Photographs by Robert Scheer
About 7,000 students, including a busload of children from Stocklmeier Elementary School in Sunnyvale, attended KidsVention '96 at the San Jose Arena on March 19.
The event was sponsored by KidsVoting, a nonpartisan, nonprofit, grassroots organization dedicated to educating youth about the rights and responsibilities of voting. During KidsVention, delegates from schools throughout Santa Clara County debated and then voted on three political issues of concern to young people. They approved a federal measure outlawing firearms and a state measure on mandatory computer-literacy testing. They defeated a local measure that would require school uniforms.
On March 26, participants were to have accompanied their parents to the polls so they could cast their "votes" in the primary election.
Pictured at left, Stocklmeier fifth-grader Yasmin Hosseinzadeh shows her support for a issue being scrutinized on the arena floor. At right, fifth-grader Michael Wathen shows his school spirit as his boards a bus to the event behind fifth-grader John Lazarus and sixth-grader D.J. Mills.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, March 27, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.