Youth Advocacy
Youth Advocacy
Year 4, Week 44 (294 total reports)
28.01.2025-03.02.2026
REVIEW and ANNOUNCEMENTS
Dr. Jerry Goebel
This administration cannot allow elections to go forward, and T.R.U.M.P. is calling for future elections to be “nationalized.” We must stand as dissidents like the brave people of Minneapolis.
Visual Stories!
Prime Minister Mark Carney told the leaders of the WEF that our world faces “a rupture, not a transition.” This song examines his statement that we need to be “clear-eyed.” https://youtu.be/_VtZPSq_YH4?si=NxONl4sZZenULvYS
Top Links of the Week
03.02.2026
Trump calls on Republicans to ‘nationalize’ future elections
What happens when a doddering, demented fool has unlimited power and unquenchable anger while also having access to unequalled power and has surrounded himself with people who only fortify his worst cravings? He goes back and tries to rectify the lies of his life. This is what our entire justice department (including the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the director of the DNI) is doing in Fulton County, Georgia. And though they will never be able to prove that T.R.U.M.P. won the election, they can sow doubt among enough of his cultish followers to undermine the next election. T.R.U.M.P. is calling to “nationalize” future (not just the next, but all future elections) because he knows he is losing. Certainly, the GOP and his cabinet will not try to rein him in, nor will the Supreme Court. If he has his way, the press will not be able to as well. As Prime Minister, Mark Carney stated, there is a “rupture, not a transition” in the system. We must remain vigilant and become dissidents if we do not want Fascism to take root in the United States.
02.02.2026
American Dissidence
Gal Beckerman of The Atlantic needs to be thanked for this article. In it, he unpacks that word “dissident,” and some of it’s vital history. He reminds of dissidents from our past and other cultures facing similar oppression. Argentinian Mothers whose children were abducted by the government, The Underground Railroad, the words of Frederick Douglass, yhe man in Tiananmen Square with two shopping bags and confronting four tanks. He reminds us (as Prime Minister, Mark Carney did at the WEF) about Václav Havel, that being a dissident is about “ordinary people with ordinary cares.” Beckerman points to “the reaction of regular people in Minneapolis,” and that it “is not, fundamentally, about an ideological or policy disagreement with the administration. The movement that has arisen on the city’s frigid streets is about defending what any reasonable American would call ‘normal’—the expectation of a life without the threat of violence and coercion.” Take the time to read this article and learn the difference between “resistance,” and “dissidence.” Increasingly, “ordinary people with ordinary cares,” will be called to the street in protest of this administration’s fascist tendencies.
30.01.2026
January 29, 2026
Heather Cox-Richardson is one of the leading voices today reminding us to be vigilant. In this Substack, Cox-Richardson runs down a list of reasons we need to remain on high alert. I’d like to point out to people that, in his speech to the WEF in Davos, Prime Minister Mark Carney called us to vigilance as well, without ever mentioning T.R.U.M.P.’s name once. That is important, along with Rachel Maddow and others, I want to remind my small band of committed readers that our problems will continue long after this current president is gone. It is the cult that supports him, the think tank of Project 2025, and radical, conservative White Nationalists like Stephen Miller, that are a continued danger to the world. Remain vigilant; the worst thing we could do is ease up out of defiance in the face of the administration’s so-called “about-face” in Minneapolis. The modus operandi of this administration is to make horrendous oversteps and then feign sorrow while throwing some low-level bureaucrat (like Greg Bovino) under the bus. These steps are merely acts to distract us and lead us to think that future moves by this administration are “not that bad, compared to what we’ve experienced.” We must fight the urge to normalize this behavior! We must fight the urge (even desire) to accept mitigated responses, as Cox-Richardson has stated, “The correct response to Dachau was not better training for the guards.”
29.01.2028
Allying with the United States Is a Big Mistake
In this commentary by Dr. Michael Rubin, in the politics and economics journal, 1945, the former Reagan administration Pentagon official warns foreign governments that “Washington’s repeated abandonment of partners is no longer an exception but a defining feature of U.S. policy.” This is a warning pertinent, not just because of this administration (who has turned U.S. partnerships on its head), but because of a contemporary conservative bent to isolate from global relationships. Rubin says, “The conclusion is stark: allies should assume U.S. commitments can evaporate when political incentives shift.” International relationships are built upon the foundation of trust, and trust is hard to find in a political and economic climate where Americans have nominated someone like Donald T.R.U.M.P. not once but twice!
28.01.2026
Rachel Maddow Welcomes GOP Backlash To Fatal ICE Raids: 'This Is Called Political Change'
On December 28, Rachel Maddow received the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Political Journalism and asked fellow journalists to focus less on Donald T.R.U.M.P. and more on the people. According to HuffPost’s Marco Margaritoff, Maddow’s coverage of the horrific events in Minneapolis this last week and the apparent about-face of this administration reflects that type of journalism. She said, “That is what has forced the Trump administration to change course. That is what has forced Trump to back down. Principled, peaceful, relentless protest is the democratic means of saving a democracy, and that is the only way to win for the long term.” This is a reminder by Maddow that we must remain active and vigilant. Only by doing what Prime Minister Mark Carney says is to “take the sign out of the window and put our feet down on the street,” can we defeat this administration and its spineless GOP supporters.
