04 February 2015 / Kate Connell / Truth in Recruitment - 

In the spring of 2014, I went to observe a career day at Santa Barbara High School, where my son is enrolled. There were a variety of organizations with representatives and literature tables. The Marines and the Navy recruiters were also there. They were soliciting student contact information. The Marine’s “survey” form included questions such as, “Did you know that the Marine Corps has a $150,000 scholarship?” and “Did you know that the qualifications for the Marine Corps are higher than the standards of UC Santa Barbara?” I told them that under the school’s existing recruiting protocol they were not allowed to get student information directly from students, and that they had to go through the Santa Barbara Unified School District office.

I turned around and saw the school's career counselor and approached him, reminding him about the school's recruiter protocol. He didn’t recall that part of the protocol and said he would talk to the military recruiters about it. I asked, “What about the information they have already gathered from students?” I went back to the Marine recruiters and repeated that they were not allowed to solicit student information. I picked up the surveys they had collected and said that I was going to tear them up and throw them out. They consented, so I ripped them up.

I went to the Navy recruiters’ table and told them the same thing. They had a binder with the protocol in it and looked it up. The Navy recruiter said, "That's correct, here it is, in 'G.'" (G. Recruiters visiting schools shall not at any time solicit contact information directly from students or require it as a condition to participate in an activity or receive an award or gift.) I said, "I am going to take this sign-up sheet and tear it up," holding it up for them to see, and they also said ok.

I discussed the situation more with the career counselor and his staff person. I told them that parents have complained that even though they had signed the district opt-out form (to bar release of student directory information to college and/or military recruiters), their children still received mailers and/or calls from the military. Solicitation of information from students at events like this and at other military recruiter visits was probably why.

I am a mother of two children: my son is a senior at Santa Barbara High School and my daughter an 8th grader at Santa Barbara Junior High School. I am also a member of the Religious Society of Friends, Quakers. I have long been concerned about the frequent presence of military recruiters on high school campuses.

For many years I have worked for what I call Truth in Recruitment, along with students, schools and community groups, including War Resisters League, Veterans for Peace, Project on Youth and Non-military Opportunities (Project YANO), Sustainable Options for Youth and Friends Meetings

My work with the Santa Barbara Unified School District in California began when a friend of my son contacted the local chapter of Veterans for Peace. He was concerned about the frequent visits by military recruiters on campus and requested that Veterans for Peace provide an alternative presence. Around the same time, my son told me that he had challenged a Marine who was a speaker in his Freshman Seminar class (meant to help students plan their futures and possible careers).

At first I congratulated him for confronting this person of authority, but then I did a double take at the fact that a military recruiter had been invited to his class to talk about career opportunities. I contacted his teacher, who replied that the sergeant was not there as a recruiter and that she had not selected him as a speaker. I widened the circle of correspondence to include the principal, assistant principals and counselors. The assistant principal also said that she did not select the class speakers. After another parent and I met with her, she agreed to have the military removed from the speaker list for Freshman Seminar classes.

Still frustrated by the lack of action on the school’s part to provide alternative viewpoints, a small group and I met with the administration to discuss both the recruiter on-campus visitation policy and the necessity to provide alternative viewpoints. The principal eventually agreed to expedite our request to have a display of tombstones representing the 398 18- and 19-year-olds killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Students, veterans, Friends and community members set up the display and read the names of the dead at Santa Barbara High School during Memorial Day week of 2012. The local TV station interviewed both students and members of Veterans for Peace. A similar display was assembled at the high school during the week of Veterans Day and on the next Memorial Day.

Over the following summer, another group of students and community members met with the assistant superintendent of secondary schools (the district has three traditional high schools) to discuss the district recruiter policy, as well as the text for the opt-out form, which enables students and families to block the release of information to recruiters. At the suggestion of the Santa Barbara High School principal, a group of us began drafting a districtwide, detailed policy regarding recruiter access to our youth, which would provide guidelines to navigate the various issues set forth by the No Child Left Behind Act.

Under this law, federal funding for K-12 schools is only available to those institutions that give military recruiters the same school access that is given to recruiters for colleges and civilian employers. Most schools have interpreted this to mean that the military must be given unlimited access to high school campuses. In actuality, they can enact policies that regulate and limit the amount and kind of access that recruiters can have, as long as the same policies apply to all of the recruiter categories.

As we worked on the Santa Barbara policy, we felt that it was important to reach out to the wider community and bring more people into the discussion. We decided to organize an educational forum – “Military Recruiters on our High School Campuses – Why?” — which took place on March 15, 2014, with a panel of counter-recruitment advocates, veterans, and military families. We reached out to the press and invited school board members, administrators, teachers, students, families, and veterans. Two weeks later, there was a follow-up meeting with attendees of the forum to discuss how it went and to draft a policy based on San Diego Unified School District’s recruiting policy.

In April we met with two school board members and presented a draft policy. The board members were enthusiastic, suggesting that it could come before the board as early as the summer and be passed before the 2014 school year started!

In July the board president forgot to notify me that the policy would be on that month’s agenda. I discovered it the day before the meeting, giving me little time to encourage people to attend. Also, I learned that the proposed ‘policy’ was just a one-page summary and lacked critical details.

But sometimes all that is needed is a little preparation and a few willing people to show up. The Santa Barbara Friends Meeting Peace committee was able to review the policy and discuss what position to take. I decided to ask the board to keep working on the policy since it was a “conference agenda item,” not an “action item” — meaning it would not come up for a vote that night.

At the school board meeting, the board president noted our public comments about the incompleteness of the proposed policy. She projected the original draft policy we had sent her so that all in the room could review it. Each board member and the superintendent offered concerns about various details in our policy. The board asked the superintendent to bring it back to the principals for their edits and additions before holding a vote at a later date. The next day I sent an email to the board members and superintendent addressing what I saw as their primary concerns.

After the school year began, I sent an email to the board asking for an update on the policy’s status. The board president notified me that it would be an action item on the October agenda. This time we had a couple weeks’ notice and so were able to get more people to come and give public comments. Usually there is a 2- to 3-minute time limit for each person to make public comments on agenda items. We needed enough speakers to address multiple parts of the policy.

Although much closer to the original draft, the revised policy was still flawed, with vague definitions, redundant additions, and vagueness on enforcement of the regulations. Ten people gave public comment — educators, veterans, students, parents — and as many more came in support of the policy. The policy passed unanimously with one change, which clarified the definition of a recruiter, as well as a plan by the board to create a Memo of Understanding regarding campus access for Santa Barbara City College and the University of California at Santa Barbara. Needless to say, we were all relieved that the policy had passed, despite shortcomings, so that we could move on to make sure the policy was enforced and to provide alternative points of view about the military in our schools.

Some have questioned why we organized to craft a district policy regulating recruiter access to our campuses. Part of education is to think critically and pose questions. The military presence on school campuses is a complex and controversial issue, and students and parents must be involved to make long-lasting changes. So to pose another question: who are our schools in service of — students or recruiters? A goal of recruitment, like advertising, is to make a sale. Sometimes selling involves leaving out information or exaggerating the facts. It is the responsibility of our schools to make sure that students have accurate information to make informed choices and to shield them from overexposure to recruiters.

What has been important for me in working for the demilitarization of schools is the building of relationships with administrators, school board members, students, veterans, teachers, families and community members. If anyone feels that they have been dismissed as part of the process, they are not going to feel engaged in enforcing a policy that treats students and families fairly. The point for me in pushing for alternatives to a military dominant culture is not to win an argument, defend my position, or to make a point. My intent has been to be of service to the community that educates our youth. Having positive exchanges and nurturing long-term relationships is integral to bringing forth the truth about recruitment in schools. We accomplished a great deal with establishing protocols at the local high schools and then passing the districtwide school policy. We now have a grassroots base for further work in providing alternative views to youth and families. It is possible that we can broaden our base to include more youth and a diverse spectrum of voices in this struggle.

This article is from Draft NOtices, the newsletter of the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (http://www.comdsd.org/).

October-December 2014 / Jesus Mendez-Carbajal / Draft NOtices, Project YANO

In the past nine months as Project YANO’s 2013-2014 student intern, I have learned an immense amount of information about U.S. militarism, its far reach, and counter-recruitment. I have been directly impacted on multiple levels. I have grown mentally through the knowledge I have gained and also personally through the interactions and relationships I have built with youth, advisors, teachers, mentors, and Project YANO supporters, volunteers and board members. I have had the pleasure of working with students who look like me, engaging low-income youth of color who have stories and backgrounds similar to my own.

At the time I began the internship, I had accepted and started working as an intern for another local non-profit organization. I am very grateful to both organizations for the opportunities they have provided me and for the personal and professional growth they have facilitated both for me and in me. I am especially grateful for the fact that both were paid internships, which allowed me the freedom to do work that I enjoy, that I am passionate about, and that is not routine -- because, as I experienced first-hand while I worked at Wendy’s, repetitive work is tiresome work.

When I began, I was very excited to intern with YANO but I was also a bit nervous and scared about successfully balancing school, my second internship, and personal life. From YANO, its board members, program coordinator and volunteers, I learned lessons in non-profit organizing, basic mailing operations, and fund appeal letter writing; strengthened my facilitation, time management, and multitasking skills; and acquired an expanded interdisciplinary view of the world.

Prior to applying for the position, I learned about Project YANO and heard about meetings, workshops, and conferences through board members who also happen to be some of my very close friends. They would say things like: “Oh! Project YANO is doing this and doing that,” and “We decided to move forward with this,” and I would think to myself, “Wow, that sounds awesome! I wonder how and if I can join?” I never actually asked, so when the internship opportunity presented itself I gladly applied.

Because the organization has been around since the 1980s and has adopted a broad analysis for counter-recruitment work, as this year’s intern I had the opportunity to make important connections. I identify as a low-income, undocumented, queer Chicano. Through Project YANO I was able to learn about militarism and counter-recruitment and bring these issues together with my own experience and that of other low-income, undocumented, and queer students of color.

Growing up, I was privileged to attend the Preuss School, a local 6-12 grade public charter school specifically designed to track low-income students into higher education -- those who largely also happen to be students of color. Preuss is located/isolated on the University of California San Diego’s campus in La Jolla, next door to La Jolla Country Day, a well-funded private school with a majority of affluent white student enrollment. Although I grew up watching ads on television and received pamphlets in the mail about enlisting in the armed forces, at school I never interacted with a recruiting officer, either off campus and or while at Preuss. Because of this, I came into Project YANO not knowing the extent of recruitment and militarism in schools, policy, and laws.

However, as a transfer student majoring in Chicana/o Studies at San Diego State, I have learned the historical context in which the U.S. has lived as a country in constant war, internal or otherwise, since its establishment as a nation. I have been able to change my binary way of thinking from the military is bad/good towards a more complex analysis of the issue, taking into consideration factors such as education systems and politics that facilitate the high enlistment of low-income people of color.

I did consider enlisting in the military while in my high school sophomore/junior years for a couple of reasons. I wanted to continue into higher education, but I did not have the best of grades and had an undocumented immigration status. Thanks to a high school college advisor (which not all students have, but should), I was shown non-military alternatives to successfully continue in higher education and eventually received legal status.

All in all, my time as YANO’s student intern has, without a doubt, served me well. I am stepping out of the position with strengthened relationships with other passionate and committed people. I am leaving with more knowledge about counter-recruitment and the military’s reach into schools for its own needs (e.g., funding STEM programs in high schools). I now have a larger sense of the history of San Diego and local counter-recruitment efforts in the largest military complex in the world, as well as the other issues we are faced with today in San Diego County.

Although I am ending my time as the student intern, I am transitioning to a board member position, continuing the very important work Project YANO has done since its inception. Counter-recruitment opens the eyes and minds of low-income youth to alternative possibilities that are just as good, and sometimes even better, than enlisting in the military (depending on who you ask). I would like to thank Project YANO, the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft, and all their members, volunteers and supporters for all their work in keeping the organizations alive and for fighting militarism and recruitment of high rates of low-income youth of color.

This article is from Draft NOtices, the newsletter of the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (http://www.comdsd.org/)

November 17, 2014 / Hannah K. Gold / Vice

For decades, the US military has been using souped-up mobile exhibits to recruit prospective soldiers. In July of this year, the military deployed the latest addition to a fleet that roves the country hoping to win the hearts and minds of American youth. The new vehicle, known as the Extreme Truck, is equipped with two 32-inch gaming stations, a 60-inch flat-screen television, several smaller TVs, and pull-up and push-up platforms. It has its own Facebook page, which, at press time, has been liked 111 times.

According to Mobile Exhibit Company commander Captain Korneliya Waters, who recently talked to Recruiter Journal, the Extreme Truck is “a symbol of independence and power.” Her description reminded me of the jacket Nicolas Cage wears in Wild at Heart, which, for him, “represents a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom.” Except the Extreme Truck is funded by tax dollars and designed to assist in contractually binding young people to America’s wars.

Videos by VICE

Recruiting vehicles have been around in some form or another since 1936, when the government established the US Army Accessions Support Brigade, the only department of the Army dedicated exclusively to marketing (the MEC falls under its purview). Three years later, the secretary of the Army sent a team of soldiers to operate a high-profile mobile exhibit at the New York World’s Fair.

The military expanded its marketing efforts dramatically in the 1970s, when it lost unfettered access to new recruits after the draft was repealed. In 1973, the year the all-volunteer force was instituted, the Army launched its first successful campaign-“Join the People Who’ve Joined the Army”-with the help of advertising agency N. W. Ayer & Son. In 1991, Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced plans to expand the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps-a program that instructs high school students in basic training skills-to 3,500 units in five years’ time. Thanks to anti-recruitment activism, the plan slowed significantly. Today, JROTC units, which are filled with MEC vehicles and exhibits, are about to reach that goal. And as Sam Diener, a visiting professor of peace studies at Clark University, notes, “Both the ROTC and the military recruiting trucks are ways in which youth in the United States are militarized.”

By 2013, MEC vehicles drove a collective 600,000 miles to more than 48 states. USAASB operations stopped at more than 1,200 high schools in 2011. “The people who advise the armed forces on marketing are the top advertisers in the profession. And the audience they are seeking are millennials,” says Rick Jahnkow, an anti-recruitment activist.

The Extreme Truck, a 15,700-pound mobile recruitment vehicle that roams the country dazzling prospective soldiers. Photo courtesy of the US Army

Another mobile unit, the STEM experience truck, is plastered with pictures of young people dressed as astronauts and staring intently into microscopes, and is pitched to aspiring engineers and scientists. Once inside, the visitor encounters a depressing scenario: The year is 2032, and there’s been an attack on a chemical plant in Eastern Europe. An officer then leads the visitor to a screen, where he or she can choose from a range of tactical counterinsurgency options, including the use of drones. Speaking of which, the MEC currently operates three trucks that contain aerial simulators-the most recent being a UAV, or drone, simulator.

“The STEM truck in particular is used to gain access instead of recruiting a certain kind of student. They try to get cooperation from science teachers and math teachers,” Jahnkow told me.

In June 2006, the first of 50 new H3 Hummers hit the road to increase interest in recruiting events. At the time, Sergeant First Class Anthony J. Colarusso told Recruiter Journal, “The H3 is a real ‘icebreaker’ in itself, so it should allow recruiters the ability to attract bigger crowds, which will allow us to work our magic.” In the same issue, United States Recruiting Command director Donald Bartholomew referred to the Hummers as “just another tool in our kit-admittedly a really big one-that will turn heads and get feet moving toward the sound and excitement.” That would be the sound of a $9,000 entertainment system that blasts waves of rap and death metal at potential recruits.

The MEC also offers things called “Immersa-Domes,” weapons simulators, and various other interactive semis, including one that has the capacity to switch from “game mode” to “classroom mode” so students can watch videos about anti-bullying campaigns and basic training in the same sitting.

Late adolescence is an impressionable age, but the military is after kids who are even younger. If you meet GI Johnny, an inflatable goofy-grinned doll dressed in Army fatigues, and you’re young enough to believe you’ve met a real person, then you are too young to start thinking about enlisting. But that’s exactly the age group the Army has gone after lately. Sergeant Laddie Matula, who helped operate GI Johnny at a rodeo in an undisclosed American town, recounted the experience positively to the Recruiter Journal back in 2007, saying, “Parents love to bring up their little kids to meet with Johnny… Teachers take pictures while their kids shake my hand. The kids love it. The little kids are very comfortable with Johnny.” Just this past spring, GI Johnny started tweeting-to little fanfare.

The military is not at all coy about its intentions to make as many impressions as possible on the emerging generation of recruits. While the media knocks itself out trying to make sense of what a millennial is, the military already has its sights set on what they call “Generation Edge.” In the September/October 2013 issue of Recruiter Journal, Steve Lambert contributed a short op-ed titled “Advertising Update: Know Your Audience: Generation Edge,” in which he argues that although millennials are “digital disciples and highly sociable,” new recruiting tactics need to be developed now to attract the next generation of cadets. Generation Edge (those born since 1995) are, in his estimation, drawn to messaging that promotes the “three R’s”: “resilient,” “resourceful,” “realistic.”

Screens in the STEM experience truck display fictional news coverage of a chemical attack in the year 2032. Photo courtesy of the US Army

Some will argue that these marketing schemes pale in comparison to the kinds of career opportunities the armed forces can provide. To demolish this argument you only need to consider the ripe age at which many recruits agree to the life-altering commitment of enlisting, the fact that war is hell, and the high rates of homelessness, unemployment, mental illness, and substance abuse among veterans.

But in the case of the MEC’s efforts, another question emerges: one of privacy, consent, and equitable access. Diener says that the idea of giving equal access to the military and anti-recruiting efforts “goes back to the 1980s, when we noticed that the military recruiters were having essentially free access to high schools across the country, so students were getting a very one-sided view of the military.”

But the purpose of these vehicles, as stated by the military in its own publications, is to give the military a distinctly unequal edge, by parking at high schools they might not usually have access to, collecting data from students, making impressions, and, ultimately, producing leads on future recruits. USAREC Regulation 601-93, which went into effect in July 1996, outlines the uses of the support unit. The regulation explicitly states that USAREC should “schedule in the primary market whenever possible (i.e., HS and colleges). Priority should go to the hard-to-penetrate schools.”

In 2011, USAASB had more than 230,000 visitors, producing approximately 88,000 leads. The leads are gathered and sorted using a system perhaps not ironically named I-ELMO, which stands for Interactive Electronic Leads Management Options. According to Jahnkow, it is commonplace for recruiters to require all students to fill out personal information before participating in the interactive war games. This information is then transmitted into I-ELMO and comes out the other end as thousands of targeted campaigns to potential recruits.

In other words, it would seem that these trucks aren’t symbols of independence or power, or any other beliefs. They’re well-funded marketing tools that project fantasies custom-made for teens and steer young people onto the warpath, leaving so many unexplored roads in the dust.

16 May 2014 / Henry Giroux / Truthout

As universities turn toward corporate management models, they increasingly use and exploit cheap faculty labor while expanding the ranks of their managerial class. Modeled after a savage neoliberal value system in which wealth and power are redistributed upward, a market-oriented class of managers largely has taken over the governing structures of most institutions of higher education in the United States. As Debra Leigh Scott points out, “administrators now outnumber faculty on every campus across the country.”1 There is more at stake here than metrics. Benjamin Ginsberg views this shift in governance as the rise of what he calls ominously the “the all administrative university,” noting that it does not bode well for any notion of higher education as a democratic public sphere.2

A number of colleges and universities are drawing more and more upon adjunct and nontenured faculty – whose ranks now constitute 1 million out of 1.5 million faculty – many of whom occupy the status of indentured servants who are overworked, lack benefits, receive little or no administrative support and are paid salaries that increasingly qualify them for food stamps.3 Many students increasingly fare no better in sharing the status of a subaltern class beholden to neoliberal policies and values, and largely treated as consumers for whom education has become little more than a service. Too many students are buried under huge debts that have become a major source of celebration by the collection industry because it allows them to cash in on the misfortune and hardships of an army of indebted students. Under the regime of neoliberal education, misery breeds a combination of contempt and source of profits for the banks and other financial industries. Jerry Aston, a member of that industry, wrote in a column after witnessing a protest rally by students criticizing their mounting debt that he “couldn’t believe the accumulated wealth they represent – for our industry.”4 And, of course, this type of economic injustice is taking place in an economy in which rich plutocrats such as the infamous union-busting Koch brothers each saw “their investments grow by $6 billion in one year, which amounts to three million dollars per hour based on a 40-hour ‘work’ week.”5 One astounding figure of greed and concentrated power is revealed in the fact that in 2012, the Koch brothers “made enough money in one second to feed one homeless woman for an entire year.”6 Workers, students, youths and the poor are all considered expendable this neoliberal global economy. Yet the one institution, education, that offers the opportunities for students to challenge these anti-democratic tendencies is under attack in ways that are unparalleled, at least in terms of the scope and intensity of the assault by the corporate elite and other economic fundamentalists.

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Critical thinking and a literate public have become dangerous to those who want to celebrate orthodoxy over dialogue, emotion over reason, and ideological certainty over thoughtfulness.

Casino capitalism does more than infuse market values into every aspect of higher education; it also wages a full-fledged assault on public goods, democratic public spheres, and the role of education in creating an informed and enlightened citizenry. When former presidential candidate Sen. Rick Santorum argued that intellectuals were not wanted in the Republican Party, he was articulating what has become common sense in a society wedded to narrow instrumentalist values, ignorance as a political tool, and a deep-seated fear of civic literacy and a broad-based endorsement of the commons. Critical thinking and a literate public have become dangerous to those who want to celebrate orthodoxy over dialogue, emotion over reason and ideological certainty over thoughtfulness.7 Hannah Arendt’s warning that “it was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think”8 at the heart of authoritarian regimes is now embraced as a fundamental tenet of right-wing politicians and pundits and increasingly has become a matter of common sense for the entertainment industry and the dominant media, all primary modes of an education industry that produces consumers, smothers the country in the empty fog of celebrity culture and denounces democracy as tantamount to the enemy of free-market fundamentalism. How else to explain the willingness of so many people today to give up every vestige of privacy to the social media, the government and anyone else interested in collecting data for the most despicable and anti-democratic purposes. Self-interest does more than embrace a new culture of narcissism; it empties out any viable notion of the social, compassion, and the ethical imagination.

Right-wing appeals to austerity provide the rationale for slash-and-burn policies intended to deprive government-financed social and educational programs of the funds needed to enable them to work, if not survive. Along with health care, public transportation, Medicare, food stamp programs for low-income children, and a host of other social protections, higher education is being defunded as part of a larger scheme to dismantle and privatize all public services, goods and spheres. The passion for public values has given way to the ruthless quest for profits and the elevation of self-interests over the common good. The educational goal of expanding the capacity for critical thought and the outer limits of the imagination have given way to the instrumental desert of a mind-deadening audit culture. But there is more at work here than the march toward privatization and the never-ending search for profits at any cost; there is also the issue of wasteful spending on a bloated war machine, the refusal to tax fairly the rich and corporations, the draining of public funds for the US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the ongoing consolidation of class power in the hands of the 1 percent.

The deficit argument and the austerity policies advocated in its name is a form of class warfare designed largely for the state to be able to redirect revenue in support of the commanding institutions of the corporate- military-industrial complex and away from funding higher education and other crucial public services. The extent of the budget reduction assault is such that in 2012 “states reduced their education budgets by $12.7 billion.”9 Liberals and conservatives justify such cuts by pointing to declining revenues brought in by the state but what is missing from this argument is that one major reason for the decline is because of right-wing policies and legislation that lowers the taxes of the rich and major corporations. Of course, the burden of such reductions falls upon poor minority and other low-income students, who will not be able to afford the tuition increases that will compensate for the loss of state funding. As the political state is replaced by the corporate state, tuition rises, the ranks of the poor expand, more social problems are criminalized and the punishing state blooms as a default register for potential dissent.

Leftover weapons from the battle fields of Iraq and Afghanistan have found a home on many college campuses that increasingly look as if they have become potential war zones.

What has become clear in light of such assaults is that many universities and colleges have become unapologetic accomplices to corporate, interests, values and power, and in doing so increasingly regard social problems as either irrelevant or make them invisible.10 The transformation of higher education in the United States and abroad is evident in a number of registers. These include decreased support for programs of study that are not business-oriented; reduced funds for research that does not increase profit; the replacement of shared forms of governance with rigid business management models; the lessening of financial support for academic fields that promote critical thinking rather than an entrepreneurial culture; the ongoing exploitation of faculty labor; and the use of purchasing power as the vital measure of a student’s identity, worth and access to higher education.11 In addition, many universities are now occupied by security forces whose central message is that dissent and protest, however peaceful, will be squelched through violence. Leftover weapons from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan have found a home on many college campuses that increasingly look as if they have become potential war zones. These weapons stand as a grim reminder that they could be used against all those students who question authority, imagine a more democratic role for the university, and connect learning to social change. Universities are increasingly becoming dead zones of the imagination, managed by a class of swelling bureaucrats, inhabited by faculty who constitute a new class of indentured, if not sometime willing, technicians, and students who are demeaned as customers and saddled with crippling debts. Not all faculty and students fit into this description. Some raise their voices in protests, others enjoy the benefits of being accomplices to power, and others get lost in the orbits of privatized interests or academic specialization. The university is a site of struggle and beset by many contradictions, but I don’t believe it is an exaggeration to say that higher education since the late 1970s has been hijacked by a mix of political and economic fundamentalist forces that have worked hard to empty it of what it means to truly educate young people to be knowledgeable, critical, thoughtful and sensitive to the plight of others and the larger society. Most importantly, higher education too often informs a deadening dystopian vision of corporate America and old-style authoritarian regimes that impose pedagogies of repression and disciplined conformity associated with societies that have lost any sense of ethical responsibility and respect for equality, public values and justice. The democratic imagination has been transformed into a data machine that marshals its inhabitants into the neoliberal dream world of babbling consumers and armies of exploitative labor whose ultimate goal is to accumulate capital and initiate faculty and students into the brave new surveillance/punishing state that merges Orwell’s Big Brother with Huxley’s mind-altering soma.

