I Want My Juvie TV!

There's a new series called Juvie, coming out next month on MTV (Hat tip: Hasdai).

From the MTV.com preview:

What happens when otherwise good kids have a run-in with the law? Every young person who has ever driven too fast, drank too much, or left a party right before the cops came will relate to the gritty new documentary series "Juvies." Welcome to Indiana's Lake Country Juvenile Center, where first-time offenders wait to discover their fates. With unprecedented access, the show follows their day-to-day life in the center and in court -- where it is up to one judge to decide their fate.

The best I can tell, it's combination of Judge Judy, Sally Jessie Raphael (the ones where they send the kids to the boot camps) and My Super Sweet 16.

Apparently the show will focus on 16 kids who get sent through a juvenile facility in northwest Indiana. The show starts airing on Feb. 8th and it looks like there will be 8 episodes.

Even before the show's been aired, which was supposed to start back in September, there's already a controversy. Apparently there's even been a lawsuit which has swept up some gossip bloggers.

I just hope this show lives up to all this hype!

Better Red Than Dead

Tragic death (I suppose it's too soon to declare it a murder, maybe a manslaughter though) of a young person at a prep school for juvenile offenders in Maryland. Allegedly staff sat on the kid for hours, while others watched, until the kid died!

First, the loss of life aside, it's a little bizarre that there's a school called the Bowling Brook Preparatory School and it's for youthful offenders. I mean, from the name, one could easily confuse it with a school for the children of the privileged classes.

Maryland's Department of Juvenile Services has a contract with Bowling Brook to educate juveniles in trouble with the law. Of the 170 students at the school on Tuesday, 74 were sent there by the department, said Edward Hopkins, a juvenile services spokesman.

So there are 96 kids going to school with Maryland's "juveniles in trouble with the law" who weren't referred by the Department of Juvenile Services? DAMN! It sucks to be them. I mean, they must learn all kinds of things before/during/after class that aren't part of the standard curriculum. That's what happens in any school, or prison, so I'm sure it goes on at this combination school-prison.

But I will say that unlike in some other places, people with experience with this school say this is an anomaly. It's not like this is a place with a reputation for guards staging fights between youth inmates or anything. From the same AP report...

Bowling Brook has been in operation for decades and has drawn few complaints from youth advocates, who expressed surprise at Simmons' death.

"My experience with Bowling Brook had always been that it's a great program," said Susan B. Leviton, who directs the juvenile law clinic at the University of Maryland. "When you (visited) Bowling Brook, every kid was involved in sports, they were going to school, they were keeping facilities clean. It was a very active and engaged place."

Either it's a great place with one huge stain on its record. Or they do a great job of cleaning everything up when people come for a visit. Either way, this kid's death is a tragedy.

Help is on the waaaaaayyyyyy....

The Rutgers-Camden School of Law has opened a new clinic for juvenile offenders.

The Children's Justice Clinic will allow law students to represent children as clients and ideally, get at the underlying issues that led them to an interaction with the criminal justice system in the first place. According to the clinic's co-director, C.J. Lore:

“We have a small caseload and we can really take the opportunity to get involved in the child's life so the students spend an incredible amount of time with them so they get to the root problems.”

That's good news for kids in the Camden area. Hopefully, it's something that will become a national trend. At the very least, it's a reason for me to spend time in Camden, should I ever decide to go to law school.

Kiddie Killers and Baby Battery, Pt. III

From an article on bias in the juvenile criminal justice system...

"There is a tremendously disproportionate number of African-Americans and Hispanics in detention centers where we know the majority of the population in those counties is not minority," said an irritated Assemblyman William Payne, D-Essex.

This is true and it mirrors the high rates of incarciration for people of color generally in the Garden State. The majority white populations of these counties live in extraordinarily affluent areas (Glen Ridge, Montclair, etc.) compared with their urban peers (yes, that means you, Newark, Irvington, East Orange, etc.) presumably where the majority of these young inmates are being drawn from. The same is true in other counties with an urban center, not just Essex, all across New Jersey.

So what to do?

One of the problems seems to be that police are allowed to exercise discretion when diverting youths into the juvenile justice system, but often times, they opt not to use this program for young people of color.

"For minor charges and for some first-time offenders, police can act without an accused having to go to court. The process is supposed to work with the police officer discussing the offense with the youth, a parent or guardian, and with the victim. As a result, the youth may pay restitution or do community service.

Delinquency, vandalism and disorderly behavior are the sort of charges the program targets."

If I were a betting man, I'd say that one of the proposed solutions will suggest a new plan that deals with all young people in a uniform fashion, so individual police biases don't have an opportunity to play a role in the decision-making process.

This is wrong! And it's how we got to the place we're at today with mandatory minimum sentences.

After seeing rich white defendants going free because of their community connections, highly paid lawyers and general ability to make a judge feel like you're not a danger to society, bright politicians got "tough on crime" with mandatory sentences, based on the weight of the drugs involved, handcuffing a judge's ability to tailor a sentence based on the totality of the defendant's involvement, and not just the weight of the drugs they were caught with.

Is it possible that police and politicians could just become aware that this bias exists and then try to avoid it in the future? I doubt it. But I know one-size-fits-all sentences do nothing to ensure that justice is served.

So what will New Jersey pols do? We'll have to wait and see...

Juvenile Drinkers

I saw my blog for the first time in the Google Alerts I get everyday. It was for my last post on underage drinking. Pretty cool.

So in keeping with that theme, (not really) I'm writing today to express (feigned) outrage that Grey Goose vodka will be sponsoring the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies!

