National Youth Rights Association

For years, NYRA has worked to find one state or one community that would finally allow people younger than 18 to vote. On May 13, 2013 we achieved a breakthrough: Takoma Park, Maryland voted to be the first US city with a voting age of 16.

“Other nations, from Argentina to Austria, have allowed 16-year-olds to vote, but Takoma Park is the first city in the United States to achieve this level of democracy,” said NYRA Executive Director Bill Bystricky. “Takoma Park is leading the way to a brighter and more democratic future.”

When Takoma Park city council members Tim Male and Seth Grimes first introduced their proposal, they faced skepticism from other council members. But when local residents, many still in high school, turned out at city council meetings to voice their views, resistance melted and the council voted 6-1 in favor of the lower voting age, and the one member who voted against says he will work to help 16-year-olds get more involved in governance so they will be well-informed and ready to cast meaningful votes.

Will other cities soon follow in expanding democracy?

“Yes,” says Bystricky. “NYRA is already working with activists in Lowell, MA to lower their voting age, and other cities will soon follow. Now that Takoma Park has led the way, it will be easier to win this level of democracy across the nation as Americans grow more accustomed to 16-year-old voters.”

A big Thank You to every NYRA activist who helped make this happen, not just the activists who spoke in Takoma Park, but those who for years kept the fires burning and the idea spreading, from the heroes in NYRA-Berkeley who got the entire state of California debating a Votes for Youth proposal, to the quiet radicals who keep the discussion going in online forums. It took years of hard work for the idea of Votes for Youth to achieve this level of acceptance.

From here, the work will be easier with momentum pushing us forward, but the work still needs to be done. Let’s spread this victory across America.

Join the forum discussion on this post

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Update: We’re winning.

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NYRA has long fought for a lower voting age, and we may soon have a breakthrough right on Washington, DC’s border.

Takoma Park, Maryland is now considering a proposal to let 16-year-olds vote in local elections. If this succeeds, we may soon see other cites lose their fear of enfranchising youth. NYRA has already written a letter to the city council in support of this proposal, but there is more work to be done.

On April 8 at 7:30 PM, the Takoma Park city council will hold a public meeting on the issue. NYRA Executive Director Bill Bystricky will speak. There’s room for others to help as well.

What You Can Do

If you live in Takoma Park, show up to the meeting and speak. You’ll get three minutes to make your case, and the city council is eager to hear from all the residents they are expected to represent.

If you live elsewhere, come anyway. Just sitting in the audience and showing your support can help.

The Hearing:

April 8 at 7:30 PM
Takoma Park Community Center
7500 Maple Ave.
Takoma Park, Maryland 20912

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A group of youth rights activists offered NYRA a matching grant, matching dollar-for-dollar individual donations that reached NYRA in December. They set a cap of $1,300, never imagining that NYRA’s members, most of them students, would be able to raise that much in just a few weeks.

Well, guess what. NYRA’s membership maxed that mother out!!

That group of youth rights activists will be giving us the entire $1300 to start off ’13 because our membership raised every penny of that! Even as young Americans struggled in this hard economy to buy gifts for their friends and family, they also found money to give our movement an economic boost.

Thank you so much to everyone who pitched in during this matching grant period. You are why the youth rights movement is charging into 2013 ready to win even more victories for America’s youth.

And if you didn’t get your donation to NYRA in time to help us with this matching grant, don’t worry – you can still be a valuable member of this movement by being one of the first NYRA-donors of 2013. You can be especially valuable if you set your credit card donation to recur monthly. Since that gives us stable and predictable funding, $10/month is even better than $120/year.

But however you choose to contribute, know that your contributions are making a big difference, sustaining hope for victims of ageism, winning substantive victories for youth rights, and getting pro-youth voices in the public debate. Thank you for that.

You’re awesome.

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In these tough times, NYRA, like many non-profits, faces economic challenges. We are tightening our belts, but with your help, we can keep fighting effectively for youth rights. To ensure that NYRA as you know it keeps running in 2013, we need you to step up and donate before December ends.

