National Youth Rights Association

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For further information see Category:NYRA

The National Youth Rights Association is the largest Youth Rights group in the United States, 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, and the like. NYRA also favors easier access to legal emancipation for young people and greater protections of student rights.

Contents

Structure

NYRA is a 501c3 organization registered as a nonprofit corporation in Maryland. It is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors.[1] In 2008, Chip Sinton was elected President, and Stefan Muller was elected Vice President.

NYRA also maintains an influential Advisory Board.[2], with such members as Richard Farson, Robert Epstein, and Mike Males.

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, LA Times, Christian Science Monitor, as well as many others, on youth rights issues such as the voting and drinking ages.

NYRA maintains an office in downtown Washington, D.C., with staff members in addition to Koroknay-Palicz.

History

The youth rights movement first utilized the internet to help the struggle in 1991, 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 named Avi Hein 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, 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 non-profit benefit organization with intention to lead the Youth Rights political movement in the United States.

The National Youth Rights Association 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.

See also:NYRA Timeline
See also:History of NYRA: 1997-2001

Recent History

Early years

NYRA's first leaders (Hein, Walcoff, and Herman) did a lot to set the tone and direct the general course of the organization. But NYRA's first years were marked by inefficiency, and constant infighting. The earliest surviving logs of NYRA Board meetings show a group of people who could hardly get along, much less lead a viable organization.

Millennial changes

It took Alex Koroknay-Palicz to take things to the next level. In 1999, Koroknay-Palicz was elected to NYRA's second board of directors. Koroknay-Palicz was deeply committed to youth rights, and he soon became NYRA's President and Executive Director. Koroknay-Palicz gave speeches, facilitated workshops, and recruited members. His influence was so far reaching that for a time almost all of NYRA's limited success could be attributed to one man. Koroknay-Palicz still serves as NYRA's Executive Director, and he is largely responsible for the day to day operations of the organization. Koroknay-Palicz is also a great theorist with a deep knowledge of the issues. His blog provides valuable insight in to the philosophical underpinnings of the youth rights movement.

In 2001, NYRA's membership elected a slightly more active board of directors. This board included Chris Manley and Christopher Coes. Coes would become NYRA's Vice President, and Manley would become NYRA's Treasurer. Manley remained on the board, taking an active role in most of its functions until 2003, when he was forced to resign amidst much controversy. Coes lingered until 2004, gradually becoming less active.

2001 was also the year Rich Jahn was first elected to the board of directors. Prior to joining the board, Jahn served as NYRA's Secretary, a position in which people essentially serve as de facto directors, if they are not directors already. As Secretary, Director, and Member Services Director, Jahn did a lot to improve the organization's internal structure. He built a database that allowed staff members to easily retrieve member information. He was also an effective chairman of the bylaws committee. He chaired the board as a whole before the chairman position was eliminated. When Jahn stepped down in August of 2005, he was NYRA's second longest serving director.

In 2002, Kathleen Miller and Brad White were elected to the board of directors. Miller became NYRA's Vice President, and White became Media Director. Miller remains active in the movement to this day, and two of her roommates are still senior officials in NYRA's New York Chapter. White has left NYRA, but recently resurfaced for a high profile Fox News appearance.

Chapter growth

It was around this time that NYRA's DC chapter reorganized under the leadership of Laura Finstad. The chapter (of which Dave Varney and Alex Koroknay-Palicz were also active members) began a campaign to lower the voting age in Takoma Park, Maryland, where NYRA's national office was located for part of 2005-2006. While the campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, it attracted a lot of media attention, and it showed the world NYRA could put up a good fight. Finstad was elected to the board of directors in 2003. Finstad appeared in Parade Magazine, which is an insert in many major newspapers throughout the country. Many millions of people read it, and it remains NYRA's most important media appearance. She has since married and left the youth rights movement. Varney also left the movement, upset that Koroknay-Palicz was not doing more work with grant applications. Today, the DC chapter is under the leadership of Katrina Moncure.

In 2004, members of the Berkeley High School Progressive Club, lead by Robert Reynolds, decided to form a NYRA chapter. Reynolds lead the chapter in a voting age protest that attracted significant media attention. Ever since, the chapter has been among NYRA's most successful, and has produced some of NYRA's best activists. Not long after the protest, California state Senator John Vasconcellos introduced a bill to lower the voting age in California. While the bill did not pass, NYRA did a lot of high profile work lobbying for it. The chapter is committed to youth voting rights, and has taken the struggle to the local level.

Obtaining 501c3 status

Johnathan McClure, who had previously served as the Financial Advisor to NYRA's now defunct North Dakota Chapter, was elected Vice President during the 2003-2004 term. McClure, along with Koroknay-Palicz, worked for several months trying to obtain 501c3 tax status for NYRA, something it had been trying to get for many years.

In November 2003, NYRA received a disappointing response from the IRS, which lead to the Executive Committee's decision to apply for 501c4 status. However, the IRS said that it had not received any documents from NYRA, and the IRS was about to close NYRA's file. Koroknay-Palicz had put the wrong address on the envelope, but fortunately, a representative from the IRS allowed NYRA to appeal for 501c3 status again, without running the risk of losing the 501c4. The 501c3 status was finally approved around December 2003. 501c3 tax status will make it much easier to obtain grants, but it does place some restrictions on the amount of lobbying that NYRA will be allowed to do.

Recent activities

2005 was a significant year for NYRA. 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 NYRA-Olympia chapter testified in support of a constitutional amendment to lower the state's voting age to sixteen.

From February to August of 2006, Vice President Adam King led a local campaign to add a nonvoting student adviser onto the Buncombe County (N.C.) Board of Education. 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. 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 on the ninth floor of an office building near K Street in downtown Washington, D.C.

Select press citations

NYRA has been cited throughout the mainstream media. Select citations include:

Publications

The National Youth Rights Association has published several pamphlets, position papers, and other materials.

See Also

External links


All about NYRA
Articles: About NYRA · Activities · People · Board of Directors · Advisory Board · Staff · Chapters · Timeline · History: 1997-2001 · Blog · Newsletter · Funders · Mailing List · ASFAR Schism

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