I mean, I don't think it's appropriate for horses to be drinking vodka, especially not young horse-athletes. I think this is just a way for the Breeders to get the 2 year old fillies drunk at the “Grey Goose Vodka Clubhouse” at Monmouth Park and then go home with "the winnings".

And we haven't even gotten into the all the little girls who want a pony and will see this! Or don't their fathers bring them to the track for a little daddy-daughter bonding?

Underage Drinking

To get ideas for what to write on this blog, I set up Google News alerts for the words "underage", "youth" and "juvenile". It's interesting to see which terms bring up what stories.

By far the most common news story involving the word "underage" centers on drinking by under-21 year olds, their parties, and the consequences, both legal and life-altering, that sometimes ensues.

Now having been an under-21 year old drinker for most of my life, from the moment the mohle put a few drops of wine on my lips, just before the unkindest of cuts, until I reached the age of maturity on June 27, 2000, (That's not actually true, I'm pretty sure I was legal to drink the semester I studied abroad in Ghana. I'm not sure what the drinking age is there, but no one ever asked me for ID, just money.) I know a little bit about underage drinking.

I'm not saying this isn't a phenomenon worthy of news coverage and discussion by those concerned with youth. Afterall, there are real adverse consequences for the teens themselves, to say nothing of society, especially around the issues of driving drunk. But there seems to be an increase in the media hype and hysteria around the issue of underage drinking that it begs a few questions.

First, what makes this news? There has always been illicit alcohol consumption, as long as alcohol has been illegal for certain groups, usually -- but not always -- distinguished by age.

Second, given that there will always be some underage drinking, what should our society's response be? Should we go after the driver's license of anyone caught with alcohol before they turn 21, as has been recently proposed in Oregon?

Should we target the parties where underage drinkers congregate? What if the parties are under control? What if our societal response was to create incentives young people to drink responsibly and then reward them when they do so, at least with some official benign neglect of their legal trangression?

I'd prefer some sort of broad social acknowledgement that most people who consume alcohol have done so before they reached 21, to the increasing legal consequences and penalties that we, as a society, have fallen in love with over the last 2 decades, to the almost complete exclusion of other solutions.

I'm thrilled that drunk driving has gone down since the drinking age became 21 nationwide. Is it possible that this is a result of increased education and awareness among teens, and not increased criminal penalties? That certainly seems to be the case for the late-'90s decline in youth tobacco smoking.

But it vexes me that an 18 year old is old enough to vote and die in the military, but can't buy a beer when he or she is home on leave. Perhaps the answer lies in licensing the drinking behavior of young people, and while we're at it, why not all people? Make them take a test that shows knowledge of alcohol absorption rates, alcohol by volume amounts of different drinks, etc. Rather than revoke their driver's license if they're caught drinking irresponsibly-- but not driving -- take away their license to drink.

Would this approach increase the number of underage drinkers? Probably, at least in the short-term. But at least we could be confident that all the licensed drinkers demonstrated sufficent knowledge to pass the test.

And would that then mean an increase in the collateral consequences associated with drinking? Perhaps. But that is why it is necessary to stress to impressionable young people especially, that our problem as a society, isn't with what or how much you drink, but how you behave when you've been drinking and that you're aware of the risks versus rewards when you drink.

If you're not a problem drinker, and don't cause problems for anyone else, then I think we should stop punishing people for what they put into their bodies, even if we don't like the age at which they're doing it. With my background in drug policy reform -- from a youth's perspective -- I've watched the larger national groups (NORML, DPA, MPP, etc.) bend over backwards to figure out a way to make drugs legal for adults, while maintaining its illegal status for young people, either under 18 or 21.

I don't think there is a way. But I'd be interested in hearing from others with different ideas.

It strikes me that the best way to get young people to not do something is to educate them on the reasons why that something is a bad idea. Criminal penalties can be a part of that, but we will never succeed if that's the only strategy. After all, it's not the size of the penalty that deters people, but their evalution of the likelihood that such a penalty would be imposed upon them.

So should we go after every underage drinker to increase that likelihood? Or would it be better to teach people to exercise responsible behavior and then hold them to that expectation?

An Apology Senator...

"This committee owes an apology, Senator", said Tom Hagen, in one of my favorite scenes in The Godfather, Part II.

And it seems like today, we have an apology from Cully Stimson, the Defense Department's Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs. He says,

"Regrettably, my comments left the impression that I question the integrity of those engaged in the zealous defense of detainees in Guantanamo. I do not.

I believe firmly that a foundational principle of our legal system is that the system works best when both sides are represented by competent legal counsel. I support pro bono work, as I said in the interview. I was a criminal defense attorney in two of my three tours in the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps. I zealously represented unpopular clients -- people charged with crimes that did not make them, or their attorneys, popular in the military."

This is great! But I can't help but notice that nowhere in his apology is there anything about the corporate CEOs taking their business away from the powerful law firms whose associates and partners represent Gitmo detainees pro bono.

So while it's nice that he supports pro bono work and has done some defense work when he was a Navy JAG, this apology subtly leaves out his call for corporate clients to investigate (and presumably drop) the law firms who are also representing people held in Gitmo.

I think that's called a non-apology, apology, depending on what your definition of is and apologize, is.

Kiddie Killers, Pt. II

Seems like even the Mormons aren't immune. And here I thought they were such nice people. I guess what the Ghanaians say is true. There really is a menace in every village.

Actually, I have no idea if any of the people involved are part of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, but that's neither here nor there. Once again, it's a case involving a 14 year old killing a 15 year old, this time by strangling her and leaving her body in a public park.

