Youth

Fossil Free Canada Convergence Deepens International Movement

November 16, 2014 Kate Aronoff, www.wagingnonviolence.org Organize! Canada, Climate Change, Youth

The Canadian Youth Climate Coalition hosted the first-ever Fossil Free Canada Convergence. Held at Concordia and Magill Universities in Montreal, the convergence brought together 80 youth organizers from around the country. Divestment has been up and running on campuses across Canada for well over a year; campaigns at the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, have already passed successful referenda for divestment through their student governments. Kristen Perry — a fourth year student at McGill, who helped to organize the convening with Divest McGill — remarked on what it was like to have the country’s divestment activists together for the first time: “A lot of the time we get wrapped up into our individual campaigns and we need to remember that this is a bigger movement, within divestment and also within the climate movement.” Like Quebec itself, the conference was bilingual in French and English. English programming focused generally on fossil fuel divestment, while French workshops and speakers dealt with the province’s growing anti-extraction movement against tar sands oil and pipelines, like the Energy East pipeline slated to stretch from Alberta and through Winnipeg and Montreal before its endpoint in Saint John, New Brunswick.

11 Year Old Vows To Silence Against Climate Change

November 13, 2014 Earth Guardians, www.us2.campaign-archive1.com Resist! Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Youth

My name is Itzcuauhtli (Eat-Squat-Lee) and I am 11 years old. I am on a silent strike until world leaders take action on Climate Change. By world leaders I mean you! We have waited too long for the people we call leaders to take action. We now face a crisis that threatens everyone’s future and every living system on the planet. I had to do something so I stopped talking on October 27, 2014. My talking strike for climate action has been harder than I ever thought it would be! My friends and teachers keep asking how long I will keep this silent strike going and how will it make a difference anyway. What I hope, is that in my silence all those who love us will speak out on behalf of our future and the world we are being left with.

Transforming Education: How Children Learn

October 24, 2014 Anna Jacopetti, www.educare4achange.blogspot.com Organize! Education, Students, Youth

It is our responsibility to see that children are able to mature into healthy strong adults whose lives will bear fruit. That means we need to understand child development and carefully craft our lessons and experiences and stories to meet the children where they are. Asking them to do tasks before they are cognitively ready for them is not only ineffective, but directly harmful, bringing stress and alarm into what should be a joyful process of self discovery. Too much stress and alarm, we know now, stops development and maturation in its tracks. A test that makes a child vomit is harmful not only to the child, but to the nation. Children who are asked to do repetitious tasks that are “boring”, who are pushed to meet “standards” that are not developmentally appropriate, will not become children who love learning They may be able to score well on multiple choice tests, but their capacities for independent thought and creativity will be stunted. They may be "career ready", but will in no way be prepared for the enormous challenges that face us as a species.

Teens Take Climate Lawsuit To Supreme Court

October 23, 2014 Sam Bliss, www.grist.org Resist! Climate Change, Law, Supreme Court, Youth

Those feisty, litigious climate-hawk kids just won’t go away. Back in 2011, we wrote about a group of witty whippersnappers that filed a lawsuit against the federal government. The premise: The government must take action to protect the atmosphere for future generations. On Oct. 3, those same five teenagers, represented by Oregon-based nonprofit Our Children’s Trust, filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court asking for a legal lifeline to keep the case alive. Let’s be clear: The petition is a crazy longshot. The Supreme Court grants about 1 percent of such petitions, leaving the decisions of lower courts to stand without review in the other 99 percent of cases.

National Day To Stop Criminalization Of A Generation

October 21, 2014 Steven Yip, www.stopmassincarceration.org Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Mass Incarceration, Police abuse, Youth

Protests on October 22 against intensified police killings, tortuous conditions being inflicted on tens of thousands of incarcerated people, and young people treated like criminals, guilty until proven innocent if they can survive to prove their innocence, will mark 19 years of the annual National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. Continuing defiant protests in Ferguson, MO, in response to the police killing of Michael Brown are part of heightened resistance to police murder all across the country. Against this backdrop, people in more than 38 cities across the U.S. are planning to take to the streets and act in other ways on Wednesday. The Organization for Black Struggle has called for civil disobedience outside the jail where people arrested in Ferguson have been imprisoned.

What Lena Dunham Taught Us About Unpaid Labor

October 1, 2014 Shen Trotter and Isabelle Nastasia, www.youngist.org Organize! Human Rights, Labor, Solidarity, Youth

Could a movement of part-time and temporary laborers, who are frequently mothers, caretakers, and homemakers, be a part of the revival of a movement demanding living wages for housework? What if interns and freelancers supported the growing movement in the US prison system by establishing connections with those struggling behind the walls? We often speak of all our oppressions as connected; taking the first steps towards creating and strengthening these bonds can lay the social groundwork that will support a popular or revolutionary mass movement. As this work is done, we should also look to the organizing that is happening as we speak.

Common Core As Child Abuse

September 17, 2014 Stamford Advocate, www.stamfordadvocate.com Educate! Education, health, Youth

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." Government and business leaders profess that today's education policies will provide students with "21st-century skills." If only these leaders had the 19th-century wisdom of Frederick Douglass, they would see that the education "reform" they are imposing has created a school environment that is devastating to our children's development and mental health. Our most vulnerable children often suffer "toxic stress:" prolonged activation of the body's stress response system brought on by chronic traumatic experiences. Toxic stress disrupts the development of the areas of the brain associated with learning and can have lifelong consequences.

