• +1-443-671-7111
  • admin@nnomy.org
  • Office: Tuesday and Thursday 10 am to 6pm
The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)
  • Home
  • About NNOMY
    • Network Formation
    • Mission
    • NNOMY in the News
    • NNOMY Social Media Sites
    • Contact NNOMY
    • NNOMY Steering Committee
    • NNOMY Network Links
    • Subscribe to NNOMYnewsletter
    • Register for archive access
  • Counter-recruitment
    • » Community Action
      • » For Counter-recruiters
      • » Counter Recruiter Access to High Schools
      • » For Parents
        • » Talking with Your Kids
      • » For Teachers
      • » For Students
        • Student Voices
      • » CR Reports
      • » What Can You Do?
    • » Demilitarization Groups
      • » National Organizations
      • » Regional Organizations
      • » Add your Group
      • » International Networking
  • Resources
    • Alternatives to the Military
      • » Finding Alternatives
      • » Alternatives by State
      • » Cultural & Art Activism
        • NYC
      • » Careers in Peacemaking
    • Article Archive
      • » Book Reviews
      • » Opinion
      • » Pat Elder
        • Military Recruiting in the United States
      • » Matt Guynn
      • » Rick Jahnkow
      • » John Judge Commemoration
      • » Jorge Mariscal
      • » David Swanson
      • » Revisiting Our Outrage
    • Downloads
      • » Audio Reports
      • » Classroom Resources
      • » Documentary/Films
      • » General Counter-recruitment information
      • » General-recruitment publications
      • » Government Documents
      • » Pamphlets/Reports
      • » Search NNOMY Site
      • » Toolkits/guides
      • » Video Reports
  • Donate to NNOMY

The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth Blog

The MAGA Face of JROTC

  • Print
  • Email
17 January 2021 Hits: 75

January 18 2021 / Gary Ghirardi / Op-ed / NNOMY - With the violence  witnessed in the beginning of 2021 at the nation's capital,  we have been forced to acknowledge the culture war that exists in the United States in full expression. We also witnessed in the subtext of that event, and the emerging crisis that will follow it, the government's promise of increasing securitization as a reaction to it. That process did not start at the "surge on the capital"  but has been in a steady progression of growth for many years. This latest event only provides an additional justification for the need to  increase the militarization of our "democracy."

Nowhere is that trend more evident as in the Junior Reserves Officers Training Corps (JROTC) military cadet program slated for a massive expansion. What is billed by the Pentagon as a character building and good citizenship program designed to instill leadership qualities in young people, now is being funded to expand from 3500 nation-wide units to over 6000. JROTC corps are constructed increasingly of ethnic minority and black youth disadvantaged with a lack of opportunities to jump start their lives. This is not an organic development. Those poorer youth lacking in programs designed to prepare them for college are specifically profiled and targeted for JROTC programs. In Chicago that targeting has gone a step further in configuring actual public schools as military academies complete with military school uniforms, protocols and curriculum.

Read more ...

From Student Debtor to Soldier

  • Print
  • Email
26 December 2020 Hits: 35

How the student loan debt crisis forces low-income students of color into the military.

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, 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.

Read more ...

INFLUENCERS IN THE MILITARY RECRUITMENT OF YOUNG PEOPLE

  • Print
  • Email
14 December 2020 Hits: 70

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).

Read more ...

The Permanent Discourse For Endless Wars

  • Print
  • Email
16 November 2020 Hits: 97

Fabiola Cardozo /  NNOMY / español  - The rhetoric about the need for a military draft in American society is lost sight of in history. The patriotic struggle to defend the nation from possible threats and the urgency to demobilize alleged terrorism attempts and take democracy to other latitudes, has served to implement policies that perpetuate permanent war and make invisible or undermine the possibility of more democratic and pacifist mechanisms in international relations.

Such has been the recurrence of this rhetoric that American society sometimes does not question the actions leading to warfare caused by the government in power. As mentioned in this article:


Yet celebrating the military, nobilizing the military experience, finding purpose and meaning in continuous war, is the very definition of militarism.

A true democracy has a military as a reluctant and regrettable choice, driven by the need to defend itself in a hostile and violent world.

…We’ve become so accustomed to living with the drumbeats of war that we no longer hear them…We’re hearing them all the time today — it’s the background noise to our lives.  For some, it’s even become sweet music.  But war and militarism is never sweet music to a functioning democracy.

(See: https://bracingviews.com/2015/07/23/the-united-states-of-militarism/)


Despite the potential that the US has, and that could be developed more efficiently to provide greater social welfare to its inhabitants and the rest of the world through inventiveness and technological innovation, it is a country that has assumed militarism and that seeks to lead with exports of weapons in conflict scenarios on a planetary scale.