Seems like the prosecutors can't decide how to charge him, as a juvenile or as an adult. Good thing the prosecutors have until Jan. 26th to formally file charges. Good luck with that choice! In the meantime, the unnamed kid is being held in a juvenile facility. Well, at least that lessens the chance he'll be raped while he awaits trial. (Yes, I know abuse in juvenile detention facilities is not uncommon, but it's rarer than when a young kid is held in an adult facility with way crazier inmates all around.)

Which brings me to my next question. If Justice is treating equals equally, and unequals unequally, as Aristotle teaches us, then is it just to treat a 14 year old murderer as a juvenile if he kills in one state but not if he kills in another? I know States have different justice systems, to say nothing of driving ages, for a reason (yay, Federalism!) but is it right to offer treatment and education, in addition to incarceration to 14 year olds in one state but not in all of them?

Is there an issue of Federally protected rights? I don't know since I haven't gone to law school, so maybe one of the lawyers I'm friends with can take a break from charging $450 an hour and answer that for me. There probably isn't, but maybe there should be?

What if one of the accused is the son of a cop? Should that make any difference? In my limited experience, it certainly does. And it seems like it does in Gary, IN where a 17 year old charged with reckless homicide isn't automatically waived into adult court, while a 15 year old, charged with murder gets the free ride to the grown-up court room. I know they're not charged the same, but honestly, if the first kid didn't have a Dad on the local police force, would he be in adult criminal proceedings already? My hunch is that he would. Is that Justice?

Things that make you go, "Hmmmmmmm."

Justice or Just Us?

I would think that Charles D. Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, one of top lawyers at the Defense Department would be smart enough not to go on record chastising some of America's top law firms for having their partners and/or associates represent pro bono "America's enemies" being held in Gitmo.

But I would have also thought that a majority of Americans would be smart enough not to vote for W. twice. Alas, it was not to be, in either case. This has very little to do with youth rights issues, other than tangentially, as there are some minors being held at Gitmo, allegedly.

Having worked with lawyers representing unpopular clients for free, I can say that it is essential for there to be a Justice system that works for everyone. There is a much greater need for these services than there are lawyers willing to do this difficult, but essential, work. And the people who usually get the help are the ones with the "sexiest" cases -- and a Gitmo detainee held without charges is about a sexy as it gets in legal circles.

So I'm not surprised that the top firms in the U.S. are representing all but two of these men, coordinated by the excellent staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who I also had the pleasure of working with in the aftermath post-9/11. As Stimson said,

“I think, quite honestly, when corporate C.E.O.’s see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.”

Now generally, I'm not one to stick up for corporate CEOs, but I think they'll do America proud and maintain their relationships with their corporate counsel. In fact, I'll go even further and make the first of what I'm sure will be many (incorrect) predictions on this blog and say that at least one CEO will publicly rebuke Stimson and the entire Bush Administration for putting and Justice for all opposite the profits their companies make.

Justice is what makes profit possible -- and markets for that matter. Don't believe me? Go ask someone involved in an illicit industry where they go when their competitors engage in unfair practices? It ain't to court, it's to the corner to settle the score. And as Virgil Sollozzo, "The Turk" from the first Godfather famously quipped, " I'm a businessman; blood is a big expense."

Here's hoping America's CEOs agree and put Justice at the top of their priority list, where it belongs. Otherwise, who knows what might happen as a result?

Kiddie Killers and Baby Battery

What to do about juvenile justice in America? Do we coddle criminals by sending teenagers who presumably know right from wrong to a juvenile detention center, instead of adult lock up? What about the kids who are too young even for youth detention centers?

My morning email news round up had two interesting stories about these very vexing questions. The first, is about a 14 year old who has plead guilty to 2nd degree murder, after killing his 15 year old brother on Christmas Eve.

Apparently, if he had been one year older, in his state the case would have automatically gone to adult criminal court and he could have received life in prison for his crime.

But, "Because he is a juvenile, the boy's name, record and details of the case are private and his hearing Thursday was closed." And according to a spokesman for the Office of Youth Development (what a euphemism!) "He will get a tremendous amount of treatment for whatever problem he has."

So the kid gets to go to classes, counseling and, here's the kicker, according to the District Attorney, "the teenager will have a clean record once his sentence is completed."

Now I can totally understand why some people are upset about the state of the juvenile justice system in the U.S. But it seems to me, if the kid was 15 and sent to adult court and adult prison, he'd certainly not get the appropriate services he needs, since most programs in prisons have been cut significantly since American got "tough on crime" in the '80s and '90s.

So instead, the teenager will get about 7 years, and have a clean record with which to re-start his life. Hopefully the counseling works, he isn't abused while in the state's custody It's too bad that is his 15 year old brother won't have the same chances though.

The 2nd story is even more wild! This case involves a 7 year old arrested for a fight where he threw his book bag at another kid at the bus stop. He taken into custody at school because, "The mother of the 7-year-old agreed that her son was uncontrollable and should be arrested."

But here's the kicker... "The boy was taken to the county's juvenile assessment center, but staff said the center doesn't accept children under age 10."

What to do with our littlest criminals? Florida must be in a bind on this one! Honestly, all this does is make me question this little kid's mother. What kind of environment has your kid been in when he can't be controlled at 7?

It might not be the mom's fault. Maybe the kid needs counseling or medication. Or maybe he just needs someone to role model appropriate behavior, step in when he gets out of line and supervise his free time so he doesn't wail on other kids with a backpack full of books!