You won’t be alone. An awesome group of youth rights leaders have already put together a matching grant. If you donate to NYRA by December 31, they will match your donation dollar-for-dollar up to $1,300 to start off ‘13. So if you give $10, NYRA gets $20. If you give $500, NYRA gets $1,000. You’ll do twice as much good for the cause and still enjoy all the other benefits:

• Not yet a NYRA-member? Give $10 and sign up for membership; you’ll be a full NYRA-member for an entire year, enjoying the right to vote in our annual BOD election or even to run for the board yourself.
• Already a member? Give $10 and we’ll add a full year to your current membership.
• Donate $150 and you will enjoy lifetime membership – you’ll never again need to worry about renewing, and if we ever raise our membership dues, you won’t be affected.
• And, as always, your donation to NYRA is tax-deductible.

Give securely online or mail a check or money order to:

National Youth Rights Association
P.O. Box 516
Rockville, MD 20848

And if none of that works for you, there’s still another way to send your donation. Many stores sell gift cards, for example from Visa or American Express, that can be used like credit cards. Buy one in cash (or ask for one as a holiday gift!) and use it to donate online.

With your help, NYRA will weather these tough times and will keep alive the fight for young people’s rights.

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2012 will mark a milestone for youth rights activism:  supporters of all ages are engaging in an effort to empower youth by lowering the voting age. The “Votes for Youth” campaign gives voice to youth who are fed-up with having no say in electing the leaders who claim to represent them. They have strongly held beliefs on domestic and foreign policy issues that should not be ignored. They know that, without the right to vote, meaningful change cannot be protected from the whims of politicians with their own agendas.  Youth know that lowering the voting age will enable them to make a difference to improve the country they love.

What is “Votes for Youth”? It’s Americans, young and old, protesting to give youth the right to vote, that most precious right of democracy that so many adults take for granted and fail to exercise.

It’s people of all ages spreading the news by all means available that youth want and need the right to vote and they will gain the right to vote: uploading videos, blogging, tweeting, contacting local, state and national leaders, writing letters to the editors, and growing a network of supporters.

This movement will achieve big things, but it will require your support. Here’s what you can do to help it grow:

• Join our Votes for Youth Facebook group.
• Find a protest in your area and spread the word to your entire social network.
• Come to the October 12 DC rally.
• Donate to the cause.
• Use a “Votes for Youth” image as your Facebook or Twitter profile pic.
• Create a video explaining why youth need the right to vote. Then upload it to http://www.mediafire.com/ and send the link to [email protected] NYRA will choose the best ones to add to NYRA’s youtube.com channel and its special “Votes for Youth” playlist.
• Send a Facebook message or tweet to all of your friends (include the link to NYRA or the “Votes for Youth” page)
• Blog about the “Votes for Youth” movement on youth sites, political sites, and news sites
• Write a “Letter to the Editor” to your local newspaper
• Contact your local city council member, state legislator, or member of Congress and let them know the voting age must be lowered.

Working together, we can achieve great things in 2012. This is our moment. Let’s make it happen!

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Sky high unemployment.  Astronomical government debt.  A fragile environment.  Rapidly rising college tuition.  Our country, and our world, face massive problems, massive problems that according to venture capitalist Andrew Lerner are caused principally by the older generation.  The first step to fixing this problem is understanding the severe discrimination young people face.

Andrew Lerner’s new book draws on a wide variety of business, government, and societal trends to illustrate how most major challenges younger adults face are exacerbated by age biases.

This book is required reading for anyone who has been, will be, or is currently, a young adult.

All the proceeds from this book will be generously donated to NYRA.  Buy a copy for your mom, your dad, your son, your daughter, your aunt, your teacher, your best friend, and your dog.

Buy the book here:

http://www.amazon.com/Thank-You-Being-Young-ebook/dp/B0068VJANS

Not convinced this e-book is the perfect gift for every friend and family member you have? Then you must not have read it yet. But we have a way to fix that.

Mr. Lerner has generously offered to make the book available through our website at a cost that is $9.99 cheaper than the $9.99 cover price. That’s right: Free!! A gift to NYRA’s supporters.

Download your free copy at http://www.youthrights.org/research/downloads/?did=194. Then, after you’ve enjoyed how Lerner blows the lid off ageism in the workplace and throughout society, buy copies for everyone you know. (http://www.amazon.com/Thank-You-Being-Young-ebook/dp/B0068VJANS ) Your friends and family will thank you as they learn about this problem, and NYRA will earn more money to fight for solutions. It’s a gift for everyone!

