial system they…
Today is an amazing day for college students! In a nutshell, after enduring months to years of tuition hikes, lowering education quality, and numerous other injustices, especially in California where the state’s financial troubles have really hit hard lately, the students have had enough and are speaking out. They are marching. They are occupying campus…
My law professor said something today that resonated with me. He said: You only possess the rights that you assert. In other words, liberty is no longer (if it ever truly was) the default in our society. In a nation that ever increasingly exhibits aspects characteristic of a police state, in the era of the…
According to Droits des Non Fumeurs, anyway. Meaning “Non-Smokers’ Rights”, they’re fighting that ever-so-important battle of keeping people under 18 from smoking. And in this ever-so-important battle, they’ve whipped out an interesting kind of artillery… saying that smoking, being a “slave to tobacco”, is like being forced to perform oral sex! The slogan is bland…
Spotted a very interesting post over at the Institute for Democratic Education in America. It started as a response to the following comment: I used to direct an after-school program, which was housed in a public school classroom, and I tried to implement a democratic meeting with my middle school students (a diverse group in…
The 21 year old drinking age doesn’t work. You know it, NYRA knows it, Choose Responsibility knows it. Vote for this issue so the whole country can understand the harm that the 21 year old drinking age does: https://www.change.org/ideas/view/21_doesnt_work_change_the_drinking_age The top 10 ideas with the most votes on Change.org will be presented to President Obama…
This is replying to a Canadian Press article, “Students failing because of Twitter, texting and no grammar teaching” from earlier in the month. Little or no grammar teaching, cellphone texting, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, all are being blamed for an increasingly unacceptable number of post-secondary students who can’t write properly. It’s perfectly…
Recently, we sent out an email looking for your youth rights stories. The President of our board of directors, Jeffrey Nadel, shared the story of his fight against West Palm Beach and their youth curfew law. Your stories have begun to come in and we have enjoyed reading them. We look forward to receiving more…
When the new International Civil Rights Center and Museum recently opened their doors in Greensboro, NC they didn’t open them to everybody. NYRA’s executive director quickly realized what museum curators and planners could not — it’s wrong for a museum whose mission is to highlight the horrors of segregation to promote segregation. The museum believes…
