National Youth Rights Association

The National Youth Rights Association, or NYRA, 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, etc. NYRA also favors easier access to legal emancipation for young people and greater respect for student rights.

Its slogan, in reference to the youth rights movement and its aims to remove the last existing legal causes for discrimination (age), is "the last civil rights movement". The slogan also refers to the theory that removing the first discrimination people experience (age) will reduce or eliminate all other forms.

Structure
NYRA is a 501(c)(3) organization registered as a nonprofit corporation in Maryland. It is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors, including :


 * Adam King, President & Chapter Formation Supervisor
 * Stefan Muller, Vice President
 * Alex Koroknay-Palicz, Executive Director
 * Chip Sinton, Treasurer
 * Katrina Moncure, Secretary & Chapter Formation Representative
 * Alex Hull-Richter
 * Keith Mandell, Chapter Formation Director
 * Jessica Roeder
 * Yonaton Yares
 * Adam Zarnowski

NYRA also maintains an influential Advisory Board, including :


 * Scarlett Swerdlow of Students for Sensible Drug Policy
 * Kevin Keenan of ACLU-San Diego
 * Adam Fletcher of CommonAction
 * Dr. David J. Hanson of Potsdam University
 * Bennett Haselton of Peacefire
 * Grace Llewellyn, author of the Teenage Liberation Handbook
 * Dr. Mike A. Males, author of Framing Youth and of University of California, Santa Cruz
 * Dr. Roderic B. Park of University of Colorado
 * Nadine Strossen of the ACLU
 * Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H, of the American Council on Science.

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, Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, as well as many others, on youth rights issues such as the voting and drinking ages. In 2007, Adam King was elected President and Stefan Muller was elected Vice President.

Other staff includes Student Defense Coordinator Chris Batchelor.

Background
The youth rights movement first utilized the Internet 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 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, the Canadian Youth Rights Association (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 Maryland non-profit public benefit corporation with intention to lead the Youth Rights political movement in the United States.

The National Youth Rights Association (NYRA) 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. Significant accomplishments to date include several appearances on CNN, increased awareness of Youth Rights among the youth service field, and its campaign to lower the voting age in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Current activities
Famous members of NYRA include Mike Males, the author of Scapegoat Generation.

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, 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.

Criticism
Cultural critic P. J. O'Rourke suggested that members of NYRA are "out-of-work socialists."

Notable chapters

 * NYRA-Berkeley
 * NYRA-New York City
 * NYRA-Orange County
 * NYRA-Paterson
 * NYRA-Vermont
 * NYRA-Olympia/WAYVRS