It's Your World--If You Don't Like It, Change It: Activism for Teenagers

I'm glad to see a book like this available for teens, because it's never too early to teach Americans that they have the power to resist. For most my life I felt powerless, but my feelings changed in 2007 when ordinary folks like myself used letters, e-mails and phone calls to stop the all-powerful federal government from giving amnesty to 12,000,000 illegal aliens. So I recommend all teens read this book and learn how to legally fight the government and protect their rights; because if you won't fight for them, the politicians will cheerfully take them away.

In a world filled with fear and uncertainty, teens need to get involved in stopping the violence, fear and global destruction. This wonderful book allows teens to get involved in saving their world step by step in a good, non-violent way.

"We can change the world, Rearrange the world, It's dying-- To get better." --Graham Nash, "Chicago" "Every year in America, more than four million companion animals are needlessly put to death in shelters." "A full-time working woman [in America] earns only seventy-three cents for every dollar earned by a man." "On average, an American high school student hears twenty-five anti-gay remarks every day." Don't like something that's going on? Then change it! I was joyed to help ferry our budding tenth grade activist and a group of her peers out to the rugged ocean coast recently to take part in a Clean Up Day. There is nothing as a parent that I'd like more than to see my kids grow up to be people who are trying to make this place better. Katie is now the same age I was when I participated in a high school clean up project on the first Earth Day. And I was living back there on the East coast when, on a summer Southampton morning in 1976, I wandered into Neil's house. Arthur was already there, and our favorite radio station, WPKN, was cranked up on the stereo. But when I walked in that morning, Arthur was all teary-eyed as he began blubbering over and over to me, "They just can't do that! They just can't do that!" It took twenty minutes of listening to 'PKN before they repeated the announcement that had unhinged my friend: The Board of Trustees of the University of Bridgeport had decided to take active control of "our" radio station and turn it into an NPR affiliate. Because I was (am, and forever shall remain) an activist/troublemaker/pain-in-the-butt, I told Arthur that he needed to immediately write letters in protest. And to this day I still cannot understand the response by Arthur which was to do absolutely nothing but moan and mourn. No matter what I said, I could not get him to write even one simple letter. But I did. I wrote to Congressman Otis Pike and told him that WPKN was a unique and vital source of alternative news and commentary for his constituents, and that the source was about to be silenced. A few days later the announcements of the impending change at the station ceased without fanfare or explanation. I then received a written response from Congressman Pike which included a copy of the letter sent to him by the head of the FCC who, at the Congressman's request, had inquired of the University what was going on with the radio station and was told that, oh no, nothing was going on. A year later, as an antinuclear activist, I had the opportunity to visit the WPKN studio to speak on the air about solar energy and conservation technologies. I brought along the letters that Congressman Pike had sent me, and was treated like a prince by the station manager when he saw that letter. He told me that he had never learned why the Trustees had abandoned their plans as abruptly as they had adopted them. And thus I learned that one young person can make all the difference. "Right now in the United States, twenty-six pe