Sun Youth Forum gives us hope — just when we need it

The hope for America. While I write this, Nevada election officials are trying to count every vote that has been cast in last week’s midterm election. It appears we won’t know the final results until well into this coming week. What we do know is that Nevada appears poised to buck the national trend. And not in a good way.

All across America, voters turned out in large numbers to turn down the opportunity to take this country backwards toward a land of less, a land of haters, election deniers and antisemites. But Democracy worked. Americans said “no” and “no way!”

In Nevada, it appears that some election deniers, those who participated in the election lies that led to Jan. 6, and those who encouraged others to believe in the lies through their silence, their complicity or their active involvement, are poised to lead the state of Nevada.

To that I say, I hope not. But hope is not always an effective strategy so it is better to hope that our elected leaders will have a change of heart, a change of mind and a change of priorities —where now their only priority is serving all the residents of Nevada. A boy can hope, can’t he?

While Nevadans were voting last week, an unassailable reason for all of us to hope for a better tomor

row was on full display at Liberty High School.

The Las Vegas Sun Youth Forum, an annual event in Clark County since 1956 — with an asterisk for COVID-19 — convened at Principal Derek Bellow’s outstanding Liberty High.

The Youth Forum is a peerless example of a public-private partnership designed to advance the education of high school students, their parents and our community and state leaders. It is a full partnership between the Clark County School District and the Las Vegas Sun, an arrangement that started 66 years ago when Hank Greenspun, Ruthe Deskin and CCSD’S Harvey Dondero decided that young people had a voice to which the adult leaders in this state needed to hear and pay heed. I believe the Youth Forum is the only one of its kind in the entire country.

Principal Bellow was a Youth Forum participant a few decades ago, so when the COVID pause gave us the opportunity to move the forum to a place more comfortable and familiar to the hundreds of students who participated from across the county, he quickly volunteered Liberty High. His enthusiasm and that of his teachers and an incredible group of Liberty High Student Council volunteers proved us all right.

When I talk about hope, I am merely echoing the words of our adult moderators who volunteer each year to help the students manage their way through their discussions on a myriad of topics — all of which they have chosen and have meaning to them.

Whether it is breaking up the Clark County School District; the minimum F policy; foreign policy decisions that our leaders struggle with on a daily basis; the legalization of prostitution or drugs; the devastation being wrought by climate change and the ramifications of plans to reverse global warming; or a host of other issues that will determine the world in which they and their families will one day live, nothing is out of bounds for discussion.

The moderators come away with a profound belief — based on the quality of the student discussion, the substance of their arguments, the civility with which they argue and their ability to find consensus in disparate groups of students — that our world will be in good hands.

And that, all by itself, is a reason for hope.

I know that in my discussion group there were a couple of students who had just turned 18 and hadalreadyvoted. Mywishwas that every student, even the ones who I think I may disagree with on policy issues, could have been voters this past week. And I know my fellow moderators agree.

Each of the groups chose a person to represent them to share their views with the rest of the community. They will present the views of their fellow students in the Las Vegas Sun, on UNLV-TV and on the radio. We will make sure everyone knows when that happens because that is what the Youth Forum is all about.

When my father first conceived of the idea of the Youth Forum it was to give voice to the young people who were either not heard or were ignored at the time.

A lot has changed in the past seven decades. But one thing hasn’t changed all that much. There is a reason we need to listen to high school juniors and seniors. It is not because they have the experience we have garnered by living much longer than they have; it is because they want to live longer and better than we have. And they want to live in a world with fewer problems, much less hatred and much more opportunity than the world they now know.

By the way, every parent wants the same thing for their kids and grandkids.

That’s why we have so much reason for hope. We see in these students the intelligence, determination, respect and responsibility that will be necessary to make this world a little better place than it is now.

All we need to do as parents, community leaders and community elders is to listen to them.

And that, my friends, is why the Las Vegas Sun Youth Forum exists!