I don't mean to pass judgement in either of these cases. Issues of juvenile justice are vexing at best and there may not be one right answer. But I'd move towards treating adult criminals more like children. That is to say, there's a real chance at rehabilitation/corrections with educational programs, treatment and counseling, especially since most people in prison are going to get out eventually, we as a society, might be a lot better off. Off course, no one's ever accused me of being soft on crime, just soft on criminals.

The Danger of Police Dogs

I think dogs working for law enforcement agencies are being abused and someone should call PETA. I'm half-kidding, of course, although I did see a great piece on 60 Minutes some years ago about the disturbing lack of qualifications and standardized testing drug-sniffing dogs undergo before their "testimony" is used to lock up suspected offenders for years at a time.

But that's not the worst of it. Some poor kid in New Zealand is facing amputation because of the injuries he's received as a result of a bite from a police dog. I know McGruff said, "Take a bite out of crime" but damn!

Yet Another Political Quiz

I think Hasdai may be on to something that political quizzes are to policy geeks, as Cosmo quizes are to drama queens.

As if there was any surprise here, I came out as Leftist-Libertarian, with a score of...

Economic Left/Right: -4.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.05

That puts me in the same company as Ghandi, Mandela and the Dalai Lama.

I'll take it.

First Global Warming, Now This?

And you thought 70 degree days in January was disconcerting?

Take a look at this interactive media feature complimenting this NY Times story about how the continents are shifting over time. At least it'll be a lot quicker to travel between New York City and Africa in 250 million years.

Back to the Future

First, I would like to say thanks to my friends, Max and Joe, for adding my new blog to their links and for giving me a shoutout. Much obliged, old friends.

And now for things that seem rather obvious to me, but I'm sure there's a good reason The Pew Research Center conducts these polls. Among the results from "How Young People View Their Lives, Futures and Politics: A PORTRAIT OF “GENERATION NEXT”...

• About half of Gen Nexters say the growing number of immigrants to the U.S. strengthens the country – more than any generation. And they also lead the way in their support for gay marriage and acceptance of interracial dating.

• Voter turnout among young people increased significantly between 2000 and 2004, interrupting a decades-long decline in turnout among the young. Nonetheless, most members of Generation Next feel removed from the political process. Only about four-in-ten agree with the statement: “It’s my duty as a citizen to always vote.”

• Asked about the life goals of those in their age group, most Gen Nexters say their generation’s top goals are fortune and fame. Roughly eight-in-ten say people in their generation think getting rich is either the most important, or second most important, goal in their lives. About half say that becoming famous also is valued highly by fellow Gen Nexters.
  

Hell ya, getting rich and famous is important! I mean, damn, have you ever watched the VH1 Show, The Fabulous Life of...? I'd put up with the paparazzi, gossip and tabloids just for the free swag you get at the awards shows and film festivals. What a racket!

Seriously tho, as someone who pretty much bridges the generation gap between the kids surveyed by Pew (18-25 year olds) and the group immediately older (Gen X), most of these results seem self-evident to me, but then again, I work with these kids, read most of the mainstream media reports about these surveys and I personally hold most of the majority views. And when I don't, the kids are wrong. Like here:

A strong majority (75%) say today’s youth are more likely to have casual sex than were young people 20 years ago. Only 7% of Nexters say their generation has less casual sex and 17% say they have about the same amount. Seven-in-ten Nexters say today’s youth resort to violence to solve conflicts more often than the previous generation. And nearly as many Nexters say they engage more often in binge drinking (69%) and illegal drug use (63%) when compared to their predecessors.

Despite what these kids think, I believe drinking and drug use have stayed relatively stable since the 70s. Many indicators of the most harmful effects of such behavior have moved in a positive direction. Drunk driving and teen pregnancy are both down significantly since the 1980s, so I think this reaction reveals more about what messages teens have internalized about themselves, based on the myriad of newspaper accounts of underage drinkers being busted and the hype of the national youth anti-drug campaign, etc. than they do about the actual behavior of actual teens. And I just can't see how there's less sex now, with all the saving yourself 'til marriage pledges in the red states and knowledge of safer sex measures, STD transmission and testing, etc. in the blue ones, than there was in the heady days post-birth control and pre-AIDS.

Still, it's gratifying to see so many young people open to ideas that seem abhorent to the generations above them. I hope it portends for a bright, more accepting and less discriminatory future for all Americans, including the next, Next Generation.

As the Bob Marley song goes, "Time Will Tell".

Dear Abby Jr.

Many people know that the original Dear Abby and Ann Landers were sisters. But how many people know that both of their daughters also got in on the advice racket?

Unfortunately, one of them (Ann Landers' daughter) is much, much better at giving advice than the other, Dear Abby's daughter, who got to crib her Mom's name and newspaper column (and all the syndication money that goes with it!) Ann Landers Jr. respected her mother's wishes and let the name and the column retire when she did. If only Dear Abby Jr, had done the same.

Since the change in advisors happened a few years ago, I've been consistently dismayed by Dear Abby Jr's advice. But now that I have this blog, I have somewhere to complain about it. This is from yesterday's column....

A 14 year old San Francisco girl wrote in to ask what to do when she overhears adults make disparaging remarks about teenagers in general. Abby Jr. starts off with a nice quote from Socrates illustrating that this "problem", I prefer adult hypocrisy, has been going on for thousands of years and even Socrates wasn't immune. Now if she'd ended it there, all would have been okay.

But I guess she had column inches to fill and didn't want to answer another person's question. So she ended her response with this shitty piece of advice...

