Youth Rights Media
Panel # 6
Perception versus Reality
OUR MISSION: MAKING MEDIA, MAKING CHANGE
Youth Rights Media is a New Haven-based nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering
youth to know, protect and advance their rights. YRM builds youth power and leadership by
engaging young people in video media production and community organizing, equipping them
with tools, skills, and strategies for affecting change within themselves and their communities.
OUR HISTORY: FROM THEN TO NOW
In New Haven, as in many urban areas, exchanges between youth and police are often
marked by mutual feelings of hostility, mistrust, and fear. In the late 1990s, when
Connecticut witnessed multiple fatal police shootings of young people of color, the grave
consequences of the prevailing youth-police relationships were made painfully clear. At the
same time, Connecticut was gradually becoming a national leader on an equally disturbing
front: its spending on incarceration, the racial disproportionately in its juvenile and criminal
justice system, and the percentage of youth incarcerated in adult facilities.
In the summer of 2000, Yale Law students Homer Robinson and Gabriel Plotkin teamed up
with undergrad Laura McCargar to launch the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project, a student-
run organization with the goal of shifting the dynamic between youth and police officers
and reducing the flow of youth into the juvenile justice system by educating youth about
their rights in encounters with police. They worked with a group of New Haven teens to
develop and produce a video titled Cops, Kids, Rights and Respect, and later paired high
school juniors and seniors with law students to facilitate in-school workshops designed to
educate youth about their rights in encounters with police.
In the spring of 2002, after working with dozens of teen peer educators to reach hundreds of
New Haven students, JRAP was incorporated as Youth Rights Media. In its first year,
YRM underwent a profound shift in its philosophy and approach. As JRAP, the primary
goal was to disseminate information about the law and legal rights to young people. As
YRM evolved, discussions about youth rights gave way to explorations of why rights were
being violated. Our work moved beyond sharing information about the law of rights to
focus on empowering youth to understand – and challenge – the politics of rights and the
power structures that make them work differently for different groups of people. YRM
creates space for youth to express and analyze their realities and builds platforms for youth
to get their voices heard. Armed with media production tools and community organizing
skills, youth leaders at YRM have not only generated significant reforms of our juvenile
justice and education system, they are leading a movement to redefine what “rights” mean.
AWARDS AND HONORS
2002 Winner, Yale Entrepreneurial Society Y50K Competition
2004 Youth Media Activism Award, Hartford Independent Media Center
2005 Best Documentary, Westport Youth Film Festival
2005 Criminal Justice Award, Media That Matters
2006 Audience Choice Award, Wesport Youth Film Festival
2006 Revolutionary Visionary Award, Arts Council of Greater New Haven
2007 Reebok Human Rights Award - Executive Director, Laura McCargar
LAURA MCCARGAR
Laura McCargar is a co-founder and the Executive Director of Youth Rights Media, a New
Haven based nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering youth to use media as a tool for
personal transformation and community change. Under her leadership, young people at YRM
have produced dozens of video productions that have reached thousands of youth and
community members through public education and organizing campaigns and have resulted in
concrete changes in the local education and juvenile justice systems. In 2007 Laura was one of
five individuals worldwide to be honored as the recipient of the Reebok Human Rights Award
for her outstanding work advancing the rights of young people. She graduated from Yale
University in 2002 with a B.A. in American Studies.