My first victory and my first campaign against age discrimination. My first chance at being on TV and they never mentioned me! But… I only have myself to blame. It was a gorgeous spring day, and I had less than a month of school left in my senior year and… I wasn’t there when the news crew came by my high school looking for me. Ha!

Even so, it is a pretty good news report. After this early success I vowed that I would devote myself to this cause and this issue. Ten years later I am still fighting for the rights of youth.

This news clip was from May 1999.

This was my first action as a youth rights advocate way back during my senior year in high school. This was April 21, 1999 (yes, one day after Columbine). Look at my pony tail, ah! I was speaking out against age discrimination at three local businesses in my hometown of Holland, Michigan who had policies limiting the number of students allowed inside at any one time. And yes, I know I shouldn’t have made a comparison to the Holocaust. This is far from my best work, of course, but I was just getting started, don’t hold it against me. In June I graduated high school, in July I joined the National Youth Rights Association, and by October I was elected to NYRA’s board of directors.

Ok, I’m a month late on this, but this awesome commencement address at Butler University from Indiana governor Mitch Daniels deserves mention:

Along with most of your faculty and parents, I belong to the most discussed, debated and analyzed generation of all time, the so-called Baby Boomers. By the accepted definition, the youngest of us is now forty-five, so the record is pretty much on the books, and the time for verdicts can begin.

Which leads me to congratulate you in advance. As a generation, you are off to an excellent start. You have taken the first savvy step on the road to distinction, which is to follow a weak act. I wish I could claim otherwise, but we Baby Boomers are likely to be remembered by history for our numbers, and little else, at least little else that is admirable.

We Boomers were the children that the Second World War was fought for. Parents who had endured both war and the Great Depression devoted themselves sacrificially to ensuring us a better life than they had. We were pampered in ways no children in human history would recognize. With minor exceptions, we have lived in blissfully fortunate times. The numbers of us who perished in plagues, in famine, or in combat were tiny in comparison to previous generations of Americans, to say nothing of humanity elsewhere.

All our lives, it’s been all about us. We were the “Me Generation.” We wore t-shirts that said “If it feels good, do it.” The year of my high school commencement, a hit song featured the immortal lyric “Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today.” As a group, we have been self-centered, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and all too often just plain selfish. Our current Baby Boomer President has written two eloquent, erudite books, both about..himself.

As a generation, we did tend to live for today. We have spent more and saved less than any previous Americans. Year after year, regardless which party we picked to lead the country, we ran up deficits that have multiplied the debt you and your children will be paying off your entire working lives. Far more burdensome to you mathematically, we voted ourselves increasing levels of Social Security pensions and Medicare health care benefits, but never summoned the political maturity to put those programs on anything resembling a sound actuarial footing.

In sum, our parents scrimped and saved to provide us a better living standard than theirs; we borrowed and splurged and will leave you a staggering pile of bills to pay. It’s been a blast; good luck cleaning up after us.

He sounds like a conservative version of Mike Males. I couldn’t agree more.

I’m more inclined to agree with the first post here, but StudentActivism.net makes a good point that this case was about an injunction, not about the merits of the speech itself. Still, I can’t see how anyone could side with the high school on any issue related to this case.

Sotomayor’s Bad 1st Amendment Decision Should Disqualify Her

Paul Levinson

MAY 2, 2009 6:11PM

According to Sam Stein in the Huffington Post, Sonia Sotomayor is “the odds-on favorite” to be chosen by Barack Obama to fill retiring Justice David Souter’s seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. She now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Second Circuit in New York City. She is regularly described as liberal and a judicial activist - fine in my book - and it would good to have a first Hispanic and another woman on the Supreme Court.

But she has one major, very bad decision on free speech and press to her discredit, which should give everyone who values these freedoms in our society serious cause for concern about Sotomayor’s possible nomination to the High Court.

The decision came from Sotomayor’s Second Circuit Court last May, regarding Lewis Mills High School student Avery Doninger. While running for Senior Class Secretary, Ms. Doninger found reason to object to the school’s cancellation of a “jamfest” event, and characterized those who scotched the event as “douchebags” on her off-campus LiveJournal blog (she also characterized a school official in that same blog posting as getting “pissed off”). The school officials, in turn, took umbrage, prohibited Avery from running for Class Secretary, and disregarded the plurality of votes she received, anyway, as a write-in candidate. Avery sued the school officials, and the Federal District Court supported the school. Avery appealed to Sotomayor’s Second Circuit Court.

