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.

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Update 5/13/13: We did it!

***

Takoma Park, MD is poised to become the first city in America to let 16-year-olds vote. To make such a change, the city council must go through three public ceremonies. First, a public hearing where members of the public give their views on the proposal. Second, a vote of the city council. Finally, a second vote of the city council at a later date to affirm they really meant it.

Monday, April 8, 2013, Takoma Park held its public hearing. Young people turned out in droves, and the overwhelming majority of people at the hearing voiced support for a lower voting age. (Video of hearing)

The following Monday, April 15, the city council had its first vote: 6 to 1 in favor of lowering the voting age!

Why is this city council so supportive of an idea that has yet to pass anywhere else in the US? Partly, it is because of the outstanding leadership of council members like Tim Male and Seth Grimes who knew this was right and were willing to risk their popularity for the good of their city. But this progress is also happening because of the activism of young people such as those who spoke at the public hearing.

Do politicians listen to teenagers? Sometimes they do. And at the April 15 city council meeting, council members Kay Daniels-Cohen and Terry Seamens both admitted they had initially opposed this idea, thinking 16-year-olds unfit for voting, but when they heard the articulate 16-year-olds in their public hearing, they could no longer cling to their stereotypes. As Daniels-Cohen told the youth in attendance, “You made a difference to me last week.”

Some like to believe that youth are apathetic, but Council Member Tim Male pointed out that roughly 15% of all Takoma Park residents aged 16-17 had attended the April 8 hearing. If the same percentage of adults in that city ever attended a city council meeting, he noted, there would not be nearly enough seats for them.

The second and final vote is expected to occur Monday May 15. If no council-member flip-flops, the proposal should become effective this summer.

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***

Update: We’re winning.

***

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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The student in question, whose name is being withheld by The New American and other media outlets for safety reasons, was supposedly disciplined for failing to cooperate with school officials and the investigation after the incident, an amended document from the school obtained by TNA shows. The original reason cited for the suspension was being “involved” in an incident in which a “weapon was present.” It appears to critics of the school decision, though, that suspending the teen after such a reportedly heroic act was a display of poor judgment at the very least, and that officials are now trying to rationalize the move.

After originally reporting the news on March 4, The New American obtained e-mail correspondence from the school principal indicating that the narrative as portrayed in the press was inaccurate and that there was more to the story. Local media outlets were the first to report the controversial suspension, which quickly resulted in national and even international attention. Based on the information available at the time, critics of the decision were outraged and quickly rallied to the student’s cause.

The school principal, however, was clearly upset by the negative attention directed at her and Cypress Lake High School in Ft. Myers. “I just wish people would use common sense and realize there is MUCH more to the story,” Principal Tracy Perkins stated in an e-mail to an individual who criticized the suspension, adding that, by law, she was not allowed to disclose all the details of what transpired. “I agree that it would be ABSOLUTELY ABSURD to punish a student for doing something heroic.”

In a phone interview with The New American, she echoed those remarks. “As per school law, I’m not allowed to discuss information related to student behavior and discipline, but … there is more to the story,” she said. “The media took some students’ information to be 100 percent factual, but they do not have the entire story. If you read between the lines, you’ll see there is a lot more involved.”

Documents obtained by The New American, including referral slips suspending the student and police reports, however, appear to confirm the general outlines of the story as reported by the press. Lee County Sheriff’s Office records state, citing statements by witnesses and the victim, that the 15-year-old suspected gunman had a pistol on his lap before “pointing the gun directly at [the intended victim] and threatening to shoot him.”

The intended victim, according to the police report, told investigators that “several other students grabbed a hold of [the suspect] and wrestled the gun away from him.” The victim’s sister issued a similar statement to authorities after meeting her brother at the bus stop and helping him get out of the fray. A video camera on the bus, however, was apparently not working at the time of the incident, detectives said in the report.

After arriving home, the student who had the gun pointed at him told his mother about what had transpired, and she promptly informed the Fort Meyers Police Department, according to the report. The next day, the county sheriff’s office arrested the suspect and searched his home, where investigators found and seized a loaded .22 caliber handgun.

The 15-year-old suspect, a football player whose name is being withheld by TNA because he is a minor, was taken to a juvenile detention facility. Based on available evidence, he was charged with possession of a firearm on school property and assault with a deadly weapon “without intent to kill,” according to official documents.

At least one of the students who reportedly helped disarm the suspect, according to witnesses and news reports, was suspended from school the next day. As The New American reported on March 4, however, the suspended student in question — who has been dubbed a hero, a Good Samaritan, and more — apparently refused to cooperate with the investigation.

