Youth

Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement Fears New Military Rule

June 14, 2014 Louise Osborne, www.occupy.com Resist! Egypt, Military, Protest, Revolution, Youth

In a quiet cafe in Cairo’s hip Zamalek quarter, Ahmad Abd Allah sits on a sofa hunched over a laptop. A shisha pipe in hand, the 34-year-old types quickly, peering intensely at the computer screen. His mobile buzzes and he picks it up distractedly, his eyebrows furrowed as he types a message before taking another puff on the pipe. “We’re having a protest tonight,” he explains, adding that around 5,000 youth are expected to attend the demonstration despite the threat of arrest and imprisonment under Egypt's new anti-protest law. Allah is a member of the April 6 Youth Movement that was instrumental in ousting dictator Hosni Mubarak three years ago. Now, the rush of those heady days has faded to disappointment. On June 8, former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was inaugurated as Egypt's president, a position he won by a landslide in a vote that many viewed as a sham – and others saw as a victory of stability over freedom. The resurgence of the military in Egypt has also made Allah and his fellow youth activists outlaws. In the run-up to the late May election, an Egyptian court banned the April 6 movement on charges of espionage and defaming the government – what Allah says are trumped up excuses to silence the opposition. “It’s crazy," he said.

Young People Take On Fracking In Pennsylvania

June 13, 2014 Nicole D'Alessandro , http://ecowatch.com Resist! Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Fracking, Student Activism, Youth

This summer students will stand in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of fracking. They are the participants in Energy Justice Summer, a joint project of Energy Justice Network and community groups in the shalefields of northeast Pennsylvania. Who are these young organizers making a difference in Pennsylvania? In the words of Energy Justice Summer: We seek a world where everyone has access to sustainable energy and no one suffers unjustly because of our fossil fuel economy. We believe that fracking presents a grave threat to people everywhere, especially those on the frontlines of extraction. This summer, we will work in solidarity with communities in Pennsylvania to stop the expansion of fracking and move towards renewable energy.

Youth Denied Critical Climate Change Relief By US Court

June 9, 2014 Our Children's Trust, www.ourchildrenstrust.org Resist! Climate Change, Law, Youth

On June 5, 2014, a panel of judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia refused to grant important climate change relief sought by youth appellants. The young people’s lawsuit asked the federal government to do its part in restoring the atmosphere to 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO by the end of the century. The appellants’ requested relief was based on the urgent warning of leading international climate scientists that failure to do so will result in disastrous climate disruption during the lifetimes of the youth. The Court refused the requested relief and affirmed Judge Robert Wilkins’s U.S. District Court order, dated May 31, 2012, that dismissed the young people’s climate change lawsuit. The Court of Appeals reasoned that there was no federal jurisdiction because the Public Trust Doctrine is a matter of state, not federal, law. The panel did not address the appellants’ separate constitutional claims, nor did it address how disparate states would protect the one atmosphere they all share, under 50 separate state public trust responsibilities. “We strongly believe that the U.S. Constitution protects the right to a stable climate system,” said Philip Gregory, with Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy LLP, co-counsel for the Youth

National Week Of Action Against Incarcerating Youth

May 19, 2014 Blogger, www.usprisonculture.com Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Mass Incarceration, Youth

There is an urgent need to find constructive ways to respond to young people in conflict with the law. Research compellingly demonstrates that youth placed in juvenile detention centers compared to alternative interventions are much more likely to later spend significant time in prison (Aizer and Doyle, 2013). Juvenile and adult incarceration both create exorbitant financial and social costs (Petteruti, Velázquez, and Walsh, 2009). Incarceration of juveniles is harmful to young peoples’ development, education, families, communities, and their current and future socioeconomic status (Majd, 2011; Bickel, 2010). Furthermore, incarcerating youth is not effective at enhancing public safety (Butts & Evans, 2011; Petteruti, Velázquez, & Walsh, 2009). Conditions of detention, even when monitored and regulated, often involve serious violations of human rights, such as solitary confinement and sexual violence perpetrated by staff (Beck, Cantor, Hartge, & Smith, 2013; Kysel, 2012; Krisberg, 2009). These abuses harm youths’ physical health, mental health, and social well-being (McCarty, Stoep, Kuo, & McCauley, 2006; Mendel, 2011).