Any intelligent person knows that the vast majority of teens today are honest, hardworking, law-abiding and upstanding. Therefore, if you are being followed around by store owners, and bus passengers grab their belongings and scoot away when they see you, it's time to take a critical look at how you present yourself. Is there something about your appearance that could be considered weird or threatening? If the answer is "maybe," then it's time for a makeover.

Fuck YOU Abby Jr.! First of all, you must know that most people aren't that intelligent. And even if they accept that the teens they know are honest, hardworking, yadda, yadda, it doesn't mean squat when they're dealing with teens they don't know.

I'm mean such phenomena isn't limited to young people. Racists may not hate the people of color who clean their homes. And there are tons of anti-immigrant bigots (like, you, Rep. Tom Tancredo) who don't mind undocumented immigrants working on their home construction and landscaping. But it doesn't stop them from being complete, unmitigated assholes, to the ones they don't have a personal relationship with.

But the bottom line here is, why should this teen change her behavior or how she presents herself? She isn't the one with the problem. Neither her age, nor her appearance, matter as much as her behavior in public does. She's not going for a job interview. She's using public spaces, like buses and stores. Abby Jr. dropped the ball completely, not surprisingly, blaming the victim for the ignorant behavior of the masses of adults this girl is forced to interact with on a daily basis. For the good of the advice seeking population in the world, this Dear Abby should join her mother and retire ASAP, turning the column over to someone who actually gives good advice!

Although there is little this girl can do to stop the offenders, as Abby Jr. correctly notes, there is something adults can do! Speak up, whenever you see other adults wrongfully discriminating against kids in public. The offender will take it to heart far easier, if the criticism comes from a peer, than from another youth. And kids can resolve not to grow up to become the sort of hypocritical adults who say such stupid things.

Because as the Socrates quote points out, these issues have been with us for millennia. Kids today aren't any different than the teenage kids of ancient Greeks. Except they dress differently and listen to better music!

Chief Junkie Rehnquist

From this piece on Slate.com, it turns out the former Chief Justice was quite the little pill-popper for many years until he was hospitalized in the early '80s to get clean. So why are we talking about it today? Money quote:

The Rehnquist story deserves a third airing today if only to illustrate the ugly double standards that excuse extreme drug use by the powerful, especially if their connection is a prescribing doctor, and condemns to draconian prison terms the guy who purchases his drugs on the street.

Even though it's been over a year since the former Chief Justice died, this point deserves to be made until all those silly drug laws go the way of Alcohol Prohibition.

What's any of this have to do with kids? As a former professional drug policy reformer, I've always felt that kids get the shaft the worst when it comes to so-called "drug education", which prefers to indoctrinate and scare kids away from drugs, rather than giving them appropriate information and allowing them to make informed decisions -- for better or worse.

I've always held that given the best information available, people will, more times than not, make the best choices. And when they don't, well, that's freedom.

As bad as addictions are, felony drug convictions, I think, are worse. If people can avoid overdose deaths, they may one day recover from their addictions and go on to great things, as Justice Rehnquist so aptly demonstrates.

USA! USA!

Can African youth achieve the pan-African dream of W.E.B. Du Bois and others, creating a United States of Africa? Professor Atukwei Okai, Secretary-General of the Pan African Writers' Association, hopes so. His comments were made at the African-Arab Youth Symposium held recently in Khartoum, Sudan. Money quote:

It is clear that unless our individual and individualistic broomstick-like countries see the wisdom in coming together to integrate and benefit from the power of a strong united African government, our economies will continue to be toyed with by foreign interests and greedy speculators, to the continuing detriment of the welfare of our people"

Personally, after spending one semester studying at the University of Ghana, including a great deal of time at the W.E.B. Du Bois Cultural Centre and Library, where his body is entombed, I can only say that I wish it were so, but I'm skeptical.

I'm a big fan of Pan-African thought, believing as I do that a host of Africa's problems are related to issues of tribalism (imagine nationalism run amok, on a much smaller, but no less deadly, scale. Silly, isn't it? Especially from the perspective of a white guy from the U.S.) and the border conflicts that result from the decisions made at the 1884-85 Berlin Conference, where Africa was pretty much cut up and traded between the European powers.

The problem, at least as far as the map is concerned, is that no one in power now is willing to give up an inch of territory, even if the old lines make no sense. Oh well, I guess the killing will continue, to detriment of all.

And btw, if you're concerned at all about the genocide in Darfur, please sign up and donate to SaveDarfur.org One day, your kids may ask you what you did to help stop the brutal treatment of the Darfurians. What are you going to to say? The least you could do is send a free email to our President. Believe it or not, increasing those numbers matter. Money matters even more!

I'm Not Alone

I'm far from the only person blogging to cover youth issues. In fact, it doesn't surprise me that there are people out there with far greater qualifications than I have writing on similar topics. ( I don't search for them, this one just happened to pass my desktop, thanks Google News Alerts.)

One such person is Elisa Poncz over at Children's Rights & Laws. She's in her 3rd year at Harvard Law School (so you know she's wicked smart!) and on Friday, she mused about the appropriateness of using, or potentially exploiting, youth rights to achieve desirable social changes.

In this case, there was a murder in Florida involving 3 teens. Two of them were 19 and one was 17, at the time of the crime -- a savage beating of a homeless man resulting in death. The prosecutor declined to seek the death penalty for the 19 year olds, (in the U.S., you can no longer execute people who were under 18 years old at the time of their crime) for reasons of proportionality between the sentences.

Assuming all three are equally guilty, all three should get the same punishment. That's Justice.
Now both Ms. Poncz and I are opposed to capital punishment, but something doesn't sit right with her, it seems, when youth rights are used as a proxy for achieving societal goals, even ones she agrees with. Money quote:

I'm concerned that the unique character of children might be exploited for the political gains of adults seeking rights that cannot be achieved in the broader society, but might be achieved with children (and then hopefully extended).

That's a fair point. She goes on to wish that the prosecutor would have not sought the death penalty on moral, rather than age-related, grounds. I understand her concern. I would hate to see youth rights exploited to achieve some end I disagreed with. But in this case, I'm satisfied.

Call me a hypocrite -- ends justifying means in this case. What can I say? I'm not perfect. It's not that I disagree with Ms. Poncz, I'm just not going to get worked up about it in this case.

Chinese Food Makes Me Sick

It doesn't actually, it's a staple of my diet, for better or worse, especially on Christmas (I'm nothing if not a living embodiment of at least one Jewish stereotype. It's more than one, probably, but that's for another post.)

But I have a good friend who recently graduated from Columbia University and is spending part of this year in China, learning Chinese. So it's nice to know that China's kids are discovering the wonders of online love. Unfortunately, in this case, with disastrous consequences.

A Political Quiz: Then and Now

So occasionally, I will digress from the stated topic of this blog, and this is going to be one of those times...

My friend Hasdai alerted me to this interesting political quiz from a 1994 USA Today. (And I think he cribbed it from Andrew Sullivan's blog.) I thought most of the questions were rather unsophisticated, but as a proud political dork, I enjoyed taking the test nonetheless.

I'd be interested to know, not only my friends' raw score, but also the specific responses to certain questions. For record, I'm no longer the most liberal person my friends' know. I scored a 12, Hasdai was an 11, my father was 17 (and thought I'd be happy that he wasn't between 35-40) and Andrew Sullivan is a 26.

Since 1994, a lot of things have changed. This "quiz" first appeared on the eve of the Gingrich-led GOP takeover of Congress, pre-Enron, etc. catastrophes and during the 1994 Major League Baseball strike, before the dramatic reduction in urban crime was visible and before we were afraid North Korea had a nuke. It also pre-dates Fox News, protease inhibitors for combating AIDS and the current President's appointments of women and people of color to some of the highest offices in government. In case you were wondering how your answers might have shifted over the last 12 years.

And just so this post isn't entirely unrelated to youth issues, you should know I answered disagree to:

#21, "As a society, we should spend more money trying to find a cure for AIDS than for cancer and heart disease because AIDS threatens younger people."

I don't we should spend money on AIDS research because it threatens younger people. Like most greedy, self-interested people, I think we should spend money on things because it threatens me!. Seriously tho, I think money for government funded disease research should generally proceed based on 1) the percentage of people in a given country suffering from such a disease, 2) the likelihood of finding a cure or at least making deadly diseases chronic instead of fatal (AIDS, Cancer, MS, etc.) and 3) the relative amount of private money being spent already.

I realize these are imperfect criteria and in some cases hard to measure (#2, especially, since how could you know until you start spending money to find out) but what I don't like about current funding for disease research is that it appears to be based on who's politically connected and how large a profile one can generate for a particular disease. Certainly there should have been more done about AIDS during the Reagan years, but the disease was associated with an undesirable pariah class (gay men, IV drug users, Haitian women, etc.) and that's wrong. But so is giving disproportionately more money to AIDS groups simply because Liz Taylor and Sharon Stone say to. What about breast cancer? We need to save the tit-tays!

Speaker(ess?) Pelosi

One of the many nice perks of being unemployed is it allows me a lot of time to watch C-SPAN and in recent days it's been a real treat. (And yes, in case you're wondering, I know exactly how big of a political-dork this makes me.)

Not only have I been able to watch 2 very moving funerals for President Ford, but today I got to be witness to history, as Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was sworn in as the first woman (and first Italian-American) to be elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

It's blogworthy because President Ford's grandkids read some very moving prayers and today, there were a ton of members' kids in the House chamber, including what looked like all of Speaker Pelosi's grandkids, as votes were taken and the members of the 110th Congress were sworn in en masse.

They were all well-dressed and polite and after giving what I thought was a very moving and inspiring speech, including all the token mentions of bipartisanship, Rep. Pelosi invited all the children who wished to touch the speaker's gavel to come down to the podium and stand beside her. Besides the occasional mischief making -- one kid tapped the microphone a few times to hear it thump, but nothing on par with Andrew Guiliani at his father's first mayoral inaugural -- you could see in the eyes of some of the young girls, the inspiration inherent in knowing that they too could one day reach these heights of power in the government of the United States.

And as far as the headline goes, if you don't get it, go watch the Michael Douglass classic Falling Down.

PS-Class act by the rumored to be gay Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) for calling attention to the first female chairwoman of the House Rules Committee, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY). For the record, I've always like Rep. Dreier's appearances on Bill Maher's HBO show, I just wish he'd stop being such a little sellout when it comes to his sexual orientation, that's all.

PPS-If you're interested in other closested GOPers, check out this list, on the left side, as you scroll down a little. Matt Drudge and Armstrong Williams, who knew?

Universal Healthcare

I'm one of the 44 million uninsured Americans at the moment (relax, NJ drivers, I have auto insurance, just not health insurance) so while I wait for Congress to guarantee some basic level of universal coverage for all Americans, I welcome the recent moves to make sure that kids are universally covered in some states, as CA Gov. Schwarzenegger has recently proposed.

