The Newsom-DeSantis debate was largely pointless. It involved Ron DeSantis who is running for president but trailing far behind the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, and Gavin Newsom who has stated he doesn’t intend to run for president this election cycle but has been suggested as a potential replacement for Joe Biden if he chooses to…
NYRA supports Choose To Rally, a movement to give Floridians back their abortion rights. Abortion is currently restricted to six weeks in the state. This constitutes a near-total ban on the procedure. Abortion is restricted in many states across the country to minors under 18 without parental consent, and states like Florida that seek to…
When it comes to many social justice causes — such as LGBTQ rights, feminism, racial equality, and economic justice — youth are typically discouraged from speaking out and leading movements. Even historically, the majority of progressive movements were led by older individuals who supposedly had more wisdom and experience than their younger counterparts. However, the…
Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. Nina Pop. George Floyd. Tony McDade… Say their names and remember them and all the Black people who have lost their lives to police brutality. Say their names and remind yourself (if it was not already obvious to you) that the U.S. is built upon the exploitation of Black and Indigenous…
Every year around this time, we hear the same soundbites from Martin Luther King’s poetic but relatively innocuous “I Have a Dream” speech. In some schools, textbooks include King’s more thought-provoking essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” but they usually censor the thought-provoking parts. What those in power are most eager to hide from young audiences…
Robert A. Heinlein stated that “Age is not an accomplishment, and youth is not a sin.” However, the current legislation surrounding youth minority in the United States implies that our concept of minority and the Christian concept of sin are not unrelated. Much as Christians surrender control to their God, minors are forced to surrender…
When debating the more minor issues of youth rights, one is often faced with a question, such as “Why do you care?” One person quoted the issue of curfews as failing a hypothetical “so what” test. Much of the difficulty in debating this type of question is the assumption that any given issue is discrete…
The degree to which the third (current) wave of feminism ignores youth rights issues has always boggled my mind. Historically, second wave feminist leaders like Shulamith Firestone made important contributions to youth rights theory and discussed the oppression of children as an important social fact like the oppression of women and African-Americans. Sadly, while third…
Perhaps due to our animosity towards older adults who have oppressed us and perhaps due to our desire to forge our movement’s identity in a context in which senior citizens already have a powerful movement to protect their rights, youth rights activists have often refrained from discussing the parallels between ageist oppression against youth and…
Recently, comedian Tracy Morgan has been receiving a lot of attention for a homophobic rant that took place during a live performance in Nashville, Tennessee. During this rant, audience members claim that Morgan stated that if he found out his son was gay he would stab him to death. Since this incident, a variety of…
