Anna Attie / Parent Category: NNOMY Articles / 26 December 2020 

Anna Attie / In These Times - When James Gard­ner got injured play­ing bas­ket­ball as a DePaul Uni­ver­si­ty fresh­man, he lost his finan­cial aid pack­age and was dropped from his class­es. To stay in school, he took out a $10,000 loan.

Soon, Gard­ner (a pseu­do­nym request­ed in fear of reprisal) and his fam­i­ly real­ized they couldn’t afford the uni­ver­si­ty. Instead, he trans­ferred to a pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty out­side Chica­go and enrolled in the Reserve Offi­cer Train­ing Corps (ROTC) of the Air Force. The mil­i­tary paid for his entire col­lege edu­ca­tion — on the con­di­tion he serve at least four years after graduation.

Gard­ner is a mem­ber of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca (DSA) and says the mil­i­tary is geared toward ​“resource extrac­tion and resource allo­ca­tion.” When DSA col­leagues learn about his mil­i­tary back­ground, he says there is a ​“lit­tle bit of a gasp.”

“Would I be in the same predica­ment,” he won­ders, ​“if col­lege and uni­ver­si­ty were tuition-free? Would I have gone through ROTC? I don’t know.”

Gardner’s sit­u­a­tion isn’t unique. Amer­i­cans owe more than $1.67 tril­lion in stu­dent debt (Source: adjusted for 11/2022 now $1.768 trillion) , and the cost of col­lege has increased by more than 25% in the past 10 years. Accord­ing to a 2017 poll by the Depart­ment of Defense, pay­ing for edu­ca­tion is the top rea­son young peo­ple con­sid­er enlist­ing. In 2019, the Army cred­it­ed the stu­dent debt cri­sis with help­ing it sur­pass its recruit­ment goals.

'I’m guessing about 60% of people wouldn’t join the military if they already had their education paid for,' says Matt Drennan, who just began his first year at the Virginia Military Institute.

“One of the nation­al crises right now is stu­dent loans,” Maj. Gen. Frank Muth, head of Army Recruit­ing Com­mand, said in 2019. While wars in the Mid­dle East were ​“not real­ly part of the dis­cus­sion” dur­ing his vis­its to recruit­ing sta­tions, he said edu­ca­tion­al ben­e­fits were a strong sell­ing point.

The pull of the mil­i­tary has even with­stood Covid-19. Though the pan­dem­ic has hin­dered mil­i­tary enroll­ment because of the lack of in-per­son sites, Army recruiters are con­fi­dent they will meet their recruit­ment and reten­tion goals, and are mak­ing stu­dent loan pay­ments cen­tral to their efforts. Mil­i­tary ben­e­fits include ROTC schol­ar­ships, loan repay­ment pro­grams and the GI Bill.

“I’m guess­ing about 60% of peo­ple wouldn’t join the mil­i­tary if they already had their edu­ca­tion paid for,” says Matt Dren­nan, who just began his first year at the Vir­ginia Mil­i­tary Insti­tute. While col­lege mon­ey wasn’t Drennan’s only moti­va­tor, he says join­ing the mil­i­tary will help him ​“not be a bur­den” on his par­ents. His father still has his own stu­dent debt to pay.

The stu­dent debt cri­sis dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affects peo­ple of col­or, with Black women owing more than any oth­er demo­graph­ic. Not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, Black women are heav­i­ly over­rep­re­sent­ed in the mil­i­tary. In 2018, Black women account­ed for almost 30% of all active-duty women, despite com­pris­ing only 13.7% of U.S. women.

Gard­ner acknowl­edges that many Black fam­i­lies, like his own, have a mil­i­tary lega­cy. But over­all, he says, the answer to why Black peo­ple are over­rep­re­sent­ed in the mil­i­tary is ​“the same rea­son why any­one else goes: It’s the economics.”

Chil­dren are often pushed toward the mil­i­tary long before they con­sid­er col­lege appli­ca­tions or grad­u­ate high school. In fact, 2001’s No Child Left Behind Act requires pub­lic schools to give mil­i­tary recruiters unfet­tered access to stu­dents. Recruiters then dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly tar­get schools in poor and work­ing-class neighborhoods.

Nika Lofton, now a junior at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, grad­u­at­ed in 2018 from Cen­tral High School in Macon, Ga. She remem­bers mil­i­tary recruiters as ear­ly as mid­dle school. ​“Any time I ever heard any­one talk about [why they were join­ing the mil­i­tary], it was … free col­lege,” Lofton says, not ​“being real­ly pas­sion­ate about going to the military.”

At Lofton’s school, mil­i­tary involve­ment fell along col­or lines with few (if any) white stu­dents join­ing the Army’s Junior ROTC pro­gram for teens. Cen­tral High School is almost 90% Black and 99% of stu­dents are from poor families.

Junior ROTC pro­grams are espe­cial­ly com­mon in poor, major­i­ty-minor­i­ty school dis­tricts. And they have been expand­ing for decades. The Army Junior ROTC web­site boasts that around 40% of all the pro­grams are in ​“inner city schools, serv­ing a stu­dent pop­u­la­tion of 50% minorities.”

“These stu­dents are seen as dis­pos­able and easy to recruit,” says Asha Edwards, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois sopho­more who co-found­ed a chap­ter of the anti-war orga­ni­za­tion Dis­senters. She says anti-mil­i­tary orga­niz­ers must intro­duce alter­na­tives to the mil­i­tary and dis­suade youth involve­ment with ROTC pro­grams, which ​“prey on poor Black students.”

“If we divest from the Pen­ta­gon and the war indus­try,” Edwards says, ​“we could afford free college.”

Source: https://inthesetimes.com/article/student-debt-military-schools-recruitment-college-loans-education-race

 Fabiola Cardozo / Parent Category: NNOMY / Articles 14 December 2020

Fabiola Cardozo / NNOMY / español - Some elements make the popularity, frequency, and increased rate of the military enlistment of many young people possible. One of the most important is the influence they receive from their environment on the part of those people who act as counselors and teachers within the schools they attend, as well as from their parents or relatives at home. The normalization of militarization in American society leads us to think of military enlistment as a great option for young people’s futures. However, little is said about the real difficulties they will face. An adult who advises a teenager on military enlistment has naturalized war in a way that is not conducive to better decision-making on the part of young people, preventing the exploration of less violent alternatives. (See: http://peacefulcareers.org/index.html).

Within the school, some teachers and counselors receive encouragement from the Pentagon to influence and foster an interest in the military sector in young people. As we know, between students and teachers or counselors, there is an inherent power dynamic that gives educators almost unquestionable validity, leading to a dangerous influence. Likewise, the constant visits of military recruiters and the implementation of school programs that encourage entry into military service mean that young people are being permanently influenced by this idea. (See: https://nnomy.org/en/what-is-militarization/school-militarization.html).

Military cadet programs at schools like JROTC and Young Marines are always promoted as leadership programs. But is it a youth leadership program, or is it more of a strategy that is part of a grand plan to keep the war machine running where young people are the most vulnerable? Who is really in charge of these programs? Are young people able to decide autonomously? It is convenient to think about the influence that all these programs exert to promote military enlistment, coupled with a militaristic culture that is fostered within all the spaces in which young people live. Video games, movies, programs, TV series, and even music offer a glorified image of military life that is not exactly a true reflection of reality, making it possible for violent behavior to increase in children and young people.

While there are multiple factors that lead to violent actions, a growing body of literature shows a strong association between the perpetration of violence and the exposure to violence through the media. Studies demonstrating an association between exposure to violence in the media and real-life aggression and violence began appearing in the 1950s. Since then, various government agencies and organizations have examined the relationship. (See: https://www.aafp.org/about/policies/all/violence-media-entertainment.html).

We must also consider the few opportunities that are offered to the poorest and most marginalized communities, these being the target audience of military enlistment, where it is sold as an option or "the best option" to socially advance their lives. At times, counselors and professors advise young men to join the military if they lack the “good” grades necessary to qualify for scholarships that allow them to enter university, without giving them more information about other options.

The term “poverty draft” came about in the early 1980s to describe “the belief that the enlisted ranks of the military were made up of young people with limited economic opportunities,” Sojourners reports. Rocio Cordova, program coordinator for the Project on Youth and Non-military Opportunities, describes this phenomenon as a “draft-like system that pushes non-privileged people into enlisting because they lack access to jobs, income, and educational alternatives in their communities.” (See: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/the-military-targets-youth-for-recruitment).

With the promise of leaving poverty and all that it entails behind, many young people enter the military service. However, all the difficulties that arise—discrimination, bullying, and different expressions of violence—can trigger serious problems such as depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem, among others.

Although adults in the active military service are reported to experience increased mental health risks, including stress, substance abuse, and suicide, there is evidence that military service for the youngest soldiers is consistently associated with health effects far worse than for those who are older. This suggests that military service is associated with disproportionately poor health for those in late adolescence. These negative outcomes for teen soldiers, coupled with significant evidence that the adolescent brain is not equipped to make accurate risk calculations, leads APHA to conclude entry into the military should be delayed until full adulthood. For these reasons, the American Public Health Association opposes military recruiting in public elementary and secondary schools. (See: https://www.apha.org/policies-and-advocacy/public-health-policy-statements/policy-database/2014/07/23/11/19/cessation-of-military-recruiting-in-public-elementary-and-secondary-schools). 

When thinking about military recruitment, it is necessary to reflect on and question the social influence that is exerted on young people. We must also offer more information about other possibilities for their professional and personal development, as well as create a culture that is strongly and actively critical of the militarization of American society.

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 Fabiola Cardozo / Parent Category: NNOMY Articles / 06 October 2020

Fabiola Cardozo / NNOMY /  español  - It’s widely recognized that the Covid-19 pandemic undoubtedly affects the economy and, as a result, also negatively affects healthcare, education, and culture. However, in the face of hard times like the ones we’ve experienced this year, national priorities are oriented through the policies implemented by political leaders.