From Ferguson To Miami, A Generation Demands Justice

September 2, 2014 Student Nation, www.thenation.com Organize! Ferguson, Student Activism, Youth

Last spring, The Nation launched its biweekly student movement dispatch. As part of the StudentNation blog, each dispatch hosts first-person updates on youth organizing. For recent dispatches, check out July 25 and August 12. For an archive of earlier editions, see the New Year’s dispatch. Contact studentmovement@thenation.com with tips. Edited by James Cersonsky (@cersonsky). 1. Getting Organized In the wake of Michael Brown’s death, young people in St. Louis have participated in marches, delivered food and supplies to organizers and residents, conducted trainings—and acts—of civil disobedience and pushed demands in coordination with the Hands Up, Don’t Shoot Coalition. The Justice League, a collaboration of Show Me 15, the St. Louis fast food worker union, and Young Activists United St. Louis, which organizes students and youth, is led by people of color with the goal of combating and redressing police violence. As we prepare for Saturday’s appreciation day, whose goal is to elevate the leadership of youth in Ferguson, we are working on curriculum materials with an emphasis on individual rights and the historical threads that made Ferguson happen. —Rasheen Aldridge and Tito Gardner

20 News Sites Kicking Our Generation Into Action

August 25, 2014 Eleanor Goldfield, www.occupy.com Educate! Media, Politics, Youth

At the height of the 2012 presidential election season, Gallup reported that “Americans' distrust in the media hit a new high this year, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.” As disappointing as the numbers are, they're not much of a surprise to Americans such as yourself, who have already sought out alternatives to mainstream news sources. Unfortunately, however, most Americans haven't. Television, the home base of mainstream media, remains the primary news source for most Americans regardless of age group, level of education, political affiliation, race or income bracket. Online news sources are becoming more and more popular, as one might expect. But a solid 50% of Americans ages 18 to 65 and over still get the majority of their news from TV – with just over one in five, or 21%, getting their news primarily from online sources. Couple this with the statistical fact that “someone who watched only Fox News would be expected to answer just 1.04 domestic [political current event] questions correctly – a figure which is significantly worse than if they had reported watching no media at all,” and it's no wonder trust is down and cynicism is up when it comes to the news.

Australian Documentary Reveals Israeli Torture Of Palestinian Youth

August 11, 2014 Will Morrow, www.wsws.org Educate! Israel, Palestine, Torture, Youth

A documentary broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Four Corners” television program on Monday night provided a devastating portrait of the Israeli government’s systematic policy of threats, arbitrary arrest and torture of Palestinian youth and children. These measures are aimed at holding the Palestinian population, particularly the youth, in a permanent state of terror and suppressing any opposition to the Israeli occupation. An entire generation of youth is being traumatised as the Israeli security forces sow a climate of fear, as well as suspicion and division, through the forced recruitment of young informers. The well-researched exposé—which also involved the Australian newspaper—was based on interviews with Palestinian youth themselves, as well as an Israeli lawyer, a former Israeli soldier and an Australian lawyer who has spent six years in the country. Qusai Zamara, one of the boys interviewed, was 14 years old when he was abducted from his bed during a late-night military raid on his family home in the West Bank. He was taken to an interrogation facility and tortured into confessing to throwing stones at Israeli citizens and security forces. This accusation is commonly used by the Israeli military to justify the repression, arbitrary arrests and killings meted out against the Palestinian people.

Young Leaders From Americas Gather In Venezuela!

August 9, 2014 Staff, www.SOAW.org Organize! Imperialsim, Latin America, Wars and Militarism, Youth

. . . permeated the SOAW Youth Encuentro in Venezuela this July, where I had the privilege of joining 33 amazing young leaders from 18 countries across the Americas. Each of these incredible young people are on the front lines of struggles for justice and self-determination in their communities, standing up against militarization and empire. Day-to-day they are defending their communities from being poisoned by multinational mining companies, calling for justice for their disappeared family members, prosecuting military officials responsible for human rights violations, demanding respect for Indigenous autonomy, organizing against deportations and deaths on the border, and constructing alternatives to corporate looting and militarization of our hemisphere.

Youths Discuss Police Brutality, Spark Debate

August 6, 2014 Aaron Cynic, www.progressillinois.com Organize! Chicago, police brutality, Youth

“Have you experienced harassment or been hurt by the police?” That question kickstarted a day of personal testimonies and discussion on the relationship between young people in some of Chicago’s most marginalized communities and police. Dozens of young people under the age of 25 gathered Saturday afternoon at Roosevelt University to speak about their encounters with police, which, they say, were often based on racial profiling and many times ended with violent treatment by officers. The gathering, put together by an organization called We Charge Genocide, focused on creating a “safe space” for young people to not only share their experiences, but also work together to create alternatives to policing in communities affected by what they say is unfair treatment. Organizers of the volunteer-run group say they are “putting the system of police violence on trial” by providing a platform for youth to discuss, what they allege is, an unfair system targeting low-income people of color. “People don’t believe young people when they say things happen to them,” said Malcolm London, a 21 year-old originally from the Austin neighborhood who now lives in Garfield Park. London, who emceed the event is part of several community organizing groups, including the Black Youth Project 100 and the Young Chicago Authors.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources