Youth

Middle School Students Called “Terrorists”

July 9, 2014 Dan Johnson, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! Civil Disobedience, Education, Student Activism, Terrorism, Youth

A group of Georgia middle school students decided they had enough of the school dress code and would violate it together in an act of civil disobedience. The school, Cowan Road Middle, found out about the plan and suspended the students for…terrorism. What? According to WSB-TV (emphasis added): “To me it was just a bunch of 13-year-olds acting crazy,” said Christopher Cagle, the father of a suspended honor roll student. Cagle said the principal called the students’ actions terroristic threats. He said the principal was too swift and severe with the punishment.” Violating the school dress code is indeed a violation of school policy, but to elevate it to a level where one could be indefinitely detained, without charge or trial, is going way too far.

Palestine: Between Selective Sympathy And Collective Punishment

July 7, 2014 Jerome Roos, www.roarmag.org Educate! Israel, Palestine, Youth

This week, Israel was shaken by the horrific discovery of the bodies of three young teenagers, buried under a shallow pile of rocks just north of the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank. Naftali (16), Gilad (16) and Edal (19) had been kidnapped near the Gush Etzion settlements on June 12 while hitchhiking home from their yeshivas, and it is suspected that they were fatally shot shortly thereafter. For days now, the country has been transfixed by a sense of collective mourning and shared sympathy for the boys’ families. As was to be expected, Prime Minister Netanyahu immediately blamed Hamas for the killings and ordered a large-scale crackdown on the occupied territories, followed by the bombing of over 30 sites in Gaza just hours after the discovery of the boys’ bodies. Since the kidnapping on June 12, Israeli violence has left at least seven Palestinians dead, including 10-year-old Ali and 15-year-old Mohammed, and more than 400 arrested and thrown into administrative detention. On Wednesday, the body of another Palestinian boy was found dumped in the woods just hours after being abducted in East Jerusalem. It is suspected that 16-year-old Mohammed was kidnapped and burned to death by Jewish extremists in revenge for the deaths of the Israeli teenagers. His body was so badly charred that investigators refused to let his father see it. Fierce riots broke out in East Jerusalem on Friday following Mohammed’s funeral.

Lessons In Dissent From Hong Kong’s Youth

July 7, 2014 M.A., www.economist.com Educate! Activism, Hong Kong, Student Activism, Youth

HONG Kong’s youth are scarcely known for being political animals: little wonder, given the example set by their pragmatic elders. Doing well at school, finding a decent job and getting their hands on the latest iPhone tend to be higher priorities than politics. Yet a breed of young activists is challenging the presiding apathy, riding a wave of political activism that is sweeping the city. An unofficial ballot on electoral reform that ended on Sunday drew almost 800,000 votes, while an activist threat to “Occupy Central”, the main business district, hangs in the summer air. The annual July 1st protest march drew a large turnout; though peaceful, it ended in over 500 arrests, mostly of students. A timely documentary, now showing in Hong Kong, portrays two of the young rebels. Joshua Wong is a “rock star” among young activists, as Li Ping Kong, a producer of “Lessons in Dissent”, puts it. In 2011, at 15, Mr Wong founded Scholarism to fight against the government’s proposed “Moral and National Education” curriculum. With their allies, the secondary-school protest group (pictured above, in 2012) decried the government’s plans as an attempt to peddle patriotic, pro-Communist party propaganda through, for instance, teaching a distorted version of history.

Baltimore Youth Stop Incinerator Construction

July 3, 2014 Brentin Mock, www.grist.org Resist! Baltimore, Environment, health, pollution, Youth

Baltimore air polluter fumbles, and kids score one for their hard-hit community. After close to three years of youth-led organizing against a massive incinerator planned for their South Baltimore Fairfield neighborhood, the young activists got their first taste of victory recently, when the state of Maryland ordered Energy Answers International, the company building the incinerator, to stop construction on the project. Assistant Attorney General Roberta R. James sent a letter to Energy Answers on June 20 alerting the company that it was in violation of the state’s air pollution control laws and regulations. Specifically, the incinerator company failed to purchase offsets for the hundreds of tons of toxic air pollutants the incinerator will emit when it gets up and running, which many in the Fairfield community hope won’t happen. The offsets — a company’s agreement to pay another company to clean up its emissions so that it can keep polluting — are mandatory under Energy Answers’ permit provisions. The company was required to begin buying offsets when it started construction last year.