A recent article by the Washington Post highlights how The Pentagon diverted taxpayer money originally meant for masks and cotton swabs to make jet engine parts and body armor.

"The Cares Act, which Congress passed earlier this year, gave the Pentagon money to “prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus.” But a few weeks later, the Defense Department began reshaping how it would award the money in a way that represented a major departure from Congress’s intent.

The payments were made even though U.S. health officials think major funding gaps in pandemic response still remain. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in Senate testimony last week that states desperately need $6 billion to distribute vaccines to Americans early next year. Many U.S. hospitals still face a severe shortage of N95 masks. These are the types of problems that the money was originally intended to address."

What are the real needs of the population during the pandemic? Should the National Defense sector be a priority now? Questions like this lead us to examine some data.

These are the 2019 US Poverty Statistics published by the US Census in September 2020:

• The child Poverty Rate is 14.4%, therefore, about one in six children are in a poverty status.  This is a disturbing poverty statistic to many Americans because children are helpless to influence their living conditions.
  
  

• While the poverty rate for the population as a whole is 10.5% the rate varies greatly by race.  Blacks have the highest poverty rate at 18.8% and Non-Hispanic whites the lowest at 7.3%.  The Poverty rate for Blacks and Hispanics is more than double that of non-Hispanic Whites.
  
  

• Adults that work full time have a low Poverty Rate of 2.0%, which is not surprising.  The 2.3 million full time workers that are in poverty generally have low paying jobs, such as a minimum wage job paying $16,000 per year, and have two or more children thus pushing the family into poverty.   There are 42.9 million adults between the ages of 18 and 64 (working age) that are not working. They total 22% of working-age adults, but account for 61% of working-age adults in poverty.
  
  

• 14.4 million working-age adults have a disability which represents 7% of the workforce.  They have a Poverty Rate of 22.5%.  While this is a high rate of poverty it is less than the nonworking adult rate of 26.4%.
  
  

• The educational level attained by individuals has a dramatic impact on poverty.  23.7% of adults over 25 years old without a high school diploma are in poverty versus 3.9% for those with a college degree.

Covid-19 exacerbates other social crises and lays bare the inequalities that make children, seniors, Black people, immigrants, disabled, and people without access to education more vulnerable to poverty. This also means that they’re more likely to have a more intense experience navigating a humanitarian crisis that is characterized by the difficulty of accessing health care, a proper diet, and shelter as basic human rights. As it stands today, the landscape in the United States is defined by elevated unemployment rates, lower general income, and an increase in medical expenses, which makes paying rent difficult as a consequence, increasing the number of evictions.

"President Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum that provided $300 per week for unemployed workers. However, President Trump’s action was limited. This act required using FEMA funds and states had to opt-in to the program. The total amount of funds are limited to six weeks of benefits and some states have already run out of money under this program. This leaves unemployed workers only able to receive their state unemployment benefits, which range from around $300 - $500 per week. (Ver: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanguina/2020/09/23/next-stimulus-bill-needs-to-address-these-3-issues/#573b455c2769)

There are currently 7,44 million cases of Covid-19 in the United States and 210,000 deaths. Because this is a respiratory disease which propagates from person to person, masks and early detection through tests are an important line of defense. The interest of some in the business of war, in continuing to amass a large stockpile of resources, and to encourage the increase of the military industry, however, continues to grow.

“The $1 billion fund is just a fraction of the $3 trillion in emergency spending that Congress approved earlier this year to deal with the pandemic.

  

But in the months after the stimulus package was passed, the Pentagon changed how the money would be used. It decided to give defense contractors hundreds of millions of dollars from the fund, mostly for projects that have little to do with the coronavirus response. Defense Department lawyers quickly determined that the money could be used for defense production, a conclusion that Congress later disputed”. (Ver: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/09/22/covid-funds-pentagon/)

During the pandemic, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, has adamantly put forth the challenges we all face, as well as the needs we need to fulfill:

The pandemic has demonstrated the fragility of our world. It has laid bare risks we have ignored for decades: inadequate health systems; gaps in social protection; structural inequalities; environmental degradation; the climate crisis. The virus poses the greatest risk to the most vulnerable: those living in poverty, older people, and people with disabilities and pre-existing conditions.

(Ver: https://www.un.org/en/coronavirus/tackling-inequality-new-social-contract-new-era)

“COVID-19 is our common enemy.  We must declare war on this virus.  That means countries have a responsibility to gear up, step up and scale-up.  How?  By implementing effective containment strategies; by activating and enhancing emergency response systems; by dramatically increasing testing capacity and care for patients; by readying hospitals, ensuring they have the space, supplies and needed personnel; and by developing life-saving medical interventions”. (Ver: https://www.un.org/en/coronavirus/covid-19-we-will-come-through-together)

“Health spending must be scaled up right away to meet urgent needs and the surge in demand -- expanding testing, bolstering facilities, supporting health care workers, and ensuring adequate supplies – with full respect for human rights and without stigma”. (Ver: https://www.un.org/en/un-coronavirus-communications-team/above-all-human-crisis-calls-solidarity)
 

In the same way, the Secretary-General has called upon all nations to cease all armed conflicts and put an end to the ravenous desire to perpetuate war:

“It is time to put armed conflict on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives. To warring parties, I say: Pull back from hostilities. Put aside mistrust and animosity. Silence the guns; stop the artillery; end the airstrikes. This is crucial…To help create corridors for life-saving aid. To open precious windows for diplomacy. To bring hope to places among the most vulnerable to COVID-19”. (Ver: https://www.un.org/en/un-coronavirus-communications-team/fury-virus-illustrates-folly-war)

The response of the United States’ government leaves a lot to be desired; war shouldn’t be, now nor ever, a nation’s priority. We must uproot militarism present within all of our social structures.

 Eoin Higgins / Parent Category: NNOMY Articles / 01 August 2020

"It's important that our youth understand that joining the military isn't the only way to pay for college or find stability in life."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday proposed blocking the military from recruiting in schools, describing the practice as a predatory attack on disadvantaged children who already suffer from underfunded resources in their learning environments. 

The proposal follows an amendment to the defense spending bill from Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, last week that would ban military recruiters from using video game streaming platforms to reach impressionable young people. 

.@AOC, though an amendment to the defense spending bill, is seeking to block federal funding for military recruiters in middle & high schools.

“Children in low-income communities are consistently targeted for enlistment,” she says. https://t.co/NyWPDztR9D pic.twitter.com/APta1mOJd3

— Luke Broadwater (@lukebroadwater) July 27, 2020

"Whether through recruitment stations in their lunchrooms, or now through e-sports teams, children in low-income communities are persistently targeted for enlistment," Ocasio-Cortez told the New York Times.

According to the Times, the fate of both last week's and this week's amendments remain unclear:

It is not clear whether Ms. Ocasio-Cortez's proposals will receive a vote. The House Rules Committee will consider them on Tuesday, ahead of action on the defense spending measure later this week.

As Common Dreams reported, the progressive Democrat's video game recruiting amendment came after the military's streamers on the platform Twitch found themselves in the midst of controversy after banning activist Jordan Uhl and others from the Army ESports channel for asking them about war crimes. 

YES! Let’s get it! @AOC has introduced a pair of amendments to a defense appropriations bill that would bar the military from using funding to maintain a recruiting presence in US schools or on digital streaming platforms such as Twitch. https://t.co/JleKgzYuze

— About Face: Veterans Against the War (@VetsAboutFace) July 27, 2020

Uhl, who welcomed Ocasio-Cortez's first amendment as "one of many necessary steps required to dismantle the military industrial complex," told Common Dreams that the new proposal was another good sign to end what he described as an abusive practice by military recruiters. 

"Military recruiting is an insidious practice that preys on the vulnerable," said Uhl. "It's important that our youth understand that joining the military isn't the only way to pay for college or find stability in life."

We've spent $6,400,000,000,000 on war since 9/11. One-fourth of that could've canceled all student loan debt in the United States.

But if we canceled low-income students' debt or gave them healthcare, how would the military poach them for the war machine? #PeopleOverPentagon https://t.co/I8prU65jlK

— Savannah Wooten (she/her) (@SavannahEWooten) July 27, 2020

In her comments to the Times, Ocasio-Cortez also emphasized the need to provide students with more resources to understand they have more options than just joining the military. 

"In many public high schools where military recruiters have a daily presence, there is not even a counselor," said Ocasio-Cortez. "As a result, the military stops feeling like a 'choice' and starts feeling like the only option for many young, low-income Americans."

Source: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/27/progressives-applaud-aoc-proposal-ban-insidious-practice-military-recruiting-schools

Jordan Uhl / Parent Category: NNOMY / Articles 24 July 2020

 Gamers with the Army, Navy, and Air Force are spending hours on Twitch with children as young as 13.

Jordan Uhl / The Nation - Have a nice time getting banned, my dude,” Army recruiter and gamer Joshua “Strotnium” David told me right before he booted me from the US Army’s Twitch channel. I had just reminded viewers of the United States’ history of atrocities around the globe, and helpfully provided a link to the Wikipedia page for US war crimes.

Was I undiplomatic? Sure. But if the military is going to use one of the world’s most popular platforms to recruit kids, then it shouldn’t be able to do so without some pushback. Right now, with the support of Twitch, gamers with the US military are spending hours with children as young as 13, trying to convince them to enlist.

The Army, Navy, and Air Force all stream on Twitch using dedicated e-sports teams. These teams are comprised of skilled gamers who compete in tournaments for cash prizes. While members of military e-sports teams offer the regular gaming skill set, they’re also on-screen talent and recruiters. Instead of approaching a recruiter behind a table in a school cafeteria, kids can hang out with one who is playing their favorite video games and replying to their chat messages for hours on end.

