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Recruiting Vans Draw Fire

A ninth grader in a suburban Washington DC classroom is delighted to be excused from Algebra class to spend a half hour shooting a life-like 9 MM pistol and lobbing explosive ordinance from an M1A2 Abrams tank simulator. At the same time 3,000 miles away in La Habra, California, a 15 year-old girl is released from English class to squeeze off rounds from a very real looking M-16 rifle. The kids thoroughly enjoy the experience, especially the part about getting out of class.

The two students have experienced the Army's Adventure Van, a 60-foot, 30-ton 18-wheeler with several interactive exhibits that bring an adrenaline rush and glorify weaponry and combat.Military Madness

The Army's 19 vans frequent various community events and two thousand schools a year, generating more than 63,000 recruiter leads.
Read More

Welcome to Counter-Recruitment.org

This website is maintained by the DC Anti-War Network's counter-recruitment working group. It is intended to be a networking tool for students, parents, teachers, veterans and others to confront the military's $4 Billion recruiting budget. If you're just beginning to research how to challenge the military in your community, there are several authoritative sites on the web we recommend.

1. NNOMY The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY) is a network of organizations doing counter-recruitment work across the country. This is an excellent source for researching ways to confront the military in the high schools.

2. YANO The Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (YANO) is a great resource for understanding the historical and philosophical underpinnings of the counter-recruitment movement. The site also has an excellent array of c-r brochures.

3. CAMS The Coalition Against Militarism in our Schools, (CAMS) is a Los Angeles-based organization that works with parents, school administrators and the teacher union to limit the military's access. CAMS has been instrumental in convincing LA school authorities to protect student privacy while administering the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, (ASVAB). The impact of this organization provides a template for activists nationally.

4. AFSC The Youth & Militarism Program of American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) is one of the finest c-r sites in the country. The Quakers have been standing against militarism in this country for 200 years and they are a leader in this movement today.

5. COMD The Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD) publishes "Draft NOtices", the nation's foremost publication on counter-recruitment issues.

6. GI Rights Hotline The GI Rights Hotline 1-877-477-4487 is an amazing institution with trained counselors and attorneys across the country who advise service members about military discharges, grievance and complaint procedures, and other civil rights.

Are you...

...in the military or a family member or friend of someone who is?
...confused about your rights?
...unsure of where to go for accurate answers?

The service is confidential and the call is free.

7. C-R Listserve The National Counter-Recruitment listserve is an invaluable resource for the counter-recruiting community. The site allows activists to discuss relevant issues and has 13,600 items in its impressive archives.

Although there are many excellent sites and thousands of individuals across the country doing counter-recruitment work, these groups will guide you in resisting military recruitment in your community. If you're new to this line of peacemaking, sustained counter-recruitment work will provide you with quantifiable successes, a rarity in today's peace movement.

Counter-Recruitment Deserves Higher Priority on the Peace Agenda

The mainstream peace and justice movement is beginning to see that countering military recruitment deserves a higher priority and should be viewed in strategic, rather than tactical terms. Resisting the unprecedented and relentless militarization of American youth transcends the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Countering military recruitment confronts an ugly mix of a distinctively American brand of institutionalized violence, racism, militarism, nationalism, classism, and sexism. It gets to the root of the problem.

Confronting the work of military recruiters, particularly in the nation’s public schools will provide a catalyst for activists to shift gears from the traditional antiwar tactics of vigils, protests, sit-ins, and CD actions to the long-term strategy of opposing the militarization of youth. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. One however, treats symptoms; the other addresses causes.

Simply put, the strategy of the counter-recruiting movement is to put the imperial armed forces of the United States into a kind of vice that squeezes new recruits from the ranks. One end of the vice is the near universal rejection of the return of the military draft. Remember how the House voted 402-2 against reinstating the daft back in October of 2004? Bringing back the draft is unthinkable. Conscription would result in demonstrations of millions that would ultimately end the war and result in a political revolution. The crushing steel on the opposite side of the vice is the counter-recruitment movement, aided by an American public that increasingly recognizes illegal and immoral wars.

Counter recruitment activists are putting on the squeeze. They’re doing it by
Read More

Recruiter Abuse Hotline 1-877-688-6881

The military promised to set up a hotline to deal with recruiters who lie or abuse recruits, but they never got around to it. The American Friends Service Committee takes recruiter abuse much more seriously. Tell them about the problems you or a friend are having and they'll try to help. Call the AFSC Recruiter Abuse Hotline at 1-877-688-6881.