(Photo: Haymarket Books)One consequence of this ongoing disinvestment in higher education is the expansion of a punishing state that increasingly criminalizes a range of social behaviors, wages war on the poor instead of poverty, militarizes local police forces, harasses poor minority youths and spends more on prisons than on higher education. The punishing state produces fear and sustains itself on moral panics. Dissent gives way to widespread insecurity and uncertainty and an obsession with personal safety.12 Precarity has become an organizing principle of a social order so as to legitimate and expand the ranks of those considered disposable while destroying those public sites that give voice to the narratives of those marginalized by race, class, gender, sexuality and ideology. Public places are now militarized, and those spaces once designed for dialogue, critique, informed exchange and dissent are occupied by the police and other security forces who have become the most visible register of the surveillance-security state.

Political, moral and social indifference is the result, in part, of a public that is increasingly constituted within an educational landscape that reduces thinking to a burden and celebrates civic illiteracy as foundational for negotiating a society in which moral disengagement and political corruption go hand in hand.13 The assault on the university is symptomatic of the deep educational, economic and political crisis facing the United States. It is but one lens through which to recognize that the future of democracy depends on achieving the educational and ethical standards of the society we inhabit.14

What liberals refuse to entertain is that the Left is correct in attacking Obama for his cowardly retreat from a number of progressive issues and his dastardly undermining of civil liberties.

This lapse of the US public into a political and moral coma is also induced, in part, by an ever-expanding, mass-mediated celebrity culture that trades in hype and sensation. It is also accentuated by a governmental apparatus that sanctions modes of training that undermine any viable notion of critical schooling and public pedagogy. While there is much being written about how unfair the left is to the Obama administration, what is often forgotten by these liberal critics is that Obama has aligned himself with educational practices and policies as instrumentalist and anti-intellectual as they are politically reactionary, and therein lies one viable reason for not supporting his initiatives and administration.15 What liberals refuse to entertain is that the left is correct in attacking Obama for his cowardly retreat from a number of progressive issues and his dastardly undermining of civil liberties. In fact, they do not go far enough in their criticisms.

Often even progressives miss that Obama’s views on what type of formative educational culture that is necessary to create critically engaged and socially responsible citizens are utterly reactionary and provide no space for the nurturance of a radically democratic imagination. Hence, while liberals point to some of Obama’s progressive policies – often in a New Age discourse that betrays their own supine moralism – they fail to acknowledge that Obama’s educational policies do nothing to contest, and are in fact aligned with, his weak-willed compromises and authoritarian policies. In other words, Obama’s educational commitments undermine the creation of a formative culture capable of questioning authoritarian ideas, modes of governance and reactionary policies. The question is not whether Obama’s policies are slightly less repugnant than his right-wing detractors. On the contrary, it is about how educators and others should engage politics in a more robust and democratic way by imagining what it would mean to work collectively and with “slow impatience” for a new political order outside of the current moderate and extreme right-wing politics and the debased, uncritical educational apparatus that supports it.16

The transformation of higher education into a an adjunct of corporate control conjures up the image of a sorcerer’s apprentice, of an institution that has become delusional in its infatuation with neoliberal ideology, values and modes of instrumental pedagogy. Universities now claim that they are providing a service and in doing so not only demean any substantive notion of governance, research and teaching, but also abstract education from any sense of civic responsibility. Higher education reneged on enlightenment ideals and lost its sense of democratic mission, but it also increasingly offers no defense to the “totalitarianism that haunts the modern ideal of political emancipation.”17 Driven by an audit culture and increasingly oblivious to the demands of a democracy for an informed and critical citizenry, it now devours its children, disregards its faculty, and resembles an institution governed by myopic accountants who should be ashamed of what they are proud of. The university needs to be reclaimed as a crucial public sphere where administrators, faculty and students can imagine what a free and substantive democracy might look like and what it means to make education relevant to such a crucial pedagogical and political task. This could be a first step in taking back higher education as a precondition for developing a broad-based social movement for the defense of public goods, one capable of both challenging the regime of casino capitalism and re-imagining a society in which democracy lives up to its promises and ideals.

NOTES

1 Debra Leigh Scott, “How Higher Education in the US Was Destroyed in 5 Basic Steps,” Alternet, (October 16, 2012).

2 Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of The Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

3 Hart Research Associates, American Academics: Survey of Part Time and Adjunct Higher Education Faculty (Washington, D.C.: AFT, 2011). Steve Street, Maria Maisto, Esther Merves, and Gary Rhoades, Who Is Professor “Staff” and How Can This Person Teach So Many Classes? (Los Angeles: Center for the Future of Higher Education, 2012).

4 Andrew Martin and Andrew W. Lehren, “A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College,” The New York Times (May 12, 2012), Page A1.

5 Paul Buchheit, “Five Ugly Extremes of Inequality in America – The Contrasts Will Drop Your Chin to the Floor,” Alternet, (March 24, 2013).

6 Paul Buchheit, “4 ways the Koch brothers’ wealth is incomprehensible,” Salon (November 27, 2013).

7 For an excellent defense of critical thinking not merely as a skill but as a crucial foundation for any democratic society, see Robert Jensen, Arguing for Our Lives (San Francisco, City Lights Books, 2013).

8 Cited in Richard J. Bernstein, The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religion since 9/11 (London: Polity Press, 2005), Pages 7-8.

9 Paul Buchheit, “Now We Know Our ABCs And Charter Schools Get an F,” CommonDreams.org (September 24, 2012).

10 See, Henry A. Giroux, The University In Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex (Boulder: Paradigm, 2007).

11 See, for instance, Robert B. Reich, “Slashed Funding for Public Universities Is Pushing the Middle Class Toward Extinction,” AlterNet, (March 5, 2012). For a brilliant argument regarding the political and economic reasons behind the defunding and attack on higher education, see Christopher Newfield, Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2008).

12 Les Leopold, “Crazy Country: 6 Reasons America Spends More on Prisons Than On Higher Education,” Alternet (August 27, 2012). On this issue, see also the classic work by Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (New York: Open Media, 2003); and Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2012).

13 Leopold, “Crazy Country“

14 Zygmunt Bauman, The Individualized Society (London: Polity, 2001), Page 4.

15 See, for instance, Rebecca Solnit, “Rain on Our Parade: A Letter to the Dismal Left,” TomDispatch.com (September 27, 2012). TomDispatch refers to this article as a call for hope over despair. It should be labeled as a call for accommodation over the need for a radical democratic politics. For an alternative to this politics of accommodation, see the work of Stanley Aronowitz, Chris Hedges, Henry Giroux, Noam Chomsky and others.

16 This term comes from Daniel Bainsaid. See Sebastian Budgen, “The Red Hussar: Daniel Bensaïd, 1946-2010,” International Socialism 127 (June 25, 2010).

17 Michael Halberstam, “Introduction,” Totalitarianism and the Modern Conception of Politics, (Yale University Press, 1999), Page 1.

April 10, 2014 / Mennonite Mission Network

Before you begin

Look around and see if other groups are already involved in your area. The National Network Opposing Militarization of Youth maintains a database of active counter-recruitment groups across the country.

Opting out

The first step in addressing the Department of Defense’s presence in schools is to investigate the sharing of student data. Federal mandates require public schools to share student addresses and phone numbers with military recruiters, unless families "opt out" of this arrangement. The process is simple, and forms are easy to print out. Suggest to a faculty sponsor or members of a church youth group with connections on the school newspaper that a column be run outlining all the ways the administration shares student data (information about minors) with the Pentagon. Federal mandates do not prohibit forms from being present at beginning-of-the-year registration, so why not make the effort to spread the word and help others cut down on phone calls and other family intrusions?

Note: Some schools have been known to interpret an opt-out form (that specifies information is not to be shared with the military) refers to any and all publications. These schools have removed all mention of students from information given to college and job recruiters, honor roll lists, newspapers, and yearbooks (since some schools give yearbooks to recruiters). One approach to a school refusing inclusion in a yearbook involves citation of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974, which applies to all schools that receive funds administered by the U.S. Department of Education. FERPA requires a school district obtain written parental consent before releasing "personally identifiable information" from a child’s education records. If a school does not have written parental consent from everyone depicted in the yearbook, it’s a moot point.

Approaching counselors

School guidance counselors are in a unique position to help students explore their post-high school options. Given the increased access of military recruiters to students, it is important for guidance counselors to be aware of some of the realities that surround military advertising, recruitment and enlistment.

Approaching students

Students aren’t actively looking for someone to tell them why they would be dumb to join the military. Students are paying attention to opportunities people present to them. Yes, it is important to share all the dangers of giving at minimum the next eight years of one’s life away to the military-industrial complex, but that can come in a minute. First, convey a message highlighting choices, freedoms, and opportunities. It doesn’t matter if your audience is counselors or students, keep the focus on "options" and not "counter recruiting." Keep the mood positive, not negative. Some prefer to call it "truth in recruiting." Stay up-to-date on when career fairs and other gatherings aimed at youth occur and get a table. Suggest to local school boards that equal time be given to all viewpoints if military representatives plan to offer a presentation during an assembly.

What makes a good packet

A good packet is bright and glossy. Those manila file folders are definitely the cheap way to go, but who sees that shade of boring and thinks excitement? (It’s the same shade U.S. Armed Forces barracks are painted …) Don’t pack it to the point of overwhelming a neutral party. Keep it brief, keep it informative, and make sure there are signs pointing in the direction of more information.

Understand the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill

The pre-2009 Montgomery G.I. Bill was a cumbersome and elusive program. It was designed to entice individuals to enlist but proved difficult to actually utilize. It was an easy program to criticize and both politicians and the Department of Defense realized this. The new G.I. Bill goes to much greater lengths to provide financial support for secondary education, but is still not a golden ticket. For example, the military may say a service member can work towards a degree while enlisted, but free time is difficult to find. In fact, enlisting is more likely to delay educational goals rather than fulfill them. A recruiter may say an individual is only enlisting for three years active duty, but neglects to mention the enlistment contract stipulates eight years no matter what. Those five "inactive" years are quite the opposite when a military is caught up in multiple wars around the world. Spending the time to research grants and scholarships may seem arduous and boring, but it’s important to keep in mind the military alternative of waking at 6 a.m. to scrub floors, marching for miles, and abandoning many personal freedoms for years on end. Learn about what the program offers and where it falls short, because an educated counter-recruiter is far better than the alternative.

What does a soldier say?

"I would have liked to know much, much more about the process of becoming a soldier and what a typical day in the military can look like during that process and after it in normal daily duty. My vision of day-in day-out training in the field with face paint was soon crushed by common tasks such as inventory layouts and "Area Beautification" details. If you can get someone to volunteer for uniformed service, it should only be after being given a firm look into what it all really entails. However, basic combat training and not being allowed in the direct presence of various miscellaneous "classified" objects and info could prove to be a difficult job shadow."

"And on top of that, it sure would have been nice to know how rank is truly used and treated … at least in the Army. It all seemed very class-based. You have the junior enlisted (E-4 and below, a.k.a. Joe), junior non-commissioned officers, followed by senior non-commissioned officers. And officers tend to be a breed of their own as well. What one must remember when enlisting into the military is that you almost always start out at the bottom of the barrel. Often, it is a very long road and over-strenuous at times in the first years to gain up enough credibility to start earning a more respectful rank."

Mennonite Mission Network 

2013  /   Ann Jones / TomDispatch 

Congress surely meant to do the right thing when, in the fall of 2008, it passed the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA). The law was designed to protect kids worldwide from being forced to fight the wars of Big Men. From then on, any country that coerced children into becoming soldiers was supposed to lose all U.S. military aid.

It turned out, however, that Congress — in its rare moment of concern for the next generation — had it all wrong. In its greater wisdom, the White House found countries like Chad and Yemen so vital to the national interest of the United States that it preferred to overlook what happened to the children in their midst.

As required by CSPA, this year the State Department once again listed 10 countries that use child soldiers: Burma (Myanmar), the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Seven of them were scheduled to receive millions of dollars in U.S. military aid as well as what’s called “U.S. Foreign Military Financing.” That’s a shell game aimed at supporting the Pentagon and American weapons makers by handing millions of taxpayer dollars over to such dodgy “allies,” who must then turn around and buy “services” from the Pentagon or “materiel” from the usual merchants of death. You know the crowd: Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas, Northrop Grumman, and so on.

Here was a chance for Washington to teach a set of countries to cherish their young people, not lead them to the slaughter. But in October, as it has done every year since CSPA became law, the White House again granted whole or partial “waivers” to five countries on the State Department’s “do not aid” list: Chad, South Sudan, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Somalia.

Too bad for the young — and the future — of those countries. But look at it this way: Why should Washington help the children of Sudan or Yemen escape war when it spares no expense right here at home to press our own impressionable, idealistic, ambitious American kids into military “service”?

It should be no secret that the United States has the biggest, most efficiently organized, most effective system for recruiting child soldiers in the world. With uncharacteristic modesty, however, the Pentagon doesn’t call it that. Its term is “youth development program.”

Pushed by multiple high-powered, highly paid public relations and advertising firms under contract to the Department of Defense, the program is a many splendored thing. Its major public face is the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps or JROTC.

What makes this child-soldier recruiting program so striking is that the Pentagon carries it out in plain sight in hundreds and hundreds of private, military, and public high schools across the U.S.

Unlike the notorious West African warlords Foday Sankoh and Charles Taylor (both brought before international tribunals on charges of war crimes), the Pentagon doesn’t actually kidnap children and drag them bodily into battle. It seeks instead to make its young “cadets” what John Stuart Mill once termed “willing slaves,” so taken in by the master’s script that they accept their parts with a gusto that passes for personal choice. To that end, JROTC works on their not-yet-fully-developed minds, instilling what the program’s textbooks call “patriotism” and “leadership,” as well as a reflexive attention to authoritarian commands.

The scheme is much more sophisticated — so much more “civilized” — than any ever devised in Liberia or Sierra Leone, and it works. The result is the same, however: kids get swept into soldiering, a job they will not be free to leave, and in the course of which they may be forced to commit spirit-breaking atrocities. When they start to complain or crack under pressure, in the U.S. as in West Africa, out come the drugs.

The JROTC program, still spreading in high schools across the country, costs U.S. taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually. It has cost some unknown number of taxpayers their children.

The Acne and Braces Brigades

I first stumbled upon JROTC kids a few years ago at a Veterans Day parade in Boston. Before it got underway, I wandered among the uniformed groups taking their places along the Boston Common. There were some old geezers sporting the banners of their American Legion posts, a few high school bands, and some sharp young men in smart dress uniforms: greater Boston’s military recruiters.

Then there were the kids. The acne and braces brigades, 14- and 15-year-olds in military uniforms carrying rifles against their shoulders. Some of the girl groups sported snazzy white gloves.

Far too many such groups, with far too many underage children, stretched the length of Boston Common. They represented all branches of the military and many different local communities, though almost all of them were brown or black in hue: African Americans, Hispanics, the children of immigrants from Vietnam and other points South. Just last month in New York City, I watched similarly color-coded JROTC squads march up Fifth Avenue on Veterans’ Day. One thing JROTC is not is a rainbow coalition.

In Boston, I asked a 14-year-old boy why he had joined JROTC. He wore a junior Army uniform and toted a rifle nearly as big as himself. He said, “My dad, he left us, and my mom, she works two jobs, and when she gets home, well, she’s not big on structure. But they told us at school you gotta have a lot of structure if you want to get somewhere. So I guess you could say I joined up for that.”

A group of girls, all Army JROTC members, told me they took classes with the boys but had their own all-girl (all-black) drill team that competed against others as far away as New Jersey. They showed me their medals and invited me to their high school to see their trophies. They, too, were 14 or 15. They jumped up and down like the enthusiastic young teens they were as we talked. One said, “I never got no prizes before.”

Their excitement took me back. When I was their age, growing up in the Midwest, I rose before daybreak to march around a football field and practice close formation maneuvers in the dark before the school day began. Nothing would have kept me from that “structure,” that “drill,” that “team,” but I was in a marching band and the weapon I carried was a clarinet. JROTC has entrapped that eternal youthful yearning to be part of something bigger and more important than one’s own pitiful, neglected, acne-spattered self. JROTC captures youthful idealism and ambition, twists it, trains it, arms it, and sets it on the path to war.

A Little History

The U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps was conceived as part of the National Defense Act of 1916 in the midst of World War I. In the aftermath of that war, however, only six high schools took up the military’s offer of equipment and instructors. A senior version of ROTC, was made compulsory on many state college and university campuses, despite the then-controversial question of whether the government could compel students to take military training.

By 1961, ROTC had become an optional program, popular at some schools, but unwelcome on others. It soon disappeared altogether from the campuses of many elite colleges and progressive state universities, pushed out by protest against the war in Vietnam and pulled out by the Pentagon, which insisted on maintaining discriminatory policies (especially regarding sexual preference and gender) outlawed in university codes of conduct. When it gave up “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 2011 and offered a menu of substantial research grants for such institutions, elite universities like Harvard and Yale welcomed the military back with unbecoming deference.

During ROTC’s exile from such institutions, however, it put down roots on college campuses in states that made no fuss about discrimination, while the Pentagon expanded its recruitment program in high schools. Almost half a century after Army JROTC was established, the Reserve Officers Training Corps Vitalization Act of 1964 opened such junior training to all branches of the military. What’s more, the number of JROTC units nationwide, previously capped at 1,200, climbed rapidly until 2001, when the very idea of imposing limits on the program disappeared.

The reason was clear enough. In 1973, the Nixon administration discarded the draft in favor of a standing professional “all-volunteer” army. But where were those professionals to be found? And how exactly were they to be persuaded to “volunteer”? Since World War II, ROTC programs at institutions of higher education had provided about 60% of commissioned officers. But an army needs foot soldiers.

Officially, the Pentagon claims that JROTC is not a recruiting program. Privately, it never considered it to be anything else. Army JROTC now describes itself as having “evolved from a source of enlisted recruits and officer candidates to a citizenship program devoted to the moral, physical, and educational uplift of American youth.” Yet former Defense Secretary William Cohen, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee in 2000, named JROTC “one of the best recruiting devices that we could have.”

With that unacknowledged mission in hand, the Pentagon pushed for a goal first advanced in 1991 by Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: the establishment of 3,500 JROTC units to “uplift” students in high schools nationwide. The plan was to expand into “educationally and economically deprived areas.” The shoddy schools of the inner cities, the rust belt, the deep South, and Texas became rich hunting grounds. By the start of 2013, the Army alone was recycling 4,000 retired officers to run its programs in 1,731 high schools. All together, Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine JROTC units now flourish in 3,402 high schools nationwide — 65% of them in the South — with a total enrollment of 557,129 kids.

Getting With the Program

Here’s how the program works. The Department of Defense spends several hundred million dollars — $365 million in 2013 — to provide uniforms, Pentagon-approved textbooks, and equipment to JROTC, as well as part of the instructors’ salaries. Those instructors, assigned by the military (not the schools), are retired officers. They continue to collect federal retirement pay, even though the schools are required to cover their salaries at levels they would receive on active duty. The military then reimburses the school for about half of that hefty pay, but the school is still out a bundle.

Ten years ago, the American Friends Service Committee found that the true cost of JROTC programs to local school districts was “often much higher — in some cases more than double — the cost claimed by the Department of Defense.” In 2004, local school districts were shelling out “more than $222 million in personnel costs alone.”

Several principals who spoke to me about the program praised the Pentagon for subsidizing the school budget, but in this matter they evidently don’t grasp their own school finances. The fact is that public schools offering JROTC programs actually subsidize the Pentagon’s recruitment drive. In fact, a JROTC class costs schools (and taxpayers) significantly more than would a regular physical education or American history course — for both of which it is often considered a suitable substitute.

Local schools have no control over the Pentagon’s prescribed JROTC curricula, which are inherently biased toward militarism. Many school systems simply adopt JROTC programs without so much as a peek at what the students will be taught. The American Friends Service Committee, Veterans for Peace, and other civic groups have compiled evidence that these classes are not only more costly than regular school courses, but also inferior in quality.

What else but inferior quality might be expected from self-serving textbooks written by competing branches of the military and used by retired military men with no teaching qualifications or experience? For one thing, neither the texts nor the instructors teach the sort of critical thinking central to the best school curricula today. Instead, they inculcate obedience to authority, inspire fear of “enemies,” and advance the primacy of military might in American foreign policy.

Civic groups have raised a number of other objections to JROTC, ranging from discriminatory practices — against gays, immigrants, and Muslims, for example — to dangerous ones, such as bringing guns into schools (of all places). Some units even set up shooting ranges where automatic rifles and live ammunition are used. JROTC embellishes the dangerous mystique of such weapons, making them objects to covet, embrace, and jump at the chance to use.

In its own defense, the program publicizes a selling point widely accepted across the United States: that it provides “structure,” keeps kids from dropping out of school, and turns boys (and now girls) of “troubled” background into “men” who, without JROTC to save them (and the rest of us from them), would become junkies or criminals or worse. Colin Powell, the first ROTC grad ever to rise to the military’s top job, peddled just this line in his memoir My American Journey. “Inner-city kids,” he wrote, “many from broken homes, [find] stability and role models in Junior ROTC.”

No evidence exists to prove these claims, however, apart from student testimonials like that offered by the 14-year-old who told me he joined up for “structure.” That kids (and their parents) fall for this sales pitch is a measure of their own limited options. The great majority of students find better, more life-affirming “structure” in school itself through academic courses, sports, choirs, bands, science or language clubs, internships — you name it — in schools where such opportunities exist. Yet it is precisely in schools with such programs that administrators, teachers, parents, and kids working together are most likely to succeed in keeping JROTC out. It is left to the “economically and educationally deprived” school systems targeted by the Pentagon to cut such “frills” and blow their budgets on a colonel or two who can offer students in need of “stability and role models” a promising, though perhaps very short, future as soldiers.

School Days

In one such Boston inner city school, predominantly black, I sat in on JROTC classes where kids watched endless films of soldiers on parade, then had a go at it themselves in the school gym, rifles in hand. (I have to admit that they could march far better than squads of the Afghan National Army, which I’ve also observed, but is that something to be proud of?) Since those classes often seemed to consist of hanging out, students had lots of time to chat with the Army recruiter whose desk was conveniently located in the JROTC classroom.

They chatted with me, too. A 16-year-old African American girl, who was first in her class and had already signed up for the Army, told me she would make the military her career. Her instructor — a white colonel she regarded as the father she never had at home — had led the class to believe that “our war” would go on for a very long time, or as he put it, “until we’ve killed every last Muslim on Earth.” She wanted to help save America by devoting her life to that “big job ahead.”

Stunned, I blurted out, “But what about Malcolm X?” He grew up in Boston and a boulevard not far from the school was named in his honor. “Wasn’t he a Muslim?” I asked.

“Oh no, ma’am,” she said. “Malcolm X was an American.”

A senior boy, who had also signed up with the recruiter, wanted to escape the violence of city streets. He joined up shortly after one of his best friends, caught in the crossfire of somebody else’s fight, was killed in a convenience store just down the block from the school. He told me, “I’ve got no future here. I might as well be in Afghanistan.” He thought his chances of survival would be better there, but he worried about the fact that he had to finish high school before reporting for “duty.” He said, “I just hope I can make it to the war.”

What kind of school system gives boys and girls such “choices”? What kind of country?

What goes on in schools in your town? Isn’t it time you found out?

Source:https://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175784/

24 April 2013 / Matt Guynn / On Earth Peace

These reflections were created and shared in the context of counter-recruitment networking calls organized by On Earth Peace, 2003-2007.  On Earth Peace is an agency rooted in the Church of the Brethren, committed to confronting violence with God's love.

The Paths that Lead to Life

"You have made known to me the paths of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence."
Acts 2:28

My friend Bob gave me this metaphor: In the woods, in fields, in cities, there are often beaten paths that go to the usual places - which keep getting deeper and stronger with use.

Right now, the paths that are more well-beaten in our society often lead toward separation from each other, toward isolation, toward self-satisfaction, toward "bigger-than" and "me" mentalities. They often lead at the social level toward resource to violence, an overweening obsession with national security as opposed to human security, toward dehumanizing each other and writing off segments of the society.

There aren't many who will be the first to try a new path -- willing to be the first to make that path.   But there are many more who will at least try a path that at least has been tried before.  We may also find that there are old paths that lead to life and we have to uncover.

What if counter-recruitment organizing were seen as a way to invite people off the beaten path, to incite people to another path - not just countering military recruiters and their work, but inviting people to another way of living?  Counter-recruitment at its best may responding to the deep yearnings in people's soul, for lives with meaning, that contribute to the betterment of society.

Affirmations and reflections:

God's presence is a creative force the flutters over the waters, who cries out that we are beloved, who is within each of our bodies, minds, and spirits.  This force, this God, this Divine is at the center of all that exists.   God had a dream of all creation - that kind of shalom community - where all life was valued and known intimately -- that kind of relationship between humans and creation, and humans and God - Eden is still God's dream.

God's intention for human life, according to Walter Wink, is to humanize us more, make us fully human.  But institutions have realities that often fall away from God's intentions - the whole set of practices, assumptions, missions, and the culture of an institution.  One name that scripture gives is to call them the "powers and principalities" - those institutions that have supreme importance in our lives and how they unfold - which often become an end in themselves, or fail to help us all thrive.  "Failure to thrive": This description given to some infants is applicable to many communities as well!

The military industrial complex is a power and a principality.  Security itself is a good thing - we need safety, we need to be secure - all of humanity needs to be secure - but this basic need twists and goes awry in the service of the nation. We're in thrall to militarism, to the system, to the nation.  Our relationship to the military industrial complex becomes idolatry - being committed to, dependent upon, looking to for security, and worshipping that which is not God.

We can all draw on God's presence (ultimate creativity, lovingkindness, generativity, deep Spirit and possibility) to become equipped to contend with the powers and principalities.

God's dream for us includes human wholeness, worth, dignity.  But this dream is at odds with the stated goals of the government or the military-industrial complex, which always fall short of God's dream of shalom.  The church also falls short.  Church's role, and the role of the faithful - is prophetic witness as well as peacebuilding - a gradual nurturing of slow growth, a weaving and a knitting together.

Counter-recruitment is getting in the way of military recruitment - but it's also recruiting for something else.   It's about recruiting for another way of living. 

Recruiting for the paths that lead to life - creating communities with deep soul and connection, places where you just want to rest and enjoy life.  For communities that engage in mutual uplift instead of a common downshift.

Source: http://www.onearthpeace.org/faith-legacy/practical-ideas-living-peace-church/theological-reflection-counter-recruitment

When the military comes to your local high school, you have a legal right to give students an opposing view.