The original referral slip suspending the student, which was obtained by TNA this week, cites only the fact that he “was involved in an incident on the bus in which a weapon was present.” A subsequent referral slip — apparently a modified version of the original, also obtained by TNA — adds that the student was “uncooperative” and “lied repeatedly” to school administrators and law enforcement.

As TNA reported in the previous article, the youth subculture frequently views any cooperation with police or government authorities under any circumstances as an absolute non-starter, hence the common saying “snitches get stitches.” The student may have feared for his own safety, too — after all, helping law enforcement build a case against somebody could potentially result in retaliation from the suspect or his comrades.

“Perhaps the most important aspect of the story to understand when considering the school’s justifications is the matter of the referral slips,” said President Jeffrey Nadel with the National Youth Rights Association, the non-profit organization that has taken up the suspended student’s cause. “The student was interrogated for nearly four hours against his will.”

Nadel told The New American that the student in question was denied access to an attorney and to his mother. He was also never read his rights, according to Nadel, and was apparently told that he had to “answer all questions and cooperate fully.” Following the interrogation, when the boy’s mother was finally able to pick up her son from school, the assistant principal issued the original referral slip implementing the three-day suspension.

“After the local media caught wind of the story and after the first local TV news report aired, the school sent the mother an ‘updated’ referral slip,” Nadel told TNA. “This was a photocopy of the first slip with additional reasons added in different handwriting with a different pen. The added information states that the student was insubordinate, was uncooperative, and that he lied.”

On the first referral there was no “incident category” circled to indicate what offense the student had allegedly committed meriting a suspension. “This makes sense, as the reason the student was punished is an absurd reason to punish a student,” Nadel said. The second version of the referral, though, has “insubordination / disrespect” circled as the cause for discipline.

“What is important to understand is that the student’s involvement in the incident on the bus — in which, of course, he disarmed a gunman who was wielding a loaded firearm and saved the lives of other students — was sufficient in the minds of the school administrators to justify the suspension,” Nadel said. “That was the single reason for which the student was suspended. When the school realized that the reasoning was indefensible, administrators altered the original referral to add more defensible reasons that are not grounded in fact.”

Since the news sparked a national outcry earlier this month, the intended victim has called the suspended student a hero, telling reporters that there was no question the boy had saved his life. The gunman’s mother, who consented to the search that eventually revealed her son’s firearm to authorities as described in official documents, has also claimed the suspended student got “a raw deal,” as Nadel put it.

“The school is very quick to dole out blame to the heroic student who saved lives, yet they are so quick to jump to the defense of their own employee — the bus driver — who is charged with keeping the students safe,” Nadel continued. “They suspended the student for his heroism. After failing to report the incident or do anything to stop it, was the bus driver suspended? Did they fire him? We do not know.”

Responding to claims by school authorities that the issue was more complicated than it seems, Nadel disagreed. “They are trying to muddy the waters so that the story is less attractive to the media,” he said. “It may very well be more complicated insofar as other students are concerned. As far as the student we are representing is concerned, however, the issue is quite simple: they suspended him because of his involvement in the incident, and they are now trying to rationalize and justify their decision.”

Nadel’s youth-led non-profit organization, which describes itself as the “nation’s premier youth rights organization” that fights for “the civil rights and liberties of young people,” has opened an ongoing dialogue with the school district on behalf of the suspended student. But so far, Nadel said, officials “have yet to make the just decision.”

“We want nothing more than to sit down with the district and rectify this issue in a reasonable way,” he concluded, echoing widely expressed sentiments among community members and commentators who spoke with TNA and other media outlets. “All we want is for the suspension to be removed from the student’s record. We very much hope to resolve this issue amicably, but we will not be going away until this student sees justice. If we are forced by the district to retain counsel and pursue this issue in the courts, we will do so.”

The school principal, however, suggested she would welcome a court challenge because it would put all of the facts into the public record. “There is a reason that the referral slip was amended,” Principal Perkins told TNA, pointing out multiple times that law enforcement did not discover the gun or arrest the suspect until the next day, strongly implying that this was a significant detail in the story that would vindicate the school’s decision. “I just have to implore people with common, rational sense to assume something doesn’t add up. There is more to this story, and I wish I could stand up on a rooftop and tell everyone in America…. I know all the facts, I made disciplinary action based on that; America does not have all the facts.”

If the case does end up in court, the public may eventually find out more about what happened. For now, though, it appears that both sides intend to hold their ground, with each insisting that it is in the right. The suspended student reportedly returned to school on Monday but, unless something changes, will have a permanent disciplinary record following the suspension.

