Last November, I had the pleasure of meeting with Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) and her Judicial Counsel in November in her Washington office. Meng introduced a bill to lower the voting age last summer, so I set up a meeting to discuss how we could work together to move the bill forward. I talked about…
I often see people in NYRA’s Facecbook group say they are surprised or disappointed that some political leader or group they like is ageist. There is nothing surprising about it. Everyone is ageist. They aren’t ageist because they are bad people or irrational or hate kids, they just don’t know that there is any other…
Growing up outside of Washington, DC, politics is life. But, as a 15 year old, volunteering isn’t the same as voting. It was the second half of the 1990s and no one had heard of the term “social media”. But we had just discovered the World Wide Web, Geocities had just provided a platform to…
As a ten-year-old kid in Seattle, I was already interested in politics. My friends and I marched around the playground protesting the Iraq War, and I wrote letters to my representatives in the state legislature and Congress on issues I was passionate about. However, I quickly found that many of these elected officials and other…
Former board member (2003-2007) and president, Scott Davidson reflects on his time with NYRA and the people he got to know during his time being active with the organization.
I first got involved with NYRA in 2009, when I was in 8th grade. I had formed a small coalition with some fellow middle schoolers called the Teen Suffrage Organization (TSO) – we hoped to collect signatures for a referendum to lower the voting age in New York State. Online, we learned about NYRA and…
Thanks to the efforts of the newly formed Fairfax County NYRA chapter, the Fairfax County Democratic Party and grassroots organizations Virginia Democracy Forward and Virginia Civic Engagement Table have endorsed lowering the state voting age to 16. “16-and-17-year-olds are not allowed to vote even though many of them are politically active and knowledgeable”, says Virginia…
Renowned critic of compulsory schooling, John Taylor Gatto passed away this week at the age of 82. A teacher for 30 years, he achieved notoriety after quitting teaching upon receiving the New York State teacher of the year award in 1991. He used the opportunity to speak out against the unnatural, restrictive and harmful impact…
I joined NYRA in 2003 after reading about it in a news article about the voting age. This wasn’t my first introduction to youth rights—I’ve believed in youth rights, though I didn’t call it that in my own head, for as long as I can remember—but it was my first indication that other people believed…
After months of hard work by NYRA’s team of volunteers, we are pleased to finally unveil our brand new look! With a new logo, a new website, and lots of new content, we’re excited for all youth rights supporters to check out the new YouthRights.org. As part of last year’s strategic planning process we decided…