Twitch, a livestreaming platform owned by Amazon, boasted more than 5 billion hours watched from April through June. (For comparison, Netflix claims that during quarantine people have been viewing around 6 billion hours of its shows and movies a month.) A typical military stream looks something like this: A recruiter, usually a man in his 30s, sits comfortably in his gamer chair inside a dimly lit room illuminated by a monitor and the colorful LED lights of his computer tower. An American flag hangs on the wall behind his right shoulder, an oversized stuffed animal sits to his left. He’s playing Call of Duty or Valorant. He’s friendly, and talks about how much he loves being in the Army. Despite being older than most of his young viewers, he speaks like them. “It do be like that sometimes. We do have some great comms,” said a recruiter in one recent session.

The practices employed on Twitch by military e-sports teams are part of a system by which recruiters target children in unstable and/or disadvantaged situations. Recruiters take advantage of the poor seeking steady income, the vulnerable longing for stability, and the undocumented living in fear because of their citizenship status. Now, at a time when all those factors are magnified by a pandemic that has left half the country out of work and over 30 percent unable to afford their housing payments, conditions are ripe for recruiters to prey on anxious youth.

“I see you guys are upgrading from recruiting out of low-income schools, nice,” Twitch user xCanyon916 said in a Navy stream on Tuesday while the recruiter was fielding questions about life in the military from chatters expressing desire to join the Navy e-sports team. The recruiter warned xCanyon916 that if they said something again about the Navy’s recruiting practices, they’d be banned.

Hasan Piker, a popular Twitch streamer with a dedicated following of over 430,000 users, recoiled at the thought of recruiters’ building relationships with young, impressionable viewers.

“Twitch is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my career, and it’s because you’re live for hours on end, talking to these people in the chat. You develop a community and know your individual chatters. There is an ecosystem in every Twitch channel,” Piker said. “Recruiting in this predatory way is a violation of [the users’] safety.”

While an 18-year-old might watch a piece of propaganda like American Sniper once in movie theaters and go on with their lives, here military members themselves are streaming hawkish agitprop day after day. In some cases, such as Call of Duty, these are games that the military or ex-military figures have consulted on and helped shape. In these Twitch channels, recruiters are using these games to solicit young viewers to share personal information. Branches that use e-sports and Twitch streams to reach and recruit younger viewers rely on sleight-of-hand tactics, false promises, and deceptive messaging to trick them into filling out recruiting forms.

The Twitter account for the US Army e-sports team links to a sparsely populated page with REGISTER TO WIN! at the top, no details on what one could even win, and a sign-up form that, according to a tiny disclosure at the bottom of the page, welcomes an eventual harangue by an Army recruiter. It allows people as young as 12 to submit the form, but adds a notice on the post-submission page that recruiters are not permitted to contact a child under the age of 16.

Twitch’s advertising pitch boasts that it can reach 80 percent of teen males in the United States. The minimum age requirement for Twitch is 13.

“All parents are concerned about screen time and what it’s doing to their children,” Justin Hendrix, the executive director of the NYC Media Lab, told me. “As a parent, I reckon a lot of us are unaware that our children are encountering marketing messages, influencers, and sales people in a variety of contexts online when we think they’re just playing games.”

Twitch viewers in the Army’s channel are repeatedly presented with an automated chat prompt that says they could win a Xbox Elite Series 2 controller—an enhanced controller with customizable options and extra paddles for advanced play that costs upward of $200—and a link where they can enter the “giveaway.” It, too, directs them to a recruiting form with no additional mention of a contest, odds, total number of winners, or when a drawing will occur.


The Army declined to comment.

There are over 325,000 current active-duty Navy servicemen and women. The inaugural Navy e-sports team commissioned earlier this year consists of 10 people. To qualify for the e-sports team, you must be at least an E-4, petty officer third class, a rank that takes on average two to three years to reach. One cannot join the Navy and immediately be on the e-sports team, but the Navy’s Twitch channel features a bio that reads, “Other people will tell you not to stay up all night staring at a screen. We’ll pay you to do it. Get a look at what life is like inside the uniform on the America’s [sic] Navy.”

Lara Bollinger, a public affairs officer with the Navy Recruiting Command, said in an e-mail that the bio is “a nod to the fact that when standing watch in various capacities on a ship (on the bridge, in the combat information center, etc.) a Sailor will be looking at various screens, (radar, sonar, navigation, etc…).”

Twitch does not consider military e-sports streams mature programming, so it does not require people to enter their age before viewing. One need only click a button acknowledging that the stream is intended for older viewers. With screen time spiking because of the pandemic, this presents a troubling dynamic.

“You can say what you want about people who serve in the military and what that says about them. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be able to play video games or e-sports, but I do think it’s more insidious to have the military using it as a recruiting tool for young, impressionable people,” Rod Breslau, an e-sports industry consultant and insider, said.

Hart Viges, a veteran, peace activist, and counter-recruiter in Austin, sets up information tables in schools and throughout his community to help kids understand that joining the military is not the only way to attain a more stable living situation or money for college. Recruitment rhetoric also ignores many of the risks of military life, especially the psychological complications of returning to the civilian world.

“They don’t talk about military sexual trauma. They don’t talk about the suicide rate. It’s mostly ‘We can pay for your school. You can serve your country,’” Viges said. “When I ask kids why they want to join, it’s either ‘I want to serve my nation’ or ‘I want to pay for college.’ I imagine recruiters feed off those two motivations the most.”

The use of gamified war propaganda to play into that myth isn’t new for the US military. The Army developed its own game franchise, America’s Army, which it launched in 2002 at the height of the War on Terror and includes story lines and missions based on real-life skirmishes. Games like Call of Duty whitewash the horrors of war, sterilize the violence, and mask the trauma inflicted on everyone involved.

The e-sports industry has become overrun with military sponsorships and partnerships with different games, e-sports organizations, teams, and even some individual players. The Call of Duty League is sponsored by both the Army and the Air Force. The National Guard recently partnered with e-sports organization NRG.

Instead of running a Super Bowl ad, the Navy opted to redirect those funds toward boosting its e-sports presence. The Navy sponsors ESLGaming and Fandom, two of the largest e-sports organizations in the world, as well as the e-sports team Evil Geniuses, which on Monday announced a larger collaborative effort with its military funder.

The Air Force, NRG, and Evil Geniuses declined to comment.

The Navy also has a partnership with Twitch that grants it prominent placement in the homepage carousel.

“Through our partnership with Twitch, the most popular e-sports streaming site, the Navy has immediate access to millions of 17-to-24-year-old e-sports enthusiasts on the platform to showcase a side of Navy life that viewers may not expect,” Bollinger said. “Viewers are asking our gamers insightful questions, and our gamers are effectively communicating that there is a place for everyone in the Navy.”

None of the military branches or Twitch would comment on paid promotion or how branches might qualify for prominent placement on Twitch’s homepage, an incredibly valuable position thanks to Twitch’s 15 million daily active users. Users recently expressed dismay last month when the Army’s channel was featured in the “Stream With Pride” category despite the military’s history of discriminating against the LGBT community.

But beyond the recruiting mechanism, these nationalistic e-sports efforts disregard the violence that the US military inflicts around the world.

“When tech and gaming platforms think of safety, they likely aren’t thinking about the very real violence predominately Muslim communities will face around the world as their platforms aid in military recruitment,” said Iram Ali, the interim director of campaigns at Kairos, a fellowship program that supports more diverse and equitable leadership in tech. “It was interesting to see Call of Duty want to express support for Black Lives Matter. But what active steps will the creators take to make sure the way the military preys on poor Black and brown kids in recruitment isn’t also happening with the help of their video game?”

This sentiment is complicated by the evolving nature of war, which makes gamers especially valuable. The military has long employed video-game-based training and was expanding its use even before the pandemic. Military personnel operate unmanned drones thousands of miles away using controllers that would be familiar to a serious gamer. A recent study showed that gamers may make better drone operators than even experienced pilots. With the military’s Twitch recruitment strategies, it’s easy to see the beginnings of an e-sports to drone operator pipeline.

“As we think about how automation and media are changing the way we fight wars, it’s concerning to think that children are being given the impression that the military is like a video game,” Hendrix said. “Whether it’s drones or killer robots, the last thing we need is less humanity in war.”

Source: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/military-recruitment-twitch/

Jordan Uhl / The Nation - Have a nice time getting banned, my dude,” Army recruiter and gamer Joshua “Strotnium” David told me right before he booted me from the US Army’s Twitch channel. I had just reminded viewers of the United States’ history of atrocities around the globe, and helpfully provided a link to the Wikipedia page for US war crimes.

Was I undiplomatic? Sure. But if the military is going to use one of the world’s most popular platforms to recruit kids, then it shouldn’t be able to do so without some pushback. Right now, with the support of Twitch, gamers with the US military are spending hours with children as young as 13, trying to convince them to enlist.

The Army, Navy, and Air Force all stream on Twitch using dedicated e-sports teams. These teams are comprised of skilled gamers who compete in tournaments for cash prizes. While members of military e-sports teams offer the regular gaming skill set, they’re also on-screen talent and recruiters. Instead of approaching a recruiter behind a table in a school cafeteria, kids can hang out with one who is playing their favorite video games and replying to their chat messages for hours on end.

Twitch, a livestreaming platform owned by Amazon, boasted more than 5 billion hours watched from April through June. (For comparison, Netflix claims that during quarantine people have been viewing around 6 billion hours of its shows and movies a month.) A typical military stream looks something like this: A recruiter, usually a man in his 30s, sits comfortably in his gamer chair inside a dimly lit room illuminated by a monitor and the colorful LED lights of his computer tower. An American flag hangs on the wall behind his right shoulder, an oversized stuffed animal sits to his left. He’s playing Call of Duty or Valorant. He’s friendly, and talks about how much he loves being in the Army. Despite being older than most of his young viewers, he speaks like them. “It do be like that sometimes. We do have some great comms,” said a recruiter in one recent session.

