This week has been a strange one so far.  With all of the hoopla around Obama securing the nomination (and understandably so, given the historical significance), and the generally piqued interest of the public in this election cycle, the one post on P+P that garners the most spirited debate is one on gun control (directly [...]

Read Hump day soundoff »

Hillary won in NH. So that’s what it is. The significant thing is that the youth vote was again a major factor. According to CIRCLE, the youth turnout rate more than doubled since 2004, rising to 43 percent compared to 18 percent in 2004 and 28 percent in 2000. More than that, among Democrats, 18- [...]

Read Not so much NH »

The New York Times Sunday ran a piece by Pam Belluck reporting that some countries have lowered the voting age to sixteen and asking whether such a move would be a good idea here in the US, as some legislators have proposed. The writer’s approach to the story was essentially to find a few fat [...]

Read Youth politics (ie not the voting kind) »

The YouTubed political revolution will be transcribed. (For better or for worse!)

Read YouTube Debate: the revolution will be transcribed »

Apathy is not endemic. It’s not contagious. It’s a mere middle-class distraction. Whew.

Read Hope in the murder capital »

I met two gang intervention specialists last week who work in Harbor City, Harbor Gateway and East Side Torrance in South LA. They are both former gang members and both fathers.
Leroy Martinez is now 52; he was an active gang member until eight years ago. He said he decided to get out because he [...]

Read prison to classroom »

The City of Los Angeles needs a new unified, comprehensive plan to tackle the entrenched culture of gang violence that continues to take hundreds of young lives every year, said top city and county officials and community leaders yesterday. Hundreds of people packed into the Los Angeles City Council Chambers to listen to the findings [...]

Read combatting gang violence, again »

Gone are the days of cruising the streets with friends and rendezvousing at midnight at the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot to see what’s up.
55% of online teens use social networks and have created online profiles. Girls moreso than boys (70% of girls aged 15-17), according to the results of a Pew Internet & American Life [...]

Read social net sites: today’s teenage parking lot? »

Dubbed “digital natives” or “the thumb generation,” young people today are quick to adopt new technologies and to adapt them as they like. Exactly what they’re doing and why is research gold for anyone interested in the future.
Take the way kids create languages to facilitate text messaging. (In case you’re older than 26 [...]

Read mobile youth power »

In the hood, it was throwback, sweet old ladies and none of the high-tech voting machines everybody’s buzzing about.

Read Election Observers »