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Youth

A UN Treaty Guarantees Youth Rights Everywhere On Earth – Except The United States

Fifteen kids from a dozen countries, including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, recently brought a formal complaint to the United Nations. They’re arguing that climate change violates children’s rights as guaranteed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a global agreement. By petitioning the U.N. on behalf of the world’s children, their action made history. But it’s not the first time that kids have turned to this international accord in pursuit of social change. As I explain in my book, “The Kids Are in Charge,” the Convention on the Rights of the Child isn’t just a legal document.

The Delicate Ethics Of Using Facial Recognition In Schools

A growing number of districts are deploying cameras and software to prevent attacks. But the systems are also used to monitor students—and adult critics. On a steamy evening in May, 9,000 people filled Stingaree Stadium at Texas City High School for graduation night. A rainstorm delayed ceremonies by a half hour, but the school district’s facial recognition system didn’t miss a beat. Cameras positioned along the fence line allowed algorithms to check every face that walked in the gate.

From Kabul: Youth On The Road To Peace

Despite the violent crises which we human beings have created for Afghanistan and our planet earth, I have witnessed yet again how renewing our relationships with Nature and one another can calm us, teach us, and change us. I saw this happening among the 26 participants of the “Youth on the Road to Peace Conference” organized by the Afghan Peace Volunteers from the 18th to the 21st of September. The youth were rightfully feeling disheartened by the ongoing challenges in their country: war, opposing local and foreign groups in conflict, ISIS, Taliban, U.S./NATO forces, capitalism, climate-change related drought, inequality, racism, rhetoric with no action, societal and personal confusion…

The New Age Of Protest

Led by young people, climate strikers blocked traffic on two mornings at the end of last month in Washington, DC. On the first day, protestors chained themselves to a boat three blocks from the White House, and 32 activists were arrested. On the second day, activists targeted the EPA and Trump International Hotel. It was a not-so-subtle suggestion to commuters stuck in their cars on those mornings to think more favorably about public transportation or telecommuting. It was also a potent reminder, as Congress remains polarized on so many issues, that some paralysis is healthy in the nation’s capital.

Reflections On The Future – Post Climate Strike Musings

Millions of people came together yesterday for the Global Climate Strike. I was in New York City with some 250,000 other people and the energy, along with other people’s sweaty bodies, was palpable. I came as part of the People’s Mobilization, an effort to connect the issues of US empire and war with climate chaos, and from this intersection build power. After all, the US military is the world’s single largest consumer of fossil fuels, equal to the emissions of 140 countries. If we are to realistically mitigate the worst effects of climate change, the military industrial complex is a good (and necessary) place to start. But the issue of war has been largely lacking in the hot topic of climate justice so a coalition of folks, not least of all those on the receiving end of US bombs, felt the issue needed to be raised.

These Activists-in-Training Are Scouting For Social Justice

Anayvette Martinez wanted to start a different kind of girl scout troop after her then fourth-grade daughter expressed her desire to join one. What Martinez found, however, was that her daughter Lupita would have been one out of two Brown girls to join. She knew this statistic had to change. “The traditional scouting model wouldn’t center her experience as a woman of color, and it would have been a watered-down version of what she could be exposed to,” says Martinez (who identifies herself as Queer) of the idea of starting the Radical Monarchs. She wanted the troop to truly center women of color’s identity.

Youth Strike In Front Of United Nations For Climate Action

New York ― Hundreds of young people took a break from their summer vacations to strike for climate action on Friday, joining well-known climate activist Greta Thunberg outside of the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan. The rally precedes a youth-led global climate strike to take place on Sept. 20, days before the U.N. Climate Action Summit. Protesters ― many of them teenagers ― held signs that said, “In Greta We Trust,” and, “If You Won’t Act Like Adults We Will.” They chanted phrases like, “Sea levels are rising, and so are we,” in between speeches by young climate activists. Thunberg, a 16-year-old from Sweden, had arrived in the U.S. earlier in the week by way of a solar-powered boat. Many of the teens at the rally were members of Fridays for Future, a global movement founded by Thunberg, in which students strike on Fridays for climate action.

5 Ways The Economy Is Stacked Against Young People

Today’s rising generation earns 20 percent less than their parents did at their age, despite being better educated and more productive. In fact, millennials are on track to become the first generation in modern American history to make less money than their parents did. The federal minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, is lower than the cost of living in every city in the country — and hasn’t gone up in 10 years. It’s hard to save when the money coming in doesn’t come close to covering the basics.

