Thursday, January 11, 2007

with a little help from my friends

this is a tale for those that are active and those just thinking of doing something to bring change. in 1967 i was 13 but well on my way to being radical. listening to music, wearing weird clothes, growing my hair and more. the Vietnam war was going and every year a certain percentage of the senior boys got drafted and went to fight. since i was to young to go, i could only fight at home to stop this from continuing. some friends and i decided to also fight to get the laws changed to allow 18 year olds to vote and to abolish the dress codes in public schools. this is one story of the struggle over dress codes in upstate NY. it was relatively easy to get girls and their mothers and grandmothers to join the fight. if you have ever walked to school during a bad NY. winter and been told you must wear an approved skirt or dress you know why this is so. we got lawyers willing to challenge the NY. state supreme court, various newspapers, the plaintiffs, the school board, officials from the state and others to attend meetings on the subject. in the end we won all but a few concessions. if the clothes were not dangerous or obscene, they must be allowed. HOORAY for us. we went on, with many others. to get the vote for 18 year olds and i voted in the first presidential election that 18, 19 and 20 years olds could. 1972 was a good year.
the point of this post is to encourage. some of you take voting and wearing jeans to school to lightly. ask us geezers, we'll tell ya.lol.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

yes 1972 was a good year I was born -- the eldest child