New Jersey itself is considering making health insurance mandatory for all its residents, similar to the Massachusetts law, but still hasn't come up with a plan for how to pay for it all.

Not that any of that really matters much for me, since I'm not a minor and I don't think the NJ legislation will pass anytime soon, but don't cry for me, NJ passed a bill last year making uninsured residents up to age 30, eligible for continued coverage under their parents' plans.

So why am I still uninsured? Through a loophole only a NJ lawmaker would think to include, the bill excluded the state health benefits plan, and those it covers (including my mother,) until Jan. 1st of this year, even though it went into effect in May of last year for everyone else. The 4 day lag -- and counting -- is now just my own laziness.

To paraphrase the great gossip queen Cindy Adams, only in New Jersey, kids, only in NJ!

Kids Aren't Always So Bright

Lest I be accused of looking at the non-adult population through rose-colored lenses, let me be the first to admit that sometimes, individual kids can be really, really dumb! I'm sure this doesn't come as a surprise to many of us, hell, most of us were dumb(er) kids once, but we survived into adulthood -- and so will most kids.

I heard somewhere that most parents' biggest fear isn't that their kids will do the same stupid things they did when they were their kids' age, but that their kids won't be as lucky as they were and get away with it. I think that's fair, albeit somewhat misguided, as most people escape their childhood with relatively few scrapes, legal or otherwise.

While surfing youth-related news stories (Google News Alerts is dope, btw!) I came across this little gem about a 15 year old girl who got arrested 'cause she wouldn't stop yelling at the cops who were apparently at the school to investigate another incident. Now maybe the full story isn't being reported here, but if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's keep your fucking mouth shut when the cops are around, especially if they're not interested in you!

I mean, this girl was warned numerous times to just go away but she wouldn't stop!

Money quote:

Officer Tracey informed the juvenile that if she couldn’t calm down, she would be arrested.

The juvenile continued to yell profanities, police said. After multiple attempts to calm the juvenile down, officers Tracey and Hardy, who had to leave the other incident to assist, tried to put the juvenile in handcuffs. She allegedly pulled away and spit at Officer Tracey. She was arrested and brought back to the police station where she continued to yell and threatened to spit in the officer’s face.

Now maybe the guy the cops were looking at initially was this girl's baby daddy, or maybe just her boyfriend, but damn, now you're under arrest. I hope the emotional satisfaction she got from spitting at the cops was worth the trouble of getting arrested. My hunch is, it wasn't.

A Real American Hero

Matthew LaClair is dope! This kid deserves all the accolades he gets and then some. For those of you who haven't followed this story, young Matthew covertly recorded his high school history teacher, Mr. David Paszkiewicz, proselytizing during history class to say nothing of deeply insulting the non-Christian students he's charged with teaching! (For the record, Matthew was raised in the traditions of the Ethical Culture Society. Damn Secular Humanists!)

What's worse than mixing church and state? Living in a community that condones, and even supports, this type of "teaching". Apparently, the good people of Kearny, NJ have remained silent while the Charlie Churches in town post messages supporting the teacher on websites, even going so far as offer a death threat against this courageous kid.

Now, surely, it's a little unseemly to record people without their knowledge. Go ask Linda Tripp. But it doesn't seem like this kid had any choice, especially given the local reaction to his objections. And to be honest, if you can stand behind your comments, I don't see why people should have a problem being recorded. Yes, things can be taken out of context, but if rational people will give one another a fair hearing, (yes I know that doesn't happen often,) then everything should be able to be worked out with little fanfare. Or maybe I'm just overly optimistic.

There may not be anything anyone can do to help this kid out, short of the ACLU giving him an award this year, (are you reading this Deborah Jacobs? She's the Executive Director of the ACLU-NJ and if she is reading, she's the only one!) but at least he'll have a great essay to write for his college applications. And maybe a job offer with Google when he graduates.

I never had to deal with anything so insane when I was in high school, thank G-d, but then again, Columbine changed everything. Or was it 9/11? I forget.

The bottom line here is, while neither teachers nor students shed their constitutional rights at the school house gate. (Do you hear me, Mike Kelly? He's a columnist for my hometown newspaper with no respect for the constitutional rights of students or teachers. We had an email spat a few years ago in the run-up to the Iraq war about a Catholic school teacher, who had recently retired from teaching high school history at my alma mater, Teaneck High School, and was fired for refusing to remove an anti-war button from his shirt. It wasn't that the school was pro-war, even the Vatican had come out against the Iraq war, but the school had a rule against wearing apparel with writing on it and he was in violation. I didn't dispute the school's right to set its own rules, after all it wasn't a public school, but Mr. Kelly couldn't wrap his little mind around that point and had an even larger problem understanding the governing distinction in public schools between dress that is disruptive to the educational environment and dress that isn't.)

But I digress, yet again. My point is, Christians, even Christianists, have a right to free speech, but they don't have a right to indoctrinate students into their belief systems, particularly when religion is not germane to the curriculum being discussed. Perhaps if they had been talking about something religion-related, say Lincoln's faith during the Civil War, or the religious motivations of the Prohibition movement, or the Civil Rights movement, whatever, then he could discuss his religious beliefs, as long as he made clear, they were his beliefs and no one else was required to believe as he does.

Unfortunately, he couldn't do that, because, as many Christianists believe, "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. John 8:12" and therefore, non-believers in Christ will go to hell. Fortunately for me, (I'm Jewish,) most of my friends, even my Christian ones, will probably be there with me, so it should be pretty fun!

