Young People

WASHINGTON -- "Get up, stand up," Bob Marley sings on a video that is part of an innovative campaign to get young people to register to vote.People for the American Way began this year distributing the short video to high schools. It features background music by popular singers and shows young people talking about the importance of voting and individual initiative.Along with the video, the liberal non-profit group is giving teachers a packet of lesson plans intended to reinforce the voting message.

Madonna may wanna make voters out of them, but young people probably won't line up at voting booths tomorrow in the same fervid way they line up for her concert tickets.The pop star, whose TV spots are part of a get-out-the-vote effort targeted at the young, may be in the same boat as the Gulf crisis and the faltering economy -- none is enough to send young voters flocking to the polls to exercise their newly aquired voters' cards."The local elections, I can't see how they'd affect us," said Akiba Covitz, a 22-year-old senior at St. John's College in Annapolis.

Stan Stovall remembers being quizzed on simple phrases in French at age 3, learning to read by following the adventures of his favorite action heroes at 6, and perusing the newspaper each day when he was 9.The WMAR-TV (Channel 2) anchorman grew up in a household where reading was a regular activity and school considered a challenge best tackled head-on, with gusto.It's no surprise that illiteracy is one of Stovall's pet peeves."Quite frankly, I don't see how anyone can get anywhere today without being not only a reader, but a good reader," Stovall says, perched on a stool in the studio where he reads the nightly news.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently delivered a speech in Tunisia that focused on the historic role young people are playing to promote freedom, opportunity and human dignity in their countries. Speaking at a youth forum in Tunis, she also took questions from the youth leaders, students and young entrepreneurs who had packed the room to hear what she had to say. Secretary Clinton's powerful message, that "the needs and concerns of young people have been marginalized too long," was also aimed at a global audience.

The sound of more than a thousand singing voices spilled out the doors of St. Casimir Church in Canton yesterday afternoon as 10 young people emerged into the sunshine carrying a 10-foot wooden cross on their shoulders. Cardinal William H. Keeler, archbishop of Baltimore, emerged next with several other members of the clergy. And then hundreds of young Catholics poured out onto the sidewalk and started proceeding down the street. Mae Richardson, coordinator of youth ministry for Sacred Heart Parish of Glyndon, looked at the noisy, briskly moving sea of young people stretching for blocks along the edge of Patterson Park.

TORONTO - Roman Catholic youths from around the world gave Pope John Paul II a rowdy welcome worthy of a rock star yesterday as the pontiff called on them to reject the hatred of violence and terror and to resist the materialism of Western culture. A cheering crowd of about 400,000 youths from 170 nations gathered at a public park on the shores of Lake Ontario to greet Pope John Paul, who made his first appearance at the weeklong 17th World Youth Day celebration. The crowd included more than 50,000 from the United States.

One of the truisms of U.S. transportation planning has long been that each year, there will be more cars on the road. The logic of this is simple - as the population grows so does their need to get to places, and motor vehicles are by far the most popular choice. This has been the case for decades. But not the past decade. Even before the economic recession put millions of people out of work or the recent spike in gasoline prices, the growth in the amount of driving per capita (also known as vehicle miles traveled)

BEIJING - Every morning, long before the glass doors swing open at 9 a.m., a crowd of young men and women gathers outside this mammoth, colonnaded building in hope of getting a seat inside. At 9 a.m., everyone dashes in with an intensity akin to the frenzy of determined shoppers at a red tag sale - a quiet mob rushing to find a place to read in the nearly silent vastness of the National Library of China. The library, the nation's largest, stands as a monument to a young generation's hunger for opportunity and advancement.

Hassan Allen-Giordano isn't one of those political types in a three-piece suit, with a fancy degree, plotting strategies on a BlackBerry. He's the guy who is up at 6 a.m., in a white polo scarfing down waffles, convincing students that politics might save their lives - as it did for him. A while back, the 30-year-old political activist wasn't worrying himself about how many young people he could get to the polls on Election Day. In 2001, he had served...

In a former garage with concrete floors and cinder block walls, a couple of dozen teen-agers and twentysomethings armed with hammers and hacksaws are thinking big.Eugene Warren wants to start his own business. Devron Dennis wants to build his own house -- preferably in a field near a stream. Wendell Fowlkes, Tayon Dixon and Carlisa Mitchell envision lucrative trades: as plumber, carpenter, electrician.No matter that many who've come to this construction training program are high school dropouts with 9th- or 10th-grade educations and few prospects for decent-paying jobs.