March 2012

Schedule Your Activism to Make it MORE Awesome

Mar 30, 2012 at 1:47 PM

April's a busy month, and finals are just around the corner. To pull your April All-Out Activism off without a hitch, you'll need to carefully schedule your planning and executing process. Fortunately, YAL's National Field Director, Joshua Parrish, has put together a sweet activism schedule designed to maximize your chapter's participation in your event.

The sample calendar you'll find is for April 2012, but this organizational scheme will be helpful for many events to come if you put it to good use! Download this short guide to scheduling your event and maximizing member participation now.

Brandon's Tips and Principles for Successful Chapter Building: Define Your Chapter.

Mar 29, 2012 at 2:09 PM

By Brandon Cestrone

Running a successful chapter requires many things. For one, you need to know what characteristics good chapters possess so you can build upon their success. Second, you should understand the principles of leadership and apply them to running your chapter. Not only will this increase your ability to take your chapter from point A to point B, having the right skill set will make you much better at spreading the message of liberty on campus, thereby fulfilling your ultimate goal.

If you are running a chapter, or are on a leadership team, I have compiled a list of tips and principles that can help you in your activist adventures. These are the important recommendations I can give you after having the great opportunity and privilege of being the founder/president of the Slippery Rock chapter and Pennsylvania State Chair. I want to clarify that though I've practiced some of these principles well, I could have done a better job of following others. I am writing this so that you don’t make the same mistakes and blunders I committed. There are a ton of other handbooks and tips on how to run a chapter, but these are the principles I believe have allowed my chapter to flourish and will hopefully help yours prosper as well.

This is going to be a series of blogs over the next couple months; this is the first installment.

Before going any further, please read and commit to memory the Guide to Build an Effective YAL Chapter to fully understand how to represent your organization on campus. This blog is designed to supplement your master guide, not replace it.

Part One: Dream big, define your vision, and inspire your troops.

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. ~ John Quincy Adams

These three suggestions are things that you, as a leadership team member, should be doing all the time. It is your responsibility to keep chapter's tank full. NEVER let that tank dip near empty. Below are ways you can keep your chapter energized and ready for whatever challenges come your way during the semester.

What's all the buzz about? Georgia Tech YAL's Activism!

Mar 29, 2012 at 2:09 PM

By Mary-Ann Ionascu

It’s been a little under 3 months since the Georgia Tech YAL chapter was founded, and we’ve already hit the ground running!

For our “Government Gone Wild” activism project, we tabled in our Student Center and we were lucky enough to be joined by our lovely Transportation Strip-Search—err I mean, Security—Agent, Ken I. Seymour. Thanks to our Treasurer and impromptu actor, Alex Sullivan, we were able to educate some of our peers, who truthfully answered that they wouldn’t know what to do if they were stopped by the police.

Our Outreach Director, Hale Schwerin, did a great job making the “Do you know your rights?” poster, as well as some fliers that outlined what to do and not do when dealing with the authorities. We thought those would be useful to our peers, especially the week before spring break, when most of them headed to Panama City Beach—the ultimate trap for college students who don’t know their rights when dealing with the authorities.

We also talked to people about the unconstitutionality of the TSA and the perverse nature of the body scanners used in airports. We reminded them that not every TSA agent sitting behind the screens would be as young and charismatic as Officer Ken I. Seymour, who by this point, had fully embraced his character by sprawling out over our table… All in the name of liberty of course.

Do you know your rights?

America's Convenient Military Scapegoats

Mar 29, 2012 at 2:09 PM

By Jayel Aheram

No one really knows what possessed Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales to go out into that cold Afghanistan night and -- as he is accused of allegedly doing -- kill 17 innocent Afghan civilians, more than half of them children. However, we do know that the military acted swiftly and within days had detained, transported, and charged the staff sergeant with 17 counts of murder. Bales is currently being held in a maximum security detention facility in Fort Leavenworth, awaiting trial and a possible death sentence for the murders.

Mecca's Misery Prompted by Government Non-Protection of Private Property Rights

Mar 29, 2012 at 2:09 PM

By Jayel Aheram

The Desert Sun just published an exhaustive investigation into the awful stench besieging the town of Mecca, a poverty-stricken community on the outskirts of the Coachella Valley. This is even more shocking considering that the Valley is home to the tourist spot Palm Springs, and plays host to a variety of national and international news-making events like Coachella Music Festival and Stagecoach (music), the BNP Paribas Open (tennis), and PGA Tour’s Humana Challenge (golf).

