Activism with Max

Activism with Max!Hey everyone, and welcome to Activism with Max!

You might have seen me around Scarleteen in the past but if you haven’t, I’ll give you a quick background on me.

I’m Max Kamin-Cross, and I’m 17 years old from a Conservative area of Western New York. I’ve been working in reproductive rights and education for about a year now. Currently I write my own purely politics blog called MasKosMF.net and write for a bunch of other awesome organizations. I also volunteer at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in Washington DC, and at my local Planned Parenthood. I love to ski in the winter and rock climb in the summer, and of course lobby and blog all year round.

I first talked to Heather a couple months ago about having a more permanent place on Scarleteen, but we weren’t sure what that would be. We started thinking about what could possibly make this amazing website even better, and this is what we came up with.

Scarleteen has become this truly supportive and educational community; all you have to do is skim over the forums and see this community in action. Scarleteen has helped millions of people around the world learn about their reproductive rights including safe sex, contraceptives, and hundreds of other topics. Unfortunately, many of these rights are being challenged around the world.

Every year bills get introduced in many states here in the US, along with in the House, to limit sex education or to make it harder for a woman to make vital choices about her pregnancy. This year alone, more than 60 anti-choice laws have been passed on the state level. These laws work to limit a women’s right to make choice about her body, which is something we at Scarleteen are against. We believe that every person should be allowed access to factual information, and be allowed to make their own choices. Many times when government leaders start to implement laws such as these, or even more extreme ones that limit comprehensive sex-ed, we may feel useless or unsure of what to do to try and stop this. The government is a big and scary thing and sometimes it feels like our opinion doesn’t matter—this is where I come in.

I’ve been working in politics for as long as I can remember, since I was 10 years old actually. In the past 7 years I’ve worked on tons of different campaigns ranging from local elections, to a variety of state elections, and most recently I volunteered on the NY-26 special election. Though I currently go to high school, to the dismay of my teachers, I spend much of my free time working with different campaigns and organizations around the country.

Starting next week, every other week or so, I’ll be sharing with you one of these campaigns or organizations that are devoted to stopping unjust and unfair laws and I'll include a way you can help. If the Scarleteen community as a whole rises up to help protect our civil and reproductive rights, I believe that we can stop these and other laws from ever being even discussed again.

If there is a specific topic or organization you would like me to cover, feel free to email me at Max.Kamin.Cross@gmail.com or tweet me @MaxKaminCross.