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Stories tagged with “Youth”

Politics

Campus Conservative Group Disbanded Over ‘White Pride’ Graffiti

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Mar 29, 2012 at 3:10 pm

The Towson University chapter of the conservative student group Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) has lost its campus privileges after some of its members chalked “White Pride” at several locations on the school’s Baltimore campus two weeks ago. The school rescinded the group’s official recognition this week after its faculty adviser, Richard Vatz, a communications professor and conservative blogger, said he no longer wanted to be affiliated with the group. He wrote in a letter to the group:

I’m sorry, but that is not how impressive and serious conservatives argue their case. I realize that I have been your adviser only nominally, but I cannot in good conscience advise a group that attacks people or groups personally or tactlessly or does not recognize their dignity and the value of dignified argument in the marketplace of ideas. … I am sorry, but that is not how impressive and serious conservatives argue their case.

Chapter president Matthew Heimbach defended the graffiti, saying, “White pride is no different than gay pride or black pride.” The school’s Black Student Union and others complained, leading to a public meeting on racism attended by 400 students. The group has been extremely controversial since it started, when dozens of students spoke out against granting YWC official status.

YWC is a self-described “right wing youth movement” aimed at fighting “radical multiculturism,” socialism, and immigration, both illegal and legal. While the group is not outwardly white nationalist, its members “frequently participated in racist circles and promoted racist beliefs,” according to the Southern Poverty Law center, which tracks radical groups:

The group has allowed a notorious white supremacist organization to raise funds for it; one of its top officials was arrested in a violent racist attack; and its officials have invited racist extremists to speak and in turn addressed hate groups themselves. At least one YWC member has met with and spoken to right-wing extremist groups overseas.

Heimbach himself is a member of the neo-confederate League of the South and has said the two groups planned to work together because they share “similar principles to us and similar goals.”

But despite the group’s radicalism, it is often allowed into the mainstream conservative fold. It was a co-sponsor of the 2009 College Republican National Convention, where it “received a great response,” and has also co-sponsored the CPAC, the annual conservative gathering in Washington. The group counts former Congressman Tom Tancredo as its “honorary chairman,” and has received funding from the Leadership Institute, which that bills itself as a “training ground” for conservative leaders.

Climate Progress

Romney: Young People Should Vote For The Climate-Denial Party

By Brad Johnson on Mar 20, 2012 at 10:24 am

Speaking at the University of Chicago on Monday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney argued that young people should embrace the Republican Party, because his party is willing to attack Social Security and Medicare, even though it denies the existential threat of fossil fuel pollution. “I don’t see how a young American can vote for a Democrat,”

I don’t see how a young American can vote for, well, can vote for a Democrat. Ha ha. I apologize for being so offensive for saying that but I catch your attention but I mean that. In the humor there’s some truth there. And I say this for this reason. That party is focused on providing more and more benefits to my generation and amounting trillion-dollar deficits my generation will never pay for.

Watch it:

Man-made climate change, now painted as a “pseudo-religion” by the Republican Party, is one of the greatest threats to prosperity for young Americans. The accumulation of carbon pollution from unlimited fossil fuel burning represents a generational debt of almost inconceivable proportions.

When he was governor of Massachusetts nine years ago, Romney supported limits on coal-plant pollution, saying he wouldn’t support “jobs that kill people.” Now, like the rest of the Republican Party, he has embraced the fossil-driven anti-science ideology of the Koch brothers and Sarah Palin, questioning climate science and pushing a drill-baby-drill agenda.

Without any apparent sense of irony, Romney concluded that the Republican Party is dedicated to preserving “this extraordinary unique nation” from threats that include a “lack of a willingness to deal with the challenges we have.”

NEWS FLASH

One Unemployed Youth Costs Taxpayers $14,000 Each Year | According to work done by researchers from Columbia University and the City University of New York, each unemployed youth — someone between the ages of 16 and 24 who is in neither work nor school — costs taxpayers nearly $14,000 dollars per year in direct costs for things like medical bills and government aid, while ultimately creating a “social burden” of more than $37,000 annually (when accounting for the costs of crime and lost tax revenue). As the Atlantic’s Jordan Weissmann noted, the current generation of unemployed youth “will cost taxpayers $437 billion over the next five years, and $1.15 trillion over the course of their lifetime.”

Climate Progress

Youth in Revolt: Younger Generations Step up the Pressure on Climate

By Stephen Lacey on Dec 12, 2011 at 2:37 pm

21-year old Abigail Borah is led from the COP after expressing her frustrations to American negotiators over the lack of bold U.S. action on climate.

I come from the energy world. If you’ve ever been to an energy conference — particularly one revolving around fossil fuels — the first thing you’ll notice is that the scene is dominated by old, white males. Depending on the renewable energy conference, the crowd gets much more diverse in age and ethnicity.