13 March 2013
The New American

http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/14767-outcry-grows-over-suspension-of-student-who-disarmed-suspect

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This comes more than a week after a Cypress Lake High School student was suspended after he wrestled a loaded .22 caliber revolver away from a would be gunman threatening to shoot another student.

“He was going to shoot him point blank,” said the 16-year-old teen who wrestled the loaded gun away.

Fox 4 is not identifying him because he fears for his safety. He believes he prevented a tragedy.

“If you didn’t tackle him what do you think would have happened?,” asked Fox 4 reporter Matt Grant.

“More of us would have been dead,” the teen said. “Not just one.”

“This student deserves to be praised,” said Jeffrey Nadel, the president of the National Youth Rights Association, “not punished.”

The Washington D.C.-based group advocates for young people nationwide and is now representing the teen’s family.

“This student should be hailed as a life-saving hero,” said Nadel. “And, instead, school officials have mindlessly adhered to a circumstance blind school policy instead of looking this young man in the eye and saying ‘thank you.’”

According to the original referral, the teen was suspended for three days because he was involved in an incident where a weapon was present.

The school later altered the document, sending the family a new referral to say it was because he was “uncooperative” with the investigation and “lied repeatedly” to law enforcement.

The teen admits withholding information but says it was because he feared for his life.

“You don’t talk around here,” said Nadel.

“Cause then what,” asked Grant, “you get a bad reputation?”

“That,” said the teen, “or you get killed.”

“I think we need to look at the circumstances holistically,” said Nadel. “Again, he was just involved in an incredibly traumatic incident.”

Nadel says he was under no obligation to answer questions. He objects to the teen’s description of his treatment, saying he was never offered counseling and was subjected to a lengthy interrogation.

“This young man was interrogated for four hours against his will by school and law enforcement officials,” said Nadel. “And he was consistently denied access to his mother or to an attorney.”

Nadel says he just wants the suspension expunged from the teen’s record. And he’s prepared to fight for that.

“He should not have a suspension on his record for his heroism,” said Nadel. “If the district signals to us clearly that they are unwilling to do the right thing than a lawsuit is definitely in the cards.”

Nadel says if they go forward with a lawsuit it would be to cover attorney fees and force the school to remove the suspension from the teen’s record.

Since the incident happened on the school’s bus, Nadel questions if the bus driver was suspended and what he did, if anything, during the incident.

Fox 4 reached out to the school district for comment but did not hear back.

Mar. 7, 2013
WFTX-TV
http://www.fox4now.com/news/local/196200551.html

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In April of last year, DeSoto County school student Amber Hatcher, then 15, was making plans to participate in the National Day of Silence. The event is a student-led day sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) that encourages students across the country to remain silent in order to call attention to the silencing effect anti-LGBT bullying — and, indeed, all bullying — has on kids.

Hatcher claims she asked for permission from her principal, Mrs. Shannon Fusco, nearly a month in advance of the event. She also provided information from GLSEN and Lambda Legal about students’ rights to participate in such actions per First Amendment protections, and the limits to those rights (you do not have a right to remain silent while in class, for instance, and this is why discussing the event with faculty members is advised before the day itself).

Hatcher asserts that Principal Fusco then threatened her with what the suit terms “ramifications” if she attempted to observe the Day of Silence.

Hatcher went over Fusco’s head to appeal to the DeSoto County School Superintendent, Adrian Cline. The superintendent repeatedly refused to meet with Hatcher. He then allegedly directed Principal Fusco to tell Hatcher her request was “disapproved” [sic] because, he claimed, allowing student participation in the Day of Silence was not allowed — this despite Hatcher having offered evidence that legal precedent was clearly on her side.

Principal Fusco is then said to have repeatedly told Hatcher that she would be barred from participating in the event, and that there “would be consequences” should she make an attempt to observe the Day of Silence. The suit even alleges that Fusco called Hatcher’s parents and suggested Hatcher be kept home from school on that day.

In due course, Lambda Legal got involved and on April 19, 2012, the suit details that Lambda Legal sent a letter to both the principal and superintendent in which it outlined the legal grounds that make it clear Hatcher, and indeed any student, has a right to observe the Day of Silence. The letter also warned that barring Hatcher from participating could be grounds for a lawsuit.

The suit claims the letter was ignored.

On April 20, 2012, the National Day of Silence, Amber came to school wearing a red T-shirt with the message “DOS April 20, 2012: Shhhhh.” As is standard on the Day of Silence, she communicated by dry-erase board with peers and teachers. She was soon called into the dean’s office, whereby she was informed she had been suspended from school for the day.