The Hazelwood School District near St. Louis, Missouri is known to youth rights activists as the district that stomped on a school paper’s First Amendment rights and led to the Supreme Court’s notorious Hazelwood ruling. But more recently, this district was the site of a youth rights victory.

NYRA-St. Louis, headquartered in Hazelwood West Middle School, recently succeeded in shaking up their school cafeteria. Students at this school found too few vegetarian foods available in their cafeteria. The school was not honoring students’ dietary and ethical choices.

In response, NYRA-St. Louis President Jaylen Bledsoe presented his fellow students’ concerns to the school district’s Director of Child Nutrition Services and persuaded her to change the district’s policy. As a result of their action, the district agreed that, starting this December, vegetarian foods will be added to the menus in all the district’s middle school and high school cafeterias, giving students a choice at last. Way to go, NYRA-St. Louis!

“I felt it was important for the people who run our school to hear the students’ concerns,” said Bledsoe. “People should not have to go hungry just because they are vegetarian. I’m glad we have some administrators who care enough to listen to their students and do the right thing.”

Though the local chapter has only been active for a year, they are already impressing the national organization.

“With the increased concern about healthy food and obesity, schools across the country have taken punitive measures such as banning packed lunches or suspending students for candy,” said NYRA Executive Director Alex Koroknay-Palicz, “Jaylen’s success reminds us that the best solutions are usually ones that work with students, not against them.”

NYRA-St. Louis’ success was featured in Veg News.

NYRA is beginning a local advertising campaign in Abilene, Texas to initiate reforms towards a lower drinking age and to raise awareness of youth rights.

This campaign will direct Texas residents to the NYRA site where they can find answers to their frequently asked questions, get legal research on drinking age laws for all 50 states, read the history of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, and get lots of research studies and papers on the drinking age.

The campaign intends to build awareness of the fact that over 962 men and women in uniform under twenty-one have died in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting for their country, never to be respected under the law as equal members of American society because of current minimum legal drinking age legislation. Because of the arbitrary discrimination of the drinking age law, our troops serve us without us being able to serve them.

San Angelo resident and NYRA member Adam Zarnowski explained the campaign, “The goal is to raise awareness about the failure of the 21-year-old drinking age and show support for our young men and women in uniform. The members of our military are just one example of the many ways in which responsible young people prove themselves unworthy of the negative stereotypes we have about youth.”

Students, parents, workers, soldiers, artists, teachers and 18 to 20 year old citizens in every corner of our nation lead responsible, productive lives and are treated as adults in nearly every other way except the ability to buy alcohol. It makes no sense to say an average 19 year old is mature enough to buy a house, get married, own a gun and go to Afghanistan but isn’t mature enough to have a can of beer. NYRA strongly believes it is time to lower the drinking age.

NYRA President Jeffrey Nadel stated, “The 21-year-old drinking age has been a discriminatory failure. For America’s military and civilian population alike, it is time to lower the drinking age.”

The billboard will run from September 12 through November 6 near the corner of Mocking Bird Lane and N 10th St in Abilene.

Welcome to the new National Youth Rights Association website!

After more than a year of planning, designing, coding, porting, and a lot of other things we just want to forget, NYRA and WireShout are pleased to present the new NYRA website! The current site has implemented many new features such as:

• Chatrooms for Chapters and General Chatting
• Picture Gallery
• Unified Login System (Known as the NYRA Passport)
• Featured Slider
• Integrated Forums
• and many more!

If you already have a NYRA Forum account from the previous system, check your email for your reset link to reset your password for the new website. If not, click this to register. It only takes a few minutes. If you have any questions or comments, please click on this and select Website Inquiries.

Signed Up? A few basic tips!

1. Setup a profile! — Click here and fill out as much info as you want!
2. Introduce yourself — Click here and tell us a little about yourself, what you are interested in, etc.
3. Join an Action Team — Click here and select what you can do to help NYRA.
4. Donate — We can’t exist without donations, click here to send a tax-detectable donation

We Want to talk with You!

We are currently online in our chat. Login here.

