Children

America’s Youngest Outcasts

November 18, 2014 National Center On Family Homelessness, www.homelesschildrenamerica.org Educate! Children, Education, Homelessness

America’s Youngest Outcasts looks at child homelessness nationally and in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, ranks the states from 1 (best) to 50 (worst), and examines causes of child homelessness and solutions. The report uses the newest federal and state data related to child homelessness, including the most recent annual count of homeless children in public schools made by the U.S. Department of Education (2012-2013 school year; released in September 2014) and U.S. Census data. The report notes that while progress has been made in reducing homelessness among veterans and chronically homeless individuals, no special attention has been directed toward homeless children, and their numbers have increased.

Victory: Lego Announces It Will Not Renew Contract With Shell

October 10, 2014 Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, www.aboutus.lego.com Resist! Children, Energy, Environment, Greenpeace

The Greenpeace campaign uses the LEGO brand to target Shell. As we have stated before, we firmly believe Greenpeace ought to have a direct conversation with Shell.The LEGO brand, and everyone who enjoys creative play, should never have become part of Greenpeace’s dispute with Shell. Our stakeholders have high expectations to the way we operate. So do we. We do not agree with the tactics used by Greenpeace that may have created misunderstandings among our stakeholders about the way we operate; and we want to ensure that our attention is not diverted from our commitment to delivering creative and inspiring play experiences. The long-term co-promotion contract we entered with Shell in 2011 delivers on the objective of bringing LEGO bricks into the hands of many children, and we will honour it – as we would with any contract we enter.

Students Protest Cop Tackling Student For Using Phone

September 5, 2014 Cassandra Rules, www.thefreethoughtproject.com Resist! Children, Education, Police

Ixel Perez, a 4’10″, 100 pound, 10th grade student at Sam Houston High in Texas, was brutally detained by three officers in her high school for refusing to turn over her cell phone. Perez’ mother, Gladys Santos, has kidney problems and receives dialysis treatment, reports Click2Houston. Perez’ father had sent a text to the 10th grader, worried when he couldn’t locate her mother. “I didn’t want to let go of my phone so they like, pinned me down to the floor. One of them was behind me, like on my legs and trying to put the handcuffs on. It hurt a lot. And the other cop has his knee on my head, all his weight on me, and I was screaming because it hurt so much. I was crying because I thought I was going to get in trouble with my mom.” Perez is currently suspended until Friday and her mother is looking to move her to another school. Many critics of having police in schools point to the fact that there has been a surge of children arrested and charged with misdemeanours for things such as truancy, chewing gum, or talking back to teachers, which they believe would be better handled by the school and its principal, rather than the boys in blue.

Teacher Challenged His Pupils To Achieve World Peace With Game

September 4, 2014 Matthew Jenkin, www.theguardian.com Create! Children, Education, Peace

Students might be able to solve the world’s problems in the future if we can develop a plan with them now. With space and time students can be made ready to address these issues when they are adults. We are not just teaching a child in the present moment, we’re teaching that child’s children and grandchildren. That gives us the motivation to continue. The game is designed for nine year olds and at first I didn’t know whether they could do it or not. But I had great confidence in them and thought we’d give it a go. And sure enough, they were able to do it in a unique, unpredictable, astounding, innovative way every time. It gives me great confidence in what is possible and quite a few of those students have gone on to work in diplomacy and leadership positions. It’s had a real, long-term impact on their lives. I see the game as an apple seed, which will one day grow into an orchard producing thousands of bushels of fruit. The possibility of one seed is so great. So what I am trying to do now is simply give the seed out for other teachers to plant. But it is not for every student, every teacher, every class. Teachers have got to deal with and be comfortable with the unknown, giving control and power to the students in the classroom so that the children become co-teachers. They are the sole source of authority and information in this game. Teachers need to deal with their own fears, expectations and hopes around that concept.

