The GENERATOR

I have a pretty decent understanding of the history of YL... But now I'm wanting to do some serious research to make sure all my facts are straight. Before I go to the library again, or do another Google search, I want to briefly state what I know at present.

YOUTH LIBERATION OF ANN ARBOR

Around 1970, the organization "Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor" was formed.

My first exposure to the existence of this group was probably via the book "Encyclopedia Brown's Record Book Of Weird And Wonderful Facts" by Donald J. Sobol (1979):

"When Keith Hefner of Ann Arbor, Michigan, was 15, he formed Youth Liberation, Inc. The group championed kids' lib.

Among other things, it supported giving children the vote and the right to divorce their parents and get alimony.

Somehow it failed to catch on.

When last heard from, Keith was fighting the battle alone.

'I'm not giving up on this yet,' he said."
(pp. 33-34)

Since that first discovery, I have found three other books that talk about Youth Liberation, Inc.:

• "Youth Liberation: News, Politics, and Survival Information", Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor (1972)

• "The Children's Rights Movement: Overcoming the Oppression of Young People", eds. Beatrice Gross & Ronald Gross (1977)

• "The Age Taboo: Gay Male Sexuality, Power and Consent", ed. Daniel Tsang (1981)

To the best of my knowledge, Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor was the first modern YL organization: a fully formed doing organization, run by youth, guided by a youth rights manifesto.

...I've been told, via Adam Fletcher of freechild.org, that Keith Hefner is still involved in YL work of some sort (although it's changed in nature). I believe I've also seen a history of the organization online -- possibly by Hefner -- that I need to hunt down again.

RICHARD FARSON AND JOHN HOLT

Around this same time period, two adult authors published their own YL manifestoes:

• "Escape from Childhood: The Needs and Rights of Children", John Holt (1974)

• "Birthrights", Richard Farson (1974)

Abbreviated versions of their manifestoes were reprinted in "The Children's Rights Movement". eds. Gross & Gross. Misplaced, but somewhere in my collection, I know that I also have a copy of "Ms. Magazine" circa 1976 that has an interview with Farson.

Holt and Farson merit being called the "fathers of the movement" -- their books, I believe, are the enduring inspiration for the YL variety of Children's Rights. No others have been as influential -- but I've found a few leads for other authors that I need to hunt down.

Laura M. Purdy has published a book titled "In Their Best Interest? The case against equal rights for children" (1992). It's a philosophy book, and is dense as convoluted, as such books often are -- and despite being anti-YL, is surprisingly fair. One of the real benefits of this book, for me, is that Purdy identifies a bunch of authors whom she describes as "Youth Liberationists". Based on her footnotes, I think I'm most interested in hunting down:

• "Equal Rights for Children", Howard Cohen (1980)

...I've seen this book on the shelf at Portland State University, and it has a similar feel to Holt's and Farson's manifestoes. I suspect that I missed it previously because it was published after Children's Rights' heyday in the seventies. ...It looks like most of the other texts that Purdy cites are academic, rather than polemic -- and mostly just essays contained in scholarly journals.

Another lead I've found was in the "International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family", under the heading "Children's Rights":

"In 1959, the United Nations approved a modest but much-cited ten-point Declaration of the Rights of the Child. In the early 1970s, writers John Holt and Richard Farson both promulgated bills of rights for children, as did New York attorneys Henry Foster and Doris Jonas Freed."

...I haven't heard of Henry Foster and Doris Jonas Freed before. I can only guess that I haven't run across their writings before because they did not publish full books. If they were attorneys, however, I may be able to track them down in legal journals, at Lewis & Clark college's law library.

RE-EVALUATION COUNSELING / CO-COUNSELING

"Re-evaluation Counseling", also known as "Co-counseling" is a form of peer-counseling-based therapy. It was founded by Harvey Jackins, a friend of L. Ron Hubbard (founder of Scientology), and has been described by some as a psychotherapeutic cult. Nonetheless, "RC" has done a great deal to promote the concept of "adultism".

Jackins' first book was "The Human Side of Human Beings". I would cite the date -- but once again, the actual book is misplaced in my collection. The "Fundamentals of Co-Counseling Manual (Elementary Counselors Manual)", however, is at hand -- it was first published in 1962.

My understanding is that when the various liberation movements of the late 60s hit, RC leadership seized upon the oppressions of racism, sexism, adultism, etc. as things that people would need healing from -- they used interest in oppressions to promote the RC "community".

RC does not involved in social change activism (as far as I am aware) -- but promoting the idea that youth are oppressed is a contribution to YL. Youth are encouraged to do co-counseling themselves, and at least for several years there was a publication titled "Young and Powerful".

FROM 1990 TO THE PRESENT

Prior to the existence of the internet, it was extremely difficult to find YL writings. Youth-run organizations typically couldn't publish books and didn't receive news coverage -- so they simply disappeared from history when they folded. Pre-1995, finding a YL pamphlet was a very precious find indeed. My two prized publications that I found during this period are:

• "As Soon As You're Born They Make You Feel Small: Self Determination for Children", Wendy Ayotte (1986)

• "Young and Oppressed", Brian A. Dominick & Sara Zia Ebrahimi (1996)

Sometime during the early 1990s there was a organization called the National Children's Rights Alliance (NCRA). They had a newspaper that they put out, and had interesting membership guidelines -- adults could be members, but only if they were survivors of child abuse (as I recall).

NCRA folded. Two more national organizations have appeared in its wake: Americans for a Society Free from Age Restrictions (ASFAR), and the National Youth Rights Association (NYRA).

Here is what the NYRA site says about the recent history of YL:

"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 AS-FAR. Not too long after AS-FAR was founded, a Rockville, Maryland high school student named Avram 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 AS-FAR, 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.

(http://www.youthrights.org/whatwevedone.shtml, accessed 10.13.05)