Read more ...

ANTIWAR.COM - Counter-Recruitment in the Time of Covid

  • Print
  • Email
01 November 2020 Hits: 189

Kate Connell / Fred Nadis / Antiwar.com / español - In 2016-17, the U.S. Army visited Santa Maria High School and nearby Pioneer Valley High School in California over 80 times. The Marines visited Ernest Righetti High School in Santa Maria over 60 times that year. One Santa Maria alumnus commented, “It’s as if they, the recruiters, are on staff.” A parent of a high school student at Pioneer Valley commented, "I consider recruiters on campus talking to 14 year olds as "grooming" young people to be more open to recruitment in their senior year. I want my daughter to have more access to college recruiters and for our schools to promote peace and nonviolent solutions to conflict."

This is a sample of what high schools, particularly in rural areas, experience nationwide, and the difficulty of confronting the presence of military recruiters on campus. While our nonprofit counter-recruitment group, Truth in Recruitment, based in Santa Barbara, California, views such military access as beyond excessive, as far as the military is concerned, now that the pandemic has closed campuses, those were the good old days. The Air Force’s Recruiting Service Commander, Maj. Gen. Edward Thomas Jr., commented to a journalist at Military.com, that the Covid-19 pandemic and high school shutdowns nationwide have made recruiting more difficult than previously.

Thomas stated that in-person recruiting at high schools was the highest yield way to recruit teenagers. “Studies that we’ve done show that, with face-to-face recruiting, when somebody is actually able to talk to a living, breathing, sharp Air Force [noncommissioned officer] out there, we can convert what we call leads to recruits at about an 8:1 ratio,” he said. “When we do this virtually and digitally, it’s about a 30:1 ratio.” With closed recruiting stations, no sporting events to sponsor or appear at, no hallways to walk, no coaches and teachers to groom, no high schools to show up at with trailers loaded with militarized video games, recruiters have shifted to social media to find likely students.

Read more ...

Page 1 of 14

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • »
  • End

Subscribe to NNOMY Newsletter

NNOMYnews reports on the growing intrusions by the Department of Defense into our public schools in a campaign to normalize perpetual wars with our youth and to promote the recruitment efforts of the Pentagon.

CLICK HERE

Search Articles

Advanced

Registered User Login

Registered users have access to article and category indexes, document downloads and research links. Utilize your user menu to access these resources. If you do not have an account, you must SIGN UP first.

  • Forgot Login?
  • Sign up

Welcome. You now have access to download documents that are only available to registered users.

Language

Donate to NNOMY

Your donation to NNOMY works to balance the military's message in our public schools. Our national network of activists go into schools and inform youth considering military service the risks about military service that recruiters leave out.

CONTRIBUTE

The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY) is supported by individual contributions and a grant by the Craigslist Charitable Fund - Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. NNOMY websites are hosted by The Electric Embers Coop. | 2020 - 2021 | #nnomypeace - #nnomynetwork

Mobile Menu

  • Home
  • About NNOMY
    • Network Formation
    • Mission
    • NNOMY in the News
    • NNOMY Social Media Sites
    • Contact NNOMY
    • NNOMY Steering Committee
    • NNOMY Network Links
    • Subscribe to NNOMYnewsletter
    • Register for archive access
  • Counter-recruitment
    • » Community Action
      • » For Counter-recruiters
      • » Counter Recruiter Access to High Schools
      • » For Parents
        • » Talking with Your Kids
      • » For Teachers
      • » For Students
        • Student Voices
      • » CR Reports
      • » What Can You Do?
    • » Demilitarization Groups
      • » National Organizations
      • » Regional Organizations
      • » Add your Group
      • » International Networking
  • Resources
    • Alternatives to the Military
      • » Finding Alternatives
      • » Alternatives by State
      • » Cultural & Art Activism
        • NYC
      • » Careers in Peacemaking
    • Article Archive
      • » Book Reviews
      • » Opinion
      • » Pat Elder
        • Military Recruiting in the United States
      • » Matt Guynn
      • » Rick Jahnkow
      • » John Judge Commemoration
      • » Jorge Mariscal
      • » David Swanson
      • » Revisiting Our Outrage
    • Downloads
      • » Audio Reports
      • » Classroom Resources
      • » Documentary/Films
      • » General Counter-recruitment information
      • » General-recruitment publications
      • » Government Documents
      • » Pamphlets/Reports
      • » Search NNOMY Site
      • » Toolkits/guides
      • » Video Reports
  • Donate to NNOMY