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The British newspaper The Guardian is reporting that the country’s Labour Party will endorse a 16-year-old voting age today.
Labour, which is currently in power in Britain, is releasing a new party platform in advance of national elections scheduled for next month. The elections, in which voters will elect the country’s parliament, are expected to be closely fought.
Incumbent prime minister Gordon Brown has endorsed votes for 16-year-olds in the past, as has Britain’s opposition Liberal Democratic party, but this will be the first time that Labour itself has embraced the concept.
A few weeks ago I passed along word that students in Idaho, one of the few states not to have a presence in the national March 4 Day of Action, had held a lobby day at the state capitol. And now comes word that they’re at it again, and upping the ante.
The Idaho Statesman newspaper reported this morning that students from the Idaho Student Association (Facebook, Twitter), a new statewide student group, are planning a sit-in protest at today’s meeting of the state Board of Education. The Board is expected to hike tuition at the state’s public colleges and universities by as much as twelve percent.
I’ll update this post with new info as I get it.
“The first demonstrations we had were just a handful of people. In fact when Dr. King himself went to jail, only fifty-five people would go with him. So, when young people today ask me, ‘When are we going to be able to get together like you all were in the sixties?’ — nobody was ‘together’ in the sixties! It was a small group of dedicated people who got it started…
“And then the kids took it over.”
–Andrew Young, interviewed by Spike Lee for the documentary 4 Little Girls, discussing the Birmingham campaign.
I’m such a sucker for stuff like this.
I got lured by another spring day.
There’s lots of stuff happening, and I’ve got lots to write about, but traffic is likely to be low until Monday, so posting will be light too. Look for big updates on several ongoing stories early next week, and word on some new actions I haven’t written about before, too.
In the meantime, feel free to ask me a question on Formspring.me — I’ll be posting some answers from there this weekend, if nothing else.

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