The practices employed on Twitch by military e-sports teams are part of a system by which recruiters target children in unstable and/or disadvantaged situations. Recruiters take advantage of the poor seeking steady income, the vulnerable longing for stability, and the undocumented living in fear because of their citizenship status. Now, at a time when all those factors are magnified by a pandemic that has left half the country out of work and over 30 percent unable to afford their housing payments, conditions are ripe for recruiters to prey on anxious youth.

“I see you guys are upgrading from recruiting out of low-income schools, nice,” Twitch user xCanyon916 said in a Navy stream on Tuesday while the recruiter was fielding questions about life in the military from chatters expressing desire to join the Navy e-sports team. The recruiter warned xCanyon916 that if they said something again about the Navy’s recruiting practices, they’d be banned.

Hasan Piker, a popular Twitch streamer with a dedicated following of over 430,000 users, recoiled at the thought of recruiters’ building relationships with young, impressionable viewers.

“Twitch is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my career, and it’s because you’re live for hours on end, talking to these people in the chat. You develop a community and know your individual chatters. There is an ecosystem in every Twitch channel,” Piker said. “Recruiting in this predatory way is a violation of [the users’] safety.”

While an 18-year-old might watch a piece of propaganda like American Sniper once in movie theaters and go on with their lives, here military members themselves are streaming hawkish agitprop day after day. In some cases, such as Call of Duty, these are games that the military or ex-military figures have consulted on and helped shape. In these Twitch channels, recruiters are using these games to solicit young viewers to share personal information. Branches that use e-sports and Twitch streams to reach and recruit younger viewers rely on sleight-of-hand tactics, false promises, and deceptive messaging to trick them into filling out recruiting forms.

The Twitter account for the US Army e-sports team links to a sparsely populated page with REGISTER TO WIN! at the top, no details on what one could even win, and a sign-up form that, according to a tiny disclosure at the bottom of the page, welcomes an eventual harangue by an Army recruiter. It allows people as young as 12 to submit the form, but adds a notice on the post-submission page that recruiters are not permitted to contact a child under the age of 16.

Twitch’s advertising pitch boasts that it can reach 80 percent of teen males in the United States. The minimum age requirement for Twitch is 13.

“All parents are concerned about screen time and what it’s doing to their children,” Justin Hendrix, the executive director of the NYC Media Lab, told me. “As a parent, I reckon a lot of us are unaware that our children are encountering marketing messages, influencers, and sales people in a variety of contexts online when we think they’re just playing games.”

Twitch viewers in the Army’s channel are repeatedly presented with an automated chat prompt that says they could win a Xbox Elite Series 2 controller—an enhanced controller with customizable options and extra paddles for advanced play that costs upward of $200—and a link where they can enter the “giveaway.” It, too, directs them to a recruiting form with no additional mention of a contest, odds, total number of winners, or when a drawing will occur.


The Army declined to comment.

There are over 325,000 current active-duty Navy servicemen and women. The inaugural Navy e-sports team commissioned earlier this year consists of 10 people. To qualify for the e-sports team, you must be at least an E-4, petty officer third class, a rank that takes on average two to three years to reach. One cannot join the Navy and immediately be on the e-sports team, but the Navy’s Twitch channel features a bio that reads, “Other people will tell you not to stay up all night staring at a screen. We’ll pay you to do it. Get a look at what life is like inside the uniform on the America’s [sic] Navy.”

Lara Bollinger, a public affairs officer with the Navy Recruiting Command, said in an e-mail that the bio is “a nod to the fact that when standing watch in various capacities on a ship (on the bridge, in the combat information center, etc.) a Sailor will be looking at various screens, (radar, sonar, navigation, etc…).”

Twitch does not consider military e-sports streams mature programming, so it does not require people to enter their age before viewing. One need only click a button acknowledging that the stream is intended for older viewers. With screen time spiking because of the pandemic, this presents a troubling dynamic.

“You can say what you want about people who serve in the military and what that says about them. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be able to play video games or e-sports, but I do think it’s more insidious to have the military using it as a recruiting tool for young, impressionable people,” Rod Breslau, an e-sports industry consultant and insider, said.

Hart Viges, a veteran, peace activist, and counter-recruiter in Austin, sets up information tables in schools and throughout his community to help kids understand that joining the military is not the only way to attain a more stable living situation or money for college. Recruitment rhetoric also ignores many of the risks of military life, especially the psychological complications of returning to the civilian world.

“They don’t talk about military sexual trauma. They don’t talk about the suicide rate. It’s mostly ‘We can pay for your school. You can serve your country,’” Viges said. “When I ask kids why they want to join, it’s either ‘I want to serve my nation’ or ‘I want to pay for college.’ I imagine recruiters feed off those two motivations the most.”

The use of gamified war propaganda to play into that myth isn’t new for the US military. The Army developed its own game franchise, America’s Army, which it launched in 2002 at the height of the War on Terror and includes story lines and missions based on real-life skirmishes. Games like Call of Duty whitewash the horrors of war, sterilize the violence, and mask the trauma inflicted on everyone involved.

The e-sports industry has become overrun with military sponsorships and partnerships with different games, e-sports organizations, teams, and even some individual players. The Call of Duty League is sponsored by both the Army and the Air Force. The National Guard recently partnered with e-sports organization NRG.

Instead of running a Super Bowl ad, the Navy opted to redirect those funds toward boosting its e-sports presence. The Navy sponsors ESLGaming and Fandom, two of the largest e-sports organizations in the world, as well as the e-sports team Evil Geniuses, which on Monday announced a larger collaborative effort with its military funder.

The Air Force, NRG, and Evil Geniuses declined to comment.

The Navy also has a partnership with Twitch that grants it prominent placement in the homepage carousel.

“Through our partnership with Twitch, the most popular e-sports streaming site, the Navy has immediate access to millions of 17-to-24-year-old e-sports enthusiasts on the platform to showcase a side of Navy life that viewers may not expect,” Bollinger said. “Viewers are asking our gamers insightful questions, and our gamers are effectively communicating that there is a place for everyone in the Navy.”

None of the military branches or Twitch would comment on paid promotion or how branches might qualify for prominent placement on Twitch’s homepage, an incredibly valuable position thanks to Twitch’s 15 million daily active users. Users recently expressed dismay last month when the Army’s channel was featured in the “Stream With Pride” category despite the military’s history of discriminating against the LGBT community.

But beyond the recruiting mechanism, these nationalistic e-sports efforts disregard the violence that the US military inflicts around the world.

“When tech and gaming platforms think of safety, they likely aren’t thinking about the very real violence predominately Muslim communities will face around the world as their platforms aid in military recruitment,” said Iram Ali, the interim director of campaigns at Kairos, a fellowship program that supports more diverse and equitable leadership in tech. “It was interesting to see Call of Duty want to express support for Black Lives Matter. But what active steps will the creators take to make sure the way the military preys on poor Black and brown kids in recruitment isn’t also happening with the help of their video game?”

This sentiment is complicated by the evolving nature of war, which makes gamers especially valuable. The military has long employed video-game-based training and was expanding its use even before the pandemic. Military personnel operate unmanned drones thousands of miles away using controllers that would be familiar to a serious gamer. A recent study showed that gamers may make better drone operators than even experienced pilots. With the military’s Twitch recruitment strategies, it’s easy to see the beginnings of an e-sports to drone operator pipeline.

“As we think about how automation and media are changing the way we fight wars, it’s concerning to think that children are being given the impression that the military is like a video game,” Hendrix said. “Whether it’s drones or killer robots, the last thing we need is less humanity in war.”

Source: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/military-recruitment-twitch/

 Carson Frame / Parent Category: NNOMY Articles / 10 July 2020

The Army is holding its first nationwide virtual recruiting campaign, after the COVID-19 pandemic forced it to scale back face-to-face interactions and revealed gaps in its digital outreach strategy.

As the coronavirus pandemic bloomed this spring, the Army reduced staff at many brick-and-mortar recruiting stations across the country. Enlistments slowed, fueling concerns that the service would have to extend the contracts of current soldiers in order to meet total force requirements.

Recruiters took their work remote, but lost out on some of the major recruitment opportunities that normally boost their numbers.

"That last moment before a senior leaves their high school-- typically we're there," said Staff Sgt. Kara Wilson, a station commander in West Texas. "We're helping them with support, finding them different avenues."

"However, we didn't have that moment this year, she said."

So Wilson and her team have had to build an online recruiting environment to reach those same young people. Apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat have proven the most effective, and Wilson has designed new campaigns for each.

But not without a little help.

"I have teenagers at home," she said. "So they have kind of schooled me on many of these new platforms, which allows me to get after the Generation Zs."

Wilson's Instagram is overflowing with images related to fitness training, as she is a marathoner. She's also posted photos of herself and others at the start of their Army careers. Several images reference the service's 'What's Your Warrior?' ad campaign. In one image, Wilson reminds interested young people that they can interview for Army positions remotely, given COVID-19.

Wilson said one of her best engagement efforts was a 45-minute Instagram Live Q&A session about what it's like to be a soldier. She promoted it for weeks and posted a count-down to her feed. People viewed the video more than 300 times.

Wilson said the idea was inspired by her 14 year-old daughter, who was raised in the Army.

"She said, 'You know, mom, I'm your kid… But other people just see you as a soldier. So what if you did a meeting with somebody else? Maybe a friend of yours in the Army... and you guys did like a question-answer thing?'" Wilson remembered. "I thought, 'Wow, that's awesome.'"

Fitness challenges, e-sports tournaments, and video testimonials are other ways Army recruiters have tried to grab the attention of young people online.

Even before the pandemic, the Army was working to incorporate more digital outreach into its marketing. But it wasn't doing it especially well, according to Emma Moore, a researcher with the Military, Veterans, and Society program at the Center for a New American Security.

"The digital engagement was showing gains. But I would say from probably most other private company and marketing measures, it's been ad hoc," Moore said. "The Army is not set up to be incredibly flexible and responsive to changing their narrative or their marketing campaign."

That's a disadvantage in the digital space, where apps and communication platforms quickly evolve.