Executive editor Greg Burton wrote in Sunday’s editorial:

There is no greater calling in journalism than to demand accountability. When reporters press powerful people and institutions for answers, we all are beneficiaries. Government enacts positive reform, pocketbooks are protected, neighbors stop suffering.
When reporters dig for answers, they find people like Angelina Guillen. She and her husband, Aurelio Leon, and their two children built their dream home in Mecca only to be subjected to sickening odors from a nearby, loosely regulated waste recycler.

YAL @ CU Protests the TSA

Mar 27, 2012 at 7:30 PM

By Mckayne Boedeker

CU YAL TSA

The Young Americans for Liberty at the University of Colorado at Boulder protested the TSA during the last week of school before spring break! We constructed a mock body scanner, had a member dressed up as an agent, and displayed a large poster of the 4th Amendment. In addition to getting a lot of sign-ups for their email list, YAL @ CU distributed flyers giving information about both the TSA and their student group. When YAL member Alexis Olson had to go through the TSA herself the next day, she carried the the oversized 4th Amendment with her to the sound of a cheering crowd!

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FIRE Speaker at UCF April 3rd

Mar 27, 2012 at 7:18 PM

By Matthew Arbos

In honor of international Free Speech Week (April 1st through 8th), YAL at the University of Central Florida will be hosting a speaker from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), Mr. Robert Shibley. Shibley is the Senior Vice President for FIRE and is a graduate of Duke Law School.

Topics that will be discussed include, but are not limited to, free speech on college campuses, due process rights with student conduct boards, and viewpoint neutrality. FIRE is a strategic partner with YAL and has helped chapters/students at their universities. Here is a recent example where FIRE helped out a YAL chapter at the University of Cincinnati over a "free speech zone."

UCF YAL will be promoting this event through tabling and flyers and co-hosting this event with UCF College Republicans and NORML. Free speech and due process rights are issues that affect all students on college campuses!

Poetry Contest: Take on the Federal Reserve!

Mar 27, 2012 at 7:12 PM

By Megan Duffield

If you want to protest in style, here's your chance! Silver Underground is giving away Guy Fawkes masks in a Rebel Poetry Contest. Here are the details:

Write your own version of the “November Fifth” rhyme, or write a rant where everything begins with V. Your entry can be as short as a haiku or as long as a Viking Edda. To enter you can post a photo of your poem written on a notebook (like Wes above). You can post on our Facebook wall or drop us an email. This contest is wide open, so be creative. We’ll announce the winner next Thursday when we launch the next contest.

Learn more and submit your poem here.

A Brief Moral Case for Capitalism

Mar 27, 2012 at 6:53 PM

By Keith Maskell

One major critique of capitalism is the excess it creates for some while the majority suffer. The poor and needy are consistently abandoned in the pursuit for profit. Because of these overview critiques, in the eyes of many misinformed folks, capitalism has failed and something new must be implemented for the sake of humanity. In the current thesis I’m researching and compiling, I make the case regarding the morality of capitalism.

Let’s be clear: Capitalism never had a chance to “fail” because it was never truly allowed to work. There has -- and continues to be -- copious amounts of coercion involved. The subtle hint of coercion flips my switch.

Capitalism didn’t fail to aid the poor and needy. Man failed to aid the poor and needy.

Capitalism is an abstract idea. Capitalism can’t flush the toilet, cut down a tree, or carry out an effective marketing campaign. It needs man to do these things. Any collectivist framework ignores the individual as a sovereign entity and upholds an abstract idea of the “group.” The group can’t exist without the individual. Individuals should have the inclination and liberty to interact with the group voluntarily and without coercion. Individual liberty, therefore, should be upheld as moral and just (because it is).

Tom Palmer Presents the Morality of Capitalism at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

Mar 27, 2012 at 6:36 PM

By Todd Hollenbeck

Last week, Cato senior fellow and Atlas Economic Research Foundation executive Vice President Dr. Tom Palmer visited the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs to provide a moral defense for free market capitalism. The event, hosted by the Young Americans for Liberty@ UCCS, drew a crowd of over 25 people, many of whom stayed long after to discuss issues ranging from the financial crisis to free market solutions for protecting the environment with Dr. Palmer. View his lecture on this playlist.