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…
Reposted from Aaliyah Would Be Proud with permission from the author. The eleventies (2010-2019) ended on December 31, and the twelveties (2020-2029) began. We begin a new year, as well as a new decade. In 2020, the ages of the eight living generations are: Interbellum Generation (1901-1910): age 109+ Greatest Generation (1911-1924): age 95-109 Silent…
Last month, NYRA’s Board of Directors met in Washington, DC to decide what strategy the organization should focus on. This is what we came up with: We decided to focus on growing in these four areas. With recent surges in both youth activism and oppressive legislation, we believe that these strategies will respond to the…
News article on the bill introduced in the Vermont State Senate to ban the possession and use of cellphones by people under 21 years of age Read the full bill here Sure, Senator Rodgers, owning a cellphone may be more dangerous than owning a gun. Probably owning a car is as well, yet in your…
Allegedly, America is a country founded on democracy, but not all Americans are given the ability to participate in the democratic process. For instance, in many states, inmates and ex-felons are barred from the voting booths. Motivated to further the long running trend of the enfranchisement of more and more groups of Americans, many organizations…
“We have a saying in this movement that we don’t trust anyone over the age of 30,” said environmental activist Jack Weinberg in 1964 during an interview with a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle. This famous quote from the anti-establishment days of the 1960s eventually was memorialized simply as “don’t trust anyone over the…