Students & Faculty Win As Condi Rice Backs Out Of Rutgers Speech

May 3, 2014 Kelly Heyboer, www.nj.com Resist! Education, Student Activism, Student protest, Youth

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice backed out of giving Rutgers University's commencement speech today amid growing opposition among the school's students and faculty. Earlier this week, about 50 Rutgers students staged a sit-in inside the campus administration building to protest the selection of Rice to speak. She was scheduled to receive $35,000 for her speech and an honorary Rutgers doctoral degree. The students called for Rutgers to disinvite Rice, echoing the sentiments of several campus faculty organizations that said the former U.S. Secretary of State was an inappropriate choice because of her involvement in the Bush administration’s support of the Iraq War, waterboarding and other controversies. Rutgers officials had declined to rescind their invitation to Rice, saying the university welcomes debate on controversial issues. Until today, Rice had remained silent about the growing protests. Rutgers faculty members who opposed Rice’s selection were scheduled to hold a "teach-in" on the New Brunswick campus Tuesday to discuss the controversy with students and the public. "Attending the teach-in will be a strong signal that we will not sit quietly while a small group of irresponsible people dishonor our beloved university," said Rudolph Bell, a veteran history professor and one of the faculty members organizing the opposition, in a letter to the campus earlier this week.

Quebec Students Continue Fight against Austerity

May 3, 2014 Roshan Bliss, www.PopularResistance Resist! Austerity, Canada, Student Activism, Youth

ASSÉ - a union of student unions boasting a membership of over 80,000 students in Quebec - has earned a reputation as one of the most militant student groups in North America. Through a sophisticated structure of grassroots, direct democracy, it has created a sustained student movement on campuses across Quebec with a culture of what is known as "confrontational syndicalism" - a political orientation that acknowledges that political elites and university administrations alike have interests that are often opposed to average people or students and that building power to directly challenge those institutions is a requisite for maintaining and advancing their rights. . . It is what has led the students and youth of Quebec to take their fights off campus, beyond student issues, and into the streets to deliver a clearly articulated message in solidarity with other sectors of Quebecois society - "make the rich pay their fair share".

Youth Demand Court Order Climate Recovery Plan

April 29, 2014 Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Climate Change, Student Activism, Youth

Five individual teenagers, and two non-profit organizations representing thousands more young people, Kids vs. Global Warming and WildEarth Guardians, partnered with OUR CHILDREN'S TRUST to file this federal lawsuit now pending at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The youth seek to require the federal government to immediately plan for national climate recovery according to the scientific prescription of Dr. James Hansen and other leading international climate scientists that will restore our atmosphere to 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 by the end of the century and avoid the disastrous scenarios of 2°C of warming. This lawsuit relies upon the long-established legal principle of the Public Trust Doctrine, which requires our government to protect and maintain survival resources for future generations. At oral argument on May 2, 2014, youth will ask the U.S. Court of Appeals to recognize their constitutional right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate system.

Condoleezza Rice Protested At University Of Minnesota

April 24, 2014 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Student Activism, Student protest, Wars and Militarism, Youth

Hundreds of students and community members protested a speech by Condoleezza Rice at the University of Minnesota. Coleen Rowley explains why: "Not even a year after 9-11, Rice began giving fear-mongering speeches that falsely alluded to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of and intent to use nuclear bombs. Rice knew there was no evidence for her “mushroom cloud” speeches but numerous firsthand accounts and memoirs, along with the “Downing Street Memo,” provide evidence that she, along with other key Administration figures, signed onto “fixing the intelligence around the policy” of their previously agreed-upon goal: Launching war on Iraq."

Portland Student Union Plays Key Role in Faculty Union Win

April 23, 2014 Roshan Bliss, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Education, Student Activism, Student protest, Youth

The effectiveness of Portland students' support of their teachers is part of an important trend on US campuses. Despite the fact that they pay thousands of dollars in tuition each semester, students often find themselves with little to no substantive representation on campus, and in recent years, many have turned to building student unions (no, not the confusingly named "student union" buildings on campus). And especially since the widely celebrated, though little publicized, success of the 2012 student strike in Quebec, a veritable student unionism movement been spreading across the country - a trend which bodes well not only for students themselves, but also for teachers increasingly being squeezed by austerity policies in education.

Med Students Want Truly Just Healthcare System

April 18, 2014 James Besante, www.commondreams.org Resist! Healthcare, Single-Payer, Student Activism, Youth

Cardinal Bernardin said, “Health care is an essential safeguard of human life and dignity, and there is an obligation for society to ensure that every person be able to realize this right.” But nearly two decades later, the realization of the “right to health care” remains elusive...The ACA doesn’t change this picture as much as some might think. People who signed up for private coverage in the exchanges are finding they have substantial cost-sharing, i.e. high deductibles and copayments, proven barriers to seeking care. Patients are also finding themselves squeezed into “narrow networks,” which significantly limit their choice of doctors and hospitals. Accidentally step out-of-network, and your costs soar. The sad truth is that for many health insurance is an umbrella that melts in the rain—when you need it most, it isn’t there. ... the business of corporate medicine is doing very well under the ACA. Health insurer profits, stock value, and CEO salaries are all up. In fact, the entire law was written around preserving the gluttonous bottom lines in American health care. The ACA handed private insurers $500 billion in taxpayer subsidies to continue profiteering off illness in our country.

