There's a housing development trying to go ahead outside of Albuquerque, NM but teens - Latino and Native American and Anglo - know that it's going to harm the precious centuries-old petroglyphs at the Petroglyph National Monument. Environmental justice - not permitting commerce and government to expand where it affects the important rights, health, opportunity and/or heritage of the more disadvantaged - is being fought for by young and old. Those whose very being these developments might affect. Check out the overview article.

March 2000: against a strong advocacy organization of the youth whom it affects, Proposition 21 - the "Juvenile Justice Initiative", California's war on youth - was passed.
What it does:
* Make it easier to try youth in adult courts.
* Expose children 14 and up to life sentences in adult prison
* Change felony vandalism like graffiti from $50,000 damage to $400 damage, increasing the minimum penalty to one year in jail and thousands of dollars in fines.
* Expand "Three-Strikes" sentencing to sweep up more youth.
* Expand the Death Penalty for youth.
* Opens juvenile records to the public by removing "confidentiality" rules that allowed children to get a fresh start after making mistakes.
* Allows wiretapping of those the government thinks are "gang members."
* Forces youth to admit guilt before being allowed in rehabilitation programs.

Youth - and especially youth of color - are singled out for repressive punishment instead of being singled out for better education and recreational programs. The initiative passed, not because of kids but 'cause their parents and older brothers and sisters didn't come out to vote against it. But the California teens are mobilized and won't let it end here.

Check out the overview at Colorlines.com and youth activities.

"Without a vote, a voice, I am a ghost inhabiting a citizen's space... Before, I made my grievances known in violent ways. Today, what I really want is a politics free of meanness, a way to register my qualms without hostility. I want to walk calmly into a polling place with other citizens, to carry my placid ballot into the booth, check off my choices, then drop my conscience in the common box."
Joe Loya, disenfranchised ex-felon and present associate editor, Pacific News Service