The COP climate conference is a whole different scene. Of course, it’s an international UN sponsored event, so it’s inherently diverse. What’s unique is the large number of young people in attendance.

It’s easy to get bogged down by the fact that the international negotiations are slow moving and, despite the last-minute deal brokered in Durban, still haven’t gotten us to close to where we need to be scientifically.

I remember one young woman in a background briefing with American negotiators last week saying “you’ve been negotiating this issue my entire life.”

If you’re still feeling down by the pace of action, one thing should give you hope about the process: the active presence of younger generations at these conferences — tracking negotiations, asking pointed questions, setting up meetings with diplomats, organizing protests, and doing anything they can to get youth voices heard.

I know this isn’t particularly new. Youth delegations have been coming to these meetings in greater numbers each year. But as a newcomer to the climate negotiation scene, it’s been pretty remarkable for me to see.

Two of these young adults particularly struck me: 24-year old American Ellie Johnston and 22-year old Chinese Songquio Yao, who went to Durban to “build bridges” and do what so many negotiators were unable to do for years. Johnston was part of a 14-member delegation representing SustainUS, a national youth coalition devoted to sustainability issues. And Yao was with a 13-member delegation from the China Youth Climate Action Network.

The Chinese and American youth delegations both met with their respective negotiators to express their passion for the issues.

Read more

Climate Progress

Speaking On Behalf Of Half The World’s Population, Climate Hero Anjali Appadurai Mic Checks Climate Summit To ‘Get It Done’

By Brad Johnson on Dec 10, 2011 at 2:30 pm

Anjali Appadurai uses the people's mic at COP17.

Anjali Appadurai spoke on behalf of the world’s youth at COP17, the UN climate summit in Durban, South Africa, using the people’s mic to say, “Get it done!” Appadurai, a student at the College of the Atlantic in Maine, gave the final address to the delegates before what was supposed to be the concluding session. Instead, negotiators have struggled through Friday and Saturday with the harsh conflict between urgent scientific necessity and political possibility.

Appadurai challenged the delegates to remember that Africa is on the “frontlines of climate change.” She accused the assembled nations of betraying her generation, saying we are living in “an era in which narrow self-interest prevailed over science, reason and common compassion”:

The most stark betrayal of your generation’s responsibility to ours is that you call this “ambition.” Where is the courage in these rooms? Now is not the time for incremental action. In the long run, these will be seen as the defining moments of an era in which narrow self-interest prevailed over science, reason and common compassion.

Watch it:

“On a purely personal note, I wonder why we let not speak half of the world’s population first in this conference, but only last,” acting COP president Artur Runge-Metzger, chair of the European negotiating team, mused after Appadurai spoke.

Transcript: Read more

Climate Progress

Durban Climate Hero Abigail Borah: ‘I Am Speaking On Behalf Of The USA Because My Negotiators Cannot’

By Brad Johnson on Dec 8, 2011 at 10:30 pm

Read all the ThinkProgress coverage from the Durban climate talks.

The delegates assembled in Durban, South Africa to tackle the civilizational challenge of manmade climate destruction burst into sustained applause on Thursday when a young American interrupted the proceedings to speak on behalf of the United States people. Abigail Borah, a 21-year-old student from Middlebury College and member of the youth climate delegation, spoke out in the plenary hall as US climate envoy Todd Stern prepared to address the assembled environmental ministers. “I am scared for my future,” she said, because of the “obstructionist Congress” and the “empty rhetoric” of President Obama:

I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America because my negotiators cannot. The obstructionist Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition for far too long. I am scared for my future. 2020 is too late to wait. We need an urgent path to a fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty. We need leaders who will commit to real change, not empty rhetoric. Keep your promises. Keep our hope alive.

Watch her speak, from Democracy Now:

Read more

NEWS FLASH

Unemployment For Young Adults Is Highest Since World War II | According to new Census data released today, young adults (aged 16-29) “suffer from the highest unemployment since World War II.” Total employment in this age group stands at just 55.3 percent, “down from 67.3 percent in 2000.” Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard University, said that “these people will be scarred, and they will be called the ‘lost generation’ — in that their careers would not be the same way if we had avoided this economic disaster.”

Climate Progress

Building a New Society for Young Climate Leaders

By Climate Guest Blogger on Sep 15, 2011 at 8:42 am

by Eban Goodstein

Events of the past year have starkly revealed the limits of an outside lobbying strategy to impact climate policy in Washington. Given the changed political landscape, and with climate change impacts accelerating, we need new strategies.

C2C Fellows is a new national network for young people aspiring to sustainability leadership in politics and business.

C2C Fellows will engage 300 students and recent graduates each year in intensive leadership training. We will challenge young people to consider: What skills and experiences are needed to become people of power, people with the ability to affect the future, within five to ten years? C2C will then support the Fellows to gain these skills.

