http://www.truth-out.org/war-resisters-inject-truth-military-recruitment/1311181786
Wednesday 20 July 2011
by: Eleanor J. Bader
The setting changes but the scene does not: Men and women in crisply
pressed uniforms enter public high schools across the country and
cajole the teenagers they meet into signing on the dotted line to
serve Uncle Sam.
Thanks to Section 9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002,
recruiters from the Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps and
Navy have the same access to secondary school students as college
recruiters or potential employers. This, in concert with mandatory
Selective Service registration for all 18-year-old males and the
Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery [ASVAB] exam that is given
to nearly three-quarters of a million high school juniors and seniors
each year, has prompted many domestic peace activists to organize
opposition to the militarization of youth. They advocate
"truth-in-recruiting," arguing that lofty promises made at the time
of enlistment -- extensive travel, scholarships or an easy route to
U.S. citizenship -- often fail to materialize once service begins.
What's more, these peace activists say that they are paying
particular attention to female recruits, warning them of potential
pitfalls: The risks associated with wartime service even in
"non-combat" positions, as well as the too-common experience of
sexual harassment and assault by unit supervisors and peers.
Little-Known Facts
The War Resisters League, an 88-year-old national group with more
than 25 chapters across the U.S., targets students and, when
possible, tables at schools to provide little-known facts about the
military: One in four soldiers gets a less than honorable discharge,
making them ineligible for college money; nearly one-third of females
seeking health care from the Veteran's Administration report
experiencing a rape or attempted rape while conscripted.
"Up until the economic recession began, the military had a hard time
finding recruits," says Kimber Heinz, National Organizing Director of
the War Resisters League. "But now the military is not only meeting
its quota, it's a de facto jobs program and you have recruiters
preying on students who can no longer afford college or find work."
One of its brochures, Know Before You Go, offers this information for
those thinking of signing up: "The military contract states, 'Laws
and regulations that govern military personnel may change without
notice. Such changes may affect pay, benefits, and responsibilities
as a member of the Armed Forces regardless of the provisions of the
enlistment document.'" In other words, beware: Even though a recruit
has signed a contract, the terms can be modified at the military's discretion.
"We let people know that if we're at war a recruit can be stop-lossed
and might end up on multiple tours," Heinz continues. "The recruit
has no control over this. We always remind people that the military
is the only job where if the worker quits, he or she goes to jail."
The organization also provides data on what it means to be a
conscientious objector and outlines the penalties for failing to
register for Selective Service.
Other truth-in-recruiting messages are also hammered. For one,
despite promises to the contrary, Heinz reports that skills learned
in the military are rarely transferable to the civilian world. "We
make it clear that many, many people come out of the military
traumatized or disabled," Heinz continues. "We ask people to think
about what it means to be an occupier of someone else's land and we
try to get people to consider whether they'll be able to live with
killing someone or seeing someone killed."
It's a heavy message, and it is repeated by more than 75 local
organizations throughout the 50 states.
Joanne Sheehan is an adult advisor to YouthPeace, a student-led
social justice group at the Norwich Free Academy, a public, regional
high school in eastern Connecticut. Since 1998 YouthPeace has raised
issues including military recruitment and Islamophobia with the student body.
Students Can Opt-Out
For the past seven years, members have also coordinated an annual
opt-out campaign to inform students that the law allows them to
request that their contact information be withheld from recruiters.
"Schools typically send student names, addresses, and phone numbers
to the military in October, so we have about a month once school
starts to publicize the opt-out provision," Sheehan says. "A few
years ago we pushed the superintendent to put information about
opting-out in the first paragraph of a letter that is sent to parents
at the beginning of the year. We want to be sure they understand that
their children don't need to provide data to recruiters, that it's
something they can opt-out of."
In some schools recruiters have free rein in the hallways
The peace groups also broach a broader anti-militarist agenda, even
in places like San Diego with a heavy military presence and 110,000
military employees. There, the school board recently voted to ban
students enrolled in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps
[J-ROTC] from taking in-school marksmanship classes. "Fifteen of the
18 high schools in San Diego have ROTC. One of them, Lincoln, was
temporarily closed for rehabbing and when we saw the plan for the
renovation, we saw that it included a firing range. We brought this
to the community's attention and formed the Education Not Arms
Coalition," says Rick Jahnkow, coordinator of Youth and Non-Military
Opportunities, known as Project YANO.
The consensus, Jahnkow says, was to focus on ending gun classes
rather than campaigning against ROTC more generally because group
participants felt an anti-ROTC campaign would fail. Education Not
Arms pointed to the pervasive gun violence already plaguing the
Lincoln area and denounced planned cutbacks in Advanced Placement
classes needed by college-bound pupils. The efforts paid off: The
school board ended all in-school gun training.
Boosted by this victory, Project YANO and Education Not Arms next
turned their attention to school-based recruiters. In late 2010 San
Diego activists succeeded in restricting recruiters to two school
visits per year, similar to policies in New York City, Chicago,
Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland. As a result,
recruiters must schedule specific times to meet with potential
conscripts and cannot disrupt "normal school activities."
"In some schools the recruiters eat lunch with the kids, hang out and
chill in the parking lot, and have free rein in the hallways," says
Pat Elder of Maryland's PeaceAction Montgomery. "In most places, what
they get to do depends on the principal. I've seen schools where male
recruiters are always around, playing one-on-one basketball with kids
who don't have fathers."
This scenario led New York City's Youth Activists-Youth Allies
Network to monitor recruiters to ensure that they obey the
regulations that circumscribe their access to individual students.
YA-YA Network staff -- all but one of whom are between 15 and 19 --
also lead workshops about U.S. foreign policy and the costs of war
and militarism. "Several years ago I asked participants what their
peers thought about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," says YA-YA
advisor Amy Wagner. "The wars were not very present for them. I
talked about how during the Vietnam War when you turned on your TV
you always heard the number of dead soldiers. They thought about this
and concluded that facts were being hidden from them on purpose. They
did a lot of research and the result was a short video now up on
YouTube, called The War Will Not Be Televised.
Terms can be modified at the military's discretion
The YA-YA Network is presently focused on making sure that schools
abide by regulations that mandate that a school staff person be
appointed to provide guidance on military recruitment in each high
school. "We first want to investigate and see if this is being done,"
Wagner says. "If not, why not. If it is, we want to know where these
people are getting their info and who's training them. We want to
give students the information they are entitled to so that they fully
understand their range of options."
Indeed, it is this idea of options that propels organizing against
militarism. Take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test,
a four-hour recruiting tool used in nearly 12,000 high schools
nationwide. To date, Maryland is the only state to require schools to
select a provision that stops student scores from being sent directly
to recruiters.
"Look, if you take even moderate Democrats and sit them down and ask
them who they think should give student data to the military -- mom
and dad or the Pentagon – they'll all support parental decision
making," says Pat Elder of PeaceAction Montgomery.
They want students to understand that becoming a soldier is not
necessarily the best way to show personal strength or valor. "A lot
of people want to be tough and powerful, so they enlist," says the
War Resisters League's Kimber Heinz. "They ultimately learn that
enlisting is not a good way to test how strong they are."
--
Eleanor J. Bader
Eleanor J. Bader is a freelance writer, teacher and feminist activist
from Brooklyn, New York. She writes for The Brooklyn Rail,
ontheissuesmagazine.com, RHrealitycheck.org and other progressive
blogs and publications.
.
