Biko co-wrote an article with the NAACP’s National Youth & College Director Stefanie Brown about the Youth PROMISE Act, a truly non-partisan piece of social justice legislation that would represent the most serious investment in the social health of urban youth in recent years. Here’s an excerpt:

If it takes a village to raise a child, what does it take to protect the children of the village?  The Center for Disease Control reports that youth violence is the second leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 10 and 24; an average of 16 young people are murdered every day.  As a village, Congressional leaders included, we ALL need to do our part to save our children.

Read the full story at Politic365.

Texas Director Christina Sanders (left) with volunteer

We are thrilled to announce that our Texas State Director, Christina Sanders, has been nominated by a staff member at the New Organizing Institute as Most Valuable Organizer.

Anyone who has worked with Christina before knows that she is a passionate organizer with all the best qualities of a field director: the ability to stay on talking points while giving an interview and then turn right back around and motivate a struggling volunteer to go back into the field to get the job done.

We are proud of Christina for her incredible work this year and wish her good luck in winning this well deserved nomination.

Please vote for Christina by “liking” her entry right here!

Texas League of Young Voters Education Fund participated in Texas RootsCamp, facilitated by Matt Glazer with GNI Strategies in Austin, TX. Since, NOI has hosted RootsCamp, an “unconference” where organizers set the agenda, share lessons learned and drive the conversation about best practices in organizing. Rather than panels and powerpoints, people have real live conversations about valuable organizing lessons taken from the field, both online and offline.  Topics included field strategies, creating local PACS and non-proftis, online fundraising, blogs and progressive activism, and the future of press and politics.