In the lawsuit, Hatcher v. DeSoto County Board of Education, et al. filed on February 23 against DeSoto County Board of Education, Lambda Legal argues the high school violated Hatcher’s First Amendment rights.

The suit requests a court order to ensure that Hatcher and other DeSoto County High School students are able to observe this year’s Day of Silence on April 19, 2013, without interference.

Lambda Legal Staff Attorney Beth Littrell is quoted as saying, “Amber was respectfully and peacefully calling attention to a real problem: LGBT students at DeSoto County High School feel unwelcome and unsafe. The school should be working to help support LGBT students rather than punishing students who are standing up against bullying. By threatening, censoring and punishing Amber for her efforts to simply raise awareness, school officials disregarded her rights as well as the Constitution.”

The school is yet to comment on the suit.

March 1, 2013
Care2
http://www.care2.com/causes/lesbian-kid-suspended-for-standing-up-to-anti-gay-bullying-sues.html

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On A&E’s Beyond Scared Straight and Lifetime’s Teen Trouble, producers document some extreme methods to address adolescents who act out. The shows intend to educate while entertaining, and some of the tough love strategies certainly make for riveting TV. But unfortunately, decades of research show that such extreme measures are at best ineffective and at worst, harmful.

Take Scared Straight, a strategy that is supposed to deter juvenile delinquents from a life of crime by briefly placing them in adult prisons, where hardened prisoners confront them with the brutal realities of incarceration. A documentary on the original initiative, founded at Rahway Prison in New Jersey, won an Oscar in 1978. A&E’s Beyond Scared Straight, now in its third season, follows teens through such programs, zooming in as inmates literally get in the teens’ faces and attempt to break them emotionally.

It’s not like there’s a shortage of data or any scientific controversy over Scared Straight’s actual results. In fact, a Cochrane review — the gold standard for evidence-based medicine — concluded that kids sent to Scared Straight were 68-71% more likely to commit crimes than those randomized to receive no intervention at all.

Teen Trouble’s approach is similarly problematic. Most of the adolescents who appear on the show have drug problems and some have mental illnesses like depression, but are not given treatment proven to work for these conditions. Instead, Teen Trouble relies on inducing fear through confrontation, supposedly to show teens the potential consequences of their actions: disfigurement, disability, homelessness, death.

In one episode, for example, a girl is forced to lie down in a coffin and touch dead bodies; in another, a boy is put in casts and a wheelchair. A third episode includes a “make over” where a teen girl’s face appears covered with scabs and sores; another sees a young woman spend a winter night on the streets with the homeless. Afterward, many of the teens are sent to tough wilderness or “emotional growth” boarding schools.

“Time and time again, research finds these approaches to be innocuous at best and traumatizing at worst,” says John Norcross, professor of psychology at the University of Scranton who studies the effectiveness of psychological treatments.

A 2007 review [PDF] of the literature on tough-love or confrontational strategies to deal with drug problems concluded “Four decades of research have failed to yield a single clinical trial showing efficacy of confrontational counseling, whereas a number have documented harmful effects, particularly for more vulnerable populations.” Teens are one such susceptible group.

Studies on virtually all of the tactics seen on Beyond Scared Straight — from getting in people’s faces and screaming at them, to forcing them to view videos of themselves filmed when they were intoxicated— showed that these tactics have either no effects or negative ones on teens’ behavior. One study revealed that the more a counselor confronts an alcoholic, the more he or she later drinks.

Nonetheless, Josh Shipp, the host of Teen Trouble— who has no credentials in psychology or addiction treatment and relies on an unnamed group of experts to approve his extreme interventions — continuously relies on such confrontational tactics. The show also sends teens to programs with questionable oversight that use unproven techniques.

In one episode, for instance, he ships off a 16-year-old girl with a drinking problem to a program called Axios Youth Community. Several weeks after the show was taped, the program was shuttered following allegations that an employee had sexually molested a 13-year-old girl. In another episode, a 16-year-old girl who was injecting heroin was sent to a “therapeutic boarding school,” Copper Canyon Academy, which claims to help troubled girls but is not a specialized center for treating teens with the most serious addictions.

The mother of a former student at Copper Canyon recently told the New York Post that while she’d expected a “top notch boarding school,” instead the program turned out to be a “Nazi concentration camp.” Former students interviewed by the Post describe confrontational and humiliating tactics, such as being made to re-enact traumatic experiences, including rape, in front of their classmates.