Read more

Economy

House GOP Budget Would Cut Nutrition Assistance For Hundreds Of Thousands Of Women And Children

By Pat Garofalo on May 24, 2011 at 2:20 pm

House Republicans have been facing a backlash after voting for a plan authored by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) that would dismantle Medicare while cutting taxes for the rich. But that plan also included deep cuts in discretionary spending, the destructiveness of which is becoming more apparent as the budget process moves forward.

For instance, the Republican budget would implement a 15 percent cut in the agency tasked with policing oil markets, even with energy speculation at an all-time high. That same portion of the budget — which is being marked up by the House Appropriations agricultural subcommittee — would also cut $832 million from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), a program that provides low-income women and children with food, counseling, and health care.

As the AP reported, Republicans claim that the cuts “are taken from excess dollars in those accounts, and participants won’t see a decrease in services.” However, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities ran the numbers and found that, with the expected increase in food prices over the coming months, hundreds of thousands of women and children would be bumped from WIC under the GOP’s plan:

House Republicans are proposing a cut in the WIC nutrition program that would force WIC to turn away 325,000 to 475,000 eligible low-income women and young children next year…Economists have varying views on the size of the likely increase in food prices over the next 18 months. If the cost of WIC foods increases by 2 percent between fiscal years 2011 and 2012 — the smallest increase likely — the proposed funding cut would force WIC to serve roughly 325,000 fewer people in 2012 than in 2011. If, as some food price experts believe likely, the price increase is 5 percent, WIC would have to be cut by roughly 475,000 people. Both of these estimates reflect the use of all contingency funds, as well as the use of carryover funds from fiscal year 2011, to close funding shortfalls.

According to the Government Accountability Office, every dollar invested in WIC “generated $2.89 in health care savings during the first year after birth and $3.50 in savings over 18 years.” As Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) said regarding an earlier attempt by Republicans to cut WIC, “On two levels [the cuts are] wrong. One is they’re wrong morally…But on a second level it’s fiscally stupid, because if you don’t feed kids, if you don’t feed mothers and get them up to speed, they deliver a low birth-weight baby that then you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars dealing with in the premie units of hospitals.”

LGBT

Teaching Sexuality In Schools Is Not a ‘Threat,’ It Promotes Safety And Understanding Of LGBT People

By Zack Ford on May 23, 2011 at 1:15 pm

For decades, opponents of equality have used one tactic more than any other to scare voters away from supporting justice for LGBT Americans: children. Riding on the decades-old implications that all gay people are pedophiles, that young people can be “recruited” into a same-sex orientation, and the “ick” factor of anal sex, today’s ads, campaigns, and talking points similarly threaten that “homosexuality will be taught in schools.” In recent years, groups like the National Organization for Marriage often can’t be bothered to generate new commercials, recycling the same content from year to year, like this TV ad currently running in New York that is the same exact ad they used two years ago:

Viewers, of course, are expected to ignore the fact that all the threats made in the ad are verifiably untrue.

The truth is that young people (even elementary school students) are quite capable of understanding that some men love men and some women love women without even learning a thing about sex. The documentary It’s Elementary demonstrated this fifteen years ago. The California Senate has passed a bill called the FAIR Education Act, which would require schools to include LGBT history, culture, and visibility in curricula. Some schools are already offering popular “gay studies” courses that even go further in talking about LGBT issues. Research shows that schools that actually talk about how and why anti-gay bullying is bad are safer for LGBT youth than schools that don’t. The inclusion of LGBT identities in schools is not a threat to young people; it’s a threat to their parents who would prefer they oppose LGBT equality.

Queerty’s Dan Villareal tried to make this point last week in a post called, “Can We Please Just Start Admitting That We Do Actually Want To Indoctrinate Kids?” In it, he offers — in Queerty’s traditionally off-color fashion — that LGBT activists should not try to counter the threats made in these ads, but instead own the fact that visibility and awareness are important aspects of social justice. Yes, young people should learn that same-sex families are a part of our culture. More importantly, same-sex families might very well be a part of those young people’s lives — now or in the future. Conversely, Tennessee’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill is the perfect example of how opponents of LGBT equality are very much trying to prevent any education about the diversity of our society. And Villareal’s post so pushed Tony Perkins’ buttons that the virulently anti-gay Family Research Council responded with a flabbergasted, “SEE?”, using the opportunity to push their lie-ridden “Homosexuality in Your Child’s School” (PDF) fear-mongering propaganda.

Ultimately, media visibility for the LGBT community has far surpassed legal equality, so young people are exposed to all kinds of same-sex families and LGBT political debates as it is. Even this week, the New York Times is showcasing the coming out stories of teenagers. In the end, if young people are “confused” (as the below 2009 NOM ad from New Hampshire suggested), it’s only because opponents of equality have taken every step possible to prevent them from accessing a proper education about the world around them:

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