A student uprising to lower the voting age
The best response to the so-called "parental rights" movement
Welcome to a Sunday edition of Progress Report.
I hope that everyone in California is staying safe as Tropical Storm Hilary makes its way up the coast. Between the extreme heat, fires in Maui, and hurricane activity ravaging southern California, unprecedented weather events have taken place at a disturbingly frequent rate this summer.
It’s probably a big ask, but if somebody could explain the situation to Joe Manchin and convince him to stop sabotaging what is likely our best shot of avoiding climate apocalypse, that would be super helpful.
Young voters in particular would be grateful for any efforts at preventing global meltdown, and as we explore in tonight’s newsletter, they’re no longer simply content with waiting patiently for their opportunity to vote.
Three years into a “parents rights” movement that has helped to upend public education across the country, students are beginning to rise up and demand formal recognition for rights of their own.
“It’s time to give teenagers a voice in electing the people that make the decisions that affect their education,” Zachary Yabut, a 16-year-old student and activist, said at a rally in New Jersey on Friday. “It’s time that teens unite because we have the most informed opinions on what the schools actually need.”
Yabut is the co-chair of the NJ chapter of Vote16, an organization that empowers young people to push for the right to vote in local elections. The group’s rally was held in front of City Hall in Jersey City, which they hope will pass an ordinance granting 16- and 17-year-olds the right to participate in school board elections. Victory will require the state legislature to pass a law permitting municipalities to lower their local voting age, something that the organization has been working on with state Democrats since last year.
The organization’s adult advisor, Mussab Ali, became the youngest elected official in New Jersey history when he won a school board season 2017. Several years later, he led a fight against the board’s attempt to cut middle and high school sports programs, a dramatic proposal that Yabut offered as an example of why students need to have their voices heard.
His co-chair, Azra Bano, cited a more explicitly political issue as animating their struggle.
“Florida just recently banned AP Psychology, AP History, and gender studies,” she said. “This truly was unacceptable: we need to be able to choose what we learn and no one is allowed to restrict our knowledge and education.”
As Moms for Liberty and other right-wing astroturf organizations take over state and local school boards, young people are being increasingly confronted with bigotry, curricula shaped by extremist ideology, and the loss of what had been safe spaces away from difficult home environments. Though these changes are immensely unpopular with students all across the country, how young people are able to effectively respond to these encroachments is frequently driven by geography.
In places like New Jersey, where legislators are working to make book bans virtually illegal, countering far-right hijacking of curricula and weird bathroom rules is an effective argument for granting students the right to vote in school board elections.
It also helps that such a change wouldn’t be unprecedented, as a growing number of local governments have either passed or at least considered lowering the voting age to 16. Last month, the Vermont state legislature overrode Gov. Phil Scott’s decision to prevent the town of Brattleboro from giving the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds, and last November, Boston granted 16-year-olds the right to vote in local elections.
Several towns in Maryland have already made the change, while Oregon’s legislature considered allowing residents aged 16 and up to vote in school elections earlier this year.
The Future Looks Bright, Even in Red States
DJ Yearwood, a young activist who founded the Missouri chapter of Vote16, is leading a more uphill battle with a political instinct that belies his age.
An activist since the age of 12 in a state governed by a Republican supermajority, he knows diplomacy is a necessity if they’re going convince a GOP legislature to expand the right to vote. Yearwood is thus careful to remain nonpartisan in conversation; he cites the taxes paid by young part-time workers as a primary reason why they should have some voice in local government, while blaming extremism “across the spectrum” for his fellow students’ growing desire in voting in school board elections.
Still, his interest is hard to divorce from what’s happening in his hometown. The Independence School District is now run by conservatives who make unilateral decisions on everything from shortening the school week to banning books and denying students of color fair access to resources.
Now a senior, Yearwood has seen students protesting major district decisions in each of his three years in high school. One in particular has driven his work to attain voting rights for students: In the spring of 2022, members of the Black Student Union at Van Horn High School held a full-day walkout to protest what they considered blatant racial discrimination, from dress code (do-rags and hair wraps violated the rules, while shirts with Confederate flags did not) to personnel decisions.
Van Horn was part of the Kansas City school system until 2008, and as one of the few majority-minority schools in the Independence district, it was very clearly targeted by a school board better known for banning books than promoting diversity and equity.
“They moved the one Black assistant principal out of that school, despite the students cries to not do that,” Yearwood explained. “The school district declined to comment on it to the news, declined to hold a hearing, and declined to not move that assistant principal. It’s those type of decisions where the school board blatantly does not give a crap about the students.”
Yearwood and his fellow students aim to pass a constitutional amendment to lower the voting age, which can be done either through a successful statewide petition drive or legislation passed by state lawmakers. Either path will prove challenging: It’s very expensive to run a successful petition campaign, and many Republican leaders, such as Attorney general Eric Schmidt, are banking on their support for conservative education policies to give them the edge in competitive primaries.
Missouri Republicans haven’t yet been able to pass a full Parents’ Bill of Rights, but are likely to try again next session, when they’ll be looking to rally the base and goose fundraising during an election year.
Yearwood recognizes the uphill climb, but has one ace up his sleeve: the lawmaker helping Vote16MO shape the voting age legislation is a Republican, making it more likely that the bill will get at least an initial hearing in committee.
It’s smart politics, worthy of the right to vote.
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I hope these kids are going to be part of the wave of voters over the next four years. I also hope more of them are considering running in local and state elections where they are eligible. The problem in a lot of these states (including my home state of Indiana) is lack of competition in these local races.