According to the most recent issue, it seems ASFAR’s ‘zine, Youth Truth is ceasing publication. After eight years it is sad to see it go, but truth be told, Youth Truth has been on life support for at least half of that time. It had become a one person endeavor (and it showed) filled mostly with news links. Even so, the publication quality was always impressively high and it was nice to see a solid youth rights publication (regardless of content) in print. NYRA has the full archive in print at our office and accessible online at the Youth Rights Network. Susan’s reasons for giving it up after all this time:

Its circulation is minuscule, its cost is prohibitive (for ASFAR’s budget anyway), its contributors have dwindled, and its editor is burned out.

The exact problems I identified six years ago and sought to solve with my suggestion that Youth Truth become a joint project for the movement as a whole and benefit from NYRA’s involvement, membership and support. An arrangement that most certainly would have saved the publication and made it far more relevant. ASFAR was stubborn however and decided not to take the offer and not to make any real changes to YT until the $2,000 a year price-tag (as of 2002 at least) became too much to bear. It is a shame.

But I’m not writing this to say “I told you so” or kick someone when they are down. I just think it is appropriate to mark the end of a publication that has been formative for the few hard core youth rights supporters who have read it and subscribed over the last eight years or so.

I also think some of Susan’s final words were worth noting and worth drawing attention to:

The realization that this is the last issue of Youth Truth, at least for awhile, has made me think about how to sum it all up for our readers, our supporters, our opponents, and the American public at large.

I keep thinking of a comedy sketch I remember from an early Saturday Night Live episode — I think it was performed by Gilda Radner, Lorraine Newman, and John Belushi. It took place in a medieval times, in a doctor’s consulting room that doubled as a barbershop, where a worried mother brought her ailing daughter for treatment. After reciting some mumbo-jumbo about the patient’s imbalance of bodily “humors,” the doctor prescribed the only treatment he knows: bleeding. As the girl’s condition declined throughout the skit, the doctor kept up the treatment. If she’s still sick, she must need more bleeding – what other answer could there be? After the inevitable outcome, at the end of the skit, the medieval doctor remained convinced he’d done all he could for the poor girl, and the mother dutifully paid the bill.

It’s human nature. We develop certain beliefs or ways of behaving in life and cling to them because they are all we know. We ignore evidence that contradicts what we think we know, and keep using the same techniques to solve all our problems, in all situations. When disastrous consequences ensue, instead of re-examining our old assumptions, we tend to conclude that we just didn’t use the same old strategies soon enough, or strongly enough… because to admit that there might be another, better way, we’d have to admit that we might have been doing the wrong thing all along.

With a few brief respites, we as a society have been pursuing the same ways of dealing with children for over a century now: tightening restrictions, punishing, demanding ever more conformity and obedience, infantilizing adolescents and even young adults.

And year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation, we still hear the same old complaints. Kids don’t appreciation, they don’t behave, they don’t learn. They spend too much time on frivolous pursuits. They have no work ethic, no respect. They don’t understand the value of a dollar. They’re impulsive. They don’t understand risk. They don’t look ahead to the future.

And year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation, adult society responds with more of the same.

Out adult population has all grown up in captivity; it is all they know. The cage in which we expect children to remain becomes even smaller, as we heap ever-harsher punishments onto their feeblest attempts to escape. Are we doomed to a never-ending battle between the desire of adults to control and the need of youth for freedom and self-determination?

Must we bleed the “patient” to death before we stop?

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First, look at this news story.

It was early last month when Jane Hambleton of Fort Dodge found the bottle under the front seat of her 19-year-old son’s pride and joy.

Her next move was a call to The Des Moines Register’s classified advertising department:

OLDS 1999 Intrigue

“Totally uncool parents who obviously don’t love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for 3 weeks before snoopy mom who needs to get a life found booze under front seat. $3,700/offer. Call meanest mom on the planet.”

The son soon found himself on foot. And the meanest mom on the planet became the target of accolades from across Iowa and beyond.

Hambleton, 48, a disc jockey, said she has fielded more than 70 telephone calls from emergency room technicians, nurses, school counselors and even a Georgia man, who wanted to congratulate her.

“The ad cost a fortune, but you know what? I’m telling people what happened here. I’m not just going to put the car for resale when there’s nothing wrong with it, except the driver made a dumb decision,” Hambleton said. “It’s overwhelming, the number of calls I’ve gotten from people saying, ‘Thank you, it’s nice to see a responsible parent.’ So far, there are no calls from anyone saying, ‘You’re really strict. You’re real overboard, lady.’ ”

Steven Hambleton, a freshman business major at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City, obviously was not one of the callers. And he didn’t feel much like talking when contacted Tuesday.

“I don’t think you can print” his response to the ad, his mother said. “He’s very, very unhappy.”

Jane Hambleton described her son as a great kid who does excellently in college and is active in church. But she’ll stick to her guns, even though Steven Hambleton said that the bottle of alcohol wasn’t his, and that someone else had left it in his (former) car.

For the record, Mom believes him.

But she and her husband set two rules when they bought the car at Thanksgiving: No booze, and always keep the car locked. The car sold within two weeks, but Hambleton said she will continue the ad for another week - just for the feedback.

“A couple in Hubbard bought it for their 19-year-old son,” she said. “I told the kid when they were leaving, ‘Do not have any booze in that car. And if you do, don’t hide it under the front seat.’ “

When you are finished vomiting, come on back here for commentary.

