youth rights

A looming staffing problem in Western Australia's 26 Police and Community Youth Centres (PCYC) is exposing premier Colin Barnett and the Liberal government's disregard for youth services and the complete hypocrisy of the law and order rhetoric that crops up at every state election.

PCYCs are formally independent non-profit organisations, supported by the state through the provision of police officers as full-time centre managers.

Recent national figures published by the Sydney Morning Herald show the rate of youth unemployment in Australia is well above the national average, hitting 17.3%.

The figure is more than triple national unemployment, which stood at 5.2% in December. Almost one in five people aged 15 to 19 and not studying are out of work.

The ban on marriage between persons of the same sex is an assault on the basic human dignity of same-sex attracted people. It subjects them to a damaging social stigma, a new report by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has now recognised.

The document surveys 10 recent psychiatric studies that explore the consequences of the marriage ban on test-samples of thousands of everyday people.

I originally heard about a proposed occupation in Brisbane when I was following the other global Occupy movements. I was immediately excited and very interested in being involved, as I have never really experienced anything like it before. From my (young) perspective, this was a significant and unique event, unparalleled since the anti-globalisation protests of the ’90s and early 2000s.

The world is rising up. When we look around the globe we see people in motion. Revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa against brutal dictators, the movements against austerity measures in Europe and Britain, democratic and indigenous revolutions in Latin America, and the Occupy Wall Street protests spreading across the United States. Resistance is in solidarity with all these movements for change.

What began several months ago with students taking over their high schools and universities has swelled into one of the largest protest movements in Chile’s history.

Student protests, involving tens of thousands of students and teachers, have dovetailed with angry demonstrations of workers in other sectors.

The education protests swelled to 600,000 on August 25, the second day of a 48-hour general strike called by a confederation of 80 unions.

Wollongong’s city centre experienced something special on August 25: an explosion of art, culture and youth talent.

During Community Voice's public launch of its cultural policy, a crowd of more than 200 people swelled around the mall's amphitheatre.

As young musicians performed, graffiti artists Adam Rizvik and Josh Harris produced an amazing piece in real time that simply said “create art” on stage.

For two hours the mall — not known for its social atmosphere — was filled with beautiful music, inspired speeches, happy people and the smell of spray paint.

On a warm spring day, strolling in south London, I heard demanding voices behind me. A police van disgorged a posse of six or more, who waved me aside.

They surrounded a young black man who, like me, was ambling along. They appropriated him; they rifled his pockets, looked in his shoes, inspected his teeth. Their thuggery affirmed, they let him go with the barked warning there would be a next time.

See also:
After the riots, poor repressed, criminalised