This has been the position taken by federal district courts in Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois and two federal appellate courts. The most broadly-worded decision came from a case that COMD took to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the 1980s. Here is the background:

Until 1986, COMD was named the San Diego Committee Against Registration and the Draft (CARD). In 1983, CARD attempted to place anti-draft registration ads in numerous high school newspapers around San Diego County. Student journalists at most of the schools published the ads, but administrators in the Grossmont Union H.S. District banned the ads from all of its student newspapers. San Diego CARD felt it was the students’ right to decide the issue, but since they weren’t going to be given that right, we filed a lawsuit against the Grossmont district in federal district court, citing violations of our First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. We requested a preliminary injunction from the court to suspend the ad ban while we waited to see if a trial would be necessary. The district court judge in San Diego refused to issue the preliminary injunction and we appealed his decision.

On June 6, 1986, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling stating that there was a substantial likelihood that San Diego CARD would have prevailed on the merits of its claim, and therefore the district court judge should have issued a preliminary injunction against Grossmont.

After the Ninth Circuit issued its decision, the U.S. military attempted to convince the appellate court to rehear the case and accept the Pentagon as a co-defendant alongside the school district. The military’s goal was to ensure San Diego CARD’s defeat by applying the vast legal resources of the U.S. government. If this strategy succeeded, any decision unfavorable to the military could then be appealed to the conservative justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Fortunately, the military’s motion to intervene in the case was turned down by the Ninth Circuit and the rehearing was denied. This left intact a major legal precedent that can be used by counter-militarism activists to demand the same opportunity to address students in public schools that is granted to recruiters and the Selective Service System.

Basically, the Ninth Circuit stated that the question of military service (whether voluntary or compulsory) is a controversial political issue, and if a school establishes a forum for one side to present its views on the issue, it must give opponents equal access to the forum (download the text of the ruling here in PDF file format).

While the ruling has a direct legal effect in only the nine Western states that form the Ninth Circuit, it can be used in other regions to help persuade noncooperative school districts to grant equal access to counter-recruitment activists. There have been other similar, though less encompassing, rulings in the Eleventh Circuit (Southeast U.S.) and in several cases decided at the federal district court level in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Florida. In some situations, citing these other cases can also help (contact COMD for details).

Some examples of what counter-recruitment activists have been able to do in schools as a result of these court cases include:

• placing literature displays in career and counseling centers

• setting up displays at career and college fairs

• placing posters and literature on bulletin boards

• having speakers and printed materials in classrooms

• running ads in student newspapers

There have also been successful efforts to counter the military’s access to student directory information (phone numbers and addresses).

A cautionary note: Pursuing new lawsuits over school access today would not be a simple matter. Litigation consumes time and resources that must be diverted from organizing, and there is a high risk that a bad precedent could result. We recommend that counter-recruitment activists use the existing positive precedents whenever they would be helpful and consult with COMD if there any access problems; however, it's more effective to carefully choose initial approaches to reaching and educating students that minimize confrontation with school officials. One very useful resource for learning about such approaches is the 48-page report, "Using Equal Access to Counter Militarism in High Schools," produced by the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (Project YANO). Download it here from www.projectyano.org or order a hard copy by sending $6.50 to Project YANO, P.O. Box 230157, Encinitas, CA 92023. A complete list of Project YANO educational/organizing resources is also on the Web site.

See more equal access and school policy documents here

Andreas Speck -

“On 1 August 1914, it was too late for pacifist propaganda, it was too late for militarist propaganda – in fact the militarists then only harvested what they have sown 200 years before. We have to sow."1

This is what German pacifist Kurt Tucholsky wrote in an article titled “On effective pacifism”, published in 1927. More than 80 years later, the militarists are still sowing. The presence of the military in schools is only the most outrageous example of the sowing and planting of militarist values into the minds of children and soon-to-be soldiers, or supporters of militarism and war. It is the most outrageous, because on the one hand schools should be about learning positive values and knowledge, and not about propaganda, and on the other hand children are most vulnerable to propaganda and indoctrination.

Militarist propaganda

A key function of military presence at schools is propaganda. This can be very obvious – as we can see in Serdar M. Degirmencioglu's article on militarism in schools in Turkey (see page 4 in the article in The Broken Rifle, March 2011, No. 88) – or more subtle, as the German military's use of the simulation game “Politics & International Security” in schools and universities (see Michael Schulze von Glaßer's article on page 9 - ibid). This military propaganda is aimed at ingraining militarist values into the minds of children, so that they do not question the existence and use of the military in later life.

As Sergeiy Sandler writes: “Military presence in Israeli schools is not so much about military recruitment. It is about maintaining a social order.” This is true for most countries, with or without conscription. And it points to a bigger issue, which goes beyond antimilitarism: school itself – with or without military presence – is about maintaining a social order (the state, capitalism, the Bolivarian revolution), and not just about education and passing on knowledge. How much the military is present in schools (and how much military is used as a positive example in school – in history, science, etc.) can be seen as a marker for the level of militarisation of our societies.

Military recruitment

But military presence in schools is not only about propaganda. Especially in countries without conscription – or with a high level of “professionalisation” of the military – the military needs to actively reach out to potential new recruits from a very young age on. David Gee in his article on Britain (Soldiers in the playground, page 7) quotes the head of army recruitment strategy, Colonel David Allfrey: “Our new model is about raising awareness, and that takes a ten-year span. It starts with a seven-year-old boy seeing a parachutist at an air show and thinking 'That looks great'. From then on the army is trying to build interest by drip, drip, drip.”

This “drip, drip, drip” is a long-term strategy, so that when someone reaches recruitment age, a career in the military seems an interesting option.

It is no surprise that military presence is often higher in schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Here, the recruiters think they can more easily prey on youth who have much less opportunities to find jobs – and so might be more easily recruited into the military. But modern armies also need highly skilled soldiers, and so the military will also target their recruitment efforts at universities.

Resistance

Within the peace and anti-war movements, there are different approaches to the presence of the military in schools. Some argue for “equal access” for the peace movement to schools, to be able to counter the military propaganda. While it can be quite effective to counter the arguments of a military recruiter or “adviser” in a direct confrontation on the school yard or in the class room, there remains the question of resources. Even if we would be allowed to – would we, as anti war activists – be able to go to every school every time the military is present there, in the class room or on the school yard? I do not only doubt it – I'm pretty sure this is impossible.

Another position – and from my perspective the more principled one – is to demand that the military has nothing to do in schools – it should be banned from any school completely. This might sound radical – after all, the military is one of the most powerful institutions in most states – but it is not more unrealistic than being able to “accompany” any military presence at schools.

Independent of these two approaches, education for peace is often promoted as a task for schools. While any form of peace education is certainly important, I personally have my doubts how they can fit into a system which is designed for “maintaining a social order” which relies on war. Schools in itself are violent institutions, representations of structural violence. While many teachers try to subvert the structural violence inherent in our existing education systems, it is always there: the pressure of “grading”, authoritarian rules and in many countries/schools even school uniforms and dress codes, designed to stifle any form of individual expression. Within this framework of structural violence (and military propaganda), peace education might seem hypocritical.

But resistance exists – in some schools more, in others less, in some countries more, in others less. Teachers can simply refuse to invite the military into their classes, parents can withdraw their children from classes which are linked to the military, and pupils can refuse to participate in such classes, either legally or by just not showing up. Resistance exists often on an individual level, but it becomes effective and a threat when it gets organised, such as in the USA with the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth, or in Germany with regional campaigns Military out of Schools. How these campaigns can work depends very much on the context of the country – politically and in terms of the education system. But similar campaigns are important everywhere.

We have to sow

But to get the military out of schools is not sufficient. The state and the military are sowing militarism in our schools, so that they can harvest it when needed – to go to war in Iraq, Afghanistan, or … [fill in the next country here], and so that they can recruit the cannon fodder/professional killers (yes, soldiers are both) needed for these wars. Again Tucholsky on “effective pacifism”: “What is completely missing almost everywhere is pacifist propaganda in daily life, on the street, in the four room apartment, on public places – pacifism as a matter of course. For or five times a year we are there, at congresses, often in assemblies. And then everyone goes home, and “life” takes its right: life – this in this case is the official patriotism, which praises war; the cinema, which glorifies war; the newspaper, that doesn't dare to show war as it is; the church, that agitates for war …; the school, which mendaciously transforms war into a bombastic panopticon; the university that celebrates war —, everywhere war.”2

Schools – the classrooms – are an important place for pacifist propaganda and counter-propaganda. We should not expect it to become part of the curriculum, and that it can then be left to the state. Far from it. The state's business is militarism and war. Pacifist propaganda in schools needs to be organised outside of official channels – by teachers and their unions, by pupils and their own organisations, by parents.

Countering military recruitment at schools does not only start when the recruiters appear – it needs to start with the countering of the military's “drip, drip, drip” strategy, with countering the glorification of military and war everywhere in the daily teaching of a school. It has to rip out the seeds the military is sowing, and plant something else. Let's get sowing.

Andreas Speck

Notes:

1. Kurt Tucholsky (as Ignaz Wrobel): Über wirkungsvollen Pazifismus, in Weltbühne, 11 October 1927, http://www.textlog.de/tucholsky-ueber-pazifismus.html (translation into English by the author)

2. See footnote 1

Published in The Broken Rifle, March 2011, No. 88

Source: http://www.peaceparty.org.uk/?388

Wednesday, 12 December 2012 15:09 Seth Kershner

Seth Kershner -

The military's new interest in STEM education

Habit{at}

Although women make up about half of the United States workforce, they represent just 24 percent of careers in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). In order to correct this, major nonprofit groups have been organizing STEM enrichment camps for middle- and high-school girls, driven by the philosophy that more women will pursue STEM careers if their interest is piqued at an early age.

But recently, some girls-only STEM programs have gone beyond fostering interest in science and math among the next generation of women. Branches of the U.S. military—in particular, the Navy—have increasingly been using these programs to market the military to girls as young as 11 and 12.

Founded in 1974, Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) organizes dozens of STEM conferences for middle- and high-school girls each year. According to its website, the EYH “recently had the opportunity to partner with the Navy and learn about careers where young women are underrepresented.” They give girls the following pitch: “You probably never gave much thought to having a career with the United States Navy. Many girls don’t.… We want to introduce you to several inspiring professional women who are currently active in the Navy and serve on aircraft carriers, who serve as Navy divers, or who serve in other interesting Navy careers.” Accompanying the text is a handy-dandy link to the Navy’s recruiting website.

Although details of the partnership were hard to come by (EYH’s interim executive director, Sheryl Bize-Boutte, said she’d have to check with the Office of Naval Research before granting an interview), one can divine a possible sign of Navy influence in the location of one of this year’s EYH conferences—the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. “Because this program is at the Naval Postgraduate School, some of the workshops will focus on cool Navy careers,” boasts the conference website. Many of the workshop presenters are on the Navy payroll and teach topics like cryptology.

And on the local level, single-sex STEM camps often seem like military recruitment lite. One prominent example is the Pacific Aviation Museum’s Flight School for Girls at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. According to its website, the three-day flight program gives girls in grades 6–8 a chance to learn scientific principles of flight through demonstrations and experiments. In addition to classroom instruction led by museum educators and a historical interpreter dressed as Amelia Earhart, there’s a day set aside for horsing around with military hardware, donning flight suits, trying out a cool P-40 Warhawk flight simulator, and—wait for it—meeting “women in aviation careers.” Who are these latter-day Earharts? None other than Navy pilots, and judging by the photos from recent flight-school sessions posted on the museum’s website, they appear to have been given ample time to talk with small groups of girls about STEM opportunities in the Navy.

Military support for single-sex STEM camps can be seen as the latest iteration of an ongoing effort to expand the military’s all-volunteer recruiting base. First, by promoting “cool Navy careers” in areas where young women may be underrepresented (like STEM fields), these military partnerships are engaging with what anthropologist Hugh Gusterson calls “feminist militarism”—the complex of cultural attitudes that convey that women can overcome second-class citizenship by serving in the military. By the logic of feminist militarism, it’s not enough to enter a traditionally male-dominated field like aviation engineering—to really show you’re equal to a man, you need to serve in the Navy.

Secondly, the Pentagon—by pushing the idea of military service on girls as young as 11 and 12—is simply following the advice of its own Joint Advertising Marketing Research Studies program, which warned in its November 2011 “State of the Recruiting Market” report that “if joining the military is not considered by age 17, it likely will not be in later years.” The U.S. Army Recruiter Handbook also points out that contact with seventh- and eighth-grade students can “positively impact high-school and postsecondary school recruiting efforts.” In other words, get ’em while they’re young.

Unfortunately, scientists have been slow to react to the Pentagon’s apparent co-optation of STEM instruction. Kathy Barker, a Seattle-based writer with a PhD in microbiology, is working on a study of scientists-as-activists. “I have never found anyone in the scientific community concerned about militarism,” Barker told me in a recent phone interview. But Barker herself has bucked that trend, documenting the military’s use of STEM programs to recruit and coauthoring a study of high-school military recruiting that was published in the American Journal of Public Health. “Scientists have an acceptance of and complicity with the military that few realize, much less protest,” Barker added. “The Navy is using EYH for advertising and recruiting. Everyone wins except the girls, who are collateral damage.” 

Source

Monday, 05 November 2012 16:55 Aaron B. O’Connell

Aaron B. O’Connell -

NOTE: NNOMY does not endorse the assumptions about the impact of militarization on the U.S. economy outlined in this article but chooses to repost it to highlight concerns for the desensitization of his students towards war expressed by a professor of history in a military university.

IN 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower left office warning of the growing power of the military-industrial complex in American life. Most people know the term the president popularized, but few remember his argument.

In his farewell address, Eisenhower called for a better equilibrium between military and domestic affairs in our economy, politics and culture. He worried that the defense industry’s search for profits would warp foreign policy and, conversely, that too much state control of the private sector would cause economic stagnation. He warned that unending preparations for war were incongruous with the nation’s history. He cautioned that war and warmaking took up too large a proportion of national life, with grave ramifications for our spiritual health.

Read more... 

Monday, 05 November 2012 15:32 Genevieve Weber - Corvallis Advocate

Genevieve Weber/Corvallis Advocate -

War is a touchy subject, especially given the near-palpable tension of the upcoming presidential election. If you’re against war, you’re a hippy at best, anti-military and unpatriotic at worst. If you’re for it, you’re pro-violence, anti-peace, an extreme conservative… Basically, you’re either too fat or too skinny, and the middle ground is essentially a wasteland. I’m not anti-military as we now know it, although there are certainly myriad issues. I do think increasing military spending when the military isn’t even asking for it, while cutting all sorts of important and necessary social programs, is absolutely ridiculous. But that’s neither here nor there.

There are some aspects of our military that are more controversial than others, and some issues really hit home—mainly because they’re happening here. When your teenaged son or daughter reports they conversed with a US military recruiter in the hall of their high school, you may experience mixed emotions. Maybe you feel socially obligated to support the military (or maybe you’re all for or against it), but you don’t want your child exposed to this particular career path. School administrators experience this same juxtaposition of thought—the men and women who recruit high school students may be exemplary human beings, and they’re simply doing their jobs. But recruiters are also asking young people to make decisions that studies suggest they aren’t ready to make, and, since it is their job to recruit people into the military, recruiters may not provide all necessary risk information to students.

There’s a Reason You Did Dumb Stuff as a Teen

The brain’s prefrontal cortex, which functions in decision-making, impulse control, and the ability to make rational decisions and anticipate consequences given multiple inputs, isn’t fully developed until near the age of 25. Now you know, at least partly, why you did all that dumb stuff in college. And in the context of behavior, image is everything—adolescents and teens tend to engage in the same types of behaviors that they observe in others, especially when those others rank high in the social hierarchy.

So in a world full of impressionable adolescents and teens (yes, I was impressionable too), we shouldn’t be spending taxpayers’ money funding movies and video games that make the military look awesome—the Department of Defense knows full well that adolescents respond well to imagery, and making blowing stuff up in the name of war look cool is both manipulative and irresponsible. Military recruitment trucks at events are full of video games—these may be for the purpose of demonstrating and testing hand-eye coordination and response time, but they’re still war-based video games, and children and adolescents can play them.

War is not a game, there’s no pressing a reset button, and the horrors of killing and of losing friends stay with you forever. In Iraq alone, we lost 4,487 American soldiers, and 32,223 more suffered debilitating mental or physical injuries, 20 percent of which were serious brain or spine injuries. Of those lost, 91 percent were non-officers, and 82 percent were active duty. 54 percent of US casualties were under 25 years old. Between 400,000 and one million Iraqis were killed—soldiers and civilians together—and millions more were injured. Lives and families were destroyed.

“It really made it real very quickly, it was no longer a game at that point,” said one US Army Iraq veteran, after losing his Company Commander and two friends, and witnessing multiple major injuries in a single day.

When US Army recruitment ads feature grinning soldiers spouting things like, “I’m in field artillery, I get to go out and blow things up,” and, “It’s a lot of fun, heck what other job can you fire weapons in?” we’ve got a major cultural problem on our hands.

Military Recruiting in Corvallis’ High Schools

The decision to join the military is wrong for some, and perfectly right for others. But we absolutely shouldn’t be asking kids below the age of 18 (and remember, research suggests even 18 may be too young) to potentially risk their lives and/or sanity, when many are not ready or even capable yet of weighing these risks. We don’t think they’re mature enough to drink alcohol, but they can risk their own lives and end others’.

Law dictates that various recruiters and groups—colleges, jobs, the military, etc.—must be allowed equal access in high schools. But locally—in Corvallis High School, Crescent Valley High School, and Philomath High School—military recruiters visit far more frequently than others, sometimes as often as once per week. Recruiters are allowed to set up tables in cafeterias and school hallways even when no other groups are present. Why aren’t we satisfied with a poster and some pamphlets?

The Army’s local high school recruitment quota, from the Alsea area to Sweet Home, includes enlisting three high school seniors (over 18 years old, or 17 with the signature of a parent) and three graduates per month. While we have a voluntary military in the US—we don’t currently have a draft—we’re not hurting for enlisted soldiers, so why are we actively recruiting such young people into potentially harmful, even deadly, positions?

Importantly, while schools—since the Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001—are obligated to provide recruiters with student contact information, parents and kids can choose to be placed on a “do not call” or “opt out” list. And in some schools, such as Philomath High School, recruitment tables are positioned in such a way that students aren’t forced to walk past them, and kids don’t feel pressured to interact if they don’t want to.

“I signed the no contact paper, because we know what [our son] wants to do post-high school, and it doesn’t involve the military, so we don’t need that in the mix of all the information we’re getting,” said Melissa Harder, an assistant principal at Crescent Valley High School. “But I think if you don’t have a direction and you’re looking for one, this is an option.”

Truth in Recruiting

Jon Bartlow, an assistant principal at Philomath High School whose daughter joined the military through ROTC in college, is very supportive of our local military recruiters.

“I see it as a really positive option for a lot of kids,” he said, and that’s true.

But Bartlow also recognizes the need for groups like Truth in Recruiting, which provide kids with information about the potential negative consequences of entering military service.

“[My daughter] found out things after joining that she would have liked to have known before, such as if the military needs you, your contract can be extended and you can be called up again,” said Bartlow. “Those are things she wasn’t aware of.”

Truth in Recruiting, run by the local group, Veterans for Peace, is afforded equal access to schools as military recruiters, as per a 9th US Circuit Court ruling in 1986. Along with tabling at high schools and events, Truth in Recruiting checks each year to be sure the military “do not contact” option is available for students.

The president of Corvallis’ Veterans for Peace, Bart Bolger, is not anti-military. In fact, he’s a 24-year veteran of the US Navy.

“I try hard not to say anything derogatory about the military, but there are things students just won’t hear from recruiters or get by watching the glossy TV ads or visiting recruiting displays at big events,” wrote Bolger. “Students need more information than they’re given by recruiters to make such a huge choice. They need to know that the terms specified in the written recruiting “agreement” are binding on them (the students) but not on the military; that the government can change any aspect of their training, basing location, pay, etc. without advance notice or recourse by the recruit.”

While many military recruiters are frankly nonplussed that anti-recruitment groups like Truth in Recruiting are allowed equal access to students—recruiters feel that these groups don’t offer students anything more than negative information—they’re not against civilians questioning the decisions and actions of the US government.

As one local Army recruiter put it, “A lot of those voices and opinions, they keep me safe… We’ve got all this support from people who are against violence.”

Of course, there are certainly positive aspects of enlisting in the military, including the potential for a free college education, a steady-paying job, and a career for those who are eligible. But you don’t have to join right now. Take your time and think about it—even recruiters will tell you to do this. Ask others about their experiences in different branches of the military. Get a job, join AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps, live in another town, another state, even another country. Explore your surroundings and yourself before making a decision that you won’t be able to take back for potentially close to a decade.

What You May Not Hear from Your Recruiter

Under normal circumstances, only a tiny percentage of the US population (1-5%) is eligible for military service. Prospective recruits can be denied entry into the military for medical reasons (including neck and hand tattoos), moral and legal infractions (drug charges, theft charges, etc.), inappropriate weight-to-height ratios, and more. But during the Iraq war, for example, waivers for the above red flags were given significantly more frequently than normal.

Here are a few things you may not hear from your military recruiter:

Unemployment rates for young Iraq and Afghanistan vets is 30% higher than for non-military 18-24 year-olds.

Your military contract is subject to change by the military (not you), and you have to abide by it, even if your enlistment time is doubled without your consent.

According to Veterans Affairs, 1 in 3 women in the military are raped or severely sexually harassed. The majority of female soldiers report experiencing some form of harassment in the US military.

If you enlist before college hoping to get a free education through the military, beware: you’ll likely not have time in the next 4-8 years to actually attend school, so your education may be delayed.

1 in 5 veterans returning from combat in Iraq or Afghanistan report experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder and severe, often debilitating depression. Many of these veterans reported trauma involving the death or serious wounding of a friend, or that of non-combatants.

Emotional trauma is not limited to our soldiers—depression and anxiety disorders are prevalent in civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially amongst women and children. You may end up killing someone, or seeing others be killed or severely injured.

Given knowledge and proper understanding of these and many other risks, people still choose to join the military. If high school students do want to join, recruitment centers are always available to those who are interested. There’s absolutely no reason that we, as a socially responsible society, should be actively recruiting teenagers into military careers.

It’s Not All Bad

The military reports thousands of cases of recruiter misconduct every year. But most recruiters are legitimately just trying to do their jobs, and many were actually assigned their positions. The US military is not what it was even in the 1990s, in that veteran and family benefits are steadily increasing. Whereas 15 years ago, the Army, for example, essentially took the position of, “we didn’t recruit your spouse,” now families are treated with significantly more care. When a child in an Army family reaches high school, that family can apply for stabilization so that their child can complete school in the same location. You’ll also travel outside of combat, and learn highly relevant job skills. Finally, many military positions provide full medical (including dental, etc.) benefits for life.

If you’re set on joining the military, ask about ROTC options for college—while this is a competitive program, you’ll graduate from college without student loans, and as an officer in your chosen branch of the military. And while there are options to attend college and participate in the military at the same time, hold off—there are many cases of students being deployed before their education was completed.

Army Staff Sergeant Matthew Cogburn, a husband and father, is a veteran of both Afghanistan and Iraq, and was deployed within the US to aid in communications post-hurricane Katrina. He feels confident that he would have become a mature adult sooner had he joined the military earlier in his life.

“I probably should have joined the Army before I went to college,” he said, “I would have gotten better grades. You learn discipline, responsibility, and you grow up.”

Employment Options Outside the Military

Northwest Youth Corps, ages 14-19, 541-349-5055

http://www.northwestyouthcorps.org/

Peace Corps, age 18 and up, 855-855-1961

http://www.peacecorps.gov/

Job Corps, ages 16-24, 541-342-1868

http://www.jobcorps.gov

Oregon Apprenticeships, age 18 and up, 971-673-0760

http://www.oregon.gov/boli/atd/Pages/index.aspx

AmeriCorps, age 17 and up, 800-942-2677

http://www.americorps.gov/

Local Military Employment Contacts

Army Recruiters, Albany, Oregon – 541-926-2699

Navy Recruiters, Albany, Oregon – 541-928-4942

Air Force Recruiters, Albany, Oregon – 541-967-1283

National Guard Recruiters, Corvallis, Oregon – 541-757-4117

Marine Corps Recruiters, Corvallis, Oregon – 541-758-0835

Source: http://www.corvallisadvocate.com/2012/1101-military-in-high-schools/

Thursday, 25 October 2012 17:38 David Swanson

David Swanson -

To: Sandy Husk
Salem-Keizer Superintendent of Schools

I would like to file a complaint about the manner in which my classmate and I were removed from what we were told was a mandatory test known as the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery). The staff member known as 1st Sergeant in our school is the one whom removed us from the test. During our removal we caused no disruption.  The only disruption was caused by the manner in which 1st Sergeant removed us.   When we explained we chose to opt out by voiding the test due to its military connection 1st Sergeant informed us as did an administration member Vice Principle Rolland Hayden, that the ASVAB is in no way related to the military. This by itself is a lie.

The whole test is administered and staffed by military members you may also refer to the link provided below about the so called ASVAB. (http://www.comdsd.org/article_archive/Military%20Testing%20in%20Schools%20Dealt%20Setback1-10.html)

When I started the test I asked two staff members if I could opt out of this test.  I was told I had to take the test, students including myself were told it was mandatory.

The data that is collected from these tests is used by the military for “marketing advertising”, when I asked several staff members what this meant none of them were clear and one staff member said that “marketing advertising” is simply information collected by the military for research.  I was told that I had to sign the release form even though I did not understand or agree with it.

When the test began my classmate and I, who also did not agree with nor want to participate in this test, decided to just randomly choose answers to the questions-the 1st Sergeant was walking around the room and when he came past my classmate and I he saw that we were just making random choices on the test and in a very loud and angry voice said “You two need to come with me you are wasting my time!”  He removed us from the testing area (gym full of other students) and as we were walking out through a hallway I asked him “Are we in trouble?” and he responded in a very rude and intimidating tone “Why?  Are you scared?”  Since he didn’t give me a direct answer to my question and due to his rude and intimidating manner I stated my belief that I felt “it was against my constitutional rights to be forced to take a military test which I felt was not appropriate for a public school environment.” The 1st Sergeant laughed, mocking us and making remarks about our knowledge of our constitutional rights.  He then said us in the presence of a member of the school administration and loud enough for other staff members to hear “What do you know about constitutional rights when you haven’t fought for this country?” To my understanding staff is not allowed nor is it condoned by administration to belittle students, especially in this way. I think it is outrageous that the Vice Principal as well as other school staff allowed this behavior and treatment of students.  We were not being disrespectful or disruptive, we simply “questioned” our right to “opt” out of taking a test that is not relative to our curriculum, and that is military sponsored.