Police Say Tasing 8-Year-Old Native Girl Was Justified, Family Sues

August 25, 2014 Vincent Schilling, www.indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com Organize! Children, Native Americans, Police, Violence

In October 2013, An 8 year old Rosebud Sioux girl was shot by a stun gun when Pierre Police arrived on scene and were not able to obtain a paring knife the young girl was holding. In the days that followed, the family of the little girl reported she was suffering from trauma, while the Pierre Police Chief Bob Granpre said the actions of the Police were justified. Since the incident, family members have secured the use of Dana Hanna and Patrick Duffy as attorneys in the South Dakota area and the tribe has spoken out against the incident. The Pierre police after releasing initial findings will no longer offer comment on the matter after inquiries by ICTMN. Rose Stenstrom, the grandmother of the little girl and a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribal council, says she was upset that her little granddaughter was a delightful and talkative little girl who some media outlets made out to be a monster. “My granddaughter is really just a friendly little girl,” says Stenstrom. “She talks a lot. Because she likes to talk, you could change her mind really easy. I have been around her, she is not anywhere near what people describe her as. They made her out to be a little monster and she is not.” Stenstrom also said the response to the original situation was not handled with any sort of professionalism.

Groups Tell Obama ‘Declare Detroit Water Emergency’

August 16, 2014 Food & Water Watch, www.foodandwaterwatch.org Organize! Children, Detroit, Human Rights, Poverty, Water

Today, a coalition of over fifty social justice organizations including Food & Water Watch urged President Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell to declare the ongoing water crisis in Detroit a public health emergency. The groups have asked the Obama administration to make money available from the Public Health Emergency Fund to restore water service to residents affected by the shutoffs. “Thousands of Detroit families do not have running water in their homes for drinking, hygiene and sanitation,” said Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter. “This is a growing public health crisis that the Obama administration has the power to stop. It is completely unconscionable that anyone would be forced to endure these conditions.” In March, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, under the direction of state-appointed Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, announced an aggressive campaign to disconnect the water service of thousands of households that are either $150 or 60 days behind on their water bills. In Detroit, 38.1 percent of residents, including more than half of children there, live in poverty. Over the last decade, residential water charges have more than doubled.

As Migrant Children Face Backlash, Communities Mobilize To Drown Out Hate

August 13, 2014 Laurie Smolenski, www.wagingnonviolence.org Resist! Central America, Children, Immigrant Rights, Immigration

On a Saturday morning earlier this summer, I joined a group of immigrant rights activists under a canopy of tall trees in Lower Manhattan. We were preparing to form a human chain around a federal immigration courthouse to protest the unbridled deportations tearing immigrant families apart. Our action was held in tandem with coordinated efforts occurring that day around the nation. Hundreds of people began to amass: Latino families with their children, workers still in uniform from the night shift, Korean grandmothers with matching visors, youth activists known as “Dreamers,” and a church group. The organizers were from Palestine, Mexico and Sri Lanka. I saw many familiar faces. Together, members of this group had taken caravans of buses together to march with tens of thousands of supporters in Washington, D.C.; we had faced arrest at civil disobedience actions; we had canvassed New York’s five boroughs; and we had fasted for weeks in the shadow of the Capital. There were many members of the press and few police. We all understood what was at stake: It was June 28, one year and a day since the Senate had passed an immigration reform bill that Congress had since failed to act upon. The window for potential reform was growing narrower by the day.

Lawsuit Filed To Block Deportation Of Youth

August 3, 2014 ACLU, www.aclu.org Resist! Children, Human Rights, Immigrant Rights, Law

The American Civil Liberties Union, American Immigration Council, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Public Counsel, and K&L Gates LLP have asked a federal court to immediately block the government from pursuing deportation proceedings against several children unless it ensures those youth have legal representation. The move comes as immigration courts are speeding up deportation hearings against children in an expedited process sometimes referred to as "rocket docket." The groups filed a lawsuit last month on behalf of thousands of children challenging the federal government's failure to provide them with lawyers in their deportation hearings. The preliminary injunction motion filed late last night specifically asks that the fast-approaching deportation proceedings for several of the named plaintiffs be forestalled until those children are provided with attorneys. The groups also asked the court to hear their motion for class certification as soon as possible, so that other unrepresented children may be protected as well. "These children face an imminent threat of being deported, potentially to their death," said Ahilan Arulanantham, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. "To force them to defend themselves against a trained prosecutor, with their lives literally on the line, violates due process and runs counter to everything our country stands for."

