Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor - History

History

The organization was founded by fifteen-year-old Keith Hefner and other Ann Arbor teenagers around December 1970, when the first draft of the Youth Liberation platform was written., and served as a principal informational and organizational hub for a host of similar efforts around the country. Its central aims included student control of education, the free development of youth culture, and an end to discrimination against youth, with related emphases on gay rights for young people, environmentalism, and an end to the Vietnam War. Youth Liberation also allied with older radicals in Ann Arbor- and Detroit-area organizations such as the White Panther Party and the Human Rights Party.

In the Spring of 1971, its members successfully persuaded the Ann Arbor, Mich. city council to drop its curfew laws. During the 1971-1972 school year, student unions were started in many schools in the Ann Arbor area.

In 1972, Youth Liberation's Sonia Yaco, a fifteen-year-old student, ran for the Ann Arbor School Board as a member of the local Human Rights Party. Regulations stipulated that only adults could run for school board, but Yaco's demands for a student voice in school governance earned her 1,300 votes as a write-in candidate, or eight percent of the total. Her campaign indirectly influenced the establishment of the experimental, alternative Community High School in Ann Arbor later that year.