New Network for Social Justice Unionism Seeks to Change the Labor Movement

April 18, 2014 Roshan Bliss, www.PopularResistance.org Organize! Worker Rights and Jobs, Youth

Rank and file labor leaders announced for the first time the creation of the Network for Social Justice Unionism (NSJU), a new infrastructure that unionists concerned with advancing social justice beyond the workplace hope to use to organize for a shift in the way the labor movement operates. The NSJU seeks to encourage the creation of social justice caucuses in union locals across the nation and to establish working relationships between those caucuses to be able to support each other's struggles. Together, these caucuses hope to create an movement inside of organized labor that pushes union leaders across the country to do more to see that union power benefits not just workers themselves, but also the communities that unions are embedded in and rely upon. The NSJU effort has its roots in recent struggles for change led by teachers, but seeks to encourage workers of all kinds to commit to lending their knowledge, resources, and influence to other ongoing struggles for justice beyond their workplaces.

Austerity Is Crap: A Brief History of the ‘#USM Future’ Protest Movement

March 28, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Acronym TV, Asher Platts, Austerity, Cuts in higher education, Democracy, Education, Finance and the Economy, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Occupy, Poverty, Resistance Report, Solidarity, Student Activism, Student protest, The Punk Patriot, USM Future, USM Protest, Worker Rights and Jobs, Youth

For this round of cuts and consolidations, a solidarity between students and faculty had been well established, and grew and flourished under the recognition that we had shared goals in preserving the University of Maine System, not only for their jobs, or for our quality of education, but for the broader benefit of society that a liberal arts education provides, in allowing all working class people to lift themselves up into an intellectual realm that had until only recently in human history been reserved for priests and nobility. A vote of no confidence was issued forth from the Faculty Senate, and Selma Botman resigned, only to be replaced by President Theo Kalikow, who has continued forth advancing the austerity agenda on the University of Southern Maine. Selma Botman, while vacating the seat of the President, was allowed by administrators to continued to draw her salary for the duration of her term, and was in fact hired back as a consultant, and paid an additional $300,000 to write a paper, putting her annual earnings well into the realm of the top 1%. As though to thumb their noses at the student protestors, Administrators gave themselves a raise of $20,000 and upwards.

Kids Used As Pawns in Bid to Up Lottery Ticket Sales

March 27, 2014 Matthew Vaz, InTheseTimes.com Educate! Government, Inequality, Poverty, Youth

Lottery sales in America are driven by a core group of devotees, with 70 percent of national sales coming from only 20 percent of players. Who these players are is no mystery: According to Bloomberg News, households making between $30,000 and $40,000 a year spend twice as much on lottery tickets as households making upwards of $100,000, and high-school dropouts spend an average of $50 a month on lottery play, while people with graduate degrees spend $13. A lottery bill of $50 a month represents a real commitment, and in working-class households it undoubtedly pushes up against food expenses, rent, the electricity bill and other basic necessities. Thus it is a genuine challenge for states to drive lottery expenses among the poor any higher, even with the most well-executed advertising campaigns. In response, the New York state lottery has taken a new approach to advertising in the hopes of broadening its customer base.

How ‘Starving Student’ Cliche Became Harrowing Reality

March 20, 2014 Staff www.truthdig.com Educate! Hunger, Poverty, Student Activism, Youth

Meanwhile, it’s increasingly clear that the economic struggles students face during school follow them long past graduation. A major new report from the Pew Research Center, “Millennials in Adulthood: Detached from Institutions, Networked With Friends,” notes that people between 18 and 33 are the first generation in the modern era to have “higher levels ofstudent loan debt, poverty and unemployment, and lower levels of wealth and personal income than their two immediate predecessor generations (Gen Xers and Boomers) had at the same stage of their life cycles.” This, even though they are the “best-educated cohort of young adults in American history.”

VIDEO: Middle Schoolers Create Award-Winning NSA Documentaries

March 8, 2014 Staff wwww.blacklistednews.com Educate! NSA, Youth

EFF congratulates students from two middle schools who took home top prizes in the C-SPAN StudentCam 2014 competition for young filmmakers with their documentaries on mass surveillance. Students were tasked with answering the question: “What’s the most important issue the U.S. Congress should consider in 2014?” According to the C-SPAN press release: Peter Jasperse, Antonia Torfs-Leibman and Madeleine Hutchins, eighth graders at Eastern Middle School in Silver Spring, Md., are national First Prize winners in the Middle School division. Peter, Antonia and Madeleine will share $3,000 for their First Prize documentary, 'The NSA: The Lengths of America's Security,' about NSA surveillance."

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