Katrina Moncure
From YRN
Katrina Moncure (born May 6, 1983) has been involved with NYRA since March 2004, and during that time has held several responsibilities within the organization and participated in many events. She is a moderator on the NYRA Forums, posting as "SciVille," and has been on the NYRA Board of Directors since August 2005. She currently lives in Montgomery County, MD, where she has lived for most of her life.
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Early Life
Katrina grew up in Germantown, MD, with her parents and younger sister (born February 25, 1987). Her affinity for youth rights began slowly in a conglomeration of many of her observations and events. Throughout elementary school she was labeled with behavior and attention problems and was treated accordingly for a while. She saw her sister, just because of being younger, being treated very negatively and consistently dismissed as a problem child with very few people willing to give her the time of day. Generally, she realized early on that adults are far from perfect, seeing all adults around her being hypocritical and bad-tempered and not always trustworthy. Even in her rather copious amounts of watching Disney movies, she developed a sense of "I don't want to be a princess, I'd rather be a queen!" in reaction to the "all little girls are princesses" stereotype, since she viewed the "princess" as someone who is stupid and useless, while the "queen" is smart, dignified, and actually in control.
Throughout school, she never cared for the dominant-submissive nature of the teacher-student relationship, so she always conversed with teachers on a casual, equivalent basis. This was by and large met with positive results, often indifference, but occasionally teachers said they were annoyed or threatened by it. Katrina, of course, did not care and continued this behavior regardless.
Similarly, she often refused to precede the names of her aunts and uncles with the Aunt and Uncle titles, a refusal which caused much family friction and occasional punishment. Again, she would not change it, believing there is no reason that anyone her parents are on first name basis with should have to be called some useless title by her simply because she was younger.
By middle school, Katrina truly saw the difference between how adults and youth were regarded, seeing adults being given the benefit of the doubt or blind respect, while youth were always assumed to be liars and inferiors. This growing realization caused her much distress, especially when she was into her teens and her family was treating her harshly for that reason alone, and realizing there wasn't anything she could do about it and that her sister was to go through the same before long.
College
Due to many problems during her 9th grade year, Katrina and her mother agreed she would not return to the school for 10th grade. During the Fall 1998 semester, she attempted to learn on her own at home, but she was severely lacking resources or transport to anywhere with resources, and her family did not yet have the internet. They learned through a group of home-schooling families that Montgomery College would accept students as young as 14 to take classes there. Katrina took the admission exam and scored higher than most high school graduates, earning the right to take college freshman level courses, so in January 1999, at age 15, she began her first semester of college.
During the summer of 1999, age 16, Katrina had a part-time job with Youth Service America. Her mother stole all of her earnings.
The following school year had some academic issues, but she managed to remain in good standing. In May 2000, she was accepted for transfer admission to Salisbury State University, and started there in the Fall 2000 semester as a 17-year-old sophomore.
Despite her academic advancement, Katrina was six months too young to vote in the 2000 Election, and like other 17-year-olds was still forced to sit sidelined, while her fellow college students, even those behind her, were allowed to participate.
Throughout college, several situations came up where she voiced her youth rights views, whether about her inability to vote in 2000 or about justification for adult penalties for minors or teen driving laws or the costume store near campus that did not allow anyone under 16 inside unaccompanied or the drinking age in general, though she was met always with dismissal and eye-rolls. She did not press the issues much more, coming to believe she was absolutely the only person around who felt that way.
Katrina graduated from Salisbury in May 2003, two weeks after she turned 20, with a bachelor of science in biology.
NYRA
On May 25, 2003, the day after Katrina moved back home after graduation, her sister showed her a quarter sheet she got at HFStival, from an organization called the National Youth Rights Association. Even though overjoyed to learn such a group existed, she could not do much about it yet, as she was living with very limited internet access and could not get around very easily since she had no car.
Over the following months, Katrina, who was unemployed due to poor luck in her job search, was stuck at home, watching, as she always feared, her sister being mistreated due to her teen age and defiant behavior. She longed to finally get involved with NYRA, increasingly viewing the organization as the cure to all of these unnecessary hardships that she, her sister, and countless other young people were made to endure.
2004
On March 20, 2004, Katrina and her sister attended a NYRA-DC chapter meeting, and it was there Katrina first met NYRA Executive Director Alex Koroknay-Palicz, as well as prominent NYRA activist Dave Varney. There were seven people in attendance. The chapter had a second meeting on April 10, but the only attendees were Katrina, Alex, and Dave, and Katrina's sister had decided for a number of reasons that she did not want to join the organization. There was a third meeting on May 1, when Katrina met Alexis Grant and Rio Samsie, and they made posters for a protest outside an ageist 7-11 store the following week (which Katrina could not attend due to a previous engagement). In June, however, Alex called off the meetings because he felt there was not enough interest.
On August 2, 2004, after Katrina's first appearance in a NYRA bi-monthly chat, she became a dues paying member and voted in the 2004 NYRA election. Two days later, she joined the NYRA Forums and made her first post, quickly becoming a regular.
On December 17, 2004, Katrina went with Alex, Dave, Alexis, and Rio to a town hall on teen driving in Bethesda, MD. Alex and Alexis both made good speeches, but Katrina was waiting in line for the microphone for so long that the event ended before she had a chance to speak.
2005
In early 2005, Katrina tried to get the NYRA-DC chapter going again, but failed for a number of reasons. She remains the official contact person for the chapter.
