Brian Greenspun

Ifound the antidote to the constant, unrelenting and continuing concern that has permeated the body politic for the past two years. You know what I am talking about. It’s that feeling of malaise that grips us as we consider where the United States is going given the current political climate and the oft-repeated question: How do we get our country back and where are the leaders who will get us there?

That answer to our ills has been available in Southern Nevada for 62 years. It is called the Las Vegas Sun Youth Forum.

When my father, Hank Greenspun, and his assistant Ruthe Deskin, together with Harvey Dondero from the Clark County School District, got together in 1956 to consider ways to make sure that the young people of that day would be listened to by the adult leaders of the community, it was the Sun Youth Forum that came to life as a way to give voice to those who could not be heard.

That year, just short of 100 students from the handful of high schools in the county gathered together to discuss whatever was on their minds — and the Sun Youth Forum was born.

It has been over six decades and the forum is still going strong, with close to 1,000 students and over 50 high schools represented. The Las Vegas Sun and CCSD are still partners together with our new partner, Barrick Gold Corp., which joined us last year and with whose help we can do this for six more decades!

Back to the antidote for what ails us.

To a person — the adult moderators from across the community, the school counselors and teachers who fill the rooms at the convention center to support their students, the business leaders who find their way to the forum to “see what’s going on” and those who make it all happen, like Brian Cram and Sheila Lee from the Sun and Sandy Ginger and Jody Plant from the School District — the feeling that Sun Youth Forum day is the best day of the year is as true today as it was when this whole thing started.

These high school juniors and seniors remove any doubt that the community elders may have about this newest generation of voters and leaders. Our country is not only in good hands, but they are the kind of hands that are more thoughtful, more curious, more knowledgeable and more understanding than any generation I have lived with and through in my lifetime.

And I ought to know because I have been participating in the Sun Youth Forum for over five decades, so I have witnessed up close and personally the kind and caliber of students who come through its doors.