Why It’s Way Too Soon To Give Up On The Arab Spring

June 30, 2014 Juan Cole, www.latimes.com Educate! Arab Spring, Egypt, Elections, Middle East, Revolution, Youth

Three and a half years ago, the world was riveted by massive crowds of youths mobilizing in Cairo's Tahrir Square to demand an end to Egypt's dreary police state. We watched transfixed as a movement first ignited in Tunisia spread from one part of Egypt to another, and then from country to country across the region. Before it was over, four presidents-for-life had been toppled and the region's remaining dictators were unsettled. The young Arabs who made the recent revolutions are ... distinctive: substantially more urban, literate, media-savvy and wired than their parents and grandparents. - Some 42 months later, in most of the Middle East and North Africa, the bright hopes for more personal liberties and an end to political and economic stagnation championed by those young people have been dashed. Instead, some Arab countries have seen counterrevolutions, while others are engulfed in internecine conflicts and civil wars, creating Mad Max-like scenes of postapocalyptic horror. But keep one thing in mind: The rebellions of the last three years were led by Arab millennials, by young people who have decades left to come into their own. Don't count them out yet.

What Happens When Youth Make Budget Decisions?

June 27, 2014 Hollie Russon Gilman, www.nextcity.org Create! Boston, Budgets, Education, Elections, Youth

Many young people in Boston just voted for their first time, and the results are in. The city’s “Youth Lead the Change” project, with help from the Participatory Budgeting Project, was the first youth-led participatory budgeting process in a U.S. city. The project empowered young people, ages 12 to 25, to decide where $1 million of public capital should go to best improve their communities. This is real money and real decision-making power. Boston’s young people have been engaged at every step, from designing the process to working directly with city officials to make viable project proposals. City agencies donated time to work directly with young people — often during pizza-filled, late-night events — to discuss spending priorities and current projects. Voting was open from June 14th to June 20th, and young Boston residents were able to vote for four out of 14 projects in four categories: education, community culture, parks/environment/health, and streets and safety. Projects included improving community centers, creating art spaces, and renovating parks. Voting sites were in community centers, schools and T stops throughout the city.

How The Feds Are Recruiting Spies At Campuses

June 26, 2014 Roberto J. Gonzalez, www.alternet.org Educate! CIA, Education, FBI, Spies, Youth

In July 2005, a select group of fifteen- to nineteen-year-old high school students participated in a week-long summer program called “Spy Camp” in the Washington, DC, area. The program included a field trip to the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, an “intelligence simulation” exercise, and a visit to the $35 million International Spy Museum. According to the Spy Museum’s website, visiting groups have the option of choosing from three different “scavenger hunts,” in which teams are pitted against one another in activities ranging “from code-breaking to deceptive maneuvers. . . . Each team will be armed with a top secret bag of tricks to help solve challenging questions” that can be found in the museum. On the surface, the program sounds like fun and games, and after reading about the program one might guess that it was organized by an imagina- tive social studies teacher. But for some, “Spy Camp” was more than just fun and games—it was very serious business. The high school program was car- ried out by Trinity University of Washington, DC—a predominantly African American university with an overwhelmingly female student population—as part of a pilot grant from the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to create an “Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence” (or IC Center).

Protesting Youth In The Age Of Neoliberal Cruelty

June 23, 2014 Henry A. Giroux, www.truth-out.org Organize! Neoliberalism, Protest, Youth

What is particularly distinctive about the current historical conjuncture is the way in which young people, particularly low-income and poor minority youth across the globe, have been increasingly denied any place in an already weakened social order and the degree to which they are no longer seen as central to how a number of countries across the globe define their future. The plight of youth as disposable populations is evident in the fact that millions of them in countries such as England, Greece, and the United States have been unemployed and denied long term benefits. The unemployment rate for young people in many countries such as Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Greece hovers between 40 and 50 per cent. To make matters worse, those with college degrees either cannot find work or are working at low-skill jobs that pay paltry wages. In the United States, young adjunct faculty constitute one of the fastest growing populations on food stamps. Suffering under huge debts, a jobs crisis, state violence, a growing surveillance state, and the prospect that they would inherit a standard of living far below that enjoyed by their parents, many young people have exhibited a rage that seems to deepen their resignation, despair, and withdrawal from the political arena. This is the first generation, as sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argues, in which the “plight of the outcast may stretch to embrace a whole generation.” (Bauman 2012a; 2012b; 2012c) He rightly insists that today’s youth have been “cast in a condition of liminal drift, with no way of knowing whether it is transitory or permanent” (Bauman 2004:76).

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.

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