The 2011 NYRA Annual Meeting, held July 29th through 31st, on the campus of University of Maryland – College Park was co-hosted by the UMD Chapter of SSDP and sponsored by the American Library Association’s Freedom to Read Foundation. With nearly 70 people in attendance, this year’s conference was twice as big as 2010. Not only did we double the attendance, we doubled the schedule. Packing in a Friday night petitioning event against the proposed Montgomery County curfew, a night of bowling on Saturday, and notable speakers such as Steve Culbertson, CEO of Youth Service America, Mary Beth Tinker, the plaintiff in the famous Tinker v. Des Moines free speech case and Dr. Robert Epstein our keynote speaker and author of Teen 2.0. The schedule was packed with debates, discussions, speakers, workshops, panels, and videos covering all aspects of the youth rights movement, from traditional subjects like the voting age and drinking age, to the question of whether Rebecca Black was good for youth rights.

Attendees came from as far away as Hawaii, Florida and New Mexico. A large contingent of staff and members of the United Teen Equality Center in took a van down from Lowell, Massachusetts. In addition to the 70 people in attendance, many more watched the conference live online. Videos of the annual meeting are still available online, so if you missed anything be sure to watch here.

The conference was not only informative and inspiring, it was a heck of a lot of fun. Saturday night at AMF Lanes in College Park, MD was one highlight of the weekend. UTEC’s own Geoff Foster, newly elected NYRA board member Eric Goldstein and NYRA Executive Director Alex Koroknay-Palicz took home the top three scores of the night.

Thanks to the expert work of local photographer Chester Lam, this year’s annual meeting also has the best looking pictures we’ve ever had at an annual meeting. Check out the full photo gallery here.

Finally, the 2011 NYRA Board Election concluded on Saturday night and we are proud to announce the 2011-2012 NYRA Board of Directors! This year’s winning candidates include: Jeffrey Nadel, Kathleen O’Neal, Katrina Moncure, Chris Hardy, Eric Goldstein, Keith Mandell, Samantha Godwin, Usiel Phoenix and Nigel Jones. Three bylaw proposals were put before the membership and two of them passed. A change was made in how elections are announced and paid staff are no longer permitted to run for the board of directors. The membership voted down a bylaw that would have created two-year terms for board members instead of the current one-year term.

Food, snacks and coffee were generously provided by the College Park locations of Noodles & Company, Bagel Place of College Park and Starbucks. Staffing the exhibition hall were the Reason Foundation, the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the United States Youth Chamber of Commerce and The Hitting Stops Here! We thank all of them for helping make this year’s annual meeting such a success. And of course, all the amazing people who came! Thank you! See you in 2012!!

NYRA, and much of the Washington, DC area was caught by surprise this month when Montgomery County, MD County Executive Ike Leggett proposed a youth curfew law for the county. What was surprising is that crime has been steadily declining in the county, so unlike other communities that consider curfews, there seemed to be no real problem it seeks to address. Due to the proximity of Montgomery County to national NYRA staff and the political engagement of the county’s youth a well organized campaign quickly emerged to stop this bill from passing.

Rapidly after news broke on Monday July 11th about the bill a Facebook event was created called “Stand Up to the MoCo Youth Curfew!” calling upon opponents of the curfew to attend an upcoming hearing on the 26th. Within 48 hours over 2,000 said they were coming. Now the event has well over 5,000. NYRA has been working with the local activists, the County Council, and local press non-stop since this campaign began. As well known experts on curfews, NYRA has been sought for comment by local TV, radio, print and online press sources.

NYRA members and local organizers petitioned against the curfew outside of a busy movie theater in advance of the midnight screening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Responses were overwhelmingly against the curfew and we easily got 200 petition signatures in an hour and a half. The petition effort and letter writing campaign are both going well.

In addition to testifying at the hearing next week, NYRA has reshuffled our Annual Meeting schedule to include a protest against the proposed curfew on the night of Friday July 29th. All conference attendees and local youth rights supporters are strongly encouraged to attend the rally, scheduled to begin at 9 pm in the plaza across the street from the Majestic theater in Silver Spring, MD. There will also be a workshop at the Annual Meeting led by the local high school students organizing the anti-curfew campaign.

