If the name Brat Magazine — or the BRYCC House — means anything to you, you’re probably a young GenX or older Millennial and you lived in Louisville in the late 90s. 

Nearly 25 years later, we’re no longer teens, or youth, or even young adults, just grown-ass people, and we’re watching in horror as disasters unfold daily on our screens. But we also see minute-by-minute updates about youth-driven activism addressing climate, racism, war, police brutality, or a host of other issues. That activism is inspiring and necessary, though when we were young people, it was a struggle to inspire large numbers of our peers to take similar decisive actions. 

Nationally, the late 90s was not a popular time for youth activism, though it had every reason to be. There were battles to be won, but there was a frustrating lack of urgency on the part of many younger people that seems especially out of character for youth when observing Louisville’s current youth-driven movement. 

It was during that youth activist lull that Brat was born — as a zine or a magazine, depending on which gatekeeper you ask. It was created by Louisville youth who knew very little about publishing, journalism, graphic design or marketing. At its pinnacle, it had a print run of 10,000 with subscribers and distribution sites mostly throughout the Midwest and South. Its crass tagline declared its antithetical reason for existence: “Because your school paper sucks.” 

Though national youth interest in activism was relatively low when we were causing trouble in the latter 90s, there had been a youth activist surge in the late 80s and early 90s. Our slightly older counterparts grappled with the Gulf War, the nuclear arms race, the beating of Rodney King, and the AIDS crisis. But coming of age in the latter 90s was a deflating experience. Along with the Gingrich-led Republican Revolution in 1994, the Clinton Democrats made it their own job to lay waste to progressive policies — “ending welfare as we know it,” deregulating Wall Street and passing the Defense of Marriage Act — hand in hand with the Republicans using a strategy called triangulation. For idealistic youth, there were few inspiring leaders in Washington, just Democrats undermining their own party’s gains and otherwise behaving badly. Take, for instance, the Democrats’ cringeworthy (and now familiar) defense of President Clinton’s sex scandals and harassment complaints, culminating with the shaming of the young intern with whom he had an affair. It was not lost on us that the vilified Monica Lewinsky was around our own age at the time.

Things weren’t moving in the right direction, but instead of these events radicalizing large swaths of American youth, it seemed common to wear your apathy on your sleeve. 

So Brat was, at that time, an unusually-timed anomaly. The zine came to exist because I had befriended people in Louisville’s music scene in 1995 and paused my enrollment at the University of Georgia to move to Louisville. I would never end up returning to my native city, Atlanta. While studying at UGA, I had chosen journalism as a major, but I lacked the context and experience to understand where my voice would belong. I instead decided to focus on paying bills and exploring my new city.

It was around this time that LEO Weekly ran a feature airing the grievances of Highlands business owners, whose ongoing gripes about local youth had reached a feverish pitch. Precious boutiques and overpriced antique stores were sprouting up around the record stores, cheap eateries and hippie holdover shops. Just as the cycle of gentrification plays out everywhere, the youth who had made the Bardstown Road strip fashionable were no longer welcome. 

So I was the only 19-year-old at the next meeting of the local business association, the source of the complaints. It seemed unfair that a meeting about youth was during school hours, so I felt obligated to attend. I listened to business owners complain to Tom Owen — who represented the district at the time — and to police officers and Metro Parks officials about the neighborhood youth running amok. I don’t remember exactly what words I used at the meeting to argue against the criminalization of youth, but I do remember my voice shaking a lot. After the meeting, someone from Metro Parks invited me to assist a city-run youth program called the Neighborhood Youth Board. It was through that program that I met the first people with whom I eventually published Brat: Mike Harpring, Corey Lyons and Harper Tobin. 

In retrospect, that first issue was sloppily written and designed, but it led to Brat attracting dozens of diverse high school and college-aged kids over the next few years from every corner of Louisville. In twice-weekly meetings at the Douglas Community Center, then at the legendary Twice Told Coffee House, and finally in a cheap apartment above White Mountain Creamery near Doo Wop Shop on Bardstown Road, we pitched and wrote articles about youth and politics, and, feeling the responsibility of our own words, we turned to organizing demonstrations. At Brat’s peak, as many as 25 young adults crowded into our living room for meetings, always held late in the afternoon to give the staff’s TARC riders coming across the city time to arrive after school. 

During the Brat years, she told me she had seen similarities between the movement Brat was creating and her own experiences with young activists. To my surprise, she took it upon herself to get closer to me, often calling while I was working at my entry-level graphic design job with a “quick question.” But Anne didn’t know brevity; she’d inevitably find herself telling a long story, usually about her years working with SNCC, a youth-led direct action group that was critically important to the Civil Rights Movement. Anne could monologue for hours at top speeds; she was fascinating, and I appreciated her, but I’ll admit that sometimes I put her on speakerphone so that I could continue working on my zine, hoping my boss wouldn’t walk in. Now I wish I’d recorded every call and regret not telling her how much she impacted me. 

Time moves differently when you’re young. It certainly felt epic-length, but its five year existence was only a brief moment in our lives. Still, according to some former readers, Brat — and its later brick-and-mortar youth center manifestation, the BRYCC House — provided a blueprint on how to assume more agency in their lives, expanding its impact beyond its short run.

Likewise, it often led its own writers to pursue careers in which service and change were central components. For me, Brat demonstrated an authentic model of learning through real-world projects and community advocacy. It made me realize that I enjoyed teaching. My husband, James Miller, who also participated in Brat, now leads a journalism magnet program with me in JCPS. Harper Tobin went on to become the director of policy for the National Center for Transgender Equality and is responsible for implementing national trans rights policies; Joe Dunman, a law professor,  was an attorney for the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges that struck down state bans on lesbian and gay marriage; Carrie Neumayer founded Girls Rock Louisville, inspiring hundreds of girls to create their own bands and music; Damon Thompson went on to move the entire city with his murals, including those of Breonna Taylor; Robert Bell, who also became a teacher, introduced Bernie Sanders at a campaign rally, continued his community activism and organized his own first run for office. I hope the others will forgive me for not completing the list, but it’s quite long.