Students in the Library? What the hell for?

One of the NY Times most emailed articles today was a little story about the Maplewood (NJ) Public Library having to close its doors in the critical hours after school and before parents get home from work. Ironically, that's also the prime time for unsupervised students to break laws, including experimenting with illicit drugs.

Apparently the kids were rowdy (big surprise, they're young!) and disturbing other patrons not to mention the library staff (which is a problem that needs a solution.) And it reminded me of a time when I was just out of high school and home on break. I was at the library to help a friend of mine search for schools and I saw, what I later found out was the head of the library, disciplining some middle school students for doing many of the minor things described in this article. (To my knowledge, none of them were accused of peeing on the bathroom floor. Yuck!)

Now, to be sure, the library has to be available for everyone and at times, people aged 10-14, can be rowdy, particularly if they're with other people their own age and there are no respected adult role-models around to reign them in. After watching a heated exchange between a student I didn't know and the library director, I went over to speak with the older gentleman and get the kid's back (as they say in the parlance of our times.)

In that instance, the kids were running around the two floors and interacting with each other as middle school students do, and have always done, at least in modern America, only now parents are whipped up into a frenzy that if kids run around their neighborhoods after school, some predator adult will do something terrible to them. Nevermind that terrible things can happen to kids in school, I think public libraries have a special obligation to serve the community, particularly young people, and it's in everyone's interests that students have a safe place to be after school before their parents get home.

I suggested to the Library Director (I forget his name, but a fairly nice older man) that perhaps the unused auditorium space in the library could be used by kids who come in from the nearby middle school (in my town, one middle school was relatively near the public library, while the other -- the one I went to -- was not) but he was concerned with liability, having kids unsupervised in his building, yadda yadda. (Btw, ain't it always the most convenient excuse for someone not to do something, that they'll get sued?)

Long story short, some of the kids were kicked out that day (as I recall, it wasn't even the real sources of trouble, just the ones unfortunate enough to be caught), but at least they got to see a young adult/older kid verbally supporting them in front of other adults who'd just as soon not have to deal with any of this.

Now, understand, I'm not condoning rowdy, disruptive behavior. I'm simply suggesting that after school, kids have a lot of bound up energy from sitting in class all day and they want to express that and be around their friends. Wouldn't it have been better for the library, the school and the town to find some way to allow that energy to be expressed, without bothering other library patrons, yet keeping those kids in a safe, supportive environment and surrounded by books, of all things, that they may actually decide to pick up.

I suppose the point of me re-telling all of this, is that kids need to be around older people who show them respect and I believe they'll behave respectfully, in return. It's certainly been my experience over the last decade and a half that I've worked with kids of all ages. That idea seems to be backed up by the experts:

Linda W. Braun, a librarian and professor who has written four books about teenagers’ use of libraries, said the students want only to be treated like everybody else.

“If there are little kids making noise, it’s cute, and they can run around, it’s O.K.,” Ms. Braun said of standard library operating procedure. “Or if seniors with hearing difficulties are talking loudly, that’s accepted. But a teen who might talk loudly for a minute or two gets in trouble.”

She added: “The parents don’t want them, the library doesn’t want them, so they act out.”

There may be a solution at hand, using the soon to be replaced police station as an after school youth center, but I don't know if it will come quickly enough, and besides, those programs, like Teen Advisory Group the library tried to implement, will only be successful if the people involved with them aren't seen as tools of the adults in charge.

Although the sunlight of an NY Times article can usually act as immediate disinfectant for most local problems, particularly those in a suburb as diverse and affluent as Maplewood, NJ, it remains to be seen what will happen to Maplewood's middle schoolers with no library to go to from 2:45 to 5pm.

Mike Males is a Youth's Best Friend...

I've been a big fan of Mike Males ever since I came across his fantastic book, Framing Youth: 10 Myths About the Next Generation, while I was buying the books I was actually required to read during one of my last semesters at UW-Madison. Today, he has a brilliant op-ed in the NY Times, for the moment, you can read it here:

Mike's main point about drug use has always been that the real problems associated with it belong to an older generation than the news media and millions of dollars of commercials would have you believe. As a statistician, he has the numbers to back his claims up. (Although I hear that 87% of statistics are made up. Get it?)

But I digress. As a drug policy reformer (now retired) and an advocate for the rights (and responsibilities that go with them) for young people, it's very refreshing to see his thoughts in the paper of record. Money quote:

As David Musto, a psychiatry professor at Yale and historian of drug abuse, points out, wars on drugs have traditionally depended on “linkage between a drug and a feared or rejected group within society.” Today, however, the fastest-growing population of drug abusers is white, middle-aged Americans. This is a powerful mainstream constituency, and unlike with teenagers or urban minorities, it is hard for the government or the news media to present these drug users as a grave threat to the nation.

The problem with not accurately understanding the nature of America's drug problem, is that any solutions that are proposed will not get at the root of the problem and we'll continue to spend millions of dollars on humorous, but ultimately, ineffective commercials. Everyone wishes to reduce the number of overdose deaths, addictions and arrests, but focusing on young people with failed programs like D.A.R.E., fails to address the heart of the drug problem. Grown-ups can't handle their drugs and they use multiple drugs at rates that are unheard of amongst young people. So get it together old folks, now that you've got your prescription drug benefit that me and my generation (not to mention, our kids) will be paying for, there's no excuse not to use responsibly!

To my readers:
This is my third attempt at a blog, the first two being very short-lived, so I hope this topic, which I care deeply about, will compel me to write more. We'll see how it works in a few days.