After acknowledging the Supreme Court’s 1969 Tinker decision, which held that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” Sotomayor’s Court proceeded to affirm the District Court’s ruling - that is, Sonia Sotomayor and her colleague justices upheld the high school’s right to punish Doninger for her off-campus speech. Their reasoning was that schools have an obligation to impart to their students “shared values,” which include not only the importance of free expression but a “proper respect for authority”.

“Proper respect for authority” … is this what our democratic society and freedom is based upon? Last time I checked, I thought our democracy and freedom were predicated on the principle that all people have a right to express their opinions, which must certainly include disrespect for authority, if actions by the authority - such as canceling a school event such as “jamfest” - are at issue.

Or as Constitutional scholar and law-professor Jonathan Turley put it about this decision last year, “The continual expansion of the authority of school officials over student speech teaches a foul lesson to these future citizens. I would prefer some obnoxious speech than teaching students that they must please government officials if they want special benefits or opportunities.”
Read the rest of this entry »

A rare link to Snipe-Me, but Galen couldn’t be more right about swine flu.

Who needs the other 8 guys on the team? This guy can do it all!

Brewers pitcher Yovani Gallardo pulled off an interesting feat today, beating the Pirates with 11 strikeouts in eight innings and providing his own support with a homer in the seventh inning off Ian Snell. It was Gallardo’s second homer this year — he hit one off Randy Johnson in San Francisco on April 8 — and his fourth in 29 major league games.

Oh yeah, the run from Gallardo’s homer was the only one of the game. It’s only the eighth time in the last 50 years that a 1-0 game was decided by a home run from a pitcher.

Read more: “Touching Base - NY Daily News”

Best yet? He’s on my fantasy team. Boo-yah!

Looks like those darn Europeans are mucking up Somalia.

In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention.”

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia’s unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”

I so want to see a mafia vs. pirates movie or video game.

Great post the other day from NYRA Board of Advisors member, Robert Epstein:
Juvenile Injustice: The Scandal in Pennsylvania Is the Tip of an Ugly Iceberg

A closeted youth rights supporter, and professor at MIT, Scott Aaronson, has made a bold attempt to come out of the closet by debating the absurd position of youth rights opponents. Specifically pointing out the lack of a credible argument against lowering the voting age. His post is impressive as he is well acquainted with our chief arguments and articulates them well (despite being over 12).

Yet despite recognizing there is no logical reason to oppose lowering the voting age he isn’t comfortable enough with the idea to fully embrace it. His reluctance to “out himself” does, I think, provide an interesting case study for our movement. Aaronson has identified our greatest challenge: we lack momentum.

When out recruiting at events I tell all our volunteers a simple rule: sign your own name to the top of the sheet. No one wants to be the first to sign a blank sheet of paper. No one wants to be the first to write a book review on Amazon (interestingly discussed by Reid Hoffman on the Charlie Rose show). No one wants to join a cause they feel has a “negligible chance of winning” regardless of how needed or right it is. This fear of going first creates, as Aaronson said, a “generations-long delay between the inarguable and the acted-upon.” A fear he too succumbs to.

How do we overcome that? How do we avoid the image of being eccentric and Aspbergerish? (or rather, how do we attract people other than those who are eccentric and Aspbergerish?)
One strategy, actually, is that of Choose Responsibility who has put the drinking age debate on the map with their Amethyst Initiative. In this light it was a brilliant idea. A petition of a sizeable body of credible officials really broke the ice on the issue, allowing many fence sitters to feel less exposed by voicing support.

Some in NYRA have suggested doing something similar for the voting age. It is a good idea. In fact in his article, Aaronson says:

I know of only two famous intellectuals who’ve publicly advocated changing things: the educator John Holt and the quantum computing pioneer David Deutsch. Anyone know of others?