In my past experiences attending schools within the Salem-Keizer School District I have never personally experienced or witnessed other classmates being subject to such belittling, intimidating and/or effort to degrade a student by staff, administration or other person which might be considered an authoritive figure.   What message does this send to the students at our school if staff, administration etc. are allowed to treat students in this manner?  I would like to again reiterate that neither my classmate nor I did or said anything to provoke this “personal attack” of our character by the 1st Sergeant.

As an informed student, I was aware of a student’s option to “opt” out of taking such tests without repercussion however, staff members did not offer this to students at any point prior to testing and if you were to ask students that were part of the ASVAB testing today I believe the majority, if not all of them would tell you they felt as though they had no other choice but to take the test as directed by staff.

At this time, I am requesting an apology from the 1st Sergeant for his inappropriate and unprofessional behavior toward myself and my classmate.    In addition, I would like the School District to adopt a policy of providing all students, and staff members with better information regarding testing and a student’s right to opt out of taking not curriculum based tests, especially those that are sponsored by outside sources.  Apparently the school sent a letter to parents to inform them of this test.  However it is not just up to the legal guardian of the student but also the student as to whether or not they must take a test given by an outside source especially the military. In addition, I would like a written warning to be given to and placed into the personnel record of  Vice Principal Rolland Hayden for his action of condoning 1st Sergeants inappropriate treatment of students.

Respectfully,
Mark Rutherford

Cc:   School Board Members
North High Principal

I remember this entire test was staffed by a few staff members and many military members who were in uniform. The next day after this event I was informed by another student that when 1st Sergeant came back into the testing area  he made mocking comments to a man in a military uniform. The student being a friend of ours told 1st Sargent that it was unprofessional to be talking about students in that manner.  1st Sargent said "It's my opinion". I also was told by many others that after the test was over anyone who didn't sign the test waver in the test booklet were told that they had to sign it. This is a gross use of intimidation by military members in public schools.

Source: http://warisacrime.org/content/students-complain-school-mandating-military-recruiters-test

Monday, 08 October 2012 18:45 Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges -

Many of us who are here carry within us death. The smell of decayed and bloated corpses. The cries of the wounded. The shrieks of children. The sound of gunfire. The deafening blasts. The fear. The stench of cordite. The humiliation that comes when you surrender to terror and beg for life. The loss of comrades and friends. And then the aftermath. The long alienation. The numbness. The nightmares. The lack of sleep. The inability to connect to all living things, even to those we love the most. The regret. The repugnant lies mouthed around us about honor and heroism and glory. The absurdity. The waste. The futility.

It is only the maimed that finally know war. And we are the maimed. We are the broken and the lame. We ask for forgiveness. We seek redemption. We carry on our backs this awful cross of death, for the essence of war is death, and the weight of it digs into our shoulders and eats away at our souls. We drag it through life, up hills and down hills, along the roads, into the most intimate recesses of our lives. It never leaves us. Those who know us best know that there is something unspeakable and evil many of us harbor within us. This evil is intimate. It is personal. We do not speak its name. It is the evil of things done and things left undone. It is the evil of war.

We do not speak of war. War is captured only in the long, vacant stares, in the silences, in the trembling fingers, in the memories most of us keep buried deep within us, in the tears.

It is impossible to portray war. Narratives, even anti-war narratives, make the irrational rational. They make the incomprehensible comprehensible. They make the illogical logical. They make the despicable beautiful. All words and images, all discussions, all films, all evocations of war, good or bad, are an obscenity. There is nothing to say. There are only the scars and wounds. These we carry within us. These we cannot articulate. The horror. The horror.

War gives to its killers a God-like power to take life. And there are those here tonight that have felt and exercised that power. They turned other human beings into objects. And in that process of killing they became objects, machines, instruments of death, war’s victimizers and war’s victims. And they do not want to be machines again.

We wander through life with the deadness of war within us. There is no escape. There is no peace. We know an awful truth, an existential truth. War exposed the lies of patriotism and collective virtue of the nation that our churches, our schools, our press, our movies, our books, our government told us about ourselves, about who we were. And we see through these illusions. But those who speak this truth are cast out. Ghosts. Strangers in a strange land.

Who are our brothers and sisters? Who is our family? Whom have we become? We have become those whom we once despised and killed. We have become the enemy. Our mother is the mother grieving over her murdered child, and we murdered this child, in a mud-walled village of Afghanistan or a sand-filled cemetery in Fallujah. Our father is the father lying on a pallet in a hut, paralyzed by the blast from an iron fragmentation bomb. Our sister lives in poverty in a refugee camp outside Kabul, widowed, desperately poor, raising her children alone. Our brother, yes, our brother, is in the Taliban and the Iraqi insurgency and al-Qaida. And he has an automatic rifle. And he kills. And he is becoming us. War is always the same plague. It imparts the same deadly virus. It teaches us to deny another’s humanity, worth, being, and to kill and be killed.

There are days we wish we were whole. We wish we could put down this cross. We envy those who, in their innocence, believe in the innate goodness of America and the righteousness of war and celebrate what we know is despicable. And sometimes it makes us wish for death, for the peace of it. But we know too the awful truth, as James Baldwin wrote, that “people who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” And we would rather be maimed and broken and in pain than be a monster, and some of us, once, were monsters.

I cannot heal you. You will never be healed. I cannot take away your wounds, visible and invisible. I cannot promise that it will be better. I cannot impart to you the cheerful and childish optimism that is the curse of America. I can only tell you to stand up, to pick up your cross, to keep moving. I can only tell you that you must always defy the forces that eat away at you, at the nation — this plague of war.

Towering about us are banks and other financial institutions that profit from war. War, for some, is a business. And across this country lies a labyrinth of military industries that produce nothing but instruments of death. And some of us once served these forces. It is death we defy, not our own death, but the vast enterprise of death. The dark, primeval lusts for power and personal wealth, the hypermasculine language of war and patriotism, are used to justify the slaughter of the weak and the innocent and mock justice. … And we will not use these words of war.

We cannot flee from evil. Some of us have tried through drink and drugs and self-destructiveness. Evil is always with us. It is because we know evil, our own evil, that we do not let go, do not surrender. It is because we know evil that we resist. It is because we know violence that we are nonviolent. And we know that it is not about us; war taught us that. It is about the other, lying by the side of the road. It is about reaching down in defiance of creeds and oaths, in defiance of religion and nationality, and lifting our enemy up. All acts of healing and love — and the defiance of war is an affirmation of love — allow us to shout out to the vast powers of the universe that, however broken we are, we are not yet helpless, however much we despair we are not yet without hope, however weak we may feel, we will always, always, always resist. And it is in this act of resistance that we find our salvation.

source: http://obrag.org/?p=66470

Friday, 14 September 2012 22:46 Charles Tilly

Charles Tilly -

If protection rackets represent organised crime at its smoothest, then war risking and state making – quintessential protection rackets with the advantage of legitimacy – qualify as our largest examples of organised crime. Without branding all generals and statesmen as murderers or thieves, I want to urge the value of that analogy. At least for the European experience of the past few centuries, a portrait of war makers and state makers as coercive and self-seeking entrepreneurs bears a far greater resemblance to the facts than do its chief alternatives: the idea of a social contract, the idea of an open market in which operators of armies and states offer services to willing consumers, the idea of a society whose shared norms and expectations call forth a certain kind of government.

The reflections that follow merely illustrate the analogy of war making and state making with organized crime from a few hundred years of European experience and offer tentative arguments concerning principles of change and variation underlying the experience. My reflections grow from contemporary concerns: worries about the increasing destructiveness of war, the expanding role of great powers as suppliers of arms and military organization to poor countries, and the growing importance of military control in those same countries. They spring from the hope that the European experience, properly understood, will help us to grasp what is happening today, perhaps even to do something about it.

https://www.academia.edu/43929365/Charles_Tilly_War_Making_and_State_Making_as_Organized_Crime

Wednesday, 05 September 2012 13:01 Patricia Hernandez

Patricia Hernandez -

As of this year, the war on Afghanistan has been going on for over a decade–making it the longest standing war that the United States has been involved with. The average person living in the United States wouldn’t really know it, doesn’t really care, or can’t do anything about it.

The indifferent or helpless response makes sense. The “war on terror” makes it clear that the purpose of modern war is control–not conflict resolution. Peace isn’t on the drone’s radar. More war is. For in the “war on terror,” enemies could be anyone, anything; it has no particular enemy.

War is routinized, war is a spectacle, war is sanitized, war is surveillance.

War becomes borderless. War cannot be ‘won’ in the traditional sense, it is ongoing, permanent. Security, and not defense, become the hallmark of ‘the war on terror,’ and this security redefines and violates civil rights in the name of the preservation of democracy. You’d think that the erosion of civil rights would create action, but this is where media such as games come into play.

Authentic and realistic are words that shooters like to brandish–they usually refer to the realistic graphics, the precise physics, or the spirit of the narrative told. Typically, the degree to which a title is “authentic” or “realistic” is debatable. Nonetheless, games sell themselves on their authenticity and realism–both of which became high in demand in American markets after 9/11, when war game sales blew up and the military scrambled to develop better simulations to, as the book Games of Empire puts it, “anticipate the new challenges of the war on terror.”

Games like Medal of Honor: Warfighter will go through great lengths to become an ‘authentic’ experience; the marketing often emphasizes how much they consult military experts on the depictions and mechanics of war represented. More recently, Medal of Honor has come under criticism for their decision to partner with brands who sell the actual guns represented in the game–they're not just realistic weapons, they're real, see?

Interestingly, the big draw of war games such as Call of Duty and Medal of Honor are their multiplayer modes, where players can play against other players in a perpetual war. This particular aspect of modern war games, I’d say, is actually the most “realistic” and “authentic” aspect about them. Though a match can be ‘won,’ a player can hop back into another fresh match as many times as they’d like, regardless of how many enemies or ‘wins’ one has accrued. There is no end.

The only exception is when a developer decides to pull the plug on the server that provides online play, but by that time, there will be a handful of new titles to buy–war games come out in yearly installments.

Other titles embody perpetual war on a narrative level, like Hybrid. The recently released XBLA title puts players in the middle of a global conflict thanks to the massive need of precious, rare resources. (Some cynics will be keen to draw parallels on that premise as well, but I digress.) The entire globe becomes a playing board and the more a faction wins matches, the more they are able to take control of an area. Theoretically it is possible to control the entire globe, but it’s more likely that the playing field remains contested and the war remains perpetual.

5th Cell programmed the game such that the first faction to attain 100 pieces of dark matter–which are awarded given enough dominance over an area–wins that “season” of Hybrid. The winning side is awarded an achievement and special helmet. You could say it’s like the game’s version of the “Mission Accomplished” banner, given that the war doesn’t actually end and nothing has really been won. The war must go on.

Having the game literally framed around a perpetual war that a player can supposedly ‘influence’ is a growing trend, as it allows developers to create a narratively sound reason for a multiplayer’s existence. Matches aren’t just isolated multiplayer elements that exist outside of the “actual” game–they are the game. Perpetual war also allows developers to craft mechanics with added complexity. Titles like Hybrid and MAG, after all, ask the player to consider war on a larger scale; to engage in battles that have significance and influence beyond the skirmish itself.

It should be noted that in effect these titles promise the player autonomy, as you are told that your actions matter in the world stage, but the endless war means that everyone’s actions are actually useless.

Most war games have also embraced RPG elements, which allow them to include incentives such as experience points and levels that a player accrues through daily engagement and ample playtime. One would be hard-pressed to find a title in the genre that hasn’t embraced RPG elements today. 

These mechanics tap into compulsion, sure, but also relay the message that perpetual war is necessary for your development as a subject, and the means through which someone becomes empowered. Here, too, there’s an empty promise: despite how long a player might develop a character, “prestige-ing” means that the process is never-ending. You reach your level cap just to start it over again and again and again.

Naturally, war is glorified through most media, and it all works together such that the media maintains the public’s will to fight. The onslaught of war propaganda in media creates a landscape where the average person sees the idea of war as a daily reality, a given, our “normal.”

War is routinized, war is a spectacle, war is sanitized, war is surveillance. 

War could even be peace, as far as the public knows–for the images we see of war in popular media are a far cry from what war actually is, making an endless war easier to maintain. After all, the war going on right now isn’t like the war conceptualize in our heads. War today is, as Robert Yang puts it,  “invisible and nearly impossible to photograph. And that is a dangerous thing. So if you ever see a photo of a guy aiming a rifle, remind yourself–that’s not war….War is the US spending billions to magically airdrop and sustain a city of 45,000 people in the middle of Nowhere, Afghanistan. War is a guard tower built next to a tennis court. War doesn't take place on a battlefield…War is an unmanned drone with 96 cameras, sending back footage for 200 intelligence analysts to dissect before going home to eat pancakes. War is a cheap internet router that may or may not have fed data to Chinese intelligence agencies.”

But more importantly, if the war ends what will the player have left as entertainment?

Monday, 03 September 2012 01:27 John Stanton

Why the Civilian Leadership Fears the Military

“Only 17 percent of the all-volunteer force serves for more than 20 years, and they are endowed with a lifetime benefit. The current US military retirement system does not compensate for those in high risk situations or extenuating circumstances (e.g., combat duty, hardship tour, and separation from family).. The current military retirement system is unfair.  For example, 83 percent of those serving in the US military will receive no retirement benefit.  US military personnel serving 5, 10, or 15 years will depart from service with no benefit or pension.  This cohort includes the majority of troops who have engaged and will engage in combat.  Retiree healthcare (TRICARE) is significantly more generous than civilian programs. For those serving more than 20 years, the retirement contribution is 10 times greater than the private sector: average private sector pension contributions range from 4-12% per year; military retirement benefit equates to 75% of annual pay per year for those who retire; and immediate payout after 20 years has no comparison in the private sector. In light of the budget challenges DOD is currently facing, the military retirement system appears increasingly unaffordable.” Defense Business Board

How times have changed since General George C. Marshall (1880-1959) walked the Earth. Chances are he would be appalled by the current-day US military leadership that has allowed (and taken advantage of) a national security/militaristic thinking to penetrate deep into the American political and social arenas. Marshall, no doubt, would be taken aback by the revolving door between the Pentagon and the private sector, and the hyper-privatization of the US national security machinery.

Read more... 

22 August 2012 / Tony Soldo / Washington Truth in Recruiting {WATiR)

US Empire Propaganda is very powerful.

Notice the increase in military recruiting ads on prime time TV news, sports, comedy, drama, and music channels. The US Empire spends a billion dollars a year on military recruiting advertising and they do it because it works. We need to stop military recruiting on TV and in schools. Stop military recruiters and you stop the wars. War is the biggest threat to peace and it is taught to children around the world that war, and the men who fight in them, is necessary and noble and sometimes holy, and the people who start them and profit from them also control the schools and movies and tv commercials that brainwash our children.  War is the greatest curse on mankind, wars kill millions while so called terror attacks only kill dozens or hundreds.  Violence has become so entrenched in our society, through an endless assembly line of action movies every weekend at thousands movie theaters across the country, from slasher flicks, to war movies, to cops hunting down the bad guys, that our culture has just accepted violence as normal human
behavior.

Another popular mind-conditioning form of entertainment is video games. The first person shooter games are very popular with our youth, and a very effective tool by the government's military to train all future soldiers. Violence starts with an image that is imprinted on the mind, and over time, becomes part of one's thought process, and then from the mind, these violent thoughts become part of the emotional state, causing a feeling  or a "high", like any drug, and finally, violence manifest's itself through one's actions. Ask yourself one question. Why is violence so entertaining to you?

Another form of violence is "slap-stick" comedy. Think about all the cartoons and toys that we shower our children with. Before they can speak a complete sentence, they already know how to hit, kick, and push, other children, by watching violent cartoons and other action movies. Children "model" behavior, that's how we learn, by watching other humans act, either good or bad, this is called conditioning.

Turning off the TV and encouraging your children to take up constructive and positive activities is part of the solution, and a stable, loving, two parent home gives children the foundation for a happy adult life, but, don't think you have to defend the concept of violence to promote a well balanced and well adjusted child. We don't have to choose just one solution to the problem, and defend the other problem. Why do we need to be entertained with violence? Why is it so prevalent in our society?

"Stop Military Recruiters from preying on children.
Resist Recruiters in schools.

There will be a day in our society, when recruiting children for war will be as offensive and evil as child molesting, instead of being noble, patriotic, and "Christian-like", as it is now.
There will be a day."

Maybe because it is drilled into our heads from the time we are old enough to sit upright and stare at that programming box that is in every home in the nation. Maybe because they use humor to ram the violence through our children's impressionable little minds. It is time to reprogram the minds of our society and change the culture of violence. Violence must become an unacceptable and vile form of entertainment, to the point that people will be embarrassed and ashamed to admit watching it.

We will never stop all violence in the world, but, if we started in our own home, by not being entertained by violence, and replaced those movies with more positive movies and cartoons and toys for our children, we could become the change that we want to see, and the next generation will pay dividends through living more peacefully with each other, and violence will become less acceptable and more offensive in our culture. All violence is evil but when governments brainwash millions of children to love the military and love the concept of war, and the parents give their blessings to their children, even after their loved ones have died in previous wars, that is the very definition of evil.

We must remember that the reason so many people cannot bring themselves to stop supporting the troops and harshly criticizing someone for joining the military and becoming a soldier, is a lifetime of mental programming, mind conditioning, and brainwashing.
95% of our thoughts, emotions, words, then actions, come from our subconscious mind, the other 5% from our conscious mind, so we cannot just hear or see the evil acts of a soldier and instantly comprehend that being a soldier is wrong, because our subconscious mind will always revert back to it's original programming, most of which has been downloaded into our "harddrive" in the first 6-10 years of our life.

Six Step plan for transforming innocent children into heartless, mindless, cold blooded, killing machines:

Step 1: Brainwash children with TV, movies, video games, toys, games, school, sports, entertainment, music, etc..., with pro war, patriotic, propaganda, so that by the time the child turns 8 years old, he decides that he wants to be a soldier when he grows up.
At that point, his fate is sealed, and Satan has another recruit.

Step 2: Desensitize them to violence, death, human suffering, and pain, with the same tactics and methods in step 1, with TV, movies, video games, school, and music, becoming more prevalent and repetitive in the child's life.

Step 3: Recruit the child in school, at shopping malls, on TV, sporting events, music concerts, etc...,where ever they are, make sales pitch, set the hook, reel them in.

Step 4: Once they sign their life away, send them to a reconditioning camp, to break them down, erase their minds, and reprogram them to kill without thinking; Autokill.

Step 5: Send them around the world, unleash them on innocent, unsuspecting, human beings, to subdue local and regional areas, to create safe environment for corporations to extract all valuable resources, while enslaving and controlling the native population.

Step 6: Return soldier to his home, to try to resume a normal life, without telling him that all the mind control, programming, desensitizing, and actual killing that is part of his being and consciousness, is permanent and real, and the the body, mind, and soul cannot peacefully exist within this state.
Watch and wait for meltdown and breakdown, then publicly renounce the defective soldier and his actions.

Parents Do Your Job

What role does a parent play in deciding the future actions of their children when it comes to joining and fighting for a government's army, and then being forced to go anywhere at anytime, to kill or die for that government?

Most parents encourage their children to join the military, and even the parents that don't like the idea of their children joining, still believe the big lie that by joining, their children are "serving their country", and "defending our freedom."

Parents are just as brainwashed as their children when it comes to patriotism and nationalism.

Every generation passes these lies down to their children through war-glorifying toys, video games, TV, movies, books, schools, and parents who were in the military, telling their children war stories.

It may be an all volunteer force, but, through mind conditioning and propaganda, most children who join are already "locked in" by the time they are 10-14 years old.

Every time a parent comments on the death of their young child who died while in the military, they all say the same thing, 
"He wanted to be a soldier since he was a little boy, and he died doing what loved," and
"He died serving his country and making the world a better place."

How sad it is that even after the most tragic event in a person's life; the death of one's child, so many people actually find comfort in the loss of their child by believing the big lie of patriotism, that soldiers must kill and die for our freedom and they  are giving freedom to the people in other countries, instead of the truth that all wars are fought to enrich the few powerful rich men who control all governments and large corporations, and those soldiers who die, die for a lie.

Parents, it is your job to protect your children, and the best way to protect them is to teach them not to believe lies, especially the lies of people within the government and corporations, and not to do anything to others that they would not want others to do to them, like attacking, invading, occupying, and oppressing other people.

And stop feeding your children's minds with violent, war-glorifying  entertainment, like toys, video games, TV shows, movies, and books, and teach them the value of respecting other people's right to be left alone, and to live and let live, and to live a peaceful as possible life, doing no harm to others.

Teaching our children to use critical thinking skills and to question everything and consider multiple solutions before they decide what is best for their personal belief system, would cause them to develop their own truth based reality, and to respect all other people, by leaving them alone, unless they request help, would solve many of our world's problems.

The only justifiable use of force is when one protects oneself, and one's immediate family from an immediate or imminent threat.
All other acts of violence are un-defendable. That should be a parent's biggest responsibility towards their children's well being and future.

Parents, Do Your Job!

One thing you can do for your children is to "opt out" of being contacted by the military recruiters. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, the Pentagon gathers info on all school children, and then calls or writes to them at school and your home. If any school tries to stop this, they lose federal budget dollars, and no school superintendent can afford that.

Get the forms to print out so they can put your children on a no contact list.

Here is the link:

http://www.themmob.org/lmca/forms.html

Schools should allow alternative perspectives and options, to allow the child a broader range of choices.

Here are some honest comments and questions for young people thinking of joining the military:

Advice for those considering joining the military

http://www.youtube.com/watch?nomobile=1&v=_8rbHwMXMT8

"That organization does not exist to give you money for school, that organization exist to exert the political will of the United States Government against other people by force of arms."
Stan Goff

Retired Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff explains what military life really entails.

Stan's website is

http://www.feralscholar.org

Before You Enlist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?nomobile=1&v=kcz7NFrPUg0

Collateral Murder soldier Ethan McCord

http://www.youtube.com/watch?nomobile=1&v=kelmEZe8whI

Should We End Military Recruiting in High Schools as a Matter of Child Protection and Public Health?
Amy Hagopian and Kathy Barker

http://www.watir.org/Articles_files/Child%20Protection%20and%20Recruiting.pdf

Source- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31346.htm

8/14/2012 /  Jennifer Epps  / OpEdNews

It seems obvious to me that the Aurora, Colorado cinema shooting and the close-on-its-heels massacre at the Sikh temple make the need for gun control clear and absolute, in particular the need to renew an assault weapons ban that would have covered the assault rifle James Holmes used. I immediately signed all the gun control petitions which showed up in my inbox, such as this bipartisan one from 700 mayors. (Others are listed at the end of this article). What seems patently obvious to me, however, is not so obvious to everyone, as gun sales in Colorado spiked 41% after the shooting at the Batman screening. The gun lobby -- which is to a large extent a gun manufacturers' lobby -- is certainly not going to let reforms come easily, even though there have been 60 mass shootings in the U.S. just in the 18 months since the Arizona shooting that injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Though there are many factors that contribute to this insanity, surely one of the reasons reform is so difficult is the prevalence of extremely powerful gun commercials available 24/7, slickly produced by multi-national corporations. These are not ads for specific gun models per se but movies, video games, TV shows, online videos, violent songs, and yes, graphic novels and comic books, which send the message that it's a very threatening world out there, that there are people who are less-than-human who you should hate, and that the way to be strong and cool is to be proficient at violence. This is emotional, gut-level propaganda, and it works.

James Holmes' deep identification with The Joker of the 2008 Dark Knight movie is one more very serious warning signal about our culture. When scientists measure toxicity levels in our water or air or they measure the growth of an epidemic, the markers that indicate the problem seem to first be the most susceptible members of the population. Poisons tend to be more noticeable in the homes of the poor and the bodies of children, pregnant women, the elderly, and those with compromised systems. Individuals like Holmes who so horrendously mistake movies for real life -- or real life for a movie -- are the ones who happen to be most susceptible. But the breakdowns or mania or whatever you want to call it that they go through are indicators of the presence of toxins which put everyone at risk.

The high school massacre at Columbine (another city in Colorado) was linked to the fantasy sequence in Basketball Diaries , when a very young Leonardo DiCaprio in a cool black trenchcoat mowed down his classmates to a sound cue of applause. Several other similar high school shootings ensued which were also linked to the movie. In fact, two years before Columbine, Basketball Diaries had already been the subject of a lawsuit by parents of victims of at a high school shooting in Paducah, Kentucky.

The same lawsuit targeted Natural Born Killers , which has been linked to eight different murders committed by extreme fans of the film, including a matricide and fraticide, a decapitation committed by a 14 year old, and the murder of the family of the killer's girlfriend. Oliver Stone's killing-spree saga was also sued (unsuccessfully) by a victim who'd been paralyzed in an NBK -inspired shooting--novelist John Grisham supported that lawsuit.

"Child's Play" still of Chucky and friend

In one of the most chilling instances of life imitating art, an Australian man devoted to the horror flick Child's Play killed 35 people; the same movie was implicated in England, when two 10-year olds (who clearly should never have been watching Chucky in the first place) abducted and murdered a toddler. Another Brit watched First Blood too many times, and went on a Rambo-inspired shooting rampage through the streets of his village. Back in Colorado, a teenaged girl and her boyfriend beat the girl's sister to death while babysitting because they were practicing moves from the video game-derived film Mortal Combat.

Other films implicated in separate incidents of overtly influential violence include Fight Club (with several copycat fight clubs and even an attempted bombing linked to it), The Matrix, Gladiator, RoboCop2, Money Train, Scream (in costume), Magnum Force, Dirty Harry, The Collector, The Deer Hunter (in the form of Russian Roulette), Taxi Driver, and A Clockwork Orange, and the pattern dates as far back as 1949's White Heat.