Check Out the Facebook Event

Click Here to View the Website for the Campaign

In exactly one week the 2011 NYRA Board Election will begin! We’ve got an impressive slate of candidates this year. Six incumbents are running for reelection and nine challengers are vying for a spot on the board. This is one of the more diverse and impressive fields we have
seen. Current board members seeking reelection are: Jeffrey Nadel, Jackie Ferro, Katrina Moncure, Nigel Jones, Usiel Phoenix and Keith Mandell. Also running for the board are Kathleen O’Neal, Chris Hardy, Eric Goldstein, Samantha Godwin, Max Harmony, Jaylen Bledsoe,
Gibson Katz, Daniel Karpantschof and Connell Wise. All dues paying NYRA members will receive their ballots on June 30.

This election also has several bylaw amendments for the membership to approve. One of which bars staff members from serving on the board of directors, meaning that this is the first time since 1999 that Executive Director Alex Koroknay-Palicz will not be running for the board. With his absence, the election will be wide open, so it is more important than ever to become a member and vote!

The election will conclude on July 30 at our Annual Meeting. A tentative schedule will be released soon, but we can tell you this will be the first Annual Meeting with breakout sessions, effectively doubling the amount of workshops and activities at this year’s conference. Together with our first ever keynote speaker, Dr. Robert Epstein, the widely recognized author of Teen 2.0 (formerly The Case Against Adolescence), this will be the biggest most involved and most participatory annual meeting in NYRA history. There is still time to register for the conference, please do so here.

Two youth-led NYRA-allied organizations have made great strides towards making a lower voting age a reality. In 2002, Cambridge, Massachusetts passed a home rule petition to lower the voting age through the Cambridge City Council and that legislation has been waiting legislative action at the state level ever since. In 2004 the Cambridge Kids Council, the official youth voice of the Cambridge, MA city government got involved in pushing for the state legislature to pass the home rule petition. The effort received a big jolt this year when the teen leaders from the United Teen Equality Center in Lowell, MA took on the issue locally and passed a similar measure through the Lowell City Council. UTEC has been petitioning the State to allow a municipal ballot initiative to lower the Lowell voting age to 17. NYRA members Stefan Muller and Usiel Phoenix joined UTEC members at the MA State House on April 13 to support the Lowell initiative while it was being discussed in committee. Among those who testified in favor of the initiative were a Lowell councilor, a high school principal, a representative of the voter engagement organization MassVote, and, of course, local young people.

On May 11, a hearing was held for legislation sponsored by the Cambridge Kids Council that would allow municipalities in the state to lower their voting ages independently, without state approval. NYRA members Daniel Widrew and Ralph Verna both spoke in favor of the legislation. This is the most progress we have seen towards a lower voting age since the 26th amendment. These bills have been passed by elected officials in their local communities and with continued work at the state level, we are hopeful that the state legislature will implement these changes.

We are proud to announce our special guest and keynote speaker for the 2011 NYRA Annual Meeting: Dr. Robert Epstein. Dr. Epstein is a prominent author and psychologist and die hard supporter of youth rights. He co-founded National Youth Rights Day and has written the ground breaking book, Teen 2.0. Dr. Epstein will be delivering the keynote address at the Annual Meeting on Sunday July 31 and will be participating in a special donor lunch earlier in the day.

Today we are officially opening up registration for the 2011 NYRA Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. The meeting is set to begin on Friday July 29 and last until Sunday July 31. A rough schedule can be seen here.

This event is the event to be at in 2011. Youth rights advocates are coming from all over the country to attend, don’t miss out! The Annual Meeting has been described as inspiring, informational and a heck of a lot of fun. Too often we may feel isolated, like no one else out there really understands and supports youth rights. Coming to the Annual Meeting will shatter those doubts. This is the single best way to get plugged in to the youth rights movement. This will be our largest, best organized and most interactive conference in history. Now we’ve made it easier than ever to participate, just click this link and register:

On January 27th, NYRA had its first chapters meeting of the year. 10 chapters were present, including NYRA-Bergen County, NYRA-New York University, NYRA-Southeast Florida, NYRA-Los Angeles, NYRA-Stockton, NYRA-Potsdam, NYRA-Nanuet, NYRA-Austin, NYRA-DC, and NYRA-Berkeley. NYRA-Bergen County has managed to get the student government reinstated at Midland Park High School after their long fight with the Board of Education while maintaining their campaign opposing Kyleigh’s Law (an ageist legislation targeting young drivers) and working to recruit new members. Newly formed NYRA-NYU is currently in a year-long club development program with other official NYU clubs. The chapter’s main focus is opposing an ageist restriction on young shoppers at the Atlantic Terminal Mall in Brooklyn and has begun planning peaceful protests. They also intend to work to lower the drinking age and create awareness about behavior modification programs. Across New York is NYRA-Potsdam, led by Alexander Ivanoff, which plans to become a registered SUNY-Potsdam chapter.

