Youth Resistance Project

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ABOUT US

Mission Statement:
Youth Resistance Project (YRP) is dedicated to educating youth around issues of social justice, human rights, and militarism and providing tools, training, and support for developing youth as leaders and organizers in our community.

History:
YRP was founded in the spring of 2008 to support youth countering military recruitment in their schools, and to educate young people for wider peace and justice work. Our board members are mainly young activists who initially came together through activism challenging military recruitment and militaristic U.S. foreign policy in our schools.

YRP believes that it is only by educating young people and giving them the confidence and skills to take action that we can most effectively change society. Many other counter-recruitment and anti-war efforts, while very important in their own right, have been characterized by adults defining the goals and the message, and have failed to mobilize or inspire youth. Much of society has written off today's youth as apathetic and do not have confidence in young people themselves to get organized. The mission of YRP is to prove this stereotype wrong, and to provide educational resources to a whole new generation of social justice activists.

In August 2008, we collaborated with the Ruckus Society and the Not Your Soldier Project to organize our first annual â€œCounter It!â€� youth activist training camp, which brought together 25 Minnesota youth, mainly high school students, for 4 days of educational workshops and trainings on military recruitment and U.S. militarism.

We are currently working to establish tables in every Minneapolis public school to provide alternative viewpoints on military service, after the Minneapolis School Board granted equal access to counter-recruitment organizations in a February 2008 resolution. We are organizing and training a network of youth, veterans, and anti-war activists to staff these tables, and developing materials that give an alternative view on the realities of military service, as well as providing information on alternatives to joining the military.

We also recognize that military recruiters disproportionately target working class youth and youth of color, who are structurally excluded from higher education and decent paying jobs and are therefore often more ready to risk their lives for the military's (often false) promise of money and opportunity. Further, there is a vicious cycle of an ever-expanding military budget which grows at the expense of social programs like education. In the context of the current economic crisis, we aim to provide youth with the skills and trainings to struggle not just against military recruitment, but also for a decent future for youth, including access to good education and jobs for all.

Board of Directors:

Maret Banks
Kelly Bellin
Tyron Moore
Dan DiMaggio
Laura Madsen
Jon McCormick
Quynh Nguyen
Angie Rash
Theodros Shibabaw
Jakob Smith
Tyrus Thompson
Dezee Walker
Holly Taylor
Kira Downing

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