The New York Times points out that five of the films on the above list, as well as The Dark Knight and many other violent films, were made by Warner Brothers. But I doubt that this is truly a matter of a specific studio or specific films. (And I personally think schlock-meisters shouldn't even be put in the same camp as the brilliant ace directors Scorsese, Kubrick, and Fincher, nor should smart and artistically ambitious Cimino, Stone, or Nolan be tarred with the same brush as a vacuous industry just out to make a profit.) The issue goes much deeper, and is a continuing and unthinking trend despite all the evidence that violence in mainstream media is linked to increased aggression. Two of Warner Brothers 1960's movies, Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, were controversial for the graphic way they depicted violence, new at that time. But those seminal achievements took violence seriously -- they were realistic about it because they were considering the actual consequences of violence on the characters and what it really means in a big-picture way. Since then, however, Hollywood has co-opted the gore but shown next to no interest in the meaning.

It is no longer conjecture what effect this is having. In 2003, for example, a study by the Texas Department of Human Services and Iowa State University found that music with violent lyrics led subjects to have more aggressive thoughts and feelings. A number of studies on violent video games have also found links to aggression and violent behavior. One such, a 2012 study, discovered that video games featuring violence against women increased male subjects' belief in myths about rape.

University of Michigan professor L. Rowell Huesmann claims that research in this area of media effects is already conclusive: "It's been well established that media violence makes kids behave more aggressively. Of course, there's no scientific way to evaluate how media violence may have or may have not caused real violence, but there's definitely a relationship, a 'priming' or 'cuing' of behavior for certain individuals." Huesmann's clarity is chilling: "Every study indicates a relationship. The statistical correlation between childhood exposure to violence in media and aggressive behavior is about the same as that between smoking and lung cancer."

Amusing Ourselves to Death

There is the possibility that we, as Neil Postman put it in his 1985 "media ecology' treatise, are Amusing Ourselves to Death . Urban life has cut many kids off completely from any meaningful experience of nature or any of its calming, restorative effects, Richard Louv argued in his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods , and replaced it with a "wired' existence -- which is starting to show links to learning disabilities and ADHD. 75% of families own a video game player; boys spend approximately 41 minutes per day playing video games between the ages of 8 and 18. Yet scientists have recently learned that the human brain is still in a formative stage throughout that span -- our brains don't reach full maturity until age 25.

Still, the effects don't even stop at age 25. In their July 16th issue, Newsweek ran a cover story headlined "iCrazy." It consolidated reports coming in on what the amount of time we spend online, emailing, or texting, is doing to us, and the results aren't pretty. A study released this year found that intensive web use alters our brains: heavy web users are adding abnormal white cells -- "extra nerve cells built for speed," Newsweek explains -- while at the same time losing 10-20% of their grey matter: areas needed for memory, emotion, and speech processing, among other key functions. The magazine quotes UCLA neuroscience expert Peter Whybrow: "the computer is like electronic cocaine." Oxford pharmacology prof Susan Greenfield does not mince words: "this is an issue as important and unprecedented as climate change."

The article discusses the case of Jason Russell, a campaigner whose video went viral, leading him to virtually fuse with his computer, barely sleeping, over the next subsequent days. He ended up likening his life to, ironically, another Christopher Nolan movie, Inception , telling his followers that he felt like he was in "a dream within a dream" -- and then had a public breakdown, apparently a "reactive psychosis.'

Another alarming result of internet addiction left a tragically innocent victim: a depressed South Korean couple spent 12-hour stretches at an internet cafe, raising a virtual child in an absorbing fantasy game -- while back at home, their actual infant starved to death.

In the late Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 , the hero's wife is so narcotized by an electronic fantasy life she can't even recall her previous night's suicide attempt. She lives for the nightly serial story that appears on the walls of her living-room, a fiction she is so emotionally engaged in she calls the characters "the Family." (The show also provides scripts and interactive opportunities for the spectator -- it's like the late Bradbury predicted gaming back in 1953.)

Soap opera actors have long been baffled by fans who can't tell them apart from their characters; quite a few other actors have also had that experience. A few are named on tvtropes.org: Robert Young would get asked for medical advice because he played Dr. Marcus Welby on TV, and Edward Woodward was often asked for help because of his recurring role as The Equalizer. Jason Hervey, who played Kevin's older brother on The Wonder Years, was once berated for being so mean to his sib. The biggest head-scratcher of a plethora of anecdotes comes from Dan Blocker, best-known as Hoss on Bonanza, who maintained that a woman asked him how Hoss was, and when he told her he was fictional, she replied: "I know that, all I want to know is if he's alright!"

Movie still of Keanu Reeves inside "The Matrix"

It's so bizarre it seems funny, but not knowing which reality you're living in was not so funny when a teen who watched The Matrix more than 100 times ended up taking part in the 2002 sniper attacks in Washington, D.C. The Matrix also allegedly convinced three other (separate) murderers that they were in an alternate reality; a "matrix" where murder wasn't really murder.

Celebrity hype is also its own ongoing fantasy, existing on a plane above the narratives these professional artists create. Holmes' state of mind leading up to the Aurora shooting was probably goaded by the huge advance hype for The Dark Knight Rises. Ads for the opening of the movie would have been constant and omnipresent, and the fan base was passionate and vocal -- causing a furor on Rotten Tomatoes even before the film opened.

Some people think they receive messages through their TV sets. John Guare's Obie-winning play The House of Blue Leaves is set in the 1960's and features an "empty nest"-aged mother descriptively nicknamed Bananas. She does little but watch TV. In a monologue, she tells her husband about a vision she had featuring LBJ and Jackie Kennedy and others from the news: "I turn on Johnny Carson to get my mind off and there's Cardinal Spellman and Bob Hope... I'm nobody. I knew all those people better than me...I know everything about them. Why can't they love me?"

Or as progressives like Ralph Nader have pointed out, the people on the covers of magazines are always the "winners", the ridiculously successful stars of entertainment, politics, business, and sports -- and everyone else is invisible. The onslaught of virtual reality doesn't stem from the consumer's imagination, it's pre-fabricated, and suits a particular agenda. There's a possibility that when we consume so much media it is really consuming us instead.

Batman, Counter-Revolutionary

The mainstream news media has certainly not been very diligent about the issue of massive domestic surveillance after 9/11. For starters, they ignored evidence that the Bush Administration began secretly and illegally spying on Americans months before 9/11. Consequently, in the previous Batman movie The Dark Knight (2008), screenwriters David S. Goyer, Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan made this kind of large-scale spying seem completely justified by having Batman do it to catch the Joker. They evidently got their news from corporate media, not from indy sources that showed the scarier ramifications of government surveillance, like "Democracy Now."

These three writers seem to continue to rely on mainstream news too much, judging from their current film The Dark Knight Rises. Their new Batman movie envisions a people's movement to "take back" New York from the rich; it fills the streets with revolutionaries. Yet it reveals them to be a criminal, violent, unthinking mob. Director Christopher Nolan maintains that he and his collaborators conceived of the idea long before the Occupy movement came into existence, and the production schedule would seem to bear that claim out. But what this means is that the Nolan brothers and Goyer (whose other writing credits include Call of Duty video games) saw the economic crisis of 2008, saw the lack of accountability for Wall Street, saw the gap between the haves and have-nots, and concluded that the most fearful thing out of all of that would be if the people were given their chance to rise up. It's ok for the craped crusader to rise, as the title indicates, but then that's pseudo-religious. He knows what's best for the people much better than they do.

Nolan attests to Rolling Stone that the scenario was an evil person seizing control of a populist movement -- and Bane (Tom Hardy) is a nasty, nasty villain, make no mistake. But he doesn't actually steer the revolution. All he does, once he's killed various people and disposed of Batman (Christian Bale), is trap the city's police force underground and open the prisons; the rest he seems to leave up to the people. And what they do with the freedom is to run rampant. At the same time, (BRIEF SPOILER ALERT) the environmentalist and investor in sustainable energy played by Marion Cotillard turns out to be a fraud. That's the problem with The Dark Knight Rises.

Unlike Occupy's scrupulous and egalitarian parliamentary procedures, the only grassroots decision-making process on display in the film is summary sentencing. The crazed judge who presides at the lethal, retributive tribunals is Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), the Scarecrow villain of Nolan's first Batman film and the cameo in his second. Also unlike Occupy's experiences, the confrontation between the film's revolutionaries and the police -- literally referred to as "war" -- is the complete inverse of what actually happened at protests. Nolan's police wear such quaint, friendly-cop uniforms, they look like their aim is to give directions to tourists. They brandish no weapons, not even "less lethal" ones like those they often shoot or spray at protesters in real life. On the other hand, the rebels are obviously armed and eager for violence. They've even got tanks Bane stole for them from our superhero -- batmobiles painted in camo. You can tell it's a comic book when civilians have the military advantage over the NYPD.

Still from "The Dark Knight Rises"

With the news media having already done their best to defeat the Occupy movement, the resonance some have noted between the uprising in The Dark Knight Rises and Occupy Wall Street is just the kind of simplistic, visceral demonization of a particular group that does brainwash people and lead to violence against that group -- whether in the form of hate crimes or just in acquiescence with the abusive practices of authorities or government policies. The way this works is illustrated, for example, in Vito Russo's groundbreaking book The Celluloid Closet (also a film), which shows how Hollywood has propagandized against LGBT characters, often having them either die tragically or become killers. (One notorious example was William Friedkin's Cruising, which gay-bashers referenced directly.) Jack Shaheen's encyclopedic tome Reel Bad Arabs (now a doc as well) exposes Hollywood's shabby, stereotyped, and hostile treatment of Arabs and Muslims on-screen. (Another Friedkin film, Rules of Engagement, vilifies the people of one such country and was probably very helpful in inculcating support for U.S. bombing in that part of the world.) The Dark Knight Rises, even if it was never deliberately meant to invoke Occupy Wall Street, adds another powerful element to an already dangerous technological, political, and cultural mix in our society that breeds hatred and violence. This must be very pleasurable for Frank Miller, the graphic novelist who created the ultra-violent Sin City, the racist and war-mongering 300, and the Batman comic book series which had the most influence on Nolan's film trilogy. He made headlines with a hysterical screed against Occupy on his site last November.

Nolan, meanwhile, has tried to stress to interviewers that A Tale of Two Cities was the conscious inspiration for The Dark Knight Rises , not Occupy. Indeed, Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) reads aloud from the novel in the film, equating Batman with the self-sacrificing Sydney Carton hero. But in A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens wasn't just critiquing the Red Terror, he was issuing a warning, essentially the same as JFK issued: "those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable." Dickens doesn't get to the carnival of death of the French Revolution until after he has poignantly described the gross injustices suffered by the French masses under their oppressors -- so we can see how the violence perpetrated by the aristocracy came back to literally bite their heads off.

Catwoman in orange in a still from "The Dark Knight Rises"

By contrast, all The Dark Knight Rises has to represent the plight of the downtrodden is the Catwoman-origin-story of scrappy, slinky Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), who makes class-conscious jibes at our billionaire hero. Kyle resents the wealth of Batman's alter-ego Bruce Wayne, makes statements about inequity, and has to cat-burgle to pay her rent. This sure doesn't justify a revolution the way Dickens did, with a nobleman callously running over a pauper's child, and aristocratic brothers hiding their rapes and murders by incarcerating an innocent physician, in solitary, forever.

Still, as in Dickens' classic, prisons are a prominent motif in Nolan's third Batman film. An aggressive new city ordinance has swelled the prison ranks of Gotham -- and when the doors open, those thugs hurry to exact revenge. Like many comic book superheroes and archvillains, The Dark Knight Rises is a model of Freudian theory: Batman certainly experienced an original trauma, and there's an excruciating origin story on the villain side as well, revealed in the climax. It revolves around an exotic, primitive prison where the inmates are dropped down to the bottom of a deep pit they can never escape, taunted only by a small circle of burning sunlight high above. This experience destroys the psyche, as indefinite detention did to the gentle doctor in A Tale of Two Cities.

However, it should be noted that the neglected prisoners in The Dark Knight Rises wear desert-climate robes and face-concealing head scarves, they live in a barren vaguely Eastern land, and oh yes, they claw and tear at each other, because the assumption is that's a region where there's always civil unrest, I guess. Perhaps that is why Batman cares only about Gotham, and doesn't try to get the prisoners out of their hell-hole; perhaps their lives are naturally barbaric, and they have none of the First World's right to a decent life.

A rope-and-pulley system to help them escape would be nothing to this billionaire with an engineering firm. Bruce Wayne uses, as his butler Alfred (Michael Caine) puts it, "air superiority" to defeat evil. (This joke is delivered in the middle of a taut action sequence; it's amusing unless, of course, "air superiority" makes you think of U.S. war crimes.) But if The Dark Knight Rises is going to lay messiah vibes on Batman -- he's got a little resurrection thing going on, and Les Miserables of the Asian prison feel it and chant for him worshipfully -- then it's unlikely the movie really sees him and them as fellow humans.

Rising Up from the Hell-Hole

A survivor of the terror attack on Colorado's midnight screening, but the friend of one of the twelve who were murdered, is suing Warner Bros., among other defendants, on the grounds that the 2008 Dark Knight film incited James Holmes to commit his heinous imitation of the Joker.

While lawsuits like this are understandable as a way to vent the rage and grief such a senseless loss engenders, what could the legal grounds be? And who would be more legally liable, filmmakers who create wooden characters and one-dimensional plots, or those who craft convincing films?

If movies or other forms of mass entertainment have content that is harmful to society's interests, we're going to have to use sociological arguments to make them change -- and when their profits are going sky-high, it will take an organized effort to be heard. When the Council on American-Islamic Relations campaigned against the title of Alan Ball's film Towelhead (coincidentally, a Warner Independent release), Ball met with representatives in a recorded dialogue, and heard their objections during a panel discussion. This airing of all sides was one of the bonus features on the DVD. It is consciousness-raising like that which we ought to embark on with the entertainment industry about violence.

The way media violence often defines the identity of "the other' -- justifying and encouraging racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, and imperialism -- merits extensive discussion. It could be a kind of Truth and Reconciliation Commission between the industry and the audience. This process would educate both media-makers and the public in general -- including consumers, parents, and those in the helping professions who treat addictions. It could also put us on the road to eliminate some of the propaganda that makes a segment of the U.S. favor gun proliferation in the first place.

Ironically, the entity which knows best how to run respectful, attentive consciousness-raising sessions these days is Occupy. The entertainment industry should try asking them for some pointers.

Still of the Joker from "The Dark Knight" (2008)

Source: http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/The-Dark-Knight-Rises--M-by-Jennifer-Epps-120813-702.html

January 12, 2012 / Pat Elder / Commondreams

The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB is the military’s entrance exam that is given to fresh recruits to determine their aptitude for various military occupations. The test is also used as a recruiting tool in 12,000 high schools across the country. The 3 hour test is used by military to gain sensitive, personal information on more than 660,000 high school students across the country every year, the vast majority of whom are under the age of 18. Students typically are given the test at school without parental knowledge or consent.

Federal laws strictly monitor the release of student information, but the military manages to circumvent these laws with the administration of the ASVAB.  In fact, ASVAB test results are the only student information that leaves U.S. schools without parent consent.

Military recruiting regulations specifically prohibit that the test from being made mandatory.

“Voluntary aspect of the student ASVAB: School and student participation in the Student Testing Program is voluntary. DOD personnel are prohibited from suggesting to school officials or any other influential individual or group that the test be made mandatory. Schools will be encouraged to recommend most students participate in the ASVAB Career Exploration Program. If the school requires all students of a particular group or grade to test, the MEPS will support it.” (See Page 3-1 of USMEPCOM Reg. 601-4)

In roughly 11,000 high schools where the ASVAB is administered, students are strongly encouraged to take the test for its alleged value as a career exploration tool, but in more than 1,000 schools, according to information received from the U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command through a Freedom of Information Act request, tens of thousands of students are required to take it.

Aside from managing to evade the constraints of federal law, the military may also be violating many state laws on student privacy when it administers the ASVAB in public high schools. Students taking the ASVAB are required to furnish their social security numbers for the tests to be processed, even though many state laws specifically forbid such information being released without parental consent. In addition, the ASVAB requires under-aged students to sign a privacy release statement, a practice that may also be prohibited by many state laws.

A typical school announcement reads, “All Juniors will report to the cafeteria on Monday at 8:10 a.m. to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. Whether you’re planning on college, a technical school, or you’re just not sure yet, the ASVAB Career Exploration Program can provide you with important information about your skills, abilities and interests – and help put you on the right course for a satisfying career!”  This announcement or one very similar to it greets students in more than a thousand high schools across the country.  There’s no mention of the military or the primary purpose of the test, which is to find leads for recruiters.

Students taking the ASVAB are required to furnish their social security numbers for the tests to be processed, even though many state laws specifically forbid such information being released without parental consent. In addition, the ASVAB requires under-aged students to sign a privacy release statement, a practice that may also be prohibited by many state laws.

Source:: https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/04-0

04 January 2012 / Pat Elder  / Commondreams

The invasion of student privacy associated with military testing in U.S. high schools has been well documented by mainstream media sources, like USA Today and NPR Radio. The practice of mandatory testing, however, continues largely unnoticed.

The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB is the military's entrance exam that is given to fresh recruits to determine their aptitude for various military occupations. The test is also used as a recruiting tool in 12,000 high schools across the country. The 3 hour test is used by military recruiting services to gain sensitive, personal information on more than 660,000 high school students across the country every year, the vast majority of whom are under the age of 18. Students typically are given the test at school without parental knowledge or consent. The school-based ASVAB Career Exploration Program is among the military's most effective recruiting tools.

In roughly 11,000 high schools where the ASVAB is administered, students are strongly encouraged to take the test for its alleged value as a career exploration tool, but in more than 1,000 schools, according to information received from the U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command through a Freedom of Information Act request, tens of thousands of students are required to take it. It is a particularly egregious violation of civil liberties that has been going on almost entirely unnoticed since the late 1960's.

Federal laws strictly monitor the release of student information, but the military manages to circumvent these laws with the administration of the ASVAB. In fact, ASVAB test results are the only student information that leaves U.S. schools without the opportunity provided for parental consent.

Aside from managing to evade the constraints of federal law, the military may also be violating many state laws on student privacy when it administers the ASVAB in public high schools. Students taking the ASVAB are required to furnish their social security numbers for the tests to be processed, even though many state laws specifically forbid such information being released without parental consent. In addition, the ASVAB requires under-aged students to sign a privacy release statement, a practice that may also be prohibited by many state laws.

A typical school announcement reads, "All Juniors will report to the cafeteria on Monday at 8:10 a.m. to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. Whether you’re planning on college, a technical school, or you’re just not sure yet, the ASVAB Career Exploration Program can provide you with important information about your skills, abilities and interests – and help put you on the right course for a satisfying career!" This announcement or one very similar to it greets students in more than a thousand high schools across the country. There's no mention of the military or the primary purpose of the test, which is to find leads for recruiters.

Imagine you're Captain Eric W. Johnson, United States Navy, Commander, United States Military Entrance Processing Command and you had the complete cooperation of the Arkansas Department of Education to recruit high school students into the U.S. military. The first step you might take is to require juniors in public high schools to take the ASVAB. ASVAB results are good for enlistment purposes for up to two years. The ASVAB offers a treasure trove of information on students and allows the state's top recruiter to pre-screen the entire crop of incoming potential recruits. "Sit down, shut up, and take this test. That's an order!"

142 Arkansas high schools forced 10,000 children to take this military test without parental consent in Arkansas alone last year. "We've always done it that way and no one has ever complained," explained one school counselor.

The Army recruiter's handbook calls for military recruiters to take ownership of schools and this is one way they're doing it. The U.S. Army Recruiting Command ranks each high school based on how receptive it is to military recruiters. Schools are awarded extra points when they make the ASVAB mandatory. See page 25 of: USAREC pub. 601-107

Meanwhile, military recruiting regulations specifically prohibit that the test from being made mandatory.

"Voluntary aspect of the student ASVAB: School and student participation in the Student Testing Program is voluntary. DOD personnel are prohibited from suggesting to school officials or any other influential individual or group that the test be made mandatory. Schools will be encouraged to recommend most students participate in the ASVAB Career Exploration Program. If the school requires all students of a particular group or grade to test, the MEPS will support it." See Page 3-1 of USMEPCOM Reg. 601-4

Is it entirely coincidental that a thousand schools require students to take the test or does the Department of Defense have regulations in place solely for public consumption that it has no intention of following?

In addition, the Pentagon is grossly under reporting the number of schools with mandatory testing. There are hundreds of schools with required testing that are not reported by the DoD. For instance, the information released by the DoD for the ’09-’10 school year shows there is no mandatory testing in Ohio. However, it is possible, using a simple Google search tool, in this case ("k12.oh.us" asvab "all juniors") to uncover several dozen schools that require students to take the ASVAB that are not reported by the Pentagon.

Why can't we get traction on this issue?

There is great reluctance in American society to stand up to the U.S. military, particularly concerning the way it runs a dozen programs in the nation's schools. Calls for transparency are met with silence and indignation, a terrible lesson for American high school students.

Pat Elder

Source: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/04-0

 December 5, 2011 /  David Swanson / Let's Try Democracy

Please take some time to look through the new website of the new National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy: www.studentprivacy.org

I’ve just joined the board because I believe a great deal of good can be done.

The National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy is a one-trick pony and that trick is the ASVAB Campaign. In short, we call for the universal selection of Option 8 for students taking the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB in high schools across the country, thereby prohibiting the automatic release of test data to military recruiting services.

Sounds pretty obscure and technical, I suppose.  But this is a relatively easy and proven model of denying the U.S. military what it needs in order to kill our young people by using them to kill others.  Namely, it denies the military the illegal right to violate the privacy of our young people in furthering its recruitment efforts.

The website provides a detailed discussion of the insidious nature of the military’s testing regime and provides a way for activists like you to contribute to its demise. The ASVAB Career Exploration Program is a fraudulent, criminal DoD venture that deceives the American public and violates state laws designed to protect the privacy of youth.  We’re going to bring it down with a disciplined, nuanced campaign that appeals to the most moderate of policymakers.

There’s a tremendous amount of work to do.  For instance, 10,000 kids in 142 Arkansas high schools are required to take the ASVAB without parental consent, and all of their data is used to recruit them. “We’ve always done it that way and no one has ever complained,” explained one school counselor.

Until now. 

We’re organizing a national complaint and we’re succeeding.  Across the country, the selection of ASVAB Option 8 has climbed from less than 1% in 2005 (our estimate) to 4.4% in 2007 to 8.6% in 2009 to 12.2% in 2010.  The new data we’re expecting through our most recent FOIA will show a substantial increase in the percentage of students taking the test under Option 8, reflecting two states and several hundred more schools and school systems that have moved to protect student privacy.

The website contains the most recent test data so you can select your state and find high schools in your community that allow the Pentagon to test children.  You can also see how your state stacks up with the others, in terms of the numbers tested, those who are required to take the test, and the percentages of students who take the ASVAB under Option 8. 

In addition, the website describes the national campaign in detail. It provides links to information pertaining to ASVAB testing in Catholic schools, military documents relevant to the student testing program, and legislative resources.

Most importantly, the site provides a template letter for you to email to your state’s superintendent of schools and school board members. Quite frequently, educational policy makers don’t know the option exists to allow the testing while keeping results away from recruiters.  The letter sites the statistics released by USMEPCOM and calls for the universal selection of Option 8.  Contact us and we’ll send you a letter already containing your state’s statistics, etc. and the email addresses of officials. We’re working to include that information on the site.

If you’ve read this far you probably see potential in this campaign.  Could you help us by contributing a few dollars? Support NCPSP  Also, could you forward this to others who you think might be in a position to financially support our work?  We want to raise funds to hire help. 

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.   – Jack London

Monday, 19 December 2011 19:26 / NNOMY

NNOMY is a national network that serves to unite national, regional and local organizations that oppose the growing intrusion of the military in young people's lives. We seek to promote the importance of counter-recruitment organizing. NNOMY is not intended to function as an independent national organization, but rather as a coalition that strengthens the work of participating groups.

We stand in absolute solidarity with our sisters and brothers in the Occupy/(Un)occupy movement. We embrace the notion that we are the 99% and we refuse to tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We recognize that it is the interests of the 1% that dominate military policy and the spread of militarism in our society. We feel, therefore, that confronting militarism and countering military recruitment of youth deserve a high priority in the movements sweeping the country that are aimed at reducing the power and influence of the 1%.

Resisting the relentless militarization of American youth transcends opposing the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time that we ask questions about the recruitment of youth for wars fought in the name of profit and control of resources, we confront an ugly mix of a distinctively American brand of institutionalized violence, racism, militarism, nationalism, classism, and sexism. Militarism in all its forms robs society of the resources it needs to function well – human, financial, environmental, intellectual, political. Challenging the militarization of youth gets to the root of the problem, both for today’s generation and for the next. Confronting recruiters, particularly in the nation's public schools, provides a catalyst for activists to shift gears from the traditional tactics of vigils, protests, sit-ins, and other civil disobedience actions to the long-term strategy of reducing societal support for both waging wasteful and unethical wars and for funding a bloated peacetime military that operates at the expense of real human needs.

It's frightening to think about, but in the last dozen or so years we've largely ceded our public schools to the narrow interests of both corporations and the military. Military academies, corporate charter schools, “CEO’s” instead of superintendents, special “superintendent schools” for retiring military personnel and high-powered businessmen and women with no background in education are all part and parcel of the same problem. Privatization of the public sector never happens in the absence of militarization of the public sector, because once collective power is conceded to private interests, the military always finds a role that advances its own interests. Due to the constant need for new recruits and for conditioning the minds of youth to accept a militarized society, schools are the favorite target for military influence.Due to the exploding influence of both military and corporate interests, the American educational system has systematically produced an ill-informed citizenry.It sounds depressing, but it’s not too late to turn the tide of militarism! It’s just that change requires a long term strategy and that strategy must include the schools and youth.