Wilson advocates decentralizing recruitment decision-making and authority, allowing regional recruiters to tailor their approach to specific communities and demographics.

"While I am encouraged by the fact that I'm seeing new types of outreach, via photos, videos, hashtags, it's still a little clunky. It still feels very Army," she said. "So I wonder about how to enable younger recruiters."

Starting in 2018, the Army began to back off from its top-down approach to recruiting, giving local recruiters more flexibility to design social media campaigns and adapt them to new platforms. It trains recruiters how to get more social media followers and encourages them to re-engage with enlistees whose contracts they've inked.

"With technology, there are innovations happening every day," said Maj. Gen. Frank Muth, head of the Army's recruiting command. "We've got to be able to not be so much a hierarchical organization that just validates the systems put into place, but be a network."

Enlistments are about 4,000 under the Army's stated goals for this time of year, Muth said. Following the issuance of stay-at-home orders in March, there was a dip in interest, and that setback is still being felt.

But interest from young people has slowly started to tick back up, according to Muth. He said the pandemic's full impact on recruitment is unclear. But he guesses that if joblessness hasn't gone down by fall, the Army will see a bump in people wanting to join.

Typically, when unemployment exceeds 6%, the military sees a surge of interest, especially from young people leaving high school and college.

Muth added that virtual outreach is here to stay, and that about 90 percent of the recruiting process can be done online.

"I think at the end of the day, what we'll find is that we may be able to reduce some of our recruiting force and reduce some of their brick and mortar."

This story was produced by the American Homefront Project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veterans. Funding comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Source: https://americanhomefront.wunc.org/post/covid-19-has-forced-army-rethink-and-step-its-virtual-recruiting-efforts

 Jacobin / Parent Category: NNOMY / Articles 26 June 2020

AN INTERVIEW WITH
Nancy Cruz, Barbara Harris, Rick Jahnkow, and Seth Kershner | Originally Published in Jacobin Magazine on October 18, 2019

SK
The National Defense Act of 1916 created the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (rotc), which operates at the university level, along with Junior rotc, which operates at the high school level. At first, JROTC was kind of like rotc’s unwanted stepchild. There were only a couple hundred JROTC units across the country until the mid-1960s.

The program really started to expand in earnest once the draft ended in 1973. Between 1971 and 1974, enrollment in Army JROTC increased by 21 percent, Air Force JROTC increased by 50 percent, and Navy JROTC increased by more than 100 percent. High schools became the answer to the Pentagon’s manpower problems.

BH
Anyone under the age of eighteen should not be recruited or be part of the military system. I believe this is a United Nations protocol, and in my view the United States doesn’t follow it.

SK
Resistance to military influence in education goes way back in the United States — even as far back as John Dewey, the philosopher celebrated as the father of progressive education, who was very involved in efforts to resist JROTC in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1917, at their national convention in St Louis, the Socialist Party called for “consistent propaganda against military training and militaristic teaching in the public schools,” and the party’s 1962 platform objected to rotc as “military conditioning inappropriate to education in a democracy.”

The term “counter-recruitment” was first coined in ’72 or ’73. Mostly, it was people from historic peace churches — Quakers and Mennonites — who were involved in those years, as well as people who wanted to continue their involvement in peace work following the end of the draft and the drawdown of hostilities in Vietnam.

RJ
During the Vietnam War, our analysis of militarism’s impact was fairly limited. Later on, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, some of us who had been around during the Vietnam War began to realize we needed a much broader analysis. We had to look beyond the impact of militarism on individuals and instead look at its impact on whole communities. This meant we had to look at where military recruiters are most present — schools in working-class neighborhoods.

SK
The Pentagon’s own research shows that, while JROTC doesn’t really improve academic outcomes, it works well as a turnstile for the armed forces. It’s obvious why the program is so strongly supported by the Pentagon: about 40 percent of students who spend at least three years in JROTC go into the military after graduation.

RJ
Instead of the legal draft we fought against during the Vietnam War, we started looking at the “poverty draft”: people being pushed into the military by their economic and social status. We realized pretty quickly that the poverty draft needed to be addressed differently than the legal draft. We couldn’t just go out and moralize about participation in war. We needed to actually offer something as an alternative to young people.

NC
Yes, the issue of school militarism is about access, about enabling youth to attend college or enter good, nonmilitary jobs. At Project YANO, we educate folks about training opportunities in skills such as plumbing — skills that can lead to union jobs. That’s a big part of my work now: to help people understand that trade unions also offer benefits. You don’t have to go join the military for that. You can be a plumber or a steelworker or an electrician.

BH
In the early 2010s, a lot of new recruiting centers were opening up in underserved neighborhoods in New York City. We demonstrated in front of those little recruiting centers with Veterans for Peace. Eventually, the armed forces got the numbers they wanted, so they packed up and closed their doors.

I have given public testimony at New York City Council Department of Education meetings lobbying for the elimination of the $1.5–1.6 million tax levy allocated for JROTC in the New York City education budget. More recently, I’ve met with New York City teachers, now members of the Retired Teachers Chapter of the United Federation of Teachers, who are concerned about the fact that JROTC instructors aren’t certified to teach in New York City public high schools, the cost of the program, the curriculum (which was developed by the Pentagon), and the display of rifles.

NC
I began to do counter-recruiting work in 2007, when I was in high school. I went to Mission Bay High School in San Diego. The military had a big presence at our school, doing regular recruitment. About 73 percent of the folks at Mission Bay were on free or reduced lunch. It was a predominantly working-class school. The school was predominantly people of color: about 63 percent of students identified as Hispanic, while only about 15 or 16 percent were white. Right before my senior year, the incoming principal reduced support for college preparatory and honors courses, and she brought in the JROTC program.

We took it very personally. I saw it as a personal challenge. I felt we were backtracking on a commitment, made in a previous year, that everyone should have the ability to go to college if that’s what they want to do. Here were these authority figures — administrators! — trying to decide what my future was going to be. A lot of students had a defiant attitude about that.

We leafleted during an open house to inform parents, and we were asked to leave the campus. We were kicked out. We also organized walkouts to bring attention to the military presence. Once, the vice principal followed us in a school police car, trying to intimidate people to leave the walkout and go back to school. But we still marched over to a recruitment station and vocalized our message: we didn’t want a military presence or recruiters on our campus.

Ultimately, we organized a boycott of the JROTC class because there was a requirement that JROTC had to maintain enrollment of more than one hundred students or 10 percent of the student body. If they fell below that threshold for two consecutive years, they would lose federal funding, and the program would have to close. At Mission Bay, we made sure their enrollment numbers were low for two consecutive years. Mission Bay no longer has a JROTC program.

RJ
It’s worth pointing out that, in this case, parents and students had to pressure the principal at that school to follow the law. The principal wanted to keep the program in place, despite it not meeting the minimum enrollment levels.

NC
Then there was the conversation about putting in the shooting range. At Mission Bay, there wasn’t enough classroom space to begin with — but they wanted to break down a wall in the school to turn two classrooms into a shooting range. We chose to take on the shooting range issue because it was very tangible. Our goal was to remove all the shooting ranges from the San Diego Unified School District — not just stop the creation of a new one at Mission Bay.

Many parents didn’t even know about the shooting ranges or marksmanship classes. We were able to get a lot of community members to come out in support. We were able to get media attention. Community groups sponsored buses to get students to school board meetings. It was very important that students were part of the decision-making at the school board level.

Ultimately, we were successful in getting rid of the shooting ranges at eleven schools in the San Diego Unified School District, after a two-year battle. They were all removed in 2009.

SK
It’s nearly impossible to dislodge an existing JROTC unit through a public campaign demanding its removal. Student boycotts, like the story Nancy told about Mission Bay High School, are really the most promising approach for forcing JROTC units to close down that we’ve seen in the past twenty or thirty years.

The War on Terror has made organizing against JROTC more difficult. There are units at roughly 3,400 high schools today, where fourteen- to seventeen-year-old students suit up, perform drills, and take classes under military officers. And there’s room to grow: in 2009, Congress approved the potential for increasing the program to 3,700 units. The various branches just haven’t set aside the funds to pull that off yet.

People are starting to realize that JROTC is saturating urban areas. One in every four public high schools in an urban area has a JROTC unit. In rural areas, it’s one in twenty. The rand Corporation, a major think tank, released a report in 2017 recommending that JROTC turn its focus to smaller high schools in rural areas. That could mean they’re headed to states that haven’t had a big JROTC presence before. Today, the majority of JROTC units are in the South — in South Carolina, for example, there are units at about 60 percent of high schools.

BH
Another concern is the “Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery” (ASVAB) test. The Department of Defense administers the test in schools throughout the country. Results of the test provide recruiters with personal and academic data for profiling and potential outreach to students. This information allows them to decide if they want to pursue a particular young person for recruitment. If a student’s profile meets a recruiter’s needs, he or she is often contacted by letter or phone call. Often, parents are completely unprepared to confront that kind of attention directed at their child from a recruiter. It’s very troubling.

The fact that each student’s ASVAB data automatically goes to the Department of Defense for profiling and recruiting is unacceptable. We want to change this procedure throughout New York State. New York City implemented a revised ASVAB directive in 2016 requiring the parent and student to sign and return an opt-in form, giving permission for ASVAB results to be shared with the military. We are working on implementing a similar ASVAB directive in the entire state, to ensure that families are in charge of their ASVAB data.

About eight years ago, I reached out to almost every guidance counselor in the state, asking what they knew about the ASVAB. Mostly, they couldn’t care less, which was quite interesting. They had so much on their plates. Progress was slow with them. And, of course, many of them have principals who are ex-military. I was surprised to find out how many retired military officers become high school principals.

SK
I think activists can be successful at preventing new JROTC units, but, of course, they have to know when and where new units are being proposed. In the 1990s, activists used Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to get lists of schools that had been targeted for possible new JROTC units. We need to do the same thing today. That will give us a road map.

