Every year thousands of young people are sent against their will to facilities designed to control their behavior. This network of private residential programs is known collectively as the “Troubled Teen” Industry and are marketed to parents who feel like they need to change their child’s behavior. These services claim to fix anything the parent…
NYRA has just secured yet another voting age endorsement from the High School Democrats of America! HSDA is the fourth Democratic Party branch to endorse lowering the voting age to 16, following the Fairfax County and Westmoreland County Democrats in Virginia, also the work of NYRA, and the College Democrats of Massachusetts. HSDA is the…
Last week NYRA published our comprehensive section on Medical and Behavioral Treatment rights. It’s the fifth issue section on our website and the second since we unveiled our new site a year ago. Young people are denied the right to bodily integrity, so NYRA believes that medical consent is equally important to other youth rights…
When I was fifteen years old, I spent my summer working as an electrician apprentice. I wasn’t a fan of the work, but the $11.50/ hour seemed pretty great, especially when compared to my sixteen and seventeen year old peers who were flipping burgers for minimum wage, which was only $7.25/ hour in Michigan during…
COVID-19 is exposing glaring problems in American society. The rapid spread of the virus has forced all Americans to live differently – from average citizens to experienced politicians. However, as the virus continues to spread and create more issues, American students can find some solace in a return to routine – through the continuity of…
Last week, I found myself packing up my apartment in Washington, D.C. The previous night was spent on a half-empty plane, traveling from my home in Los Angeles to Washington, D.C, where I had spent the last two months in American University’s Spring Semester Program. Even while surrounded by the emptiness of my bare room,…
Ageism is deeply rooted in our culture. It affects both the young and the elderly. And it has been particularly acute during the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. Left unaddressed, this harmful ageist thinking will continue to divide our society, devalue human lives, and result in more deaths from COVID-19. But this is also a chance…
Reposted from Protect 18 with permission from the author. The recent inventions of vape and JUUL and their prevalence among teenagers have undoubtedly raised extreme moral panic around tobacco usage. Beginning around 2010-2011 tobacco use among U.S. middle and high schoolers started to rise due to the introduction of e-cigarettes, starting at around 2.1 percent…
At the beginning of the year, NYRA’s Board of Directors met in Washington, DC to decide what strategy the organization should focus on. We decided that one of our focal strategies should be riding the wave of youth activism that’s happening to bring youth rights to the center of the movement. To that end we…
Reposted from Sure, Why Not? with permission from the author. Suddenly, lowering the voting age to 16 is a mainstream issue. It got a lot of support in Congress, if not enough. The issue is being asked of presidential candidates. More and more places are proposing the change. Nancy Pelosi is even claiming she’d always…