“And Gen. Smedley Butler, who said that after 33 years and four months in the Marine Corps he had come to understand that he had been nothing more than a gangster for capitalism, making Mexico safe for American oil interests, making Haiti and Cuba safe for banks and pacifying the Dominican Republic for sugar companies. War, he said, is a racket in which newly dominated countries are exploited by the financial elites and Wall Street while the citizens foot the bill and sacrifice their young men and women on the battlefield for corporate greed.” - Chris Hedges

Luckily, NNOMY has beenworking on challenging school policies that favor military recruiters and we've been organizing in our communities to change them. We've been providing youth with training, employment and educational alternatives to military service. We've been engaged with community leaders. Most importantly, we've being successful across the country but we need more help from the 99%.

How can you help?

Do you know the policies of your local school system regarding military recruitment? The Pentagon preys on vulnerable 16 and 17 year olds to convince them it's in their best interest to enlist. It is an insidious practice. The military may request a list of the names, addresses and phone numbers of all the high school children in your town. What's your school district's policy regarding the military recruitment "opt out" form? Federal law says your schools are supposed to tell parents they have the right to remove their children's names from lists being sent to the Pentagon. What's your high school doing?

Does your school have a Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) Program? Are children firing weapons on school grounds during marksmanship training? Are they using lead ammunition, spewing deadly particulates into the air?

Your local high school has probably been forced by the Federal No Child Left Behind Act to hire highly qualified teachers. Many school districts are requiring classroom teachers to have master's degrees after a few years of service. Meanwhile, many JROTC instructors need only a high school diploma to teach credited courses. The stringent "No Child Left Behind" regulations don't address JROTC instructors. What are they teaching? Certainly, they're reading more Clausewitz and Machiavelli than Jefferson and Thoreau. What kind of curricular oversight does your high school exercise over this program? If you want to stop wars, you might start asking.

660,000 school children in public schools take the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test every year. Does your school offer the test? Why is the Pentagon testing children in the public schools? Military recruiting manuals admit it is primarily to produce leads for recruiters. The ASVAB is supposed to be voluntary, but many schools require all juniors and seniors to take it. Students are forced to sign a "Student Privacy Statement," to take the test, violating state laws. Does your school automatically forward the results from the four hour test to military recruiters? Most do, even though two states have banned the practice and hundreds of schools and districts have stepped in to protect the privacy of their students.

Are military recruiters allowed to greet children as they enter the cafeteria during lunch while college recruiters are required to meet with students by appointment in the Guidance Office? Federal law calls for military and college recruiters to have equal access to children. Schools across the country have ordered the military to meet with students in guidance and career centers, rather than allowing recruiters to have access to the entire student body.

Do you know if your local high school lets children out of class to shoot M-16 rifle and M- 9 pistol simulators in the increasingly popular Army recruiting vans? Are military recruiters frequenting some schools more than others due to racial and economic factors? Call your local high school principal and start asking questions. They're your schools and you're paying for them, even if your children don't attend. Wars start in your community and they can end there too.

Pat Elder, Don Chapin, Amy Wagner and Janine Schwab for NNOMY

17 December 2011/ War Resisters' International

International Study Conference Germany 2012 / Darmstadt, 8-10 June 2012

The international study conference on Countering the Militarisation of Youth, which took place from 8-10 June 2012 in Darmstadt, Germany, was a great success. With the conference we made an important step towards more cooperation and exchange among groups working on militarisation of youth in a range of topical areas and countries. For the conference, we brought together 65 participants from 14 countries and four continents, which in itself has been a great achievement. Our discussions enriched our understanding of militarisation, and helped to inspire us how to resist this militarisation.

The conference developed several proposal on how to improve our understanding of the militarisation of youth, and exchange experiences of resistance:

Educating Against Militarism / peace education

The idea is to collect and share information on peace education, including:

• curricula

• specific materials, resources of interest, including experiences using those materials in classrooms

• contacts of speakers who can go into schools, such as migrants from a conflict region, who can be resource persons for lessons or a speaking tour.

Winning the war of images

The creativity of the peace movement is such that we should rise to this challenge by producing designs and images that can also speak to young people which can then be distributed through social media and other networks in order to cast new light on the issues of militarisation within the circles that young people are familiar with. Too often lack of time, or necessary skills prevents activists from producing quality materials, and this proposal aims to also tackle this issue by providing a gallery or database of visual resources in accessible file formats and under creative commons licensing such that they can be adapted.

Conscientious objection to military registration

This was suggested by a mostly German group, based on the situation in Germany, where data is passed on automatically by the registry office to the military, but where the law provides a right to “opt-out” of this data transfer.
The idea is a campaign of conscientious objection to the (automatic) draft registration, but it also became clear that for an international campaign more research on how (automatic) draft registration functions would be needed.

Countering militarisation of universities

In Germany, there will be a week of action against militarisation of universities from 24-29 September 2012 (more information – in German – at http://www.dfg-vk.de/thematisches/schulfrei-fuer-die-bundeswehr/2012/754). At present, the idea is to produce appealing visual materials and posters to promote the week of action, but also with simple messages to raise the issue. Nina Eisenhardt is working with others in Germany to produce materials (not only in German), which can be shared. These posters/materials should be displayed at as many universities as possible in Germany and other countries.
The discussion at the networking meeting following the study conference suggested to share an evaluation of the German week of action, and to possibly coordinate and call for an international week of action in 2013.

Military out of schools

This proposal focuses on the militarisation of schools, and what can be done about it. It became clear that more information is needed, not only about how schools and militarisation are being militarised, but also about the legal framework governing this militarisation – e.g. about a schools right not to allow the military into school, etc.

Presently, the objective is to collect information on:

• militarisation of schools

• actions against military in schools, including NVDA, conscientious objection of students/teachers/parents, etc.

• creating of alternatives, such as alternative lesson plans that teachers could use.

War Resisters' International will continue to expand its work on the militarisation of youth, and more information will be available at http://wri-irg.org/programmes/militarisationofyouth.

November 27, 2011 / New York Civil Liberties Union  / Peace and Justice Online

The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) reports, “The US Military is aggressively recruiting young people for military service.”  “Recruiters,” the NYCLU states, “often target immigrants, students from poor families and people of color.” The targeting of teens in low income and minority communities is an acknowledged and accepted practice, according to a former military recruiter with whom I spoke.

The military often assigns recruiters to meet with students at local high schools. Schools must allow this, by federal law, if they permit job or college recruiters to meet with students.

High schools routinely provide the military the names, addresses, birthdates, and telephone numbers of their students. This, too, is required by law.  However, students or their parents can choose to “opt-out,” preventing the school from providing this information.  Additionally, schools must inform students and parents of this right to opt-out.

In a recent survey of several area school districts, we found that there was great variation in the manner in which the law was implemented.  Some high schools, for example, permitted recruiters to visit often and to set up staffed “information tables” outside the school cafeteria.  Other schools had more stringent policies that limited the frequency and extent of contact that recruiters could have with students.  Some schools placed more of an emphasis than others upon informing students and parents of their right to opt-out.  Students and parents might want to ask about their school’s policies on these matters.  Students who wish to opt-out should be sure to check the school’s procedure and deadline for this.

There is so much violence in our society, and there are so many wars.  One of my concerns is that we need to place far more emphasis upon teaching both the importance and the means of preventing violence, in our communities and globally as well.  Teenagers are impressionable.  I believe that we need to ensure that they do not learn in school that violence and war are to be taken for granted.

The NYCLU has prepared an outstanding guide, “No Student Left Unrecruited? Frequently Asked Questions About Military Recruitment and Students’ Rights.”  This guide explains what the law requires, and provides quite a bit of very helpful information for students and parents.  The text of the guide can be accessed in English here.  It can be accessed in Spanish here.  A PDF of the guide, with opt-out forms, can be downloaded in English here and in Spanish here.  Print copies of these guides, as handy palm cards, can be ordered from local NYCLU offices.

The NYCLU website provides related information on alternatives to the military, the rights of student groups, a model school policy, and other info that may be of interest to students, parents, and others who are concerned about the militarization of youth.  A listing of topics and links to these resources can be found here.

Readers might also be interested in visiting the website of the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY).  The NNOMY site provides a wealth of information about students’ rights, counter-recruitment, alternatives to the military, and related topics.

For further information about NNOMY and resources it provides, please see its entry in the Peace and Justice Online Directory of Resources.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), of course, is the national organization of which the NYCLU is an affiliate.  For more information about the ACLU, and helpful links, check out its entry in the Directory or Resources.

Source: http://peaceandjusticeonline.org/2011/01/21/military-recruitment-in-our-schools-students%E2%80%99-rights-and-an-nyclu-guide/

23 October 2011- Oregonian

Betsy Hammond -

The Portland school board is set to adopt a rule Monday to give "counter-recruiters" skeptical about the value of joining the military the same access to high school students that military recruiters enjoy under federal law.

Instead of standing out on the school sidewalk waving signs and offering fliers, as they have done regularly outside Portland high schools, anti-war activists will be able to staff recruiting tables and hand out pamphlets in the school career center or cafeteria, just like military recruiters in uniform.

"What we want is a balanced account of military service," said school board member Matt Morton, one of at least four board members lined up behind the new rule. "What's key is giving them all the information they need to make good decisions."

The board plans to ask district staffers to prepare an information packet for distribution at every high school to tell students about military recruiting tactics, their right to have their contact information withheld from the military and other post-high school options for students to serve their country, including AmeriCorps.

The chief of recruiting for the Oregon National Guard aid the military has so little access to Portland high school students that any concerns about over-the-top military recruitment on campus are unwarranted.

"We have difficulty making inroads to even get into those Portland schools," said Lt. Col. Cary Miller, chief operations officer for Oregon Army National Guard recruiting. "My recruiting force is a professional force. They're not going to step out of line or lie to kids."

His recruiters have been forced to reach Portland teens less directly, through sponsoring basketball tournaments, staffing booths at festivals such as The Bite of Portland and putting a celebrate diversity-themed float in the Rose Parade, Miller said.

Critics of military recruitment concede that they have no evidence that hardball tactics are being used in Portland high schools these days. But they say they might be.

Beginning in 1995, the Portland school board banned military recruitment in schools, primarily because of the military's discrimination against gays. Then in 2001, the federal No Child Left Behind law mandated that military recruiters get the same access to every public high school campus and to students' addresses and home phone numbers that college recruiters do.

Peace activists and military "counter-recruiters" weren't extended the same rights.

Hence the regular sidewalk protests by members of the War Resisters League, Veterans for Peace and other groups outside Portland high schools, said John Grueschow, coordinator of the Resisters League's military and draft counseling programs.

"We feel that, since the military is required to be let in there, there should be some response" from anti-military recruiters, too, Grueschow said. "We should have the same opportunity they do to present students information."

Board vice chairman Martin Gonzàlez has been the primary force behind getting the rule written and passed, fellow board members said.

The policy is like those already in place in Seattle, San Francisco and other left-leaning city school districts, they said.

Miller, of the National Guard, said he's worried the pro-and-con setup spelled out in the board's proposed rule could make for disruptive episodes in schools.

"To have someone come in and say, 'The recruiters are lying to you,' well, that's not true. I run a tight ship. We are high on integrity and character and value. ... How is somebody who's not in our force and not knowledgeable about what benefits are currently open or available going to say that I am wrong or lying to them?" Miller asked.

"There are people out there who simply don't like the military and don't acknowledge that we in the National Guard have a peacetime mission to help the citizens of Oregon. They'll say, 'You're going to sign up and think you're going to college, but you're going to go to war and die.' That's what they all do."

But Kathy Barker, a PTA leader from Seattle's Garfield High who was a prime force behind Seattle schools' 2007 adoption of a peace-recruiter access policy said it doesn't get ugly. Dozens of times in recent years, she's staffed a peace recruiter table next to the military recruiter table at various Seattle high schools.

When the tables are set up in the career center, often three or fewer students come by that day, and the opposing recruiters spend the day chatting, she said.

When the tables are set up in the cafeteria, students are drawn to check out the side-by-side displays of military benefits and drawbacks, she said.

"There's not the trouble school people thought there would be," she said.

Military recruiters talk up the college tuition assistance, discipline and training that come with enlisting. She talks about the horrors of war and the likelihood of getting locked into an eight-year service contract, she said.

"Often the student might be engaged with both of us at the same time," and often she will counter a military recruiter's line by saying, "Actually, that's not true at all," Barker said.

But, she said, "It's never been nasty or hostile. They are professionals, and so are we."

-- Betsy Hammond

Keep NNOMY aware of the latest news from your organization at admin@nnomy.org so we can share it with the national network.

NNOMY on Facebook / Online

Online: Visit NNOMY Peace on Facebook to see all our Friends

Online: Visit The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth on Facebook to see who likes us

New Groups added to the NNOMY Network

• NJ Youth United Against War and Imperialism

• Veterans for Truth in Military Recruiting / Safe Passage Network

• Madres contra la Guerra

• Yap High School

Repeal of DADT: How It Helps and How It Doesn’t

Dear LGB Youth… Now that you can enlist, please don’t.

Read more... 

26 September 2011 - War Is a Crime - David Swanson's blog

David Swanson -

Remarks at Lynchburg College on September 26, 2011

I'd like to thank Dave Freier for inviting me, and all of you for being here.  I think I was invited to speak about my most recent book, War Is A Lie, but I asked Professor Freier if it would be all right to speak about my next book, not yet finished, and he agreed.  So, the following is a relatively very short summary of a forthcoming book that is not yet finished, and which I need your help with.  It would be very helpful to me if you let me know when I've finished these opening remarks what was unclear, what didn't make sense, or what didn't persuade you, as well as what -- if anything -- seemed useful or inspiring.

It would also help me a lot if you would raise your hands to show your views on a few questions.  First, raise your hand if you believe that war is illegal.  I don't mean particular atrocities or particular types of wars, but war.  And I don't mean bad or regrettable, but illegal.  If you're not sure or think it's not a good question don't raise your hand.  OK, thank you.  Now, raise your hand if you think war should be illegal.  OK, thank you.  And now raise your hand if you know what the Kellogg-Briand Pact is.  All right, that was very helpful.  Now, let me tell you a little story, or at least a few pieces of it.

Read more: When the World Outlawed War

Thursday, December 8, 2011 - The Peace Table at Bowie High School

Hi, all,

On Thursday, Tami, George and I tabled at Bowie HS and had perhaps our best day there ever. Bowie is either the first or second largest school in our district. George is a member of Veterans for Peace visiting Austin from Canada, and it was great to have him joining us. Tami was getting over a bug, and because we were busy, it was especially good to have three of us at the table.

Photos are posted at: http://peaceoptions.blogspot.com/

Here are George’s observations about our day, and then mine. From George: Following is a reflection on our time at Bowie High School on Dec 8. We were greeted at the school office and asked to check in and if we had checked with the school scheduler before hand. Bowie is where, on a previous occasion, Sustainable Options for Youth, then called Non-Military Options for Youth ,was told to leave the premises until the Principal had a chance to review and read the literature on our table. This in spite of the fact that the Austin Independent School Board had cleared our group to visit Austin high schools years ago. This was our third visit there since being asked to leave. My reflection is that it was a very postive experience for me, interacting with hundreds of high schoolers at the two tables we had set up in front of the school cafeteria for the two lunch periods. My guess is that no fewer than 300 students stopped at the table to play the Peace wheel game, make folders with stencils or pick up peace literature and brochures on the table. I personally got into about a dozen more in depth conversations with individual students.

One teacher from the Spanish Department stopped by for a brief chat and was very supportive. He shared that the language department was short staffed having laid off four teachers at the beginning of this school year. Custodial staff was very friendly and supportive. We ran out of free folders for the kids to stencil, so bought some more from the school store at .50 per folder. We ran out of some our literature and will have to replenish stock for our next high school visit. We found a parking space in visitor parking quite near the front door. For me a very good and postive effort. I learned alot about where today's teenagers are coming from on a variety of issues. Most I talked to were very aware of Occupy Austin and what those issues were and several had actually visited the site down at city Hall of Austin.

Submitted by George Taylor, Veterans for Peace chapter 16 From Susan:

George told us that he’s already visited Occupy Austin four times since he’s been in Austin, which is more than I have! -- So it was cool that he could talk with students about it from first-hand experience, since the Occupy Movement is one of the items on the Peace Wheel.

At Bowie, we have a good set-up spot in a hall just outside the cafeteria, with good student traffic and bright window light. There was a student banner posted on the wall above our table that was about trust being a component of healthy relationships, so we felt that was appropriate to our message, too. The hall adjoins the gym, so groups of women’s basketball and volleyball players came by the table, and some students practiced dance routines in the hall between lunches.

One of the first people to stop by the table was a custodial worker who liked the peace wheel and said she’d like to make one for her Bible Study group. She looked it over carefully to see how it was made. Then, a student’s mom stopped by and took a bunch of the “military realities” fliers because she said that a Marine representative had come to the school and had talked in her son’s class recently, so her son was suddenly gung-ho about the Marines – which she was not.

As is typical, students at first walked quickly by the table on their way to lunch, just glancing at us, but as soon as a few students came over to ask what we were about, then that attracted more students, and we were busy after that. I was at the ‘art’ end of the table, where more students than usual took us up on the offer to use our stencils to make their own folder art. I had brought about 40 blank folders, and, as George mentions, we ran out toward the end, but Tami noticed that a little student supplies shop was open down the hall and they sold paper folders there! So, we made two trips down there to get more!

At Bowie in the past, we’ve usually had a group of JROTC students come up to the table with an attitude, challenging our literature and our messages. We welcome that! There are JROTC programs in four of our high schools, but it’s Bowie where the students seem to feel most confident to argue with us. This time, a few students stopped by who I expect were part of the JROTC, but they didn’t argue. One student ran up and asked, “Do you have any books about the military?” (one of our banners read, “Books, Not Bombs.”) I think he was pulling our chain, but we said, yes, we did, and handed him a copy of “Addicted to War.” He seemed a little surprised, but he took it. Quite a few students took “military realities” fliers and seemed to look at them seriously.

Chatting a little with students as they did the stenciling, I observed, as we often do, that students are very concerned about: animals, the environment, costs of college, their friends and family. That’s partly why the art tries to link the environment with peace. As in: pandas can’t survive in a world forever at war. And the same for humans. We also gave out a lot of Americorps brochures, as most students had not heard of it.

Like at McCallum HS, students sat in little groups on the floor of the hallway during lunch. It’s nice to see how communal they are at that age. There was a more laid-back feeling at Bowie this time than I’d felt in past visits.

A favorite moment was when one student said to another as they were stenciling, something like, “this is pretty fun, after all, at the crazy people booth.” I said, “Yup, we are crazy about the earth and we want it to survive and be healthy forever. So—crazy in a good way?” And the students both smiled and nodded. Tami also heard a student say something like, “This is a cool table.” So, of course, these kinds of comments make us feel it’s worthwhile.

Until next time,

Susan

Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - Hanging out at LBJ/LASA High School

Hi, all,

Today, Tami and I visited LBJ/LASA high school and had an interesting day.  A few photos are posted at www.peaceoptions.blogspot.com

Here’s our take on it:

From Susan:

As most of you know, LBJ and the Liberal Arts and Science Academy are two schools within the same building.  LBJ students had the first lunch, and right away, a bunch of students came over to do the stencil art and spin the peace wheel.  Several also took the military reality fliers and talked to us about the military.  One young woman said her brother is having problems in the Marines, but then she said she wanted to join the Marines, too, in order to help him.  I tried very hard to not just say “NO! DON’T DO THAT!”  Often, students are really casting about, and although our encounters with them are usually brief, we get a sense of the difficult decisions in their lives.

I made a new stencil design based on the Food Not Bombs logo, but the most popular are still the Panda images and the “Peace Takes Courage” slogan.

During the LASA lunch, the situation was quite different – hardly any interest from students.  Most of the magnet school students are likely to have more post-high school plans in the works.

Tami and I brought some Americorps fliers to the career counseling room afterward because we are noticing that schools don’t seem to keep Americorps materials around.  That seems strange to me, since some schools actually have Americorps members on staff in the college/career counseling areas.  The counselor we talked to today, in fact, said she had done an Americorps program herself.

One other thing I’ve been noticing is fewer military recruitment posters in the schools than I used to see.  I don’t know if this is a conscious choice by school staff, but it is encouraging.

A final observation is that, so far, the students who have told us they know about OccpuyWallStreet have been Anglo, and students of color tend to not be as aware of it. (It comes up because we have it as one of the items on the peace wheel)  One LASA student who breezed by the table said he had been to Occupy Austin on two days and seemed excited about it.

From Tami:

During the first lunch period we had quite a few curious and friendly visitors.  One difference this time was that more students seemed to have plans to be in the military.  One student who said that he had already signed up still seemed firm in his decision.  He was open to taking the relevant brochure that explained his rights in case he changes his mind.  Another  male student told me he had made the decision to be in the military, but was willing to take the brochure, "Do You Know Enough to Enlist?" when I suggested he gather a range of information before he actually joins.  He was moving on with friends, so I didn't have a chance to ask his reasons for wanting to be in the military.  He had previously turned the peace wheel and been interested in those who had promoted social change.  Among others who took a turn on the wheel, one knew Cesar Chavez led boycotts (the first student from any school so far to know that) and others knew he had done something positive for people of Mexican heritage.  Several students chose someone they knew of, Martin Luther King.  One student said "they brought black and white together" and another specifically mentioned the "I Have A Dream" speech as promoting better racial relations.  None referred to the intense segregation and lack of voting rights that led to the Civil Rights Movement, although one student did refer to Rosa Park's refusal to follow the rule black people had to go to the back of the bus.  As at other schools, no students knew what the Greensboro Sit In was.  Perhaps Rosa Parks may be a substitute at some point, as she is a another female role model.  One student landed on Julia Butterfly Hill, and didn't recognize her name, but then said he knew of her when I described her effort to save Redwood trees from being cut down for lumber.  In regard to Gandhi, one student had read about him and knew that he had used a hunger strike, but did not recall what the goal of it had been.  As with all participants, we shared brief info in our own words, and then offered them a list with descriptions of all the people on the wheel.  All of the students were quite willing to take the list and put it in folders they chose or created with Susan.  Only one student knew of Occupy Wall Street and he spoke with both of us.  One more activity we did was to give out a fair amount of information about Americorps, which students hadn't heard of, but were pleased to find is another option to pay for college.  One student knew of the Peace Corp and said she planned to participate in that program.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - Notes from our day at Crockett HS

Hi, all,

Today, Tami and I tabled at Crockett HS in South Austin.  Crockett is right across the street from an ACC campus, and it was good to hear from several of the students that they are either taking classes there or plan to before they graduate.  We did our usual with the peace wheel and the stencil art project to draw students over, which helps us to have more time to talk with them.  Here is Tami’s report back, and there are photos at www.peaceoptions.blogspot.com

BTW, this article was in today's Statesman, reprinted from The Washington Post: "Recent veterans more likely to be unemployed than civilians," which is one of our talking points. Tami's report back:

We had students come to our table in smaller groups at this school so were able to have more varied conversations.  Quite a few were interested in the peace wheel and more students were aware that Cesar Chavez  had been involved in helping "workers."  One specifically chose Martin Luther King, as that was the only person they knew, and several others also named him as the most familiar.  One knew about Helen Keller being blind and deaf, but asked what she had done related to peace/social justice.  None had heard of Julia Butterfly Hill or Wangarai Maathai, but were impressed when they learned more about their efforts to preserve trees and forests.  More students took copies of our brochures on the military than at any of the other schools so far, and several asked some very good questions in an open minded way.  Looking at the sheet on ten reasons not to join the military, one student who said he planned to join in the Marines when he graduates asked about the item regarding being lied to.  My answer was that they may be promised a certain kind of training or location and then be assigned to something very different in a combat zone.  He was only a freshman, so has time to reconsider enlisting before making a commitment.  One young man was a foreign exchange student from South Korea and expressed serious concern about why the US got into the war in Vietnam.  I should have asked how he knew of that war, and we wondered afterward if he had family members who were sent there in his country's army.  As I wrote this, I checked in Wikipedia and learned that "between 1965 and 1973, 312,853 South Korean soldiers fought in Vietnam."  A female student spoke of a friend who was killed in Afghanistan and since then having persuaded another male friend not to join the military.  Several students spoke of the education benefits as a reason to join the military and we shared a lot of information about Americorps.  The one student who had heard of it was in a program ("College Forward") to encourage low income students to go to college that was staffed by Americorps members.  She spoke of wanting to go to a college in Boulder, Colorado started by Tibetan monks.  She and several other female students said they planned to major in environmental studies.  One teacher who came to our table spoke of promoting peace in multiple ways and said she was glad we were there.  Students at Crockettt were friendly, curious and open to learning more about our peace related information.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - Notes from our day at McCallum HS

Here are summaries from Tami and me about our tabling date today at McCallum HS, which was great!
Photos at www.peaceoptions.blogspot.com

From Tami:

Today at McCallum there was a lot of interest in the peace wheel, and students knew about several of the Peace Heroes, offering suggestions of others as well.  One student was able to share a detailed account of Ghandi's salt protest and another Wangari Maathai's efforts to reverse deforestation in Kenya.  Several knew about Helen Keller and were pleased to learn that she had been an activist for women's voting rights and peace.  One student who had recently moved from a western state with few Hispanic people said she hadn't heard of Cesar Chavez until she came to Austin.  Some of the names offered as other peacemakers they knew of were Oscar Shindler, Mother Teresa, Lisa Rogers (Program Director at Out Youth) and singer Michael Franti.  On Franti, the student had chosen him for a History paper on a social activist and spoke of his choice to not wear shoes in solidarity with many people in the world who can't afford them.  Quite a few students knew of Gidon (local hip hop artist/ poet) and one said he had rapped with him.  A significant number had also heard of the Occupy Wall Street assemblies, and one student connected that with Abbie Hoffman's street theater throwing dollars on Wall Street "in the 70's."  The young woman who had participated in the Austin Wall Street demonstrations asked how she could get more information about our group and we gave her a flyer with our website listed.  Another remembered past tablings by SOY and expressed an interest in assisting the next time that we come to this school.  I asked one student if he had heard of African recording artist and peace activist Emmanuel Jal, and he had not.  When I told about this young man's history of being taken as a child soldier in Sudan, the student told me that there is a concert coming up in Kenya that is going to feature African musicians for peace.  If anyone knows more about this, please share that info with us.  I also spoke with some of the students about alternative ways of paying for college.  One who was very knowledgeable about the Peace Corps, said they prefer students after graduation with some skills to offer.  She spoke of that as a way she could do something worthwhile and get help paying off large student loans she expected to have to take out.  Few had heard about Americorps, but many were interested and took brochures with more information on that program.  On the whole, this was a school in which a significant number of students came to our table and engaged in sophisticated conversations about peace and social justice related topics.