Being denied access to high school students?

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

This has been the position taken by federal district courts in Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois and two federal appellate courts. The most broadly-worded decision came from a case that the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft took to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the 1980s. In simple terms, the argument for equal access rests on the principle that once a government agency creates a forum for expressive activity on a controversial topic, access to the forum can be limited only so long as it is reasonable, and not a façade for viewpoint-based discrimination. If the presentation of one point of view has been allowed, the forum must also be opened to those with an opposing view.

Federal judges have consistently ruled in favor of granting access to counter-recruitment activists in the public high schools. Go get 'em! Read More

Vague Section of No Child Left Behind Act Regulates Military Presence in High Schools

Since 2001, when President Bush signed the "No Child Left Behind" act into law, military recruiters have been entitled to receive the names, phone numbers, and addresses of high school students across the country. The pertinent section of the law, Section 9528, is actually very brief, consisting of three paragraphs. Please read the law.

The law says students or parents may request that the student's information not be released; that schools are supposed to notify parents of this option; and that schools are to comply with any requests to remove students from lists being furnished to the military.

The law also says schools should provide military recruiters the same access to students as is provided generally to other recruiters. That's all Congress wrote into the law.

(Of course, it's a very bad law. Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) has introduced HR 1346 that would do away with it, but it has received scant support, even from Democrats.) Read about HR 1346

In the Washington, DC metropolitan area, local school districts interpret the law in a myriad of ways.

Half of the region's districts don't have "opt out" forms that specifically allow students to remove their names. Most of these districts use another federal form (FERPA) and require students to remove their names from the entire Student Directory to preclude their information from being sent to military recruiters. Of course, those students no longer receive information from colleges or financial institutions. Still, other districts require parents to write separate letters to opt out and give no guidance.

Fairfax, Virginia interprets the law to mean that students may "opt out" without their parent's signature, but neighboring Arlington County requires parents to opt out. Howard and Anne Arundel in Maryland release full transcripts on graduates to the military, while neighboring PG and Baltimore Counties do not. Fauquier, Virginia discloses information from a student’s educational records to the military. Prince William, Virginia furnishes photographs and videos of students to military recruiters

Some school systems, like PG, have developed opt out forms with check boxes specifically for military recruiting, most have not. Some systems, like Montgomery, mail opt out forms home to parents, most do not.

Some counties post information on the opt-out procedure prominently on their website, most do not. Some districts require parents to opt out annually; some allow them to do so in perpetuity.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the law calls for military recruiters to have "equal access". In the DC metropolitan area, military recruiters generally enjoy far greater access to high school students than college recruiters. While college recruiters usually are required to make appointments with students and meet with them in the relatively confined guidance office, military recruiters often have full reign off the school, freely fraternizing with students during lunch, in the hallways, or in the parking lot.

Read through the website of the Resource Center for Nonviolence. They put together a remarkable guide for mounting an opt out campaign in your community. Learn about the Opt-out

What did you learn in school today?

"I learned that might makes right and the U.S. is never wrong."

The American military machine is busy indoctrinating a half million children every day in public high schools across the country. They're enrolled in the four-year JROTC program, administered by the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The programs operate in more than 3,000 middle and high schools. Typically, school systems exercise little or no curricular oversight while courses in U.S. History and U.S. Government offer a dangerously reactionary view of military history and contemporary politics.

Although the No Child Left Behind Act has pressured most school systems to require professional teachers to hold advanced degrees, JROTC instructors are given a pass by local school systems. JROTC instructors only need a GED to teach credited high school courses. The military is taking steps to require some instructors to acquire AA degrees.

To gain a sense of the Army textbook's treatment of historical facts, compare this paragraph on the Spanish-American War of 1898 with high school history books today:

"America went to war on the side of Cuba to help that country gain its freedom from Spain…. According to the terms of the peace treaty, signed in December 1898, Spain gave Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico to the United States and agreed to give up its claim to Cuba. Cuba became a free nation in 1902… The Spanish - American War helped to dim the sour feelings between the North and South as all Americans united together to fight for one cause. The war also proved to the rest of the world that the United States was once again a truly united and powerful nation."