Artist Sculpts Own Son Into Gaza Chaos: ‘If It Were Zack’

July 31, 2014 Creative Resistance, www.creativeresistance.org Create! Arts, Children, Creative Resistance, Gaza, Violence, Wars and Militarism

This article is from our associated project, CreativeResistance.org. The Israeli assault on Gaza December 27, 2008- January 18, 2009, or “Operation Cast Lead,” resulted in hundreds of innocent civilians being killed and thousands injured and left homeless. The number of children who were killed ranges between 300-350. At that time, in reaction to the horrifying stories of children dying, I made an artist book, In Memoriam. During the last few days of 2009, in solidarity with the Gaza Freedom March, I made the sculpture If It Were Zack. I am chilled by arguments rationalizing the brutal, violent killing of innocents. I cannot fathom the wretched abyss of hatred that feeds such an intellect. When I hold my son Zack, my heart breaks imagining these hundreds of children. When he laughs, I think,”That child once laughed, too, delighting his mother.” My grief in this time feels near intolerable–and this is just pain imagined. I don’t know what the answer is to the conflict between Israel and Palestine. But I do know that the military-minded adults on both sides of the Wall have to begin with the premise that there is no cause worth the torment of children–the children of Gaza live in fear, sleeplessness, boredom, frustration, anxiety, depression, hunger. And there is surely no cause worth the killing of children.

How U.S. Kids Are Welcoming The Central American Child Refugees

July 26, 2014 Christa Hillstrom, www.yesmagazine.org Create! Children, Immigrant Rights, Refugees, Religion

"You matter." "We are working hard to make sure you are able to stay in this country." "Come and live in California!" It's not exactly the incendiary rhetoric we've grown accustomed to in the last few weeks, as American leaders clash over the question of what to do with tens of thousands of child refugees fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. The messages above—along with more than 1,800 others—have flooded the website TheyAreChildren.com since it was launched last week by the California Endowment and partner organizations. The aim is to bypass severe political condemnation from those who are calling for the immediate, no-questions-asked deportation of the children (see Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks' proposal of buying them all one-way tickets for a $27 million bargain). Instead, letter-writers are sending kids messages of encouragement, compassion, and solidarity. Hundreds of notes submitted by ordinary people—many of them children and members of faith communities—will be translated and delivered through service providers to children in detention facilities "to make sure these children know that thousands of people are praying for them and extending support and compassion," said Anne Stuhldreher, the project's coordinator.

Treat Immigrant Children As Refugees?

July 15, 2014 Anna Lekas Miller, www.wagingnonviolence.org Organize! Children, Immigrant Rights, Refugees, Violence, War On Drugs, Wars and Militarism

Last week, the news broke that another wave of unaccompanied migrant children crossed the border, which brings the number of unaccompanied minors that have attempted to escape into the United States since October to more than 52,000. Most of them are fleeing escalated gang violence in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Unlike many migrants from Central America and Mexico, coming to the United States to escape economic hardship, this new wave of migrants is escaping brutal drug-related violence plaguing the region. For this reason, both immigrant justice activists and the United Nations High Commission on Refugees are calling upon the U.S. government —which has already allocated $116 million to process the deportations and pay the transportation of the most recent wave of children — to treat these migrants as refugees, allowing them to seek temporary or permanent asylum in the United States. Political instability and corruption in Central America allows drug trafficking gangs fighting for control of key smuggling routes to grow unchecked. The resulting violence has been called an undeclared war, with murder rates in Honduras being the highest in the world.