She was a diligent attendee for all online NYRA chats, whether regular chats, board meetings, or others.
In February 2005, she helped Alex table at the National Conference for Organized Resistance, and there met Adam Fletcher.
On April 21, 2005, Katrina and Jess Caralize were made moderators on the NYRA forums to help with the excessive flame wars and other undesirable activities.
Katrina decided to run for NYRA Board of Directors in the 2005 NYRA election, and she attended NYRA Annual Meeting 2005 in New York on August 6, 2005, where she met Jason Kende, Ana Hevesi, Pamela Tatz, Scott Davidson, Keith Mandell, Stefan Muller, Ken Boring, and several others. She was elected to the board.
At the first board meeting in late August 2005, Katrina was elected unopposed by the board to be the Treasurer of NYRA.
In October 2005, there were ongoing disputes on the NYRA forums over how it was moderated, leading to a nasty scuffle between Katrina and Alex, prompting her to leave the forums. She returned a week later after things were somewhat resolved.
In late November 2005, Katrina met Kathleen Miller in DC, when Kathleen was in the area for the Thanksgiving weekend.
On December 1, 2005, Katrina discovered a pet store in Gaithersburg, MD, that had a sign forbidding anyone under 16 from entering the store unless accompanied by an adult. She spoke to the store clerks about the policy, hoping to get them to take it down.
On December 28, 2005, Katrina's website Eight Mine Fortress first opened. The site contains her blog Sure, Why Not?, where she discusses a number of youth rights issues, among various other topics.
2006
On February 4, 2006, Katrina and Alex tabled at NCOR again, and they first met new NYRA member Conor Nugent. Later in the month, they tabled at three JSA conferences.
In June 2006, they tabled at the Takoma Park Jazz Fest, and, along with Conor, solicited drivers for donations at an intersection in Virginia, until the police ordered them to stop. Alex and Conor went on soliciting at other intersections where legal to do so, but Katrina did not care for it and preferred to raise money in other ways.
Katrina ran for re-election to the NYRA board in the NYRA 2006 Election, and she attended NYRA Annual Meeting 2006 in San Francisco, where she met Robert Reynolds, Zach Hobesh, Dustin Manuel, Rio Bauce, Chris Howell, Mike Males, and others. She was re-elected to the board. However, at the first meeting of the new board, she was voted out of her Treasurer position by a landslide, and replaced with Zach Hobesh.
In September 2006, concerned over the content of many forums users' posts, Katrina called for stricter forums rules to ban informal promotion of prepubescent sexuality, so to protect the organization's reputation. She discussed this at the board meeting to find out how the other directors felt about it, and they unofficially agreed on it. However, this was mistaken by some meeting spectators to be an official vote, and they spread the misinformation quickly among the forums users. This resulted in several days of forums mutiny and rebellion, several very long angry threads, and Chris Batchelor resigning as forums moderator. The controversy calmed when the actual guidelines of the new rules were explained, showing that much of what the users were concerned about was false hearsay and not actually part of the new system.
Later in September, Katrina and Alex met with Scott Davidson, who was attending college in DC, and tried to have another NYRA-DC chapter meeting, but they were the only attendees. At this meeting, Katrina revealed that she had ordered some NYRA pens as well as NYRA's first bumper stickers that read "16: Old Enough to Vote". Alex promptly put one of the stickers on the back of THABOAT.
On December 2, 2006, Katrina went with Alex and Scott to meet Chip Sinton, who was having a debate event at nearby George Mason University.
In mid-December, Katrina ordered and sent out NYRA's first holiday cards. A total of 90 cards were sent on December 19, 2006.
2007
In January 2007, Katrina went with Alex and Scott to table at an anti-war rally, where her bumper stickers made their first tabling appearance.
In February 2007, she, Alex, and an intern tabled at three JSA conferences.
In March 2007, Katrina, Alex, and Scott tabled at NCOR. A few days earlier, all three and several other people attended an open house party for NYRA's new office.
On April 18, 2007, Katrina watched Alex and Scott give testimony against a DC night club ban, where anyone under 18 would be banned from night clubs.
Katrina ran for re-election to the NYRA board in the 2007 NYRA Election, and she attended NYRA Annual Meeting 2007 in Washington, DC, where she met Justin Graham, Brian Lombrowski, Zack Feinberg, Jonathan Corwin, and some others. She was re-elected to the board.
On August 10, 2007, she met Adam Zarnowski when he and Chip Sinton were in DC for an event.
Later in August, at the first board meeting, Katrina was elected by the board to be Secretary of NYRA. There were some initial concerns because of her subpar performance as Treasurer, but she felt she could do this job much better.
Near the end of the month, she met Jim Pleger.
In September 2007, Katrina began putting up youth rights flyers at bus stops all over the county to try to raise awareness.
In October, she made some youth rights videos with her new camcorder, believing NYRA needed more YouTube content.
Through November and December, Katrina prepared the second annual NYRA holiday cards, and sent them out in mid-December, a total of 236.
2008
On January 1, 2008, Katrina created a Facebook group called End Discrimination Against Young Shoppers, to help raise awareness of ageist stores and malls.
In February 2008, she tabled with Alex at two out of the three JSA conferences, since an intern accompanied him to the first.
On March 10, 2008, she traveled to New York City to attend a big chapter meeting there, which included many prominent NYRA members.
2009
See Also
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