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YOUTH ACTIVIST AWARD GOES TO ERIC REED, BHS JUNIOR
Eric Reed, a junior at BHS, along with Ruby Butler of the Youth Empowerment School in Oakland, was honored with the California Teachers Association Peace and Justice Caucus Award for Youth Activism at a January 28th awards ceremony in Los Angeles.
Eric and Ruby worked together on the youth organizing team for "ON THE FRONTLINES: Options for Youth in Times of War", a conference which brought together over 600 students, parents, teachers and community activists concerned with the issues of military recruiting and non-military alternative for youth. Thanks in large part to their efforts, ON THE FRONTLINES was the largest counter recruitment conference held in recent decades, and one of the first to include a significant number of high school aged participants.
Teenagers, especially low-income youth of color, are the primary targets of military recruiters. However, their voices are often absent in the discussion of how to limit military recruiters' access to our public high schools and how to expand and promote non-military alternatives for youth. Through extensive outreach, months of steadfast organizing, and the creative interweaving of hands on art, culture and performance into the conference, Ruby and Eric helped bring hundreds of teenagers to the conference and made it a meaningful experience for everyone involved.
For more information on the conference and the ongoing work of Military Out of Our Schools-Bay Area, please see: http://www.objector.org/moos-bay.html
Susan Quinlan
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