From Susan:

McCallum HS is the arts magnet school in north central Austin.  Of all Austin's public high schools, McCallum seems to have the most even mix of ethnicities among the student population.

We brought our usual materials, along with enough supplies for students who wanted to do some stencil art on the spot, and we had many takers!  It usually takes a few minutes for a student or two to come over to the table, and then once that happens, more kids are attracted, and it goes well from there.  At my end of the table, I really enjoyed seeing how the kids used the colors in inventive ways, and we were able to talk a bit about their future plans, and other things at the school.  I noticed quite a few students slipping counter-recruitment fliers into their folders as they hung around the table.  I talked with one student who spoke about her father having been in the Navy and having secret missions that he wasn't allowed to talk about with his family.  While she was stenciling, she also talked about a bullying situation she was experiencing at school and how she was responding to it.  While talking, she came up with some good solutions to her dilemma.  She also talked about how much she likes animals, and she knew a lot about them, too.  I learned, for example, that sharks are territorial!

During the second lunch, a group of about 20 students sat down in the middle of the hallway right next to us to eat their lunches together.  At first, I thought:  It's OccupyMcCallum!  But, I guess they were just having lunch in an accustomed spot.  It was sweet the way they were so joined at the hip, talking and doing homework in one big clump.  The school administrators seemed used to it and didn't give them a hard time.  The student group didn't pay much attention to us, but I gathered they felt comfortable with us being there.

I added the OccupyAustin event to the peace wheel, and some of the kids did know about it.  One student said she had been at City Hall all weekend (except for overnight) and that her dad had spoken at one of the rallies!

One school administrator who was monitoring the lunch period came over to us and asked us about our group.  She said she was glad we were there.  She said that the Marines had tabled once so far this semester, but she hadn't seen more military presence than that so far.  We usually hear at McCallum that recruiters are there a lot, and it's still early in the school year.

One student said she was part of a Philosophy Club and writes for a school literary journal that is different from the school newspaper.  Others talked about doing music and film at school.  They are about to perform a musical this weekend in their new performing arts center.

Wednesday, 28 September 2011 - Notes from Lanier High School

Tami and I each wrote up some impressions from our SOY table today at Lanier HS, Austin, so here they are from both of us!:

From Tami:

My time with students at Lanier was around the Peace Wheel, and it continues to be surprising that most recognize the names of Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and Gandhi but are not so aware of specifically what issues they addressed.  One student did connect Rosa Parks with Dr. King, and knew that her activity involved a protest on a bus.  Perhaps this could be a woman to add to the wheel.  The person students knew most about was Helen Keller and how she had overcome being deaf and blind.

After the students shared what they knew about the person who came up on their turn of the wheel, I described what the person changed and emphasized how they did this in non violent ways.  Several took the informational page that accompanies the wheel and seemed genuinely motivated to learn more about even the people they had not heard of.   Many also seemed to like talking with an adult who was interested in their thoughts and goals.  Most of the students I spoke with were juniors and seniors, so we talked about their post high school plans.

All described goals involving additional education, with career plans such as being a psychologist for victims of crime, being a crime investigation tech, or studying business and opening a vegetarian restaurant.  One young man who was also enthusiastically stenciling folder covers with Susan was a senior active in choir and school plays said he wants to work in those performance areas when he graduates.  With all of the students who shared their future educational goals, I asked if they knew about Americorps and most did not.  Again several asked for the brochure and benefits descriptions we had on the table.

Since one staff member had said students are often given the impression that the military is their only option, we wanted to make sure they know there are others.  When I pointed to the brochures we had about information the recruiters might not tell them, many made comments indicating that they did not feel positively about the military. Students continued to come up, remain talking, or working on their stenciled folders right up to when the bell rang and it was time for them to return to class.

From Susan:

Today, when Tami picked me up for our tabling date, she said that she’d just heard that nobel laureate, Wangari Maathai had died.  Ms. Maathai is included on our Peace Wheel, and not many students have known who she was, so it felt important to raise some awareness about her and the Kenyan Greenbelt Movement.  Tami later sent a link to a good article about Ms. Maathai published in the Washington Post, which I’ve reposted at our site:

www.peaceoptions.blogspot.com

I also added the current “#OccupyWallStreet” action to our Peace Wheel because it’s happening right now and is led by young people.  Tami said that none of the students who spun the wheel today landed on that one, so we’re not sure if any students had heard about it or not, but we’ll see at our next table.  Of course, there is very little about the Wall Street action in the main stream press, but I’ve appreciated the coverage provided by the young journalists at

www.wagingnonviolence.org

I brought the stenciling supplies and when lunch began, I started doing some stenciling at our table, which attracted a student, which soon attracted a whole bunch of students!  I had to go to the school’s art room to borrow more brushes, as it really drew a crowd of stencil artists today! (The art teachers were really nice about it.)  Lanier only has one lunch period, and we were busy throughout.  I didn’t even have time to take any photos of our goings-on!  I always like how the kids think of new things to do with the stencils, like mixing the colors differently or mixing and matching the images and words.

A few staff people stopped by to talk and they were supportive.  A few of the students who hung out at the table talked to us about wanting to join the military, and they were open to our materials.  We heard from staff and students that the recruiters are there a lot.  Student population is mostly Latino.

In the school cafeteria are a number of large murals high on the walls.  I’ve noted them before – they are pictures and brief quotes from people like Mother Theresa, Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, Sitting Bull,  Maya Angelou.  They are nice, but one of them is strangely different than the others.  It’s a picture of Pancho Villa, but with a quote not by him, but by Woodrow Wilson: “The seed of revolution is repression.”  Wait a minute—didn’t Wilson preside over the US repression and military occupation of Haiti, for example?  Didn’t he suppress anti-war activists in the US?  Hm-m.

We checked our materials in the library, where the librarian seems supportive and keeps the fliers on shelves near the college guides and military stuff.

All in all, a good visit, where it was clear that students enjoy being creative.

Susan

Links:

• Lanier High School Table of SOY in 2010

• Our table today at Lanier High School - 2009 report

• Waging peace at McCallum HS - Thursday, February 3, 2011

• Beginning the school year at Austin HS - Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Originally published in the Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Scott Harding - School of Social Work University of Connecticut / Seth Kershner - Simmons College -

In an effort to counteract the growing militarization of schools, military counter-recruitment (CR) has emerged as an effective grassroots movement across the United States. Led by a small number of local activists, CR utilizes community organizing methods to confront the structures supporting military enlistment as a viable career option. Despite operating with limited resources, counter-recruitment has secured key legal and policy victories that challenge the dominant social narrative about military service. Three examples of counter- recruitment are profiled to illustrate the different tactics and strategies used for successful organizing within a culture of militarism.

Read more: Just say No: Organizing Against Militarism in Public Schools

Keep NNOMY aware of the latest news from your organization at admin@nnomy.org so we can share it with the national network.

NNOMY on Facebook / Online

NNOMY Peace on Facebook Made new Friends including....

Al Kovnat,Angel Wings , Barbara Ehrenreich ,  Brad Laird,  Brenda Bailey Traylor,  Danielle Radicanin,  Deanna Lee McGowan,  G. Simon Harak,  Heather Bricklin,  Ken Shipp, Kevin Cummings , Lee Conklin, Mona Shaw , Roland Jesperson ,  Veterans For-Peace Long-Island and others......

Online: Visit NNOMY Peace on Facebook to see all our Friends

New People who like The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth Facebook Page including....

Peace and Social Justice Ministry - Catholic Diocese of Joliet,  Northwest Suburban Peace & Education Project, Buddhist Peace Fellowship of Tampa Bay - Chapter,  Tampa Bay Counter Recruitment Coalition, Peace and Social Justice Center of South Central Kansas , Granny Peace Brigade , The Whatcom Peace and Justice Center , Rockland Coalition for Peace and Justice , Massachusetts Peace Action, Racine Coalition for Peace and Justice, AZ Counter-Recruitment Coalition, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, U.S. Section, Institute for Peace and Justice, Peace Action, South Lake Democratic Club, San Diego Friends Center,  and others .......

Online: Visit The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth on Facebook to see who likes us

Pablo Paredes / A Dream Deferred , San Francisco

Pintando Verdad contra el Poder

Es un terreno baldío abandonado a tres cuadras de la alcaldía de San Francisco y al lado del edificio de los Amigos (cuáqueros) de San Francisco. Los cuáqueros han tratado de trabajar con la ciudad para crear un jardín comunitario, pero hasta ahora sin resultado. Las agujas usadas, basura, cristales rotos y las viviendas improvisadas de las personas sin hogar, lleno de sueños en la última década.

Esta semana un grupo de jóvenes migrantes con status mixto del proyecto 67 sueños de AFSC, sus amigos, familiares y aliados han estado trabajando duro para transformar este espacio. Desde la limpieza de la basura para la colocar un hermoso mural de unos 100 por 30 pies, cada parte de este mural refleja la experiencia del migrante.

San Francisco, California: Lea más en "A Dream Deferred" Sitio Web

Leah Bolger /Veterans For Peace, National

Why You Won’t See Veterans For Peace on the Cover of TIME Magazine

The cover of the August 29, 2011 issue of TIME magazine features five members of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), with the caption “The New Greatest Generation.” The point of author Joe Klein’s article is that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have created a new kind of veteran who is “bringing skills that seem to be on the wane in American society, qualities we really need now:  crisp decision making, rigor, optimism, entrepreneurial creativity, a larger sense of purpose and real patriotism.” Klein profiles a small number of veterans (including a Harvard valedictorian, a Rhodes scholar, and a Dartmouth grad) who have done well since returning to civilian life and credits their military service as the reason, then goes on to make a sweeping generalization that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have created a whole new generation of hard-working, disciplined young citizens who have something “more” to offer than their civilian counterparts.


National / Common Dreams:  Read more on the Common Dreams Web site

Stanley Kirshner Breen / Southwest High School, Minneapolis, MN

War and Art: Creativity and Youth In Action

$1,216,539,560,417 or — for those of you who are like me and can’t process numbers instantly in their head —   one trillion, two hundred and sixteen billion, five hundred and thirty nine million, five hundred and sixty thousand, four hundred and seventeen dollars. This is the total cost, and rising, of what America has spent on war in the past decade. I think that when people   see such a large number as this, they have a hard time connecting it to their lives. So I considered the most  important things in my life.

As hard as it is to admit in the middle of summer, school is one of the most influential things in my life. I go to a Minneapolis public school, and the lack of money has been noticeable, mainly in class sizes. While my school has been lucky with funding, I know schools that are not. Schools in the poorer area of the city have had their arts funding cut to where its basically nonexistent. This is terrible!  Our taxes are being used to support violence and terror in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet America’s youth don’t have creative outlets in school.

Minneapolis, MN: Read more on the Michael Moore Website

Ernie McCray/ COMD/ San Diego, California

Rekindling the Fire — Now That Would Be Great!

I was asked to see if I could rekindle (though I can barely keep a campfire going) energy for leafleting our high schools with information to help students understand and respond to attempts to militarize them. They encounter this not only in their schools but also in their communities and beyond, as anyone can see in commercials, video games, and every form of media.

Well, it should be obvious that there's a tremendous need for us, especially those of us who dare to refer to ourselves as "community activists." We look out for our children when Uncle Sam comes after them with his zest for war, even though some of the organizations and activities that counter the militarization of young people are shrinking nationwide.

For instance: the American Friends Service Committee no longer has staff in its national office working full time on youth and military recruitment. The work of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (CCCO) ceased in 2008 when the venerable, decades-old organization folded. And, for a brief while, Project YANO (Youth and Non-Military Opportunities) recently had to cut its sole paid organizer's position to half-time.

San Diego, California: Read more on the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft Website

Peace Action / Kansas City, Missouri

KC peace activists stand up for democracy in (nonviolent) fight to stop new Bomb factory

Peace Action’s affiliate in the Kansas City area, PeaceWorks Kansas City, is one of the leaders of the struggle to prevent a new factory to build the non-nuclear components for U.S. nuclear weapons. I plan to visit Kansas City in mid-October and hope to be able to learn more and support the cause.

National Peace Action board member Larry Wittner has an article on this struggle on History News Network, and Mother Jones also had a piece on this by Adam Weinstein as well. More soon about how we can all support the KC Peace Planters!

Kansas City, Missouri: Go to the Peace Action Website and give your support , Reported in Mother Jones, In The National Catholic Reporter

The Wilmington Peace Center/ Charlottesville, Virginia

The Military Industrial Complex at 50

A Conference on Moving Money from the Military to Human Needs
http://micat50cville.org

WHEN:
September 16-18, 2011

WHERE:
Friday, September 16, 2011, at  the Haven, 112 W Market Street, Charlottesville, Va.  Map.
Saturday and Sunday, September 17 and 18, 2011, at The Dickinson Fine and Performing Arts Center at  Piedmont Virginia Community College, 501 County Road 338, Charlottesville, Va. 22902-7589.  Map.

Charlottesville, Virginia: Read more at the The Wilmington Peace Group Website

http://www.nnomy.org

Keep NNOMY aware of the latest news from your organization at admin@nnomy.org so we can share it with the national network.

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NNOMY on Facebook / Online

NNOMY Peace on Facebook Made new Friends including....

Eli PaintedCrow , Jim Nicholson , Janice Elaine Hammett , Faten Faye Salameh , Heather Lang , Jenell Holden , Zoe DoubleRainbow Johnson , Andres Nieves ,Deanna Lee McGowan. Madelyn Hoffman , Barbara Millar , Dede Miller , EarthFirst Journal, and others......

Online: Visit NNOMY Peace on Facebook to see all our Friends

New People who like The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth Facebook Page including....

Lilian Ix'Chel Molina , Freedom Voices , Pedro Montenegro , Irma Cabrera Romero , James Fox , Jenell Holden , Edric Figueroa , Teachers ForJustice ,  and others .......

Online: Visit The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth on Facebook to see who likes us

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Pacem in Terris / Peace on Earth , Delaware

Creating the Peaceable Classroom

The program brings the teaching of Conflict Resolution INTO the classroom with the regular teacher or assistant. It integrates Conflict Resolution into everything that goes on in the entire school and further, in the home and eventually, the community. All of the adults in a school are trained in Conflict Resolution methods and goals. Every incident of conflict is noticed and addressed. Nothing is so small or insignificant that CPC ignores it. What we offer is also a community resource to help any organization or group that deals with children, not just schools.

Wilmington, Delaware: Read more about this program at the Pacem in Terris / Peace on Earth Website

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Medea Benjamin / Charles Davis / Code Pink, San Francisco, California

Enormous Cuts In Military Spending? Read The Fine Print

In this age of austerity, all the politicians are talking about the need for spending cuts. But when it comes to shared burdens and slashed budgets, don't expect the Pentagon to start holding bake sales, despite what you may have heard about reductions to its obscenely bloated funding.


San Francisco, California:  Read more on the Huff Post Politics Page

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Resource Center for Non-violence, Watsonville, California

RCNVs ReGeneration Project

In an effort to reinvigorate the Resource Center with youth involvement   the ReGeneration Project seeks to provide a space for Santa Cruz youth and students of all ages to engage in critical and creative thinking about our society, and the resources to address those issues through creative and nonvi0lent means. We believe that the arts are the vehicle through which social change and creative cultural resistance can occur!

Watsonville, California: Read more on the RCNV Website
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American Friends Service Committee/ Chicago, Illinois

Military Recruiter Abuse Hotline

The National Youth and Militarism Recruiter Abuse Hotline is now open at 1- 877-688-6881. After hearing many reports from young people and their families about abuses by military recruiters, we at AFSC are beginning to track these abuses as reported to our national hotline. Examples of recruiter abuse include making misleading or false statements; repeated contact after a request to refrain from contact; physical coercion; sexual solicitation; encouraging recruits to lie or falsify information; offering drugs or alcohol; attempting to intimidate or scare recruits or their parents; and refusal to accurately document recruits’ medical or legal situations.

Chicago, Illinois: Read more on the AFSC Chicago Website

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Veterans for Peace Chapter 54 / Santa Barbara, California

Mark Twain on the Philippines

The story is in response to a particular war, namely the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902, which Twain opposed.

The War Prayer
by Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Santa Barbara, California: Read more on the VFP 54 Website
ed
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Center on Conscience & War / Washington, D.C.

District of Columbia Residents: Automatic or Manual? Tell D.C. Council Not to Link Registration With Driver's Licenses

A majority of states in the U.S. now link registration with Selective Service and obtaining a driver’s license. What this means is that if a man has failed to register, he cannot receive his license.

Now the District of Columbia, the nation’s capital, is working to do the same thing to its young male residents.

Legislation B19-0330, titled “Access to Selective Service Registration Amendment Act of 2011,” was introduced on June 7, 2011 to the D.C. Council.

The current law says: “Men between 18 and 25 years* of age, may register with the Selective Service when they obtain or renew their driver's license.” (emphasis added)

The new bill would change this provision to: “Men between 18 and 25 years of age, shall register with the Selective Service when they obtain or renew their driver's license.” (emphasis added)


Washington, D.C.: Read more at the CCW Website

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http://www.nnomy.org

NNOMY on Facebook / Online

NNOMY Peace on Facebook Made 40 new Friends including....

Michael Parenti, Arlene Inouye, Bay- Peace, Boston Solidarity, Christine Stone, Debbie Tolson, Heather Wokusch, Juan R. I. Cole, MacGregor Eddy, Noco Progressives, Oskar Castro, Pablo Paredes, Peaceful Vocations, Rachelle Janice, Seattle Solidarity, Tony Soldo, Washington Peace Center, Ya-Ya Net

Online: Visit NNOMY Peace on Facebook to see all our Friends

80 New People who like The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth including....

Preston Enright, Christine Stone, Gary Lee, Serena Blaiz, Jay Diamond, Francisco Estrada, Gina Herman Tyner, Ebony Murphy-Root, Veterans For-Peace Long-Island, Casey Ross, Maurice Martin, Elva Salinas, Regeneration Csa, Miguel-Angel Soria, Ucsd Clah, Natalia Trenchi, Sharon Weisman, Cristina Fernández, Farah Azadi, MacGregor Eddy, Mike Budd, Ana Gonzalez, Pablo Paredes,

Online: Visit The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth on Facebook to see who likes us

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Penn Army of None, Pennsylvania

NNOMY Welcomes our latest network member!

Penn Army of None works to resist the militarization of our schools on multiple levels. At the student/parent level, their efforts are geared toward raising awareness of Military Databases and Opt Out Rights, Enlistment Facts Recruiters,  Don't Tell, and Alternatives to Military Enlistment.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Visit the Penn Army of None Website

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LEPOCO/ Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Peace Camp 2011

Monday, July 25th - Friday, July 29th, 2011, 9am - noon: LEPOCO's Annual "Young People Making Peace" Summer Day Camp, at First Presbyterian Church (corner of Tilghman Street and Cedar Crest Boulevard) in Allentown. Five mornings of stories, songs, games, crafts, and learning activities related to the broad topic of peace and justice, for children ages 5-12 who have completed kindergarten to 6th grade. Sponsored by the LEPOCO Peace Center and the Center for Humanistic Change. Click here for a Camper Registration Form to fill out and send in. Call 610-691-8730 for a Volunteer Interest Form or for more information..

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: Read more on the Bay - Peace Website

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NYCLU/ NYC, NY

Following NYCLU Advocacy, DOJ/DOE Affirm Immigrant Children’s Right to Attend U.S. Public Schools.

The U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education have issued guidance to all the nation’s school districts clarifying that schools must not inquire about a child’s immigration status at enrollment. The guidance follows a New York Civil Liberties Union analysis last year that found that at least 20 percent of public school districts across New York State were unlawfully barring or discouraging the enrollment of immigrant students. Civil rights group across the nation conducted similar advocacy on this issue.

NYC, NY.: Read more on the NYCLU Website
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Pax Christi Will County/ Joliet, Illinois

IL HOUSE PASSES ILLINOIS DREAM ACT ON A BIPARTISAN VOTE

ICIRR applauds both parties for supporting education for children of immigrants brought here without legal status by their parents

Springfield— Today, the Illinois DREAM Act (SB2185), legislation that would offer undocumented youth better access to higher education, passed in the Illinois House of Representatives on a bipartisan 60-54 vote. SB 2185, sponsored in the House by Rep. Edward Acevedo, has the support of Cardinal George, 15 university presidents, and hundreds of other faith leaders, business leaders, and community organizations.

Joliet, Illinois: Read more on the Pax Christi Website

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The Tulsa Peace Fellowship / Tulsa, Oklahoma

The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for June 2011

Congress Admits Soldiers Have No Marketable Skills after Service in the Military. About 27 percent of veterans age 20 to 24 are unemployed, according to recent statistics from the Labor Department. Many veterans returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan are finding themselves at a competitive disadvantage when they look for civilian employment in the difficult economy because they lack job-skills training, according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the bill’s sponsor.

Tulsa, Oklahoma : Read more on the Washington Post

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Sustainable Options for Youth / Austin, Texas

Veterans launch Operation Recovery at Ft. Hood

On Memorial Day, I joined supporters of Under The Hood Cafe in Killeen to learn more about the Operation Recovery project now underway at the entrance of Ft. Hood.  Members of IVAW have gathered to bring their concerns directly to the new administrator of the base, General Campbell.  Concerns center on the multiple deployments of soldiers who are clearly suffering psychological and physical injuries that are not being treated adequately in the military.  Members of IVAW have built a watch tower overlooking one of the entrances to Ft. Hood to demonstrate their intent to hold the General accountable and to continue their efforts to meet with him.  See the video above of the press conference held this week by IVAW members at the watch tower.

Austin, Texas: Read more at the SOY Website

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http://www.nnomy.org

Alternatives to the Military/ Lincoln, Nebraska

NNOMY Welcomes our latest network member!

Alternatives to the Military is a project of the Nebraska Greens. We welcome them to the NNOMY Network and acknowledge their work in increasing awareness about the DOD's Starbase Program and the danger it poses to children who are further indoctrinated into a culture of war.

Lincoln, Nebraska: Visit the Alternatives to the Military Website

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BAY- Peace/ Oakland, California

YOUTH MANIFESTO CAMPAIGN: We did it! ... Thanks to your support!

We are very proud to announce that on May 12th, the Oakland Board of Education took a strong stand against aggressive military recruiting in Oakland Unified School District schools by passing the Student Privacy and Equal Access Resolution, marking the success of the BAY-Peace Youth Manifesto Campaign.

Oakland, California: Read more on the Bay - Peace Website

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On Earth Peace/ New Windsor, MD

On Earth Peace is launching Step Up!, a network of youth and emerging young adults taking action to eliminate violence, advance justice, and build peace.

By joining Step Up! participants commit to three years of active peacemaking, and On Earth Peace commits to accompanying youth and young adults as they lead peace making initiatives in their own communities.

Step Up! calls participants to LEARN the ways of active nonviolence through monthly emails and training events; LEAD efforts to advance justice, build peace and eliminate violence; and BUILD the movement through inviting friends and supporting the network with an annual donation. Are you or someone you know searching for a network of learning and support to step up for peace? Read more on the Step Up! web page and sign up, or email stepup@onearthpeace.org for more information.

New Windsor, MD.: Read more on the On Earth Peace Website
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Peaceful Gatherings/ Corning, NY

Peaceful Gatherings informs high school and college students about the many alternatives to enlisting in the military, including alternative National Service, college scholarship opportunities and regional private and public sector employment options and services.

Peaceful Gatherings has set up information tables at East High in Corning, NY, West High in Painted Post, and at Corning Community College.

We need additional volunteers to counter the high-pressure sales pitch of military recruiters in our high schools. We want our young men and women to make important decisions about the future with informed minds. We intend to make every effort to ensure that young people are given the chance to know what they are committing to before

Corning, NY: Read more on the Peaceful Gatherings Website

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American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) / Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

On April 19 AFSC’s Racial Justice Through Human Rights (RJTHR) youth group accomplished their goal when Pittsburgh was declared a Human Rights City. Youth from the Pittsburgh Young Leaders Academy joined the RJTHR youth during the presentation of the proclamation in a ceremony during City Council. Five of the RJTHR youth accepted the Proclamation and spoke about their hope and concerns for the future of Pittsburgh.  .

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : Read more on the AFSC Philadelphia Website

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Rogue Valley Peace Veterans/ Jackson County/Ashland-Rogue River, Oregon

Forming & Maintaining School Peace Groups

Many educational institutions have clubs for student activists to join. If your school doesn't already have some form of a peace group, here is a rough guide of how to start one. Most schools, colleges and universities have a procedure by which clubs and groups are formed, which can usually be found through your school's office or student's union.

Jackson County/Ashland-Rogue River, Oregon: Read more at the Rogue Valley Peace Veterans Website

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http://www.nnomy.org

Stop Military Recruiters from having easy access to our children!!!

Inform students about their right to "opt out" of their school giving their private information to MILITARY RECRUITERS!
Join Palisadians for Peace and CAMS as they distribute Student Privacy (Opt Out) forms to high school juniors and seniors.

Read more: October Student Privacy (Opt Out) Actions:

Nearly 300 people from across the nation poured into the Friends Center in Chicago and Roosevelt University the weekend of July 17-19, 2009 for the National Network Opposing the Miltarism of Youth Counter-Recruitment and Demilitarization Conference. The faces represented what the counter recruitment movement is all about and how it has grown over the past years from a handful of established organizations to a vibrant grassroots movement with the intermixing of youth and adults. Representing organizations from approximately 35 states they included the very young (from 12 years of age) to the seasoned activists. The people themselves, including veterans, youth, educators, parents and community activists manifested the growing diversity that this movement has embraced. Read more about the conference from this article.

   Click to view and download documents from the conference.

26 September 2011 - War Is a Crime - David Swanson's blog

David Swanson -

Remarks at Lynchburg College on September 26, 2011

I'd like to thank Dave Freier for inviting me, and all of you for being here.  I think I was invited to speak about my most recent book, War Is A Lie, but I asked Professor Freier if it would be all right to speak about my next book, not yet finished, and he agreed.  So, the following is a relatively very short summary of a forthcoming book that is not yet finished, and which I need your help with.  It would be very helpful to me if you let me know when I've finished these opening remarks what was unclear, what didn't make sense, or what didn't persuade you, as well as what -- if anything -- seemed useful or inspiring.