When Will We Start Applying The Precautionary Principle To Chemicals Killing Our Kids?

The first car my parents carted me and my siblings around in, in the 1950s, didn’t have seatbelts. Not one of us was ever strapped into a car seat. No kid I knew donned a helmet before hopping on her bike. When I was a kid, there were no government-regulated safety standards for cribs or playpens or strollers. There were no “choking hazard” warnings on the packages containing the toys we played with, regardless of how many small, potentially detachable parts came with those toys. After decades marred by child deaths in car accidents, and what were determined to be preventable deaths if only baby equipment manufacturers had thought to make this crib safer, or that stroller less dangerous, the federal government stepped in.  Taxpayer-funded government agencies, like the Consumer Product Safety Commission, founded in 1972, told corporations they had to make products safer.

Remnants Of War

Intense fighting and hideous attacks battered Afghans throughout their country last week as negotiators in Qatar weighed the benefits and costs of a peace agreement that might stop the bloodshed. In Kabul at least 40 people, including one child, were killed in a complex Taliban attack. Dozens of children whose school was partially collapsed by a massive car bomb were injured. Of these, 21 were hospitalized with serious injuries. New York Times correspondent Mujib Mashal posted (on Twitter) a photo of an elementary school child being carried into the Italian Emergency Surgical Center for Victims of War in Kabul. “Blood on his face,” Mashal writes, describing the child. “Still in shock. Still clutching that pencil.”

Teens Less Likely To Use Cannabis When It’s Legal, US Study Finds

Teenagers are less likely to use cannabis in places where the drug has been legalised, a new study suggests. Researchers at Montana State University looked at health surveys of US high school pupils between 1993 and 2017. While overall use among US youth went up, the likelihood of teen use declined by nearly 10% in states where recreational use was legalised. Some 33 states have legalised medical cannabis, while 10 states have also legalised recreational use. Cannabis use remains illegal in all states for people under the age of 18.

Governments & Corporations Being Sued In 28 Countries Over Climate Change

This policy report provides an overview of current issues in climate change litigation, focusing on selected cases and developments from May 2018 to May 2019. The report draws on the Climate Change Laws of the World database and the U.S. Climate Change Litigation database. Climate change litigation is increasingly viewed as a tool to influence policy outcomes and corporate behaviour. Strategic cases are designed to press national governments to be more ambitious on climate or to enforce existing legislation, while cases against major emitters seek compensation for loss and damage. Routine planning and regulatory cases are increasingly including climate change arguments, exposing courts to climate science and climate-related arguments even where incidental to the main claim.

Why We Still Need A Movement To Keep Youth From Joining The Military

Elizabeth King, In These Times - Eighteen is the youngest age at which someone can join the U.S. military without their parents’ permission, yet the military markets itself to—which is to say recruits—children at much younger ages. This is in part accomplished by military recruiters who visit high schools around the country, recruiting children during career fairs and often setting up recruitment tables in cafeteri­as and hallways. As a result, most students in the U.S. will meet a military recruiter for the first time at just 17 years old, and children are getting exposed to military propaganda younger and younger.

What Can South Africa Teach Palestinians?

From April 1 to April 11, 2019, the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), in partnership with the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC), hosted a delegation of 20 Palestinian youth organizers in Johannesburg, South Africa. The delegation was driven by three goals: first, to deepen relations of joint-struggle between Palestinians and South Africans; second, to study how we, as Palestinians, can learn from the historic achievements of the South African struggle; and third, to strengthen working relationships among a new generation of Palestinian youths from various geographic and ideological backgrounds toward a unified national liberation project. The intensive study program featured lectures, seminar discussions, visits to landmark sites of historic struggle, and meetings with South African political figures, community leaders and youth activists.

Eyewitness In Venezuela: A 14-year Perspective

I was in Venezuela from April 26 to May 5, 2019. It was the fifth time I have been there in a span of 14 years, so I was able to put things I saw on this trip in that context. My first visit was in 2005. I saw people begging, sleeping in doorways, street venders filling not just sidewalks, even whole streets in some areas. But I also saw bundles of books being distributed house to house, following a campaign to teach everyone to read. I visited clinics in poor neighborhoods staffed by Cuban medical personnel. I saw independent radio stations run by people in their communities, broadcasting local news, and providing a platform for commentary on current events. Stores had basic foods at affordable, subsidized prices.
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