Cameron Plans Strike Crackdown On 1 Million Public Workers

July 10, 2014 Patrick Wintour and Matthew Taylor, www.theguardian.com Organize! Children, Education, Labor, Unions, United Kingdom (UK)

David Cameron has been accused by union leaders of being a "Bullingdon bully" after he vowed that the Conservative election manifesto would tighten the screw on strike laws in response to what he regards as Thursday's illegitimate mass walkout of up to 1 million public-sector workers. Cameron attacked the low turnout thresholds in union strike ballots and challenged the validity of mandates to take industrial action derived from ballots conducted more than a year ago in some cases. The prime minister said: "I think the time has come for setting a threshold. It is time to legislate and it will be in the Conservative manifesto." In a sign of how the political battle may unfold, the education secretary, Michael Gove, will accuse the teaching unions of not standing up for education but for their pay and pensions. On Newsnight on Thursday, Gove said teachers who were joining the strike were a minority.

Israel’s Attack On Gaza Kills At Least 8 Children

July 10, 2014 Jon Queally, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! Children, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Violence

At least eight children are among those who have been killed in the Gaza Strip over the last twenty-four hours, according to various reports, as the Israeli military continued to bombard the Palestinian enclave using naval ships, fighter jets, and aerial drones. According to a report from the Defense of Children International (DCI-Palestine), six children were killed when a building was leveled by a missile that may have been fired from an Israeli drone on Tuesday afternoon in the city of Khan Younis. According to the group: The five families that reside in the building evacuated immediately after an Israeli aerial drone fired a warning missile. A number of neighbors, however, gathered on the roof in an effort to prevent the bombing. Shortly after 3 p.m., an Israeli airstrike leveled the building, and killed seven people, including five children, on the spot and injured 28 others.

The US-Mexico Caravan For Peace Takes On The Drug War

July 3, 2014 Chris Moore-Backman, www.truth-out.org Resist! Children, Drug War, Immigrant Rights, Mexico, Prison

Like many people in the United States, I've had a vague notion that in recent years, things have gone from bad to worse in Mexico. A notion characterized by images of chaos and sporadic violence related to narco-trafficking. I've pictured skirmishing between competing drug cartels, with disorganized and corrupt law enforcement thrown into the mix. And I realize that the image of Ciudad Juarez with its reputation as the world's most murderous city, has somehow worked as a reference point for me as I've thought of Mexico, every now and then. A few months ago, I was talking with an old friend that I had been out of touch with for some time, and I was describing for him the radio documentaries I've been working on which focus on race, criminal justice and the drug war, and on the growing movement to end mass incarceration. He wasted no time in asking me if I was planning to do a show on the international aspects of the Drug War, and more specifically, he was wanting to know if I was going to do anything about what was happening in Mexico. He said that he thought the movement to end mass incarceration in the United States and the movement to end the drug war in Mexico were deeply connected, but that very few people were seeing it yet or talking about it. He told me that a bi-national caravan was about to travel the length of the US calling for an end to the drug war. He said that many of the people with the caravan would be family members of those who had been killed or disappeared in the drug war violence in Mexico.

Children’s Lives In The Balance

July 2, 2014 Pam Bailey and Medea Benjamin, www.codepink.org Educate! Children, Israel, Palestine

Children’s Lives In The Balance: Is One Child’s Life Worth More Than Another? With the news that the bodies of three missing Israeli teens had been found in a field not far from the stretch of road where they disappeared June 12, people everywhere reacted rightly with sorrow and anger. Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, also 16, were students who lived with their families in a Jewish-only settlement near the Palestinian city of Hebron in the West Bank. The settlement and others like it have been declared illegal by the International Court of Justice because they are located in occupied territory and impede Palestinians’ liberty of movement and right to employment, health and education. However, they were youth just starting out on life, sons and brothers whose families will forever grieve their horrific deaths. We must all condemn such violence. We must also condemn the collective punishment and violence unleashed by the government of Israel in response. To date, the Israeli police and military have broken into and ransacked 1,500 homes, businesses and schools in its rampage, arresting more than 550 residents. More than half of the abducted individuals are being held without charge or trial, more than 100 have been injured and at least six have died – including a 14-year-old boy who was shot in the chest at point-blank range and a 78-year-old woman who suffered a heart attack during a house raid.

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