Young people hold up signs saying students demand action.

We Students Will Keep Advocating for Background Checks for Gun Sales

In this past year as a student activist for gun safety, I’ve learned that America’s gun problem is a multifaceted issue. Gun violence includes incidents like mass shootings, gang and domestic violence, and suicides.

Man skateboards past billboards about new condos.

Can Washington State Keep Youth Off the Streets After They Leave Detention?

By the age of 17, David Vanwetter had been in and out of detention perhaps a dozen times.
Washington state is vowing to keep young people like Vanwetter — often with complicated and troubled lives — from becoming homeless after they exit the jailhouse door. The state Legislature has ambitiously pledged to stop releasing youth from “publicly funded systems of care” — juvenile detention, foster care and mental health and drug treatment — into homelessness by the end of 2020. And that doesn’t mean putting them in a cab to a homeless shelter: Youth must have “safe and stable housing,” the law says.