NYRA-Southeast Florida is currently preparing for their hearing against the West Palm Beach curfew, scheduled two months from now. They have also begun National Youth Rights Day planning and are negotiating unjust school policies authorizing teachers and administrators to violate student privacy by reading their text messages and forcing them to take blood tests due to suspicion of marijuana abuse. NYRA-Los Angeles has also taken a stand against injustices in their school, protesting the random and unwarranted use of drug dogs at Temple City High School. The chapter is also planning a “Know Your Rights Day” on March 26th this year. Another California chapter leader, Alyssa Palomares of NYRA-Stockton, is working to spread awareness about youth rights through various local events including a fundraiser at a local restaurant and a possible benefit show.

Last night NYRA’s President, Jeffrey Nadel, took on New York State Senator and former police officer (better known for his crusade against sagging pants), Eric Adams, to defend the privacy and dignity of young people against his attacks. Sen. Adams published a video on YouTube urging parents to search the rooms and backpacks of their kids for drugs and weapons and giving them instructions on how. He defended his video on CNN, insinuating that any young person could be hiding a gun or a crackpipe and that it was a parent’s responsibility to spy on them.

Jeffrey Nadel responded by pointing out that 2009, the latest year we have statistics for, was the safest year in the United States since 1968. And drug use among 12 graders has plummeted 32.6% since the 70′s according to a Monitoring the Future report. Young people today are in fact safer, less likely to use drugs and better citizens than their parents were.

In response, Sen. Adams said, “I’m an adult, I have an obligation and a responsibility not to look to stats to try to beautify or to give a dream environment.” Sen. Adam wasn’t the only one on the show to assert adult privilege. Both he and the host continued to point out Nadel’s age and patronize him for being 17. Clearly in this case wisdom does not come with age. While somewhat confusing, Sen. Adams’ quote does make clear that as an adult, he does not think he has an obligation to look at stats. Apparently Sen. Adams believes statistics are more the realm of young people – as is truth and common sense.

During the interview Nadel made a cogent argument that instead of invading the privacy of their kids, parents should try talking to them. An open, trusting relationship in the family is the best guard against teen crime and drug use. If your kids trust you, they will come to you when they are in trouble or need advice and seriously listen to what you have to say. Going through their things breaks down this bond of trust, pushes your kids away from you and your home and potentially into dangerous situations. Nadel did an amazing job and this is a very important press opportunity for the youth rights movement. Be sure to check out the video and share it with everyone you know.

Today, New York State Senator and former police officer (better known for his crusade against sagging pants), Eric Adams, published a video on YouTube instructing parents on how to search the rooms and backpacks of their kids for drugs and weapons. His calls for parents to invade the privacy of their children has attracted considerable press attention, even though his YouTube video only has 170 views (as of 4:30 pm on January 31). NYRA believes that all people, including young people, have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and that following Sen. Adams call to rifle through their things is misguided and dangerous. NYRA President, Jeffrey Nadel, will be telling this to Sen. Adams directly when he appears on CNN’s Headline News today at 6:15 pm to discuss the topic.

Sen. Adams’ pleas for parents to spy on their kids is unnecessary. Despite a great deal of focus on “out of control youth” young people today are in fact safer, better citizens than their parents were. 2009, the latest year we have statistics for, was the safest year in the United States since 1968. Indeed the murder rate hasn’t been this low since 1964. Drug use among 12 graders has plummeted 32.6% since the 70′s according to a Monitoring the Future report. This means that kids today, the ones Sen. Adams hopes parents will spy on, are in fact less likely to be violent drug users than their parents were.