There are other weaknesses, too, like enrollment. To get federal funding, schools that have JROTC units have to keep enrollment above a certain minimum. Usually, no one notices when they fall below that minimum, so they carry on, in violation of the law. But, again, you can use FOIA to figure out enrollments at various schools, identify which units are under-enrolled, and push to get those eliminated.

RJ
The military’s involvement in public schools is not just for the purpose of recruiting bodies. It’s for recruiting minds as well.

The military’s values are being taught in schools across the country. That should scare anybody in this country who is dedicated to working for progressive social change. Those kinds of activities undermine our ability to mobilize people later on in life. That’s the greater danger than just having recruiters go to schools to fulfill enlistment quotas. It’s something we all have to be afraid of.

More resources on JROTC and school recruitment can be found at the website of the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth: www.nnomy.org.

Source: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/dismantling-the-school-to-soldier-pipeline

 Jonah Walters / Parent Category: NNOMY Articles / 17 June 2020

Military recruiters understand that widespread joblessness is good for enlistment. They celebrate the arrival of “Sergeant Hard Times,” recognizing that misery is the best motivator.

The corona virus crisis has been a double-edged sword for military recruitment in the United States. On the one hand, the tightening of the labor market contributed to higher rates of retention than the Army brass expected, meaning that many soldiers decided to reenlist this spring rather than pursue civilian employment when their terms of service expired. On the other hand, recruiting stations across the country have had to shut down to comply with social distancing guidelines, limiting recruiters’ access to young people and inhibiting the “kneecap-to-kneecap” conversations recruiters widely acknowledge to be essential to their work.

Less than one percent of the Armed Forces’ target demographic — seventeen- to twenty-four-year-olds — is actively interested in a military career. After a “kneecap-to-kneecap” encounter with a recruiter, whether at a recruiting station or a school event, probability of enlistment climbs to more than 50 percent, according to the Army.

The reasons for this have been well-documented by anti-recruitment activists for decades. Recruiters, who are expected to meet regular enlistment quotas, aggressively pursue young people who express interest, generally attempting to separate them from parents, teachers, counselors, and others who might advocate for civilian careers.

Since the end of the Obama presidency, Army leaders have insisted upon the need for a 500,000 member Army, establishing quarterly recruitment benchmarks in an attempt to reach that goal. (Last year, there were about 470,000 active-duty Army soldiers, down from a recent peak of about 560,000 in 2010, during Obama’s Afghanistan surge.) The recruitment drive is part of an effort to transition the US military away from its focus on “small wars” and counterinsurgency efforts in preparation for a possible “great power” conflict with Russia or China.

The Army missed its recruiting goal by about 6,500 enlistments at the end of 2018, its first missed target since 2005, during the Iraq War. The Army responded by adding 770 new recruiters and forming virtual recruiting teams (VRTs) for each of its recruiting battalions nationwide. VRTs, which one colonel characterizes as “force multipliers,” are tasked with identifying possible recruits using social media.

The Pentagon also launched a national recruiting strategy dubbed “Focus 22,” which aims to shift the geography of recruitment away from Southern and Midwestern areas (many of which are experiencing population decline) and towards a list of twenty-three American cities with high numbers of black and Latino young people. (Presumably they added a city after determining the name of the initiative.) City governments have generally been quite happy to collaborate with military recruiters on this program.

In Baltimore, city officials opened all forty-four of the city’s public recreation centers to the armed forces, allowing the military to install its “March2Success” software on public computers. March2Success is a program that purports to assist students studying for college admissions tests; it also captures personal information and helps recruiters identify students to target for recruitment.

Perhaps most bizarrely, the Army developed a set of sixty-five neighborhood profiles, or “segmentations,” to assist recruiters in cities around the country with their messaging. The Army understands downtown Baltimore, for example, to be a “Modern Urban Mix” segmentation. Recruiters are reminded that, in segmentations such as this one, residents enjoy “urban adult contemporary music” and are interested in boxing.

The first year of Focus 22 was a success. More than 68,000 new recruits joined the ranks of the armed forces in 2019, with military officials acknowledging that student loan debt was likely the biggest factor driving military recruitment that year.

Focus 22 continues this year, although the ongoing coronavirus crisis poses significant barriers to normal recruiting techniques. The military has met the moment by transitioning to a detailed digital recruitment plan, intensifying its focus on social media outreach and taking advantage of school closures to promote March2Success to home learners.

The Marine Corps recently organized a truly bizarre virtual recruiting event, featuring Second Life-style avatars wandering clumsily around a digital job fair. The Pentagon also has big plans for its Army Esports Team, formed just last year as a possible outreach and recruiting engine.

It remains to be seen whether the armed forces will hit their benchmarks this year. It’s no secret that the Pentagon deliberately targets low-income black and Latino youth for recruitment, and that, especially in recent years, recruiters have begun to see poor neighborhoods in liberal cities as prizes ripe for the plucking.

The purpose of Focus 22, according to its Army architects, is to provide a pathway into military careers for young people in poor urban neighborhoods without a lot of employment options. Recruiters aim to accomplish this, in part, by introducing the military to people who have not yet encountered it as an institution in their everyday lives.

By my count, Army National Guardsmen deployed to assist police in repressing this month’s Black Lives Matter protests in fifteen of the Pentagon’s twenty-three target cities. (Cities where the National Guard deployed and that appear on the Pentagon’s list are Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Sacramento, Seattle, and St. Louis.)

After the events of the past month, young black residents of Minneapolis and other cities need no introduction to the military as an institution. Many of those who the Pentagon may have hoped to recruit this summer have by now already encountered the military — not in the form of a smiling recruiter (or his online avatar), but as a menacing interloper in their own neighborhoods.

Source: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/us-military-recruitment-protests-covid

Gary Ghirardi / Parent Category: NNOMY Articles / 15 June 2020

Back in May of 2020, I caught an interview on Pacifica's KPFK radio on a morning program where a young woman was explaining the loss of her aunt that was a nurse in a hospital engaging the Coronavirus. She recounted her aunt telling her that she was not provided with masks or gloves and that a patient had sneezed in her face a week prior to her falling ill. All this culminated with a Zoom meeting with the family saying goodbye before she died. Later that day I passed a local hospital that had placed a large banner on the street honoring our heroes that were fighting the current epidemic.

In my work for The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth, I am constantly reminded of a similar refrain from those pushing back against our work of getting youth, with limited opportunities for their futures, to consider all the ramifications of serving in the United State's post 9/11 military. That push-back always invokes the heroic diatribes defending those who serve in our military branches and a forceful reminder of how dare we try to diminish the sacrifice of heroes who have served or are considering serving by revealing the harmful realities of military service. Of course we do not diminish their service but try to put it in context to a fuller and more accurate disclosure of what military recruiters manage to leave out of their enlistment appeals. The relationship between these two scenarios, and the contradictions inherent in both, stayed with me all week and encouraged this short OpEd.

What seemed so prescient to me was that both these health workers and young soldiers are asked to put themselves in harms way for the rest of us yet we seem to not strive, as a country, to provide them with adequate protections, compensation fitting the hazards they face, or sound governmental policies to avoid virulent pandemic or violent conflict and then we resort to platitudes of recognition rather than prioritize human concerns that could had made these situations less lethal. I think that our “essential workers,” our warriors included, are our expendables, that can be sacrificed to flawed planning and a lack of just and humanistic social principles without our society coming to terms with what has caused these deplorable conditions in the first place.

Our nation, as a culture, has consistently normalized and created cover for our injustices and have reduced terrible suffering to cliched and tired justifications for empty honors. Likely, for many of us individually, we are not comfortable with such representations but we have become collectively distant from the fallout of disasters that we don't own and perceive are outside our individual control including our endless and opaque wars.

Now, as we enter a perfect storm of a global pandemic and an economic disaster rivaling our pre-WWII depression, coupled with a shattering of our national political leadership heading into a circus of a presidential election, we seem to be approaching a difficult choice that needs to be enacted that the citizenry may lack the political will and organization to see through.

Are we prepared  to look in the mirror at our true national face, and make the changes so necessary to heal a very broken and dysfunctional country? To redirect the massive waste of resources expended for mounting militarism into human requirements like national healthcare, housing, and food security for nearly half of our population that are on the brink of insolvency with this crisis? Or will we use perpetual and escalated warfare to pull our economy up again as did happen seventy-five years ago? Based on the absence of a leader with the ability to make the kind of reforms needed to overcome the power of entrenched global economic interests that seem insurmountable at this point, the future looks uncertain.

If we choose the latter course and proceed with the expansion of the war economy, now launching into space, the price it will pay upon the poor and fledgling middle-class, in multiple nations, will make many more expendables in the process and may even bring our entire species and the others we share this planet with to an end. The stakes are that profound.

 Pat Elder / Parent Category: NNOMY Articles 07 / June 2020

COVID-19 has profoundly impacted the way the military finds new soldiers. The recruiting command was caught unprepared to face the pandemic and is facing a challenging new reality.

Military recruiting is an intense, psychological pursuit that has traditionally relied on the ability of recruiters to develop close relationships with teenage prospects. These relationships were cultivated in the nation’s high schools where recruiters enjoyed access to children. Recruiters served as coaches and tutors. They brought donuts to the faculty. They ate lunch with prospects, sometimes a hundred times in a single school year. Military recruiters played one-on-one basketball after school with potential recruits and became best of friends with some kids. So friendly, hundreds of male recruiters have been implicated in inappropriate sexual relationships with underaged girls.

High schools were the center of the recruiting universe, but that ended abruptly in March when the enlistment pipeline was ruptured. Recruiters enlisted seniors and placed them into the Delayed Entry Program (DEP) in which a student’s entry into active duty is postponed for up to 365 days. (The Army now calls it the Future Soldier Program.) The thrust of the DEP program is to maintain future soldier motivation while minimizing attrition. When DEP members report to basic training, they are accessed (enlisted) into active duty.

