Perhaps due to our animosity towards older adults who have oppressed us and perhaps due to our desire to forge our movement’s identity in a context in which senior citizens already have a powerful movement to protect their rights, youth rights activists have often refrained from discussing the parallels between ageist oppression against youth and…
WASHINGTON – The National Youth Rights Association (NYRA) announced the recipients of its second annual awards, which were formally presented on July 30 at the 2011 NYRA Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Youth rights is the concept that young people are entitled to the rights and civil liberties enjoyed by all American citizens. Three separate…
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 a conversation with a friend who is new to youth rights ideology, I was recently asked a question. Why, he asked me, is youth oppression considered oppression as such when everyone experiences it? As my friend understood it, the oppression of young people was a necessary fact of life that all people passed through…
NYRA is pleased to announce the nominees for the 2011 NYRA Awards! The Awards were created last year to recognize significant contributions to the field of youth rights, both for and against. The three awards are the Youth Rights Progress Award, the NYRA Achievement Award and Ageist of the Year Award. The Youth Rights Progress…
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…
On television news programs, in political magazines, and in college classrooms around the country, fashionable (and indeed important) discussions take place about civil rights and liberties. The focus of these discussions run the gamut: the rights of prisoners, due process rights for those accused of a crime, labor rights, the rights of racial minorities, women,…
We talk a lot about how a great deal of anti-youth sentiment comes from the idea that those under 18 aren’t so much people as they are humanoid extensions of their parents. It’s boggling to think about just how deeply this affects a young person, how damaging this really is. Guidance counselors and the like…
On May 1-3 leaders from around the world gathered in Washington, DC to mark World Press Freedom Day, a United Nations organized event promoting freedom of the press. This is the first year the event has been held in the United States. As host, this was a great opportunity for our country to promote the…
I like to assume that educators chose their line of work not because they enjoy wielding arbitrary power over children or because education is an easier major than theoretical physics, but because deep in their hearts they are idealists. And so I wonder how they feel when instead of teaching they find themselves running internment…
