National Youth Rights Association

This is part of the Youth Rights 101 series. Please check out Youth Rights 101: Introduction for the rest of the series and more information. Aren’t curfew laws necessary to keep kids safe and out of trouble? Should kids really be out so late? The real question is, should anyone be out so late, of [...]

February 1, 2012 MariAn Gail Brown Connecticut Post http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/MariAn-Gail-Brown-Curfew-a-well-intentioned-bad-2883095.php Inside Evolution Tattoos in downtown Bridgeport, there are samples of hundreds of possible designs for a customer, all neatly arranged in plastic protective sleeves to keep them from getting damaged. Too bad there are no such containers we can put our kids in to keep them [...]

Some New Orleans residents are up in arms criticizing their city council for adopting a law they believe was passed to keep low-income Blacks out of sight of tourists. On Thursday, the New Orleans City Council approved a strict curfew for people 16 and younger in the French Quarter. The ordinance revises a long-standing 11 [...]

The Montgomery County Council voted 6-3 to table a proposed curfew law that would have allowed police to arrest anyone younger than 18 for being in public after 11PM. This vote to table the proposal effectively kills it, though it leaves open the possibility that the Council could consider it once again in the future. [...]

October 23, 2011 – Poughkeepsie Journal – http://www.poughkeepsiejournal…..dyssey=tab|topnews|text|PoughkeepsieJournal.com Halloween is a night of ghouls, goblins and candy. In some places, it’s also a night when curfews that prohibit minors from being in public without adults go into effect. According to police and local municipal codes, in Dutchess County, the towns of Rhinebeck, Pleasant Valley, LaGrange, [...]

The Examiner today reports that Montgomery County’s Council of PTA’s has passed a resolution opposing County Executive Ike Leggett’s youth curfew proposal: Montgomery parents called County Executive Ike Leggett’s controversial youth curfew proposal “unjustifiable,” passing a resolution against the legislation. The Montgomery County Council of Parent-Teacher Associations said that the 50 percent decline in gang-related [...]

When we discuss youth rights we tend to do it from the default perspective of someone in an urban or suburban community. For those who spent their youth in such communities, this bias is understandable if nonetheless problematic. However, even for those of us raised in rural communities, it can be easy to forget (especially [...]

In the American city of Philadelphia, on weekends, young people have been banned from going out on the streets after 9 pm. In the American city of Philadelphia, due to attacks and assaults by groups of children and youths out on the streets, a curfew has been imposed on children and young people after 9 [...]

Be home by 11 p.m. on weekdays, 12 a.m. weekends—this familiar curfew will not only be enforced by parents, but also by police for Montgomery County minors. Failure to cooperate could result in mandatory parenting classes and fines. Businesses will also be held liable for having minors in their buildings after curfew hour. Violating minors [...]

On July 12, I heard the distressing news that Montgomery County, MD, where I’ve lived my whole life, has proposed a youth curfew. Two weeks later, on July 26, we gathered at the Montgomery County Council hearing on the issue, “we” being myself (Katrina Moncure), Alex Koroknay-Palicz, Kathleen O’Neal, Abigail Burman, Alan Xie, and many [...]

Before the Montgomery County Council Testimony of Alex Koroknay-Palicz On behalf of the National Youth Rights Association on Youth Curfew July 26, 2011 Over the last two weeks I have been asked the same question many times: “What good reason is there for teens to be out after 11?” There are a number of good [...]

This morning, the Supreme Court released the opinion in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Assn. By a vote of 7-2, the court found that the law was unconstitutional. The opinion of the court drawing a sharp distinction between violence and obscenity, it states that protecting minors from displays of violence is not exempt from the first amendment, and finds that the law is unconstitutional.

NYRA Freedom Volume 11, Issue 5 June 16, 2011 Contents – NYRA Forms Coalition Requesting Apology from Rockefeller and Gingrich – Election Two Weeks Away, Annual Meeting Next Month – Effort Renewed to Put Youth on NYC Community Boards – Koroknay-Palicz Defends Youth Privacy at Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference – Bill to Curtail Corporal [...]

You’ve seen “convenient youth voice” happen, or maybe you’ve done it yourself: A young person gets a position with an adult-led group, and suddenly they start dressing and talking like an adult. Adults often reward this behavior with recognition and encouragement, even foisting these “youth leaders” into more representative positions. In a way, adults are rewarding compliance: By acting like us, we are not threatened by them, and this must be acknowledged.

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 [...]

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 [...]

Video: Video from the chapter and their lawyer outside the courthouse. Video of a segment from the local CBS channel 12. News coverage: WPBF ABC 20 WPTV NBC 5 Palm Beach Post Vote in this poll: http://www.wpbf.com/news/19842223/detail.html

At 4 o’clock this afternoon, NYRA-Southeast Florida filed their lawsuit against the city of West Palm Beach, Florida. After months of attempting to negotiate with the city council to repeal their unconstitutional curfew law, the chapter has now taken their battle to federal court. NYRA is making history! This is the first time a NYRA [...]

A great new commentary from Henry Giroux about the criminalization of youth and the conspicuous absence of concern for youth in our growing economic crisis and recovery efforts. A good read. Some of the juciest bits: Increasingly, children seem to have no standing in the public sphere as citizens and as such are denied any [...]

The other day I was perusing the aisles of Wal-Mart, walking though the aisles until I found my self in an aisle filled with vitamins and supplements. I wasn’t looking for anything but I looked around anyways, and something caught my attention.  Right at eye level, there was a bright orange package reading “One-a-day Teen [...]