It would also help me a lot if you would raise your hands to show your views on a few questions.  First, raise your hand if you believe that war is illegal.  I don't mean particular atrocities or particular types of wars, but war.  And I don't mean bad or regrettable, but illegal.  If you're not sure or think it's not a good question don't raise your hand.  OK, thank you.  Now, raise your hand if you think war should be illegal.  OK, thank you.  And now raise your hand if you know what the Kellogg-Briand Pact is.  All right, that was very helpful.  Now, let me tell you a little story, or at least a few pieces of it.
In 1927 and 1928 a hot-tempered Republican from Minnesota named Frank, who privately cursed pacifists, managed to persuade nearly every country on earth to ban war.  He had been moved to do so, against his will, by a global demand for peace and a U.S. partnership with France created through illegal diplomacy by peace activists.  The driving force in achieving this historic breakthrough was a remarkably unified, strategic, and relentless U.S. peace movement with its strongest support in the Midwest; its strongest leaders professors, lawyers, and university presidents; its voices in Washington, D.C., those of Republican senators from Idaho and Kansas; its views welcomed and promoted by newspapers, churches, and women's groups all over the country; and its determination unaltered by a decade of defeats and divisions.

The movement depended in large part on the new political power of female voters.  The effort might have failed had Charles Lindbergh not flown an airplane across an ocean, or Henry Cabot Lodge not died, or had other efforts toward peace and disarmament not been dismal failures.  But public pressure made this step, or something like it, almost inevitable.  And when it succeeded -- although the outlawing of war was never fully implemented in accordance with the plans of its visionaries -- much of the world believed war had been made illegal.  Wars were, in fact, halted and prevented.  And when, nonetheless, wars continued and a second world war engulfed the globe, that catastrophe was followed by the trials of men accused of the brand new crime of making war, as well as by global adoption of the United Nations Charter, a document owing much to its pre-war predecessor while still falling short of the ideals of what in the 1920s was called the Outlawry movement.

"Last night I had the strangest dream I'd ever dreamed before," wrote Ed McCurdy in 1950 in what became a popular folk song.  "I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war.  I dreamed I saw a mighty room, and the room was filled with men.  And the paper they were signing said they'd never fight again."  But that scene had already happened in reality on August 27, 1928, in Paris, France.  The treaty that was signed that day, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, was subsequently ratified by the United States Senate in a vote of 85 to 1 and remains on the books to this day as part of what Article VI of the U.S. Constitution calls "the supreme Law of the Land."

Frank Kellogg, the U.S. Secretary of State who made this treaty happen, was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and saw his public reputation soar -- so much so that the United States named a ship after him, one of the "liberty ships" that carried war supplies to Europe during World War II.  Kellogg was dead at the time.  So, many believed, were prospects for world peace.  But the Kellogg-Briand Pact and its renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy is something we might want to revive.  This treaty gathered the adherence of the world's nations swiftly and publicly, driven by fervent public demand.  We might think about how public opinion of that sort might be created anew, what insights it possessed that have yet to be realized, and what systems of communication, education, and elections would allow the public again to influence government policy, as the ongoing campaign to eliminate war -- understood by its originators to be an undertaking of generations -- continues to develop.

One way to revive a treaty that in fact remains law would, of course, be to begin complying with it.  When lawyers, politicians, and judges want to bestow human rights on corporations, they do so largely on the basis of a footnote added by a clerk to a Supreme Court ruling from over a century back.  When the Department of Justice wants to "legalize" torture or, for that matter, war, it reaches back to a twisted reading of one of the Federalist Papers or a court decision from some long forgotten era.  If anyone in power today favored peace, there would be every justification for recalling and making use of the Kellogg-Briand Pact.  It is actually law.  And it is far more recent law than the U.S. Constitution itself, which our elected officials still claim, mostly unconvincingly, to support.  The Pact, excluding formalities and procedural matters, reads, in full:

"The High Contracting Parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.

"The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means."

The French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, whose initiative had led to the Pact and whose previous work for peace had already earned him a Nobel Peace Prize, remarked at the signing ceremony:

"For the first time, on a scale as absolute as it is vast, a treaty has been truly devoted to the very establishment of peace, and has laid down laws that are new and free from all political considerations.  Such a treaty means a beginning and not an end."

The peace movement that made the Kellogg-Briand Pact happen, just like the militarism against which it competed, was given a huge boost by World War I, by the scale of that war and its impact on civilians, but also by the rhetoric through which the United States had been brought into the war in 1917.  According to U.S. Socialist Victor Berger, all the United States had gained from participation in World War I was the flu and prohibition.  It was not an uncommon view.  Millions of Americans who had supported World War I, came during the years following its completion on November 11, 1918, to reject the idea that anything could ever be gained through warfare.

The propaganda machinery invented by President Woodrow Wilson and his Committee on Public Information had drawn Americans into the war with exaggerated and fictional tales of German atrocities in Belgium, posters depicting Jesus Christ in khaki sighting down a gun barrel, and promises of selfless devotion to making the world safe for democracy.  The extent of the casualties was hidden from the public as much as possible during the course of the war, but by the time it was over many had learned something of war's reality.  And many had come to resent the manipulation of noble emotions that had pulled an independent nation into overseas barbarity.

However, the propaganda that motivated the fighting was not immediately erased from people's minds.  A war to end wars and make the world safe for democracy cannot end without some lingering demand for peace and justice, or at least for something more valuable than the flu and prohibition.  Even those rejecting the idea that any war could in any way help advance the cause of peace aligned with those wanting to avoid all future wars -- a group that probably encompassed most of the U.S. population.

Some of the blame for the start of the World War was placed on secretly made treaties and alliances.  President Wilson backed the ideal of public treaties, if not necessarily publicly negotiated treaties.  He made this the first of his famous 14 points in his January 8, 1918, speech to Congress.

Following the war, disillusioned with its promises, many in the United States came to distrust European peace efforts, as it was European entanglements that had created the war.  When the Treaty of Versailles, on June 28, 1918, imposed a cruel victors' justice on Germany, Wilson was seen as having betrayed his word.  When he promised that the League of Nations would right all the wrongs of that treaty, many were skeptical, particularly as the League bore some resemblance to the sort of alliances that had produced the World War in the first place.

Both jingoistic isolationists, and internationalist peace activists with a vision of Outlawry that shunned the use of force even to punish war, rejected the League, as did the United States Senate, dealing a major blow to those peace advocates who believed the League was not only advantageous but also the reward due after so much suffering in the war.  Efforts to bring the United States in as a member of the World Court failed as well.  A Naval Disarmament Conference in Washington in 1921-1922 did perhaps more harm than good.  And in 1923 and 1924, respectively, the members of the League of Nations in Europe failed to ratify a Draft Pact for Mutual Assistance and an agreement called the Geneva Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, both of which had adopted some of the language of the U.S. Outlawry movement to somewhat different purposes.

Remarkably, these set-backs did not halt the momentum of the peace movement in the United States or around the world.  The institutional funding and structure of the peace movement was enough to make any early twenty-first century peace activist drool with envy, as was the openness of the mass media of the day, namely newspapers, to promoting peace.  Leading intellectuals, politicians, robber barons, and other public figures poured their resources into the cause.  A defeat or two, or ten, might discourage some individuals, but it was not about to derail the movement.  Neither was political partisanship, as peace groups pressured Democrats and Republicans alike, and both responded.  It was during the peaceful Republican interlude of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, in between the Democratic war-making of Wilson and Roosevelt, that the peace movement reached its height.

European trade unions were pacifist and were working to recover the pre-war idea of a general strike to prevent any movement towards war.  Many political parties in Europe were strongly in favor of working to ensure peace.  European peace organizations themselves were smaller and less influential than their U.S. counterparts, but they were more unified in their agenda.  They favored both disarmament and the League of Nations, as well as other treaties, alliances, and arbitration agreements.

U.S. and European peace advocates came from opposite directions.  Americans viewed peace as the norm and as consisting of the absence of war.  But Europeans, dealing with constant threats, provocations, grievances, and divisions, believed peace to require an elaborate system of checks on hostilities and means of resolving disputes.  The United States imagined the world at peace and sought to preserve it.  Europeans strove to build a peace they did not know, with a keen awareness that they could never possibly solve every dispute to everyone's satisfaction.

Many U.S. peace groups, it should be said however, inclined toward the European perspective, while others did not.  The United States had a larger peace movement than Europe did, but a more deeply divided one.  Sincere advocates of peace came down on both sides of the questions of joining the League of Nations and the World Court.  Nor did they all see eye-to-eye on disarmament.  If something could be found that would unite the entire U.S. peace movement, the U.S. government of the day was sufficiently representative of the public will that whatever that measure was, it was bound to be enacted.

The Carnegie Endowment for Peace had profited from the war through U.S. Steel Corporation bonds.  Its president, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, and its director of the Division of Economics and History Professor James Thomson Shotwell, would play significant roles in the creation of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, after having advocated unsuccessfully for U.S. membership in the League of Nations.  Shotwell had a $600,000 annual budget, or about $6.8 million in today's terms.  Other peace groups had even larger budgets.  More radical peace groups, often with less funding, in some cases supported the League and the Court, but in addition pushed for disarmament and opposed militarism more consistently, including U.S. imperialism in Central and South America.

One organization deserves particular attention, although it was largely a front for a single individual and largely funded out of his own pocket.  The American Committee for the Outlawry of War was the creation of Salmon Oliver Levinson.  Its agenda originally attracted those advocates of peace who opposed U.S. entry into the League of Nations and international alliances.  But its agenda, of outlawing war, eventually attracted the support of nearly the entire peace movement, when the Kellogg-Briand Pact became the unifying focus that had been missing.

Levinson's mission was to make war illegal.  And he came to believe that the effective outlawing of war would require outlawing all war, without distinction between aggressive and defensive war, and without distinction between aggressive war and war sanctioned by an international league as punishment for an aggressor nation.  Levinson wrote:

"Suppose this same distinction had been urged when the institution of dueling was outlawed. . . . Suppose it had then been urged that only 'aggressive dueling' should be outlawed and that 'defensive dueling' be left intact. . . .  Such a suggestion relative to dueling would have been silly, but the analogy is perfectly sound.  What we did was to outlaw the institution of dueling, a method theretofore recognized by law for the settlement of disputes of so-called honor."

Levinson wanted everyone to recognize war as an institution, as a tool that had been given acceptability and respectability as a means of settling disputes.  He wanted international disputes to be settled in a court of law, and the institution of war to be rejected just as slavery had been.

Levinson understood this as leaving in place the right to self-defense, but eliminating the need for the very concept of war.  National self-defense would be the equivalent of killing an assailant in personal self-defense.  Such personal self-defense, he noted, was no longer called "dueling."  But Levinson did not envision the killing of a war-making nation.  Rather he proposed five responses to the launching of an attack: good faith, public opinion, nonrecognition of gains, the use of force to punish individual warmakers, and the use of any means including force to halt the attack.

Levinson would eventually urge the nations signing the Kellogg-Briand Pact (also known as the Pact of Paris) to incorporate the following into their criminal codes: "Any person, or persons, who shall advocate orally or in writing, or cause the publication of any printed matter which shall advocate the use of war between nations, in violation of the terms of the Pact of Paris, with the intent of causing war between or among nations , shall be guilty of a felony and upon conviction thereof shall be imprisoned not less than ______ years."  This idea can be found in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966, which states: "Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law."  It was an idea that also influenced the Nuremberg prosecutions.  It may be an idea worthy of revival and realization.

Levinson wrote on August 25, 1917: "War as an institution to 'settle disputes' and establish 'justice among nations' is the most barbarous and indefensible thing in civilization. . . . The real disease of the world is the legality and availability of war . . . .  [W]e should have, not as now, laws of war, but laws against war; there are no laws of murdering or of poisoning, but laws against them."

Many in the United States were averse to the sort of alliances created, for example, in 1925 in Locarno, Switzerland.  Under these aggreements, if Germany were to attack France, then England and Italy would have to attack Germany, whereas if France were to attack Germany, then England and Italy would have to attack France.  Aristide Briand made a name for himself as a peace negotiator in Locarno, but the Outlawrists' criticism of such arrangements as sheer madness looks wiser through the lens of later history.

Rather than alliances and unpredictable adjudications, the Outlawrists favored the rule of the written word.  The most popular criticism of Outlawry was that it intended to simply wish war away by banning it.  The most popular criticism of international alliances was that they would create wars to end wars.  While NATO and even the United Nations have indeed been used to launch wars (although the European Union has rendered wars within Western Europe unimaginable), the Kellogg Briand-Pact and the United Nations Charter have banned war, and wars have proceeded merrily on their way not noticing.  But all of this criticism is overly simplistic.  The United Nations is a corrupt approximation of an ideal never yet realized.  And Outlawry, despite passage of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, has never been fully tried.

Outlawry, in Charles Morrison's outline of it (Morrison was a close ally of Levinson), required that a world court ruling on a body of world law be substituted for war as a means of settling disputes. The International Criminal Court (ICC), finally created in 2002 and having taken jurisdiction over the crime of aggression in 2010, begins to approach this idea, but the United States is not a member, and yet the court is under the thumb of the United States and the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.  The 1920s critics of the then existing World Court as a creature of the League of Nations would, if brought forward in time, no doubt have a similar critique of the ICC.

Where the argument for Outlawry gets a little hairy is in its refusal to consider any distinction between aggressive and defensive war, while nonetheless countenancing armaments and self-defense.  Morrison argues that distinguishing aggressors from defenders is a fool's errand, as every nation always claims to be fighting in defense, and an initial attack may have been provoked by the other side.  (In 2001 and 2003 the United States attacked the distant, unarmed, impoverished nations of Afghanistan and Iraq and claimed to be acting in defense.)  Morrison believes that self-defense will almost certainly not be needed, in the future of outlawed war, because war just won't happen.  But were it to happen, self-defense clearly must be envisioned in Morrison's scheme as something that does not resemble war.  For, otherwise, how can the world court of Outlawry determine which nation(s)' leaders to put on trial?

Ultimately, outlawing war is a process of moral development.  Changing the law and establishing a court to enforce it is a means toward changing people's conception of what is morally acceptable.  Viewed in this way, the work of the 1920s that brought about the Kellogg-Briand Pact can be seen as a partial success to be built upon, whether or not any court will ever be able to both prosecute warmaking and avoid the distinction between aggression and defense.

Morrison argued that Outlawry was so clear and so popular that no statesman would dare oppose it.  He urged popularizing the peace movement, taking it out of the hands of experts.  And he was right about that.  He was right about the United States and about the entire world.  Nobody opposed banning war.  While we still have wars, most people do not want them.  Wars may be Tyrannical Ruler Nature, or Corporate Profiteer Nature, but they are the furthest thing from Human Nature.

In 1922, the Lion of Idaho, Republican Senator William Borah, slowly began to roar. Levinson produced a pamphlet on Outlawry at Borah's request, and Borah republished it as a Senate document, placing it in the Congressional Record.  Senator Borah and Senator Arthur Capper of Kansas mailed it to their lists.  Meanwhile, Raymond Robins barnstormed the country making speech after speech for Outlawry, and Levinson corresponded at length with anyone and everyone who expressed interest or raised objections.  Organizations of all varieties passed countless resolutions in support of Outlawry.  School boards and labor unions distributed pamphlets.  Prominent figures gave their endorsements.

Groups that supported the Outlawry of war early in the campaign included some organizations that are still around today, but which one cannot imagine even considering taking the same step again, even with the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the U.N. Charter already in existence and formally a part of our law.  Among these were the National League of Women Voters, the Young Women's Christian Associations, the National Association of Parents and Teachers, the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, and the American Legion.

When President Harding up and dropped dead in 1923, his Vice President Calvin Coolidge got the top job and the Republican nomination to remain in it after 1924.  Indeed, he remained until March 1929.  Levinson helped persuade Coolidge to pick Borah for the vice presidency and Borah to accept, but this deal fell through, Borah declined, and Charles Dawes accepted.  Secretary of State Frank Kellogg would have occasion to refer to Dawes as "an unmitigated ass" prior to organizing the nations of the world in support of brotherly love.  Borah would instead end up in the job of Chairman of Foreign Relations.  Outlawry made it into Coolidge's speech accepting the Republican nomination but not into the Republican Platform.  It did, however, make it into the Democratic Party Platform.

While the struggle for women's suffrage had used marches and civil disobedience, and conscientious objectors to the war had used noncooperation, those were not the primary tools of the Outlawry campaign.  Instead there were countless public meetings and packed lecture halls, signed petitions and resolutions, and the support of numerous newspaper editorials.

In 1923, Borah introduced an Outlawry resolution in the Senate, following a tireless lobbying effort by Levinson.  Outlawry began to unite peace groups in a way that the League and the Court did not.  In 1924 Levinson and the Outlawrists sought unity with their fellow peace-activist League supporters, offering support for World Court membership in exchange for support for the Borah Resolution on Outlawry.  In 1925, League and Outlawry supporters reached an agreement, known as the Harmony Plan, backing adherence to the Court Protocol and within two years the backing of Outlawry and the holding of a conference to embody in a treaty the principles that war be made a crime and the Court be given jurisdiction.  A third and final plank in this agreement was that the United States would withdraw from the Court if the Outlawry provisions were not put into effect within two years.  The plan was reported in national and international newspapers and served as a guide for local peace organizations, even though the peace-movement leadership was back to quarrelling by the end of the year.

Butler met with Briand in June 1926, at which point Briand asked "What can we do next?"  Butler replied: "My dear Briand, I have just been reading a book . . . . Its title is Vom Kriege, and its author was Karl von Clausewitz . . . .  I came upon an extraordinary chapter in its third volume, entitled 'War as an Instrument of Policy.'  Why has not the time come for the civilized government of the world formally to renounce war as an instrument of policy?"  Briand's reply was "Would not that be wonderful if it were possible? I must read that book."

In 1927 the pressure on world leaders for steps to ensure peace reached a climax, and the pieces of a plan to do something about it began to be fitted into place.  Political organizations and clubs pushing for peace were springing up by the hundreds.  And the question of the League of Nations was no longer there to divide them.

Shotwell met with Briand in Paris on March 22nd.  France had just refused a U.S. invitation to a disarmament conference and was still upset about its treatment at the one in Washington and about U.S. accusations of militarism, not to mention U.S. insistence on war debt payment, and U.S. refusal to join the League or the Court.  Shotwell suggested removing U.S. suspicions of French militarism by proposing a treaty to renounce war as an instrument of national policy.

On April 6, 1927, Levinson was on a train to New York where he would sail to Europe.  He read the day's newspapers on the train and was overjoyed and overwhelmed by an Associated Press report on a public statement from Briand, the Foreign Minister of France.  Shotwell later told both John Dewey and Robert Ferrell that he had written Briand's message himself.  The message proposed that the United States and France sign a treaty renouncing war.

This was public diplomacy at its most public.  The Foreign Minister of France was proposing a treaty through the Associated Press.  The only downside to such methods was that a response could not be required.  And in fact, no response from the U.S. government was forthcoming.  And the newspapers didn't see any story worth pursuing.  On April 8th Butler and Borah publicly debated the outlawing of rum, which was of much more interest to the media.  Butler, who wanted to abolish war believed banning rum was too difficult.  With regard to Briand's offer, Butler took matters into his own hands.  He published a letter in the New York Times on April 25th demanding action in response to Briand's proposal.

Butler's letter in the New York Times and a supportive editorial published by the New York Times caught the wider news media's attention.  Newspapers turned it into a big story in the United States and even abroad.  This was Butler beginning a dialogue with his colleague Shotwell, but with Butler speaking for the United States and Shotwell having spoken through Briand for France.  Not a bad bit of ventriloquism.

Numerous senators spoke up in support of answering Briand's offer.  Borah was opposed to an alliance with France and proposed that the treaty be expanded to include all other nations.  Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg, when he read Butler's letter, told a friend that Butler and the French were a set of "--- ------ fools" making suggestions that could lead to nothing but embarrassment.  If there was anything he hated, Kellogg said, it was "-------- pacifists."

But as public pressure grew, Levinson and Borah worked to educate Kellogg on Outlawry.  When Senator Capper introduced a resolution in November 1927 in support of renouncing war, the nation understood that the farmers of the Midwest were behind Briand's proposal, or at least not against it.  The Pocatello Tribune arrived at this cynical interpretation:

"The real significance of the Capper plan . . . lie in its showing the belief of western politicians that the voters who prevented American entry into the league are aware that if Europe spends a disproportionate share of its limited funds in military preparation it will have little left for American wheat and corn."

This was, of course, before the weapons exporters came to hold more sway in Washington than the wheat and corn exporters.

The combination of a number of Republican leaders backing former Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes for the 1928 Republican presidential nomination and Capper introducing a resolution coming out of the Butler-Shotwell camp, a resolution that defined aggressive war, may have helped motivate Borah, with his own presidential ambitions, to manipulate Briand's offer in his own direction.  The treaty would end up banning all war in order to (1) avoid banning only aggressive war, and (2) avoid doing nothing.  The latter was not an option, given the pressure coming from the peace movement.  On December 10, 1927, Jane Addams led a delegation to the White House and delivered a petition with 30,000 names.  Coolidge assured her that he would try to achieve the treaty with France.  Addams sent the same petition to Briand who thanked her.  By January, 1928, to the shock of his staff at the State Department, Kellogg was working hard to achieve a universal treaty, which France did not want, and writing to his wife that he hoped to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

On February 5th, with negotiations stalemated, Senator Borah published a front-page article in the New York Times Magazine, largely prepared by Levinson.  The headline was "One Great Treaty to Outlaw All Wars."  Borah claimed that a breach of the treaty by one nation would release other nations from complying with it in relation to that violator.  This would allow self-defense.  It would also allow France to sign such a treaty while still upholding its treaties forming alliances to respond to war.  Kellogg continued to push France, and in March asked the U.S. ambassador to point out to Briand the wisdom of acting while Kellogg was still in office.  Coolidge had less than a year remaining as president.

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom passed a resolution commending Kellogg on May 5th.  So did the American Peace Society.  The National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War's 12 million women planned 48 state conferences through which to influence the Senate when it came time to ratify a treaty renouncing war.  On June 23rd, Kellogg wrote to 14 countries.  Germany formally agreed on July 11th, and France three days later.  Agreeing to sign the pact by July 20th would be Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, India, the Irish Free State, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. And these additional nations would sign on to adhere to it: Afghanistan, Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, China, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Liberia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Romania, the Soviet Union, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, Siam, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey. Eight further states joined at a later date: Persia, Greece, Honduras, Chile, Luxembourg, Danzig, Costa Rica, and Venezuela. 

Does anybody know what Persia is called today?

The Kellogg-Briand Pact was put together in an extremely public manner, and as these things go was agreed to very quickly, and with an unusually high number of adhering nations.  Most observers give public opinion and public pressure the credit.  The U.S. peace movement was fully behind it, and that unity was a new and powerful force.  About the public opinion in favor of the Peace Pact it is worth noting a couple of things.  First, the propaganda campaign that had brought public opinion around to supporting war in 1917 had been far more extensive, vastly more expensive, and backed up by a police force.  The peace movement did not have to intimidate or lie to anyone in the United States to gain their support for Kellogg-Briand.  Secondly, the same was true with foreign heads of state acting in accordance with the wishes of their peoples.  Unlike the formation of a coalition of nations to invade Iraq in 2003, this coalition of nations to outlaw war was put together without bribery or threats being required.

The highest hurdle remained, namely the U.S. Senate.  The peace movement buried it in letters, petitions, resolutions, and lobbying visits.  Supportive senators read the petitions into the congressional record. President Coolidge persuaded Vice President Dawes to whip every senator in support of the Pact.  The Federal Council of Churches brought the White House a petition with 180,000 signatures.  In mid-January 1929, a thousand women peace leaders from around the country lobbied their respective senators in Washington, delivering thousands of petitions. Carrie Chapman Catt, who led this effort, suffered a heart attack during it.  The vote was 85 to 1.  The Wisconsin state legislature censured its U.S. senator who had voted No.  Other senators who had expressed concerns all voted Yes.  One explained his Yes vote by saying he did not want to be burned in effigy back in his state.

It would take me another hour to begin to cover the hypocrisies, weaknesses, and shortcomings of this accomplishment.  I'll limit myself here to claiming that it was an accomplishment.  It was not just a second-rate effort after the League of Nations failed, nor just a pretense or a fraud.  The Kellogg-Briand Pact established the practice of not recognizing territorial claims gained through war, and its revival by another crusading lawyer during World War II (the Pact having been largely forgotten by then) created prosecutions of the crime of aggression -- ironically so, in that the Pact had been created precisely in order to avoid creating a crime called aggression.  Victors' justice is not full justice, but punishing leaders following World War II worked out a whole lot better than punishing an entire nation after World War I had.

A new and more faithful revival of Outlawry might again serve us well.  The Kellogg-Briand Pact, which has never been repealed, makes a stronger case against wars like Afghanistan and Iraq than does the U.N. Charter.  To comply with Kellogg-Briand, wars need not be defensive or U.N.-authorized.  Rather, wars need to simply not exist.

Outlawry also removes a major reason why young men and women join the military, namely to make war as a means to achieving peace.  If there is no way to peace other than peace, if war cannot have a noble cause, if war has been -- as it formally has been -- renounced as an instrument of policy, then idealistic militarism goes away from recruiting offices, and the propaganda of humanitarian war suffers as well.

We may also have something to learn from the activism that promoted Outlawry.  It was principled, non-partisan, cross-ideological, and unrelenting.  More internationalist and more principled anti-imperialist or disarmament proposals, and the proposal to create a public referendum power to block wars, helped to make Outlawry mainstream by comparison.  The campaign was built over a period of years through both education and the cultivation of powerful supporters.  It was not overly distracted by elections.  Its analysis included cold cost-benefit calculations, but front and center was always the morality of the cause of ending war.  This campaign worked internationally, nationally, and locally.  And its members did not believe victory would come in their lifetimes.  But neither were they so self-focused as to imagine that this somehow made eventual victory impossible.

There is one thing that we can say with certainty, and I will close with this: if Outlawry does not win, humanity will lose.

Source: http://warisacrime.org/content/when-world-outlawed-war