We certainly have our share of prominent supporters. Dennis Kucinich mentioned his support for lowering the voting age during a Democratic primary debate, Ralph Nader wrote an excellent article for Counter Punch calling for the voting age to be lowered, and Michael Moore also supports enfranchising youth. Unfortunately though, each of these figures carry with them political controversy and lack the mainstream appeal and clout of university presidents. But thanks to them, thanks to NYRA, and thanks to others around the world the call for lowering the voting age is slowly broadening its appeal.

Moving beyond the voting age, we have various credible figures who have supported at least some of our agenda. The biggest splash in recent years was “The Case Against Adolescence” by Robert Epstein. A book I strongly encourage Scott Aaronson to check out. Epstein made a strong appeal for a wide range of rights for young people. The breadth and scope of his book hasn’t been seen since the works of John Holt, Richard Farson, Mike Males, Bob Franklin, but Epstein definitely brought something new to the table. Most interesting for this post, he had a very strong list of endorsements in his book jacket. Endorsements which demonstrate the unexpected support these ideas have in sometimes unusual corners.

The individuals who voiced support for Robert Epstein’s bold vision for the rights of youth:

- Albert Ellis, Ph.D., The Albert Ellis Institute
- Drew Pinsky, M.D., Co-Host, “Loveline”; Medical Director, Department of Chemical D ependency Services, Las Encinas Hospital, Pasadena, California
- Deepak Chopra, Life After Death: The Burden of Proof
- Dr. Joyce Brothers, author & columnist
- Frank W. Abagnale, Catch Me If You Can; president, Abagnale & Associates; author
- M. Scott Peck, M.D., The Road Less Traveled
- Alvin Toffler, Future Shock and Revolutionary Wealth
- Robert Coles, M.D., professor of psychiatry, Harvard University; recipient, Pulitzer Prize
- Leon Botstein, Jefferson’s Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture; president, Bard College; author
- Ellen Langer, Ph.D., Mindfulness; Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
- Jean Liedloff, The Continuum Concept
- George F. Will, columnist
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow; Professor of Management, Clairemont Graduate Center
- John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down and The Underground History of American Education; former New York City and New York State Teacher of the Year
- Gale A. Brewer, Member, New York City Council
- Suzanne Somers, actress and author
- Mariel Hemingway, actress
- Curtis Sliwa, Founder & President, Guardian Angels; co-host, ‘Curtis and Kuby in the Morning,’ WABC Radio, New York
- Buzz Aldrin, Ph.D. (Col., USAF, ret.), Apollo 11 Astronaut

Now, not all of the above list specifically said they agree with 100% of the ideas in Epstein’s book (I didn’t) but these issues are getting serious consideration from serious people. Others to add to the list include former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, whose excellent article in Business Week echos Epstein’s call to end adolescence. Popular bloggers such as Glenn Reynolds, Matthew Yglesias, and Anya Kamenetz have come to our defense on a number of issues as well.

I have been at this for almost 10 years now and I can honestly see a positive trajectory for this movement in those years. This movement does have a non-negligible chance of winning. Every time a professor, lawmaker, columnist, media personality or college president steps up to voice support for the seemingly “eccentric” or “Aspbergerish” cause of youth rights, it becomes less fringe and more mainstream and encourages even more to come out in support.

As a small organization with few resources it seems that our most important role is to build more awareness of who actually has come out in support of us, and put their comments and ideas in the proper context of an overall revisioning of the role young people play in society. That way all these articles, blog posts, bills, and comments are seen not as isolated curiosities but as a part of something larger that is building steam.

Our other important role is to jump ahead a generation or two and start acting upon the ideas we all know are inarguable. Pass laws, repeal laws, overturn business policies, reform schools, and everything else that inches us further toward our goals. Each step shows that this cause not only makes sense, but is possible as well.

Hopefully Scott Aaronson will help our cause move one step further from the inarguable to the acted-upon.

Wow, someone actually merged the entire Watchmen story with the NFL. It is pretty long, so I didn’t read the whole thing, but the parts I read seemed both spot-on and amusing at the same time. This definitely took some time to put together.

Btw, best comment from the story:

I want to see the Venn diagram of the audience this was written for. All 27 of us.

As one of those 27 football fans/comic book geeks, I recommend this.