Basically some self-righteous mother decided to sell her 19-year-old son’s car because she found an alcohol bottle in it. If that weren’t enough, the ad she put in the newspaper to sell the car explicitly stated she was doing this to get back at him, that he had “violated her car rules” so she was punishing him.

So let’s review. No indication that he was actually drinking and driving. She saw something in his car she didn’t like and decided he wasn’t allowed to have it anymore, so she sold it, something he loves (and who can blame him, I love my car, too!) behind his back and without his consent. She found an alcohol bottle, so she decided to make his life hell.

If only it stopped there! Because of the little ad she put, explaining what she was doing and why, a lot of people decided to call her up and congratulate her! She was being this big bad “tough disciplinarian” on her (adult) son, so everyone thinks she’s some kind of hero. At first, I thought this was just a lot of media exaggeration, until I went to the article itself and saw the comments. I’m still having trouble keeping my lunch down after reading that.

So what does this mean? It means it is socially acceptable to publicly humiliate a teenager. I mean, what if this woman had done this to her husband instead of her son? Would you be congratulating her? Might be some, but there’d be a lot more people probably complaining to her that she had no right to do something like that to a “grown man”. That would probably not even be newsworthy. But humiliating your son gets you national commendations.

I mean, I can’t imagine how he feels right now. His mother betrayed him, stole and sold something he loved, and now the whole state and beyond is laughing at him and saying he deserved it, that his mother needed to be strict with him. Betrayed by a loved one, lost a major cherished possession, and publicly humiliated and called out.

And what for? Because there was a beer bottle in his car and he’s under 21? Has our society gotten so hysterical over the thought of anyone under 21 even being near alcohol that this sort of widespread mocking is called for? I mean, if he was actually drinking and driving, maybe, but it was not stated if he was in the article, and it would have said if he had, so I’m going to assume he is innocent of that.

This is the power parents have over their children, even ones over age of adulthood. It is appalling. It is inhuman. Worst of all, it is a disgusting perversion of the concept of love in our society. To love is to make someone miserable based on your own personal morals? Well, if that someone is under 21, then yes, I guess it is.

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This blog entry is partially a response to the e-mail below, and partially a general comment, so not everything is gonna be directly related to or in response to this quoted bit:

The Patriot Act is extremely mild compared to the many infringements on privacy that young people are subjected to. If you care about the right to privacy, consider the following.

The Patriot Act doesn’t require that individuals submit to random, suspicionless drug testing as many schools and indeed some parents are now requiring. Unlike drug testing at work, youth usually don’t have any choice whether to be at school or live with their parents.

The Patriot Act doesn’t allow authorities to search through an individual’s property without probable cause like schools do with lockers and parents do with everything.

The Patriot Act allows for increased use of wiretaps and monitoring of e-mail but nothing close to the kind of tracking software parents regularly place on their kid’s computers that tracks and records every keystroke and action taken with the computer. Every website, every word typed, every program used is recorded and sent to parents.

The Patriot Act may allow the government, in some cases, to look at what books you are checking out, but it doesn’t outright ban you from looking at or listening to certain books, movies, websites, magazines and music like age restrictions do.

While not part of the Patriot Act, no doubt you are alarmed by the increasing use of security cameras in public places watching our every move. That pales in comparison to the ways teens are tracked. Parents have taken to putting GPS tracking devices into backpacks and cars. Plus many cell phones now have GPS enabled on them and parents use those to track their kid’s movements. Furthermore there are computers parents install in cars that record every turn you make, how fast you go, how complete a stop you make, etc.

More directly, parents are even installing cameras in their kid’s bedrooms to monitor them at all times. Or removing their bedroom doors so they have no privacy whatsoever. This is all perfectly legal and happens all across the country.

As you of course know, the government (via schools) controls what clothes you wear, how you style your hair, whether you can have a cell phone or other electronic device, and what you can say or write in school. The Patriot Act doesn’t come close to that.

The war is indeed an important issue. But who is it that we are sending overseas to fight and die in that war? Young people. Young people who probably weren’t old enough to vote for the politicians that sent them to that war. Young people who risk their lives in the desert and are not treated as equals in this country or given the respect they deserve for making such a sacrifice. They return home and unlike most Americans can’t open a can of beer while watching a football game, or go out to a bar with a few buddies, or even attend many concerts. Over 645 young Americans have died in the desert while never being respected as equals in the nation that sent them there.

The infringements on the privacy of youth are more extreme than the Patriot Act ever was or will be, and affect far more people on a daily basis. After being raised as youth with no expectation of privacy is it any wonder people don’t value privacy as much when they get older and get into power? And while I’m not going to say that the drinking age is more important than the war, it directly relates to the war and is another injustice heaped upon young people that absolutely needs to be addressed.

Youth rights isn’t just some side project or a somehow a selfish, small issue that distracts from ‘bigger’ issues out in the world. I know you didn’t say that, and I’m not saying people should vote only on the basis of youth rights, but youth rights is a HUGE issue that deserves a lot more attention and respect than it currently gets - even from NYRA members. Cause if we don’t put youth rights first, who will?

Finally, if you (and this isn’t just directed to you) oppose the Patriot Act and the War and invasions on privacy and everything else, did you vote for candidates who opposed those policies? Were you able to or were you prevented from voting by the voting age? Who knows how different the country would be today if you and your peers were able to vote.

Youth rights is directly intertwined with all other issues you care about in society. It should never be put on the backburner, even in an election year.

If youth are free, then we all will be free.

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