National Youth Rights Association

National Youth Rights Association
NYRA logo
Formation	1998
Headquarters	Washington, D.C., U.S.
Membership	9,500 members
Website	http://www.youthrights.org

The National Youth Rights Association, or NYRA, is the largest youth rights group in the United States,^[1] with several thousand members. NYRA proposes lessening and removing various legal restrictions that are imposed on young people but not adults, for example, the voting age, drinking age, curfews, etc. NYRA also favors easier access to legal emancipation for young people and greater respect for student rights.

Its slogan was formerly "the last civil rights movement", in reference to the youth rights movement and its aims to remove the last^{[citation needed]} existing legal causes for discrimination (age). It also referred to the theory that removing the first discrimination people experience (age) will reduce or eliminate all other forms. However, by vote of the membership in 2008 prompted by belief that the slogan was too long or controversial, it was changed to "live free, start young".

Structure

NYRA is a 501(c)(3) organization registered as a nonprofit corporation in Maryland. It is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors, including Executive Director Alex Koroknay-Palicz, Katrina Moncure, Keith Mandell, Jeffrey Nadel, Steve Ross, Stefan Muller, Hal Levy, Brian Lombrowski, and Jackie Ferro.^[2] NYRA also maintains an influential Advisory Board, including Scarlett Swerdlow of Students for Sensible Drug Policy; Kevin Keenan of ACLU-San Diego; Adam Fletcher of The Freechild Project; Dr. Robert Epstein, author of The Case Against Adolescence; Dr. David J. Hanson of Potsdam University; activist Bennett Haselton of Peacefire; Grace Llewellyn, author of the Teenage Liberation Handbook; Dr. Mike A. Males, author of Framing Youth and of University of California, Santa Cruz; Dr. Roderic B. Park of University of Colorado; Nadine Strossen of the American Civil Liberties Union, and; Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H, of the American Council on Science.^[3]

NYRA's current Executive Director is Alex Koroknay-Palicz. He has overseen the organization since 2000. As its key spokesman he has been featured on CNN, Fox News, PBS, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, as well as many others, on youth rights issues such as the voting and drinking ages. David Moss serves as the organization's Director of Development and Operations.

Background

The youth rights movement first utilized the Internet in 1991,^{[citation needed]} with the creation of the Y-Rights listserv mailing list. Two members of that original Internet presence, Matthew Walcoff and Matt Herman, began a non-profit organization out of that mailing list known as ASFAR. Not too long after ASFAR was founded, a Rockville, Maryland high school student began a youth rights group called YouthSpeak. At the same time, a third youth from Canada, Joshua Gilbert, was starting a youth rights organization for his country, the Canadian Youth Rights Association (CYRA). Walcoff, Hein and Gilbert all met through ASFAR, and decided to start a non-profit corporation to help unify the youth rights movement, which at that point consisted of almost a dozen different groups around North America and the world. They eventually joined with Herman and created NYRA, the National Youth Rights Association. By June 1998, NYRA was incorporated as a Maryland non-profit public benefit corporation with intention to lead the Youth Rights political movement in the United States.

The National Youth Rights Association (NYRA) was founded in 1998 by the original founders of ASFAR because of the desire to create a moderate, pragmatic organization in the Youth Rights Movement.^{[citation needed]} Significant accomplishments^{[citation needed]} to date include several appearances on CNN, increased awareness of Youth Rights among the youth service field, and its campaign to lower the voting age in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Recent activities

2005 was a significant year for NYRA.^{[citation needed]} In late March, several NYRA members traveled to Vermont in support of a bill lowering the drinking age to eighteen. They visited numerous colleges and signed up over 2000 new supporters. They participated in a debate at the Vermont state house, and the event was significantly covered by the media. Meanwhile in Washington state, a new chapter in Olympia, Washington, testified in support of a state constitutional amendment to lower the state's voting age to sixteen. From February to August 2006, President Adam King led a local campaign to add a nonvoting student adviser onto the Buncombe County (N.C.) Board of Education.^{[citation needed]} His project had the support of the Asheville Citizen-Times and over 60 faculty members and administrators at his high school. However, in August, the Board of Education rejected his proposal citing that they already had sufficient student input. During his campaign, King made several appearances in the media.

By 2006, NYRA's main area of focus was expanding its local chapters.^{[citation needed]} Chapters had increased fivefold between 2003 and 2006. In 2006, the Board of Directors formally established that chapters are separate legal entities. The chapter formation division saw a major restructure near the end of 2006. Previously, the division was divided into five regions with one person assigned to that region. However, the division's management decided to utilize a national pool of representatives working with all intents throughout the nation.

In December 2006, NYRA received its first substantial grant from the Babson Foundation. And in January 2007, it began renting an office from Common Cause in downtown Washington, D.C.^[4]

In 2009, NYRA began to take prominent legal action, as it filed its first joint amicus curiae brief in Stafford v. Redding, a student rights case brought before the United States Supreme Court, and a local chapter filed a lawsuit against the city of West Palm Beach, Florida, in an effort to repeal its curfew, a case which is still ongoing.

See also

• History of youth rights in the United States
• Youth suffrage

References

External links

• Official Website
• Youth Rights Network
• Age of Reason, NYRA's official blog
• NYRA forums