We got back from NCoR on sunday. Last year we somehow managed to get better accommodations- free bed, free rides, free breakfast... this year we had to pay for the bus there, the train, the food... ended up costing us a lot.

Anyway, the workshops this year were very good, but surprisingly similar to the ones last year - or maybe we're just interested in the same things. We promoted a fair amount, we gave out about a 150 of those flyers we posted, plus I put some postcards and stickers on a table and they were snatched up really quick.

We didn't get to do a workshop, but we were given a little bit of time to speak at the NYRA workshop. That workshop was actually probably the most interesting one we went to, from a Misled Youth point of view.

NYRA is an organization that focuses on youth rights and passing legislation against things like the voting/drinking ages, state-imposed curfews, behavior modification programs. They're somewhat similar to us in terms of our ideals (despite what seems to be an unhealthy obsession with the American flag in their flyer designs), and actually, come to think of it, sort of inspired us to switch from writing a book to starting this organization, two years ago at their last workshop at NCoR. The difference between our organizations is that we are more socially focused while they are more legally focused.

Misled Youth has many problems, but one of the big ones is that we can never quite explain what we are to people without at least two pages of space. This is made worse by our confusing name, that sounds somewhere between a rehab and a punk band. People not really understanding what exactly we're trying to do is the main reason not too many people have jumped on board with us.

Sitting through this workshop helped me step back and realize the order in which things occur to people. The whole thing evolved from youth rights to changing and reclaiming the educational system, which is exactly how Misled Youth evolved. It seems like a lot of the time when we're trying to explain Misled Youth, people have a hard time seeing the relationship between them. When we were doing Teenage Lobotomy it was really clear because our goal was simply to destroy all institutions for young people. But I was talking to a girl on the phone like a year ago who went to the same fucked-up institution I went to (The Family Foundation School) and she was asking about what I was doing to get rid of it. I said I wasn't really working on getting rid of it anymore, but creating an alternative to it. She thought this meant starting another school that was just less fucked-up. I tried to explain that by alternative, I meant making all institutions obsolete. I don't think she understood what I was saying, and I sorta stopped trying to explain it.

I was starting to think we should just not mention the youth rights thing anymore and just try to come off as a self-education advocacy and resource network, but that seems to confuse people even more. I think this works, not that it's our mission statement or anything, but that it's the general progression of ideas from problem to solution.

"Young people are being marginalized, locked-up and mistreated. The excuse for this is that young people are pill-popping, shoplifting vandals that shoot each other in the halls of their high schools. This is a gross stereotype, but whatever problems young people do face (mostly TV, drugs and violence) are often caused by apathy, which is not a native trait in teenagers, but one created by the heavy monotony and oppression in schools which portray education as a collection of mandatory assignments, authoritative figures, fierce competition and blatant lies. If education is viewed as something better than TV, drugs and violence, which it is, there would be no need for behavior modification programs, or any of the other tactics used to control and restrain kids."

Something to that effect I think is a pretty good description of why we exist that is severely lacking both on this website and in our materials. If it's combined with the text we just wrote for the flyer which outlines the four points of what we're trying to do, I think we'd have a good explanation of ourselves to outsiders interested in youth rights.

OK, moving on (damn, the amount of words it takes to explain one thing. This is one of several reasons why I never talk in person-- I'd bore people to death). We were able to talk to some of the people from YELL!, but unfortunately they were only able to see three workshops and stay one night, which limited our interaction a lot. We're going to have to meet more regularly what with the anarchist bookfair approaching and all... hopefully the chat will run smoothly on other people's computers.

We went to a bunch of other cool workshops: there was an Icarus Project / Freedom Center one that was similar to last year but seemed to cover more topics and receive more participation from the audience. And there was a really cool one on permaculture and urban sustainability by the rhizome collective. There was a counter military-recruitment one that was really interesting but they didn't have a website ready yet. Ummm, what else... a bunch of New Orleans related ones were really cool, there was one about what an anarchist economy would look like, with worker-owned businesses and all, which reminded me of this art project that I've been planning for a while but I don't really wanna explain it until I'm more prepared...

And I guess that's it.

We decided that next year it's not worth the $60 per person and 9 hours of travel it ends up amounting to unless we have workshop or a table. It's a cool experience and all, but it gets a little repetitious the third time around. I'm definitely more excited about the anarchist bookfair than I was about NCoR.

I'm sure that I left a ton of things out, despite the giant block of text I just shat out of my fingertips... but that was my overall experience. Feel free to post yours if you were there...