The program at Copper Canyon, which costs $6,000 to $8000 a month, waives its tuition for Teen Trouble participants in order to be promoted by Shipp. For licensed professionals, such an arrangement might be barred by ethical guidelines, which warn against “dual relationships” that could lead to a referral that is not in the best interest of the patient (in this case the teen), but in the interests of the contracting parties (the show and the treatment program).

Copper Canyon has denied the abuse allegations in a statement to the Post, saying “The reality is that our students come to us dealing with a variety of behavioral health and addiction issues, at varying levels of severity… We offer them a structured and nurturing treatment environment with professional staff who specialize in working with adolescent girls.”

Copper Canyon is part of a network of teen programs run by Aspen Education, which also operated a school known as Mount Bachelor Academy in Oregon. TIME reported on Mount Bachelor’s use of similar tactics in 2009: they included forcing girls who had survived rape or sexual abuse to do lap dances and participate in other sexualized role play. The exposé helped spur a state investigation ultimately resulting in the school’s closure. Aspen maintains that there was no wrongdoing but Oregon’s investigators said that they had “reasonable cause to believe that abuse or neglect had occurred.”

Now, teens and parents who say they were harmed by these programs are protesting Teen Trouble, creating an online petition to have it taken off the air and a website devoted to detailing problems with the show and with the programs in which Shipp enrolls adolescents.

Says Norcross, “The real process of psychotherapy tends to be slow, laborious and uninteresting to the external observer. It would be such boring TV, I appreciate that. While [producers] may protest, ‘No, we care about the kids,’ their behavior belies those public statements.” If they really cared, he says, “they would only select treatments for which we have scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness. Instead they do the exact opposite and focus on highly dramatic and largely discredited practices.”

TIME tried to reach A&E for comment, but did not receive a response. Of the 19 teens who appeared on Beyond Scared Straight and are not still in restricted environments like military school, the show’s website reports that at least 9 continued in sustained misbehavior, which mainly involved frequent marijuana use but also includes a teen who is in prison for robbery, one who was arrested for gun possession and another who was hospitalized for an overdose.

While dramatic confrontation may be entertaining, it is not therapeutic. Experts say shows like these that rely on discredited or questionable therapies legitimizes those who sell outdated and harmful treatments and could ultimately undermine the progress of evidence-based care to help teens with substance abuse or behavior problems get better.

Jan. 25, 2013
Time
http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/25/how-effective-are-tactics-used-on-tv-shows-to-treat-troubled-teens/

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On social media, people love to share pictures that are interesting, funny, or make a good point quickly. An image that says something about youth rights could make a real impact if it goes viral.

So NYRA is inviting youth rights activists to submit images for our meme contest. Make a graphic related to youth rights. It can be funny, thought-provoking, informative, or just plain fun. You can use photographs, charts, quotes, or anything you feel appropriate.

Email your entries to bbystricky at youthrights.org with the subject line “Let’s go viral.”

The best image will be posted on NYRA’s website and Facebook page, and the winner will receive public recognition plus a free 1-year paid membership in NYRA, or if already a member, will have one full year added to his/her membership. If you have a lifetime membership in NYRA, we will give you membership for the first year of your afterlife!

Rules:

1. Image must have “www.youthrights.org” on it somewhere so people will know where they can go to learn more about the movement. A stamp in a lower corner of the image is fine, though if you want to do something more creative with the URL, feel free.
2. Email your entry to bbystricky at youthrights.org with the subject line “Let’s go viral.”
3. Entries must be received by Thursday Jan. 31, 2013.
4. Contestants may submit as many entries as they wish, and may attach them to the same email or to separate emails.
5. Entries become the property of the National Youth Rights Association.
6. Must comply with all applicable laws. Blah, blah, blah.

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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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Supporters of Franken’s bill rightly recognize the dangers such spyware poses. “It’s really, really troubling that an industry would see an opportunity to make money off of strengthening someone’s opportunity to control and threaten another individual,” says Karen Jarmoc, ED of the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

One problem with the bill: it specifically exempts parents who want to spy on their children. That’s right. An abusive husband wanting to keep watch on his wife would be denied this creepy assistance, but an abusive father wanting to keep watch on his daughter through her cellphone would still enjoy full access to such spyware.

There is still time, however, to change this. Senators can still make adjustments to the bill before passing it. So please write to your state’s Senators today and ask them to remove this exemption for abusive parents. Let your Senators know that you expect them to protect citizens of all ages, children included.

But I’m not old enough to vote, you say. Will they really care about my opinion? You don’t have to tell them your age. Just make sure they know you live in their state, and make it clear you want them to remove the exemption for parents and protect the privacy of all Americans.

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