 There are actually two enlistment-processing actions: contracting into the DEP and accessing into active duty. It’s the second one that matters.

Youth take the Oath of Enlistment to enter the DEP. "I, _____, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States..”

The DEP is the core component of the military’s recruiting process. If DEP members change their minds and decide not to enter the military, they are allowed to leave with no adverse consequences. Once they stop responding to their recruiter and they are out. When recruits fail to report to boot camp they are discharged. “It’s like waking up from a nightmare,” one enlistee explained. There is a long history of abuse by recruiters and the command toward DEP members who quit, while many youths and their families are unaware of the non-binding nature of the DEP.

Before the pandemic, seniors in the DEP were encouraged to spend a significant amount of time with other DEP members and their recruiter who indoctrinated them into a military culture with drill and ceremony, lessons on the chain of command, and rank structure.

The recruiter’s close, personal involvement kept unpredictable youth from walking away. Impetuous teens who turn 18 often sign up without clearly thinking it through. While recruiting behavior in the nation’s high schools has become increasingly predatory, the American Public Health Association says there is significant evidence that the adolescent brain is not equipped to make accurate risk calculations. The kids often express ‘buyer’s remorse” so the job of the recruiter is not just to get seniors to sign up, but to keep them in the DEP until its time to ship to boot camp. This is precisely where the military is most vulnerable to the upheaval caused by the pandemic.

A study that analyzed data on over 1.3 million DEP participants from FY05 to FY12 found that attrition increases the longer a member is in the DEP, so it’s necessary for the branches to quickly move recruits who signed up earlier in the academic year to boot camp. Historically, almost half of those in the Army’s Future Soldier program are in the DEP for two or fewer months. Many sign up in April and May and they’re shipped to boot camp in June and July. Only 15% stay in the DEP 7 or more months.

The Army had the lowest DEP attrition rate among the services at 11.0%. In contrast, over 40% of Marine Corps and Navy DEP members stay 7 or more months and have average DEP attrition rates of 17.8% and 20.8% respectively. The Air Force, with over 60% of its DEP lengths between 3 and 6 months, averaged a 12.7% attrition rate.

The DOD does not provide the current strengths of the DEPs in each branch, although we know many seniors don’t make up their minds until the 4th academic quarter - and this year, the quarter was cancelled due to COVID-19, leaving the DEP in peril.

The absence of the command’s human touch and the uncertainties of reporting to boot camp amidst stories of outbreaks at the Army’s Fort Jackson, Fort Benning, Fort Leonard Wood, or Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, and Recruit Depot Perris Island have caused many to think twice about reporting to boot camp. Naval recruiting is facing public concern over COVID-19 outbreaks on 40 ships, most notably, stories of a thousand infected sailors on the USS Teddy Roosevelt.

Mothers of youth in the DEP have reached out, expressing deep concerns, while many teenage recruits may be oblivious to the dangers or have not developed adult reasoning capabilities, as the American Public Health Association suggests. The moms have every reason to be worried.

More than 140 Army soldiers and trainees at Fort Benning, Ga., and more than 70 at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., tested positive for the coronavirus, the Army reported in early June.

At the Marine Corps’ Parris Island Recruit Depot in South Carolina, where an outbreak has been reported, the recruits wore masks in the larger formations, but during some physical tests — even those where teamwork was required and social distancing impossible — the masks came off. Most of the drill instructors wore theirs at all times, as did visiting Defense Secretary Mark Esper and his entourage when he visited at the end of May, according to Stars and Stripes.

The Marine Corps is not reporting on the number of COVID-19 infections at Parris Island, which is located within the area of zip code 29902. Data from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control on June 6th shows that 99 confirmed cases and 608 suspected cases have been reported in zip code 29902 since the pandemic began June 6, 2020.

Stars and Stripes, a critical source of information pertaining to the military, reports that all of the services have recently experienced drastic declines in the number of recruits they added to their DEPs. Maj. Gen. Frank Muth, Commanding General, U.S. Army Recruiting Command said he expects to face a shortfall at the end of May of about 3,100 recruits with signed contracts.

On March 18, the Army shut down public access to its 1,400 recruiting stations. Within a week, more than 20,000 military recruiters were left to their cell phones, computer screens, microphones, cameras., and detailed personal information on tens of millions of American youth. The DOD must sign up 150,000 annually to stay even with those leaving the service. Muth said his decision to shutter stations from the general public was about protecting his own people.

The Navy saw a 45% dip in qualified individuals expressing interest in March, 2020, compared to March, 2019. The Air Force also saw drops in recruiting in March and April. The Marine Corps saw a drop of about 25% in contacts with qualified individuals in March over the same month last year.

Gunnery Sgt. Justin Kronenberg, a spokesman for Marine Recruiting Command, told Stars and Stripes, “Our systematic recruiting process has always placed a premium on ‘kneecap to kneecap’ interaction between a recruiter and applicant, so it may be challenging to replicate this physical assessment of those wanting to become Marines solely through tech mediums.”

Almost half of Marine Corps accessions are 18-years old. Those who are age 20 and younger made up 83% of Marine Corps recruits, 65% in the Air Force and the Army; and 64% in the Navy.

For at least a decade the Army has been aware that the way it recruits lagged behind technological advances employed by more sophisticated corporate recruiters. But the military enjoyed a captive high school audience so recruiters were occupied by “hanging out” with potential recruits in high school parking lots or setting up booths during career days or giving out free tchotchkes in high school cafeterias. They weren’t lurking in game rooms and on social media to the degree they are now.

Recruits completed various physical activities such as running, push-ups etc. Recruiters nurtured students and provided guidance. They encouraged future soldiers to invite parents, family, and referrals to DEP events. They played video games and they had pizza together.

The recruiting command understands the “recruiter-applicant-influencer relationship” is a significant cause of DEP attrition. Put another way, Johnny’s girlfriend or his mom may not want him to enlist. In the pandemic world, these “influencers” may have more of an upper hand over the virtual recruiter.

The command says contact between the recruiter and the DEP member and his or her influencers must be “frequent, genuine, honest, and forthright.” Surely, social media affords the frequency, but may be lacking in its ability to project recruiters as being genuine, honest, and forthright.

Human interactions cannot automatically be replicated through machines.

Military recruiting has shifted from an intensely personal pursuit to a comparatively sterile online experience. Recruiters spend most of their digital days on social media. 18-year-olds often don’t “do” email, and rarely talk on the phone, while text messages are frequently ignored. The trick for recruiters is to engage the teens on video platforms like Instagram, Facetime, and Zoom where recruiters can hope to humanize the interaction and build trust.

Recruiters host huge gaming tournaments promoting “Call of Duty” which is built around the combat portion of belonging to the military. Recruiters hope its visceral appeal and ability to attract large, nationwide audiences will allow them to collect leads.

The Army’s Joint Base Lewis-McChord Morale Welfare and Recreation Program (JBLM MWR) hosts these tournaments. They are sponsored by the United Services Automobile Association (USAA) and used by the recruiting command to keep DEP members in the loop and to reach new prospects. Chat rooms discuss things like the necessary number of kills to initiate killstreaks, or how important organization and teamwork are. Recruiters lurk in chat rooms.

The Army recently announced it is loosening restrictions on how recruiters may use Facebook. The Army instructs its recruiters:

“You can use your personal Facebook page to become an admin of a fan page. Anybody who has admin rights to the fan page can grant you admin rights to the fan page; your information will not be shared on the fan page and no one outside of the page admins will know that you are an admin of the fan page. Determine your own privacy settings; these will not be violated if you are a fan page admin. Direct traffic to your fan page and keep your personal life separate from work. In addition, it is strongly suggested that you use “friends only” privacy settings on personal pages to protect your personal information.”

The U.S. government is surreptitiously spying on our children.

The laptops of recruiters are loaded with personal information on youth taken from social media sites. The information is merged with data from the DOD’s Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies Recruiting Database (JAMRS) and the result is staggering. The recruiter knows Johnny reads wrestling magazines, weighs 160, can bench press 180, drives a twelve-year-old Ford F150, and likes BTS and Kpop. And although they’ve never spoken, the local recruiter assigned to Johnny’s high school knows that Sam, his girlfriend, would love to see him enlist and that she loves Zendaya and they both enjoy kayaking. They even know Johnny’s mom doesn’t care much for Sam It sounds superfluous, but these kinds of details matter more today than ever. They provide a human connection before reaching out digitally.

Recruiters track DEP members and potential recruits on social media sites for signs of disqualification, like weight, tattoos, problems with education, drugs, or law enforcement. Army recruiters use FBI Live Scan capability to conduct quick-turn-around fingerprint checks. Important documentation like diplomas, birth certificates, and Social Security cards are all relayed electronically now. With the exception of the physical examination, everything is done virtually. Recruiters have become something like associates at credit card, health care, and insurance company call centers.

When direct, personal contact is necessary with the recruiting command the health of DEP members is jeopardized. The Army Combat Fitness Test, a critical component of the recruitment process, can’t be accomplished through a computer screen. During the 2-mile run, the Army says, a limited number of lanes will be made available to runners. The pushups test requires another individual to properly count repetitions, but the tracking person can count at a 6-foot distance. Soldiers will be required to wipe down each piece of exercise equipment with sanitizer after completing the corresponding test. The Army may eventually figure it out, but it is likely to be at the expense of the health of thousands of 18-year-olds along the way. The virus will exploit the weakest link in the Army’s chain of viral defenses.

Once the candidates ship to boot camp, they are quarantined for two weeks. After that, the Pentagon seems to be making it up as they go along. In early May the DOD said a recovered COVID-19 patient would be ineligible to join the military. The DOD reversed course shortly thereafter and said only recruits who had been hospitalized for COVID-19 would be banned. By the middle of May the DOD announced that recruits who have recovered will be examined by a physician to determine if there are long term effects.

The recruiting command is in serious trouble because large numbers of potential recruits and their families realize this is a terrible time to enlist.

