Youth Advocacy
Youth Advocacy
Year 4, Week 02 (244 total reports)
13.02.20245-18.12.2025
REVIEW and ANNOUNCEMENTS
Dr. Jerry Goebel, MBA, D.Min.
Are you the kind of person that wants to share a message of hope and resilience with others? Subscribe to my YouTube page and find multiple videos to empower, relax, and educate those around you.
NEW FEATURE: Visual Stories!
Visual Stories is my YouTube account which shares presentations based on original music and designed to inspire parents, foster parents, educators, and youth workers. Topics vary from dealing with grief to songs about historic female resistors. Songs can be customized to fit your group. Tell me the details of what you’d like, and share pre-approved pictures with me, and I’ll create a custom-made presentation for your group from the songs in my compilations.
Top Links of the Week
18.02.2025
Presidents Day protests: See photos from demonstrations across the nation
People are taking action all across the United States, turning out for demonstrations at a level that rivals the protests during the Vietnam War. There is nothing this administration would like more than for you to remain isolated in your home, thumbing through the daily disasters and feeling helpless. In fact, that was the plan as crafted by Steve Bannon and Project 2025 long before the election. Their playbook was to take so many egregious actions as rapidly as possible that the press and the public would feel unable to respond. But always remember, even a small response is empowering. Read about the boycotts of oligarch products and commit to them; read about the protests and join them. Don’t let their strategy of “shock and awe” keep you from being involved.
17.02.2025
The Death of Government Expertise
There is a difference between being an expert and having expertise. Someone who has expertise is likely the first one to tell you they are not an expert; they may have studied an area—perhaps even for a lifetime—but they still explore life with curiosity and are open to learning more. An expert believes they have already garnered as much information as possible and no one else can match their knowledge. President Musk and his 47th minion both believe they are experts and do not want to be surrounded by expertise because their “expert” opinions are often false and based on misinformation that they want to be true (as opposed to actually being true). This administration is making a conscious effort to surround themselves with people who will not disagree with them. That type of hubris is part of what makes them so dangerous. In our modeling of knowledge with young people, let us make sure that we always reveal our expertise and shun the title “expert.”
16.02.2025
European leaders set to hold emergency summit on Ukraine
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c04nw1pg3k2o?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=other
President 47 has a full agenda to achieve for the ones who pull his strings (almost too many people to mention at this point; Putin, Musk, Project 2025, the list is almost overwhelming regarding who he owes favors to), but the primary two goals of his campaign remain the same—sow chaos, seek revenge. Those are the bookends of 47’s life. His whole being is fueled by four insatiable motivations: hatred, greed, lust, and revenge. Many of us are seeking ways to protect ourselves from our own government (federal employees or those like me, dependent on the money I put into Social Security over decades of hard work), and now those abroad are gathering to ask, “How do we defend ourselves against the American people and the idiots they continue to elect? It would be convenient to blame this disaster solely on 47 and his actions, but we must never forget how many people voted for this horrible person and the others who didn’t even show up to cast their vote.
15.02.2025
Robert Reich: Profiles In Courage – OpEd
I have respected Robert Reich since he first worked for Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, long before he became the Secretary of Labor under Clinton. His insights into who has been a Profile in Courage during the first terrible days of 47’s reign of chaos are a good read. It helps set a standard for what courage looks like today. And—he can’t help himself—he also points out a few profiles in cowardice.
14.02.2025
60 years of progress in expanding rights is being rolled back by Trump − a pattern that’s all too familiar in US history
The plethora of policies dumped on the US by Project 2025, Elon Musk, and their orange-haired buffoon is designed to roll back the rights of Americans, not just certain Americans, but all Americans. Because indeed, when the rights of anyone in a democracy are rolled back, the rights of all are rolled back, and if these three entities have their way, democracy itself will be rolled back. This historic look at America’s pursuit of “Liberty, Justice, and Freedom for all” compares the latest attempts by 47’s administration to the rollback of rights during the Jim Crow era. It is evident that 47 is NOT in charge, that his strings are being pulled by a myriad of backstage players, but the intent is singular: tear down democracy and replace it with authoritarian rule.
13.02.2025
America Is Its Own Worst Enemy
This historical perspective into powerful countries undermining themselves is so apropos while watching the implosion of the Elon Musk and Project 2025 government under the amateurish figurehead of 47. Comparisons to Mao Zedong in the late 1950s and Nikita Khrushchev (also in the 1950s) are intriguing and accurate. So are the comparisons to Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, rapacious autocrats who ruined their economies and caused the death (and emigration) of thousands. Will America survive this oligarchy as a democratic government? I think the jury is still out. It certainly won’t be the America promised by George H.W. W. Bush, as a “ kinder and gentler nation.” What nation we leave future generations will largely depend on our daily acts of “good trouble” and “civil disobedience.” How can you use your one, small voice (Carole King in her 1982 song, based on the Hans Christian Andersen story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”) to alert others of the danger we are facing?