Read how European settlers exterminated American Indians but the U.S. government treated native Americans "the same way it dealt with other foreign governments". Read how America's wars had no detractors. Read how the War of 1812 had to be fought. Take a look at the section on World War I and see how the sinking of the Lusitania is treated. They forgot to mention that the Lusitania was heavily armed or that the US regularly used passenger ships to sell ammunition to the British.

The JROTC text refers to a democratic government led by Syngman Rhee in South Korea. It repeats the lies of the Johnson administration regarding the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The text says the Dominican Republic "requested assistance" of American peace-keeping forces.

There are numerous propagandistic lies in this document. Goebbels would have been proud. Army JROTC Cadet History Textbook

Alternatives to Military Service

None of the Army's fancy brochures mentions that there are two wars
going on and they never say you stand a good chance of getting hurt
or even killed. Their brochures leave out the long tedious hours, the low pay, the mandatory eight-year enlistment contact and the fact that you can't quit if you don't like it.

The brochures also say if you join the Army you'll earn up to $70,000 for college. They seem to say that if you join the military, college is all but paid for. But only a small percentage of recruits receive any education benefits from the military. Most that do get money don't see anything close to $70,000. Enlisting in the armed forces is more likely to set your educational goals back. If you put in the necessary time, energy, and dedication, you can find a way to pay for college.

The basic pay rate for a new enlistee in the Army is about $300 per week. You'll pay Federal Income Tax, Social Security, Medicare, and State Taxes on your basic pay. The military will foot the bill for you room, board and health care. In return, they'll own you.

Do you think you could find an adventerous job without joining the military if your life depended on it? You could be a merchant marine in the Mediteranean, work on oil wells in the Middle East or fish for King crab in the Bering Sea. How about service? Maybe you'd like to volunteer to feed the hungry in Africa or build homes for the poor right here at home? Perhaps a job at a resort on a tropical island or working on a cruise ship would be more to your liking than joining the military. You'd make more money than the military, you could quit if you didn't like it, and you wouldn't have to kill anyone.

The Center on Conscience & War and the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth have teamed up to produce an extraordinary guide to job opportunities across the country. Click on the site below and select your state for current employment opportunities that don't have anything to do with killing anyone. Maybe you could find a job on the Love Boat.
A million non-military jobs

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Need funding for counter-recruitment work?

Apply to the A.J.Muste Memorial Institute Counter-Recruitment Fund!

The Muste Institute has created a special fund supporting grassroots efforts to inform young people about the realities of military service, help them find other options for educational funding and employment, and provide alternative points of view to those presented by military recruiters. The fund makes grants of up to $1,500 each.

All you have to do to apply is:

1) Read the guidelines at http://www.ajmuste.org/counter-recruit.htm
to make sure you qualify.

2) Download the application form here:

http://www.ajmuste.org/crfundapplication.rtf

3) Fill out the application form and send it in (with the necessary attachments like budget worksheets, examples of curriculum materials,
etc.) to info@ajmuste.org no later than 5 PM EST on April 11th, 2008

4) Wait to hear back. The decision process takes about 8-10 weeks.

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A.J. who?

Abraham Johannes Muste was born on January 8, 1885 and died on February 11, 1967. Known to the public as A.J. Muste and to his friends and associates simply as "A.J.," he was a great American pacifist and helped lead the movement for world peace while pioneering the development of nonviolent resistance as a means of securing social change.

There are two themes that ran through A.J. Muste's life so clearly and marked his own actions so decisively, that the conflict between them became a dialectic, never resolved. One theme was peace, nonviolence, profound reverence for life. The other theme was social justice. To respect life meant to struggle to achieve social justice, yet the struggle for social justice invariably disturbed the peace and risked the nonviolence so central to A.J. The life-destroying institutions of injustice which A.J. saw around him were intolerable--yet violent social change was also intolerable. It was this "dialectic" which led him into the Marxist-Leninist movement and then back into the religious pacifist movement. Those who worked most closely with him are convinced that he was never fully able to leave behind his Christian mysticism when he was a Marxist-Leninist, and that on his return to the Church he brought with him much of his Marxism.

For more on A.J. Muste and the Foundation in his name, see:
http://www.ajmuste.org/

Contact Us!

If you have questions or comments regarding any of the articles in this section, send an email to the working group:
agentforchange@comcast.net

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