Youth who sign up with the DEP are putting their health in jeopardy. The DOD’s decisions regarding Covid 19 will continue to be guided by its ability to fill the ranks.

Sources used for this article

 Bonnie J Caracciolo / Parent Category: NNOMY Articles / 02 June 2020

Bonnie J Caracciolo / Chelsea Uniting Against the War (CUAW) - For fourteen years a dedicated group of anti-war citizens in a working-class suburb of Boston, MA, has worked to inform high school students in their community, including their own children, about the perils of military recruitment. Chelsea Uniting Against the War (CUAW) convenes within the first week of the school year to distribute counter-recruitment flyers informing students of the risks of military service. They then follow up this activity by speaking with students one-on-one during school lunch breaks while distributing forms to opt out of school releases of student information to military recruiters. These lunchtime events occurred twice each year and were always preceded by a phone call to the principal’s office to determine an appropriate date. At no time did CUAW enter the school without prior notice.

This annual routine changed in the Spring of 2019 when CUAW showed up on the appointed date and was confronted by the newly-hired principal who told the members they were not going to be allowed to continue. CUAW members left the school without incident.

In September of last year (2019) a group of nine CUAW members assembled outside of Chelsea High School during the first week of school as it had done for the previous thirteen years, for the purpose of distributing a counter-recruitment flyer and to discuss the opt out form which is included in the school’s student handbook.

Shortly thereafter, a request was made for a meeting with the school superintendent for the purpose of revisiting the ban on access to the school.  Three times school officials set up a meeting, only to postpone it to a later date. Finally, a meeting was scheduled that included both the principal, the former AND new superintendents AND the city attorney for Chelsea. The meeting was confusing as none of the parties on the side of the city appeared to be in agreement and simply informed CUAW that regardless of the precedent that had been set in the past, CUAW was no longer welcome inside the school cafeteria. The former superintendent claimed that although she was aware of CUAW being inside the school she did not know why.  No one else spoke except the city’s attorney, who essentially said if CUAW can find a reason why it should be allowed inside the school for the purpose of counter-recruitment, we should let her know.

Well, that was the opening CUAW needed! With the help and guidance of Rick Jahnkow, researcher and consultant with the San Diego-based Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (Project YANO*), a hastily organized conference call took place between San Diego and Chelsea. During this meeting, it was decided to craft a letter from CUAW to the city attorney. It would include copies of letters from the ACLU that had helped several other counter-recruitment groups achieve equal school access. The cover letter requested that the city attorney and school superintendent review and reconsider CUAW’s request to be allowed entry into the high school.

Once the letter’s delivery had been confirmed, a CUAW member visited the city attorney’s office and was told that she was unavailable, but that a response would be forthcoming.  This went on three more times when finally, on March 11, a letter from the Assistant City Attorney arrived via email, saying:

“We have reviewed your request for access to Chelsea High School and have come to the following conclusion. The Chelsea Public School District will allow Chelsea Uniting Against the War (CUAW) access to students on the same basis as that granted to military recruiters.”

The letter went on to describe the parameters to which CUAW must adhere, including activities limited to the school cafeteria during all four lunches and a restriction on posting material on walls. Otherwise, this was a victory that gave new vigor to counter-recruitment efforts at Chelsea High School.

*Project YANO has been doing youth education and school outreach since 1984.

#projectyano #counterrecruitment #cuaw #nnomypeace #militaryfreeschools

Source: http://www.comdsd.org/index.php/articles-archive/234-a-counter-recruitment-victory

 Elizabeth King / Parent Category: NNOMY Articles / 27 May 2020

Elizabeth King /Article Originally appeared in In These Times web edition in June 2019 -

A scrappy counter-recruitment movement is trying to starve the military of labor.

Out of the spotlight, dedicated counter-recruiters around the country are steadfast in their organizing to cut off the human supply chain to the U.S. military.

­Eighteen is the youngest age at which someone can join the U.S. military without their parents’ permission, yet the military markets itself to—which is to say recruits—children at much younger ages. This is in part accomplished by military recruiters who visit high schools around the country, recruiting children during career fairs and often setting up recruitment tables in cafeteri­as and hallways. As a result, most students in the U.S. will meet a military recruiter for the first time at just 17 years old, and children are getting exposed to military propaganda younger and younger.

The recruitment of young people to the military is as old as the military itself, and has become more and more normalized along with the general militarization of schools. According to the Urban Institute, more than two-thirds of public high school students attend schools where there are “school resource officers,” a name for school-based police. This police presences comes on top of the role of military recruiters on campuses, or at college and career fairs. 

Counter-recruitment surged in popularity during George W. Bush’s Iraq War, when the U.S. military ratcheted up recruitment for the war. But these days you don’t hear much about this movement, despite the fact that the U.S. is still engaged in brutal wars, from Yemen to Afghanistan, and the Trump administration has been threatening war with Iran. Out of the spotlight, dedicated counter-recruiters around the country are steadfast in their organizing to cut off the human supply chain to the U.S. military. U.S. wars have caused innumerable deaths, created long-term hardships in occupied nations, and cost trillions of dollars. Counter-recruitment, then, is about starving the military of the labor it needs to accomplish these destructive missions. When working with students, parents and school leadership, counter-recruiters focus on a variety of issues, including the negative personal consequences that come with being a soldier and broader problems like racism and U.S. imperialism.

Kate Connell, the director of the California counter-recruitment organization Truth in Recruitment, a parent, and a Quaker, tells In These Times that one reason counter-recruitment efforts are so overlooked these days is that U.S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan have fallen out of the news. “I think that's kind of what got people concerned and out in the streets” in the past, she says. Though this movement doesn’t get as much attention these days, organizers and activists say that counter-recruitment efforts remain critically important.

For the most part, activists who do counter-recruitment work in schools focus on matching or exceeding military recruiters in face-time with kids. Thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act, military recruiters are required to have the same level of access to students as college and career professionals who recruit in schools.

Hart Viges, a U.S. Army veteran who has been volunteering in counter-recruitment for around a decade and works with Sustainable Options for Youth-Austin (SOY-Austin), says his role is to educate children using interactive tabling in schools. The group brings t-shirts and a “peace wheel” the students can spin to learn more facts about the military. Children also get to discuss how they’d like taxpayer dollars spent. For example, they might discuss whether they want to spend billions on war, or allocate that money elsewhere. Viges is blunt with them about what life will be like after time spent in the military.

“I ask them, ‘Do you like fireworks?’” Viges says. When they respond yes, he explains, “you won’t like them anymore” after coming back from a war. He tells them the realities of living with post-traumatic stress disorder brought about by combat, and how it does lasting damage to veterans. Being real with children about the military has proven effective for Viges. “There's so many wins in counter recruitment I feel,” he adds. “I talk to kids who are thinking about joining and I tell them the realities of it, and you can see their minds start to change… With politicians it's like a stalemate, but counter-recruitment is like a punch in the gut that will topple the military industrial complex.” Hart also talks to children about other issues connected to the military industrial complex that concerns them, such as war in general, racism, sexism and climate change.

Youth are active in this work, too. Jenny, a 16-year-old incoming junior at Santa Maria High School in California, interns with Truth in Recruitment. She tells In These Times that she got involved with the organization after a friend told her it would be a good way to stand up for herself and her peers who are frequently visited by military recruiters at school.

When she started high school, Jenny says she noticed that the military recruiters frequented her school, but other opportunities for students post-high school were not well represented. “I thought this was a problem, especially since the majority of us are students of color and I thought that we were being disproportionately targeted because we are people of color,” she says.

Angel further notes that many students at her school are undocumented, and she noticed that military recruiters were telling her peers distorted information about the benefits of military service based on their undocumented status. She says that after speaking to military recruiters, a number of her peers have said that they were promised they would get U.S. citizenship if they served in the military. While there is some pathway for non-citizens who serve in the military to become naturalized, this is not a guaranteed benefit. In fact, the U.S. government has a history of deporting foreign nationals who were employed by the military. “I always have to correct them because I don't want them to join and not know the full truth about it,” Angel says. “We wouldn't be seeing these things at schools rich, white students attend.”

The military does, in fact, tend to recruit in poor and working class communities, especially among Black and Latinx youth. The strategy of targeting poor, working-class, and Black and Latinx people for military conscription is known as the “poverty draft.” The tactics of this strategy can be seen in military recruitment efforts at schools like Santa Maria High School where Angel attends, and is evident in studies on the socioeconomic status of people who fought in recent US wars. According to a 2016 study out of Boston University and the University of Minnesota Law School, “Today, unlike in World War II, the Americans who die or are wounded in war are disproportionately coming from poorer parts of the country.”

Connell, the Truth in Recruitment director, says that the tactics used by military recruiters on children are “very much a grooming process.” She notes that branches of the military operate social media accounts, where they will follow and communicate with students who are potentially interested in joining up. In this way, recruiters have direct, unsupervised access to young teens, who may or not be discussing recruitment efforts with trusted adults in their lives. This type of behavior, Connell says, is “inappropriate.”

Still, the presence of the military in schools has become normalized. “I feel that the idea that the military is an untouchable subject as far as criticism or cutting the budget, [makes counter-recruitment] a really tricky conversation to have, so people avoid it.” The institutional power and not to mention funding and broad support that the military has makes counter-recruitment a challenge.

But the group has seen concrete results from their organizing and advocacy. Working with students, parents, and school and district leadership in Santa Barbara in 2014, Truth in Recruitment was able to convince the district to create better resources for parents to more easily opt their students out of having their information shared with military recruiters.

Though counter-recruitment is perhaps not as prominent as it was more than a decade ago, organizers in this field are unequivocal about the need to support students by offering alternatives to the military, such as college or the workforce. As the military continues to target children, especially in low-income and Black and Latinx communities, counter-recruiters will continue to work with children and their care-takers to offer safer, more dignified options for life after high school.

Source: https://inthesetimes.com/article/21937/war-military-counter-recruitment-education-schools-youth