Instead of invading the privacy of their kids, parents should try talking to them. An open, trusting relationship in the family is the best guard against teen crime and drug use. If your son or daughter trusts you, respects you and feels he or she can talk to you honestly, you will have far better information about their lives than you could get by snooping. If your kids trust you, they will come to you when they are in trouble or need advice and seriously listen to what you have to say. Going through their things breaks down this bond of trust, pushes your kids away from you and your home and potentially into dangerous situations.

Be sure to tune in to CNN’s Headline News at 6:15 PM Eastern time to watch NYRA President Jeffrey Nadel explain this to Sen. Adams.

NYRA President Jeffrey Nadel has been campaigning against his town’s illegally enforced unconstitutional youth curfew for a few years now. He’s met with city officials, organized rallies and protests, attended hearings, and filed suit in state and federal court. Before he did all that, he had to make sure he had the facts. Jeff used Findlaw.com to research the legalities of his case. At 17 years old, Jeffrey Nadel doesn’t have a high school diploma but he so thoroughly learned the ins and outs of curfew law that his knowledge was complemented by journalists and even by the curfew-supporting Mayor of West Palm Beach.

Findlaw.com is currently running their “When Life Gets Legal” video contest. Check out Jeff’s video and take a few seconds to vote for him. If we win, it will mean $5,000 for Youth Rights – which means more campaigns and more trained youth rights activists like Jeff. Vote for Jeff Here.

On November 2, NYRA members gathered on the steps of the US Supreme Court to speak out for free speech, opposition to video game censorship and support for lowering the voting age. On this day, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Schwarzenegger v. EMA. On trial was the right of the state to restrict the sale of video games based on age. November 2nd was also election day, a day in which youth were denied the right to vote based on age. NYRA was there also to support our amicus brief in the Schwarzenegger v. EMA case.

The rally was a great success, and tons of youth rights supporters turned out for it, even traveling from New York and Pennsylvania for the event. Our rally attracted great press in Time Magazine, Games Radar and 1up.com. NYRA members held signs that read “Live Free, Start Young”, “Suffrage Not Censorship”, “Free Speech is for All Ages” and “Been Playing Grand Theft Auto Since 2004, Still Haven’t Stolen a Car”. Check out some great pictures of the event on Facebook and Flickr.

NYRA board member Usiel Phoenix gave an inspiring speech at the rally. With cameras filming her every move, Usiel said, “As I speak, millions of American citizens are exercising their right to defend their political interests through the casting of a ballot. Not one of these people will be under the age of 18. Not one of these ballots will clearly reflect the interests of youth. On this day, 75 million American students, workers, and taxpayers, should they think of raising their voice to speak, will find that their tongues have been cut out and held in trust. If I could vote, I would vote against those who would betray the founding ideals of this country so deeply as to engage in needless censorship.”

Join the forum discussion on this post

We are holding a rally on the steps of the United States Supreme Court on November 2nd in support of free speech, opposition to video game censorship and support for lowering the voting age. On this day, the Supreme Court will be hearing the arguments in the case of Schwarzenegger v. EMA. Up for trial is the right of the state to restrict the sale of video games based on age. November 2nd is also election day, a day in which youth are denied the right to vote based on age.

Join us at the Supreme Court to defend free speech, video games and democracy.

It is important to recognize that youth, those who are affected by the ruling of this case, have not been allowed a vote towards electing those who appointed and confirmed the Justices ultimately making this decision.

We’re hoping for a large turnout at this rally, so as to make it known to both the Court and the nation that Americans of every age support the civil rights of youth. Please join us at 8:30 AM in Washington, D.C. on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court to show your support for youth rights. RSVP for the rally on Facebook! For more information, check out our blog’s coverage of the rally and some early press coverage.

We have done our part in this case to ensure that the voices of youth are heard, we joined with the ACLU and the National Coalition Against Censorship to file an amicus brief. We generated a storm of discussion on several gaming forums and gathered over 100 comments describing the social, political, and artistic value of video games. Several of these comments were included in our final brief and will be read and discussed by the Supreme Court. But we cannot change the fact those most affected by this ruling have been allowed no role in electing those who will make the decision. Join us on Election Day on the steps of the Supreme Court to make it known that youth will no longer sit idly by as our rights are curtailed and our political means of opposition stifled.