Teens Tackle Tough Issues at CSUN Workshop

Dressed like one of them, talking like one of them, San Fernando Valley Youth Organization director Albert Melena, 31, stood before a group of high school students and posed a question: “If you went to a ditching party, and there wasn’t any beer, would it be a ditching party?”

“Naaahhh,” the students said.

Next he flashed up a slide of a Budweiser billboard with two sexy women dancing next to a giant beer can and asked them why they link parties and alcohol.

Thus began the alcohol advertising workshop Saturday at the fourth annual Youth Summit at Cal State Northridge. More than 150 teenagers discussed social ills, ranging from alcohol and tobacco abuse to youth violence, sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancy.

More importantly, they talked about how they could make a difference.

“They watch TV, they read papers, where kids are portrayed as the problem, right?” Melena said after his presentation. “This is to tell them, ‘You are the solution.’ This is to get them involved.”

Saturday’s all-day event was sponsored by the San Fernando Valley Youth Organization, a nonprofit group funded in part by the Los Angeles County Alcohol and Drug Program Administration and state money. It targets youth ages 13-19.

The biggest battle for these San Fernando Valley teens, so far, has been fighting to ban alcohol and tobacco billboards near schools and parks.

Teenage leaders kicked off the day by presenting Councilman Mike Feuer with an award for helping the city of Los Angeles pass legislation prohibiting outdoor ads for alcohol and tobacco within 1,000 feet of schools and parks.

That legislation passed in 1998. But the fight goes on. A group of grocers, liquor store owners, and national beer and wine distributors filed a lawsuit in federal court last year--just months before the city legislation was scheduled to take effect--that asked a judge to declare the restrictions unconstitutional and strike them down. No decision has been made.

Although many groups were instrumental in getting the city ordinance passed, Feuer, who wrote the city legislation, praised the Valley teens’ activism in helping to pass the Los Angeles billboard law.

“When we did the billboard ordinance, hundreds of kids came to City Hall,” Feuer said. “Their parents came. I have to think it made a difference with swing votes on the council.”

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Many high school students who were involved in doing surveys, taking pictures of billboards and advertising in their neighborhoods and testifying for the council on the billboard ordinance are now in college, but they continue to help out with the San Fernando Valley Youth Organization. Some ran workshops Saturday. Others do outreach at local schools, including San Fernando High School, John F. Kennedy High School in Granada Hills and Monroe High School in North Hills.

They said getting involved in community activism as high school students strongly influenced their lives and their outlook.

Pamela Villasenor, 20, who attended Granada Hills High and just earned an associate’s degree from College of the Canyons in Valencia, said she protested in front of Budweiser, marched against youth-targeted alcohol advertising on the Day of the Dead, and spoke out on the radio.

The experience built self-confidence and gradually won the respect of her parents. It also taught her the power of speaking out, she said.

Newcomers in Melena’s workshop Saturday listened carefully as he discussed how alcohol companies target young people, especially in low-income neighborhoods.

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As Melena spoke, Eric Reyes, 13, who attends San Fernando Middle School, and Isaac Zuniga, 16, who attends Sylmar High School, nodded in recognition.

“Those signs,” Isaac said, referring to the alcohol billboards. “You can